The Narcissist's Playbook (2026) Movie Script

1
Many people...
don't like the idea
that monsters really do exist.
Monsters are made of stories, aren't they?
They're the boogeyman on the bed,
the thing in the dark that comes
and takes away naughty children.
If they don't go to bed
on time and fall asleep.
They're conjured up for an
exciting story around the campfire,
but they don't really exist.
Werewolves and vampires
and all of those things.
But actually, monsters do.
And they're in human form.
They're us...
My name is Sam Vaknin.
In 1995, I established the first website
about Narcissism, pathological Narcissism.
I established the first six
support groups for victims of
narcissistic abuse.
Narcissistic abuse is a phrase
that I coined in 1995.
I published academic papers and
I teach in various universities.
I had written and published
a book, Malignant Self-love
Narcissism Revisited.
It's in its 10th edition right now.
In this sense, if you wish,
Im the grandfather of the whole thing.
Ironically, I'm a narcissist,
so I'm coping daily with my disorder.
It's an all-pervasive cancer of the soul if you wish.
I think there had been a phase in my life
where I had been a malignant narcissist,
which is an antiquated name for what we
call today's psychopathic narcissist.
I was very rich. I had a private jet
I was a vain twentysomething.
I bought a bank,
and then I hyped the shares of the bank.
And that's, of course, criminal.
So I went to prison.
Having emerged from there,
I decided to attempt a transformation.
I started to focus on educating
victims of narcissistic abuse.
But I've been acting
effectively as a healer.
I feel that I am accomplishing things.
I feel that I am making a difference.
Would I have been able to be the good
guy? Had I not been the bad guy?
I don't think so.
I think the bad guy was
training for being the good guy.
Maybe there's a moral in there.
Some lesson.
In the world we live in now,
Narcissism, Narcissistic personality,
is incentivized.
It's rewarded.
The messages, especially
to the young generation.
If you are a narcissist,
you're going to end up on top.
You're going to end up rich
and famous and powerful.
They can help you get dates.
It can help you get elected.
It can help people like
you when they meet you.
Narcissistic people make more money.
Narcissistic people are more likely
to be in leadership positions.
Narcissistic people are
actually more likely to get
the romantic partners they want.
So they're kind of winning.
Narcissism is invading everything.
World leaders, corporate leaders,
celebrity leaders,
healthcare professionals,
therapists. Pick an area.
Politics, show business,
mass media, the family unit,
the community, the church,
you name it.
It's everywhere.
My name is Isla Traquair
and I've been a journalist
since I was 16 years old,
specializing in crime.
Hello and welcome. I'm Isla Traquair.
Police say they are not yet
scaling back the search.
I have a number one podcast.
I'm well known as a true crime journalist.
I've worked all over the world,
and I've confronted quite a few killers.
Mr. Hardison, answer the question.
Did you kill your ex-boyfriend, Paige?
I'd say I've encountered
a higher-than-average number
of narcissists in my life.
But this case I'm investigating currently
is a little more unusual.
It's not a killer, per se.
His victims are alive,
but they've been completely annihilated.
He's abusing them mentally and physically.
And I think he's the most
dangerous kind of narcissist.
I've got to try and stop this man
from hurting more women.
And I'm not sure how he would react when
or if the penny would drop.
Will he maintain the facade?
Or will he break down and lash out?
I don't know.
Narcissism is a personality
style characterized
by a consistent lack of empathy,
entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance.
This sort of inflated ego,
sense of self-importance,
sense of entitlement.
I'm better than you. I'm superior to you.
They have this excessive
need for admiration
and to be liked and adored.
A tendency to break into rage.
They're not about respect and compassion
and long-term consistency,
but rather they tend to
be a flash in the pan,
and exist for the narcissistic
person's own pleasure
or short-term interest.
That kind of boils down
to somebody is an asshole.
Hello, my name is H.G. Tudor.
I'm a diagnosed narcissistic psychopath.
I operate through a pseudonym
which is H.G. Tudor,
but I do so to avoid complication
with my private and professional life,
which enables me to function in
an unfettered fashion so that
I can tell people all about the
world view of me and my kind,
and explain all of the behaviors
so people are better
able to understand it.
Why give away the secrets
of my kind to the world?
Quite simply, it enables
me to control people.
It draws fuel to me,
and it's part of that legacy.
It's not going to cause a
problem for me. Many people say,
H.G. why are you giving
all this information away
isn't going to make it harder
for you to get victims.
Answer. No. I am very
skilled at what I do.
I was subject to physical, emotional,
and sexual abuse as a child.
The chief antagonists were my mother,
my uncle, and my auntie.
But I soon learned that by mimicking
much of the things that they did,
I could inflict that on other people.
A lot of narcissistic people's
backstories are painful.
They're traumatic, they're neglectful.
They're abusive. They're lonely.
They were not well-parented.
And so for the narcissistic person,
their entire life
is a singular mission
to ensure that they create
a fortress around themselves
so that stuff can stay forever buried.
And what better way to do that than money?
Power? Being attractive?
Being famous?
Things that make you seem
like a superhero to the world.
Narcissism really is
a maladaptive pattern
of self-loathing.
And, starting at age four
and for the next 12 years,
I had been physically abused in
life-threatening ways on a daily basis,
using instruments and implements,
and ended in blood all the time.
Enduring this, there was
psychological and verbal abuse.
How could I defend against
a murderous mother?
I packed a small backpack,
and I ran away from home,
and I knocked on doors and I said,
would you like to adopt me?
But no one would.
While many narcissistic people
do have a history of childhood abuse,
trauma, or neglect, that's not an excuse
because a far greater proportion of people
who experienced those adverse
conditions in childhood do
not go on to engage in
narcissistic behavior
and harmful behavior towards other people.
My name is Richard Grannon.
I am a psychologist, and I help people
protect themselves against
psychological predators.
At the moment, I work out
of the city of Liverpool
and all around Europe.
I was raised in an environment
which I would charitably
say was not an easy environment
for a child to feel safe in.
It was emotional, psychological,
physical and sexual abuse.
My father is, he's an abusive man.
I mean, he's a he's a sick
man, criminal psychopath.
And he went to prison
for abusing his children.
Around the age of 21, I was going
to join the Army as an officer,
and before the final test,
which was the RCP,
I was out in a club.
It was a gay club. I went to,
with my mates and their girlfriends,
and a guy headbutted me and hit me in the
side of my eye with a glass for being gay.
Which I am not.
But he went in there
specifically to do that.
I couldn't conceptualize
that somebody in cold blood
would think to go out and
to harm someone in that way.
I knew in theory that it existed,
but I was shocked to be
confronted with it so directly.
As a result of that experience,
I became very interested in
trying to answer the question,
what the fuck is wrong with people?
I've never been applauded
on the way in before, Sam.
They were not applauding you.
They are applauding me.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we have the pleasure of having Mr.
Sam Vaknin back with us again today.
Thank you for having me, Richard.
My, my pleasure and your honor.
I love working with Sam
and doing the talks with Sam.
His insights are original,
and it's crystal clear.
And it gets to the heart of the matter.
We're going to be going through
Doctor Professor Sam
Vaknin's more recent ideas.
It will be game-changing.
I do my best to avoid people,
because I have pity on them.
But Richard is in touch with them,
so it's kind of my liaison
to the outside world.
We are a great team together.
I'll describe how,
how I hone in on a woman,
a specific woman.
Why do I choose one,
or nine?
One?
Well, she bleeds.
I'm a shark.
I'm a predator.
Yes. I have a map of you.
Of you specifically.
Right now.
I have a map of all of you.
So I know who
is bleeding,
who is broken,
who is damaged,
who is vulnerable,
who is open to attack,
who is open to intrusion,
who is open to takeover,
who is open to mind snatching,
who is open to merging and fuzing with me,
who is open to share my fantasy
in the sense that she's willing,
willing, craving
to suspend reality,
to suspend reality and go with me
into the Twilight Zone,
into the Netherlands of
my mind,
because my mind is very dark
and to some extent dangerous place.
And it takes a certain type.
And so,
when I scan for vulnerabilities,
I divide the vulnerabilities
into two groups.
There are those who are vulnerable,
but seek healing,
vulnerable,
broken, damaged,
traumatized, hurt.
But they want to heal,
and
this is a very crucial insight.
There are those of you
who are hurting,
in pain,
bleeding,
and you want war.
You want more of the same.
You want me to destroy you.
Because you hate yourself,
because you're self-destructive,
because you're self-trashing,
because you're self-punitive.
I am your instrument of destruction.
It's like suicide by Vaknin.
So narcissism is a funny thing.
A lot of people see it as black or white.
Either are, or you aren't.
And it's not that simple.
It really sits on a
spectrum or a continuum.
At the lowest ends,
we really have someone that may be
really sort of interpersonally needy.
They're very superficial.
These are sort of social
media narcissists.
These folks don't tend to be dangerous.
They tend to be annoying.
Most of us who are getting
flummoxed by these
narcissistic relationships
are dealing with the
mid-range narcissists.
It's actually a real problem.
Their lack of empathy,
their entitlement, their
arrogance, their need to dominate,
it can make for very
problematic marriages,
really problematic workplaces,
very toxic friendships.
Just enough good days to keep people in.
Just enough bad days to
get other people sick.
Now, at the far end of the spectrum,
the high, more severe end of it,
now we're looking at what we
call malignant narcissism.
We're getting into a space here
where it can be downright dangerous.
This is where we see a
lot more manipulation.
They're more exploitative.
They're more menacing.
Malignant narcissism kisses psychopathy.
They're right next to each other.
The difference, though, is that
people who are psychopathic,
there's no sense of remorse.
So the malignant narcissist
is still putting on a mask.
The psychopath doesn't need a mask.
Narcissists target people.
The way viruses target people.
I infect you.
I cause your cells to replicate me.
I take over your mind.
And so that moment on your mind.
My goals or your goals,
my emotions or your emotions.
We merged and fuzed.
We become one organism.
I can become anyone.
And I do become anyone.
I'm a chameleon. I'm Zelig.
And because I have this
capacity to become anyone
at any time
tailored to your
menu, I'm irresistible to you.
I am you.
My name is Evan Rachel Wood,
and I am an artist
and an activist and a survivor.
I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina,
in a very artistic community.
I grew up in the theater community there,
as can happen in artistic communities.
I was also around a lot of narcissism
and manipulation as a child.
I think I internalized a lot of that
to become a people pleaser
as a way of protection.
Looking back,
I can absolutely see
how I was never really seen
very deeply as a child.
Marilyn Manson.
Also known as Brian Warner, is
one of the
most successful and well-known
figures in the history of rock.
A man who needs no introduction,
a platinum selling musician.
Grammy nominated artist, top rock icon.
On the night that we met,
I was 18,
and Brian Warner was 37.
He really started in
right away with the like,
nobody really sees you, do they?
Like he saw that?
He saw that.
I felt that way.
And I felt lonely and unseen.
He really started to exploit that
right away, immediately
saying things like, I
love you and we're soulmates. And this
is special. This is different.
We're supposed to be together.
I don't care what happens.
I don't care what people think.
And he said
you should move in with me, like,
right away.
Before the physical abuse began,
I was already trapped.
He was already controlling when I slept.
And what I wore and when I ate.
He would have his
assistants follow me around,
and send him photos of what
I was doing, so he knew
where I was.
And then that sort of escalated
into the sleep deprivation. And then
if I tried to sleep,
he would make me do drugs to stay awake.
And that's where things got
really, really, really dark.
He made me kneel
on a prayer kneeler
in the prayer position
and tied me up
and beat me over and over with
a whip and electrocuted my body.
He put me in front of a TV screen.
Right? Well, this is happening.
And on the TV screen in front
of me while I kneel down
are violent images.
It's a girl slitting her wrist.
And I didn't understand why he
had put me in front of the screen.
That was just projecting violence.
While the violence is
being committed against me.
And then later on, when I
was reading about cults,
I read that it's a brainwashing technique.
It's a tactic.
It, it makes it harder to remember
the assault.
He was always abusing the
people around him in big ways
and in small ways.
And he would always say, you know,
they're dumb enough to fall
for it. Then they deserve it.
To leave and to admit
that the abuse was happening
was to admit that I was stupid,
and that was
how he lured me in in the first place,
was that I was really smart.
Sorry.
Just, Ive literally
just put that together.
So yeah, I think I just felt
really stupid, you know?
I'm, like, really ashamed.
So I don't want to tell anybody.
So I didn't.
For a really long time.
Once upon a time, you take
a picture of the view,
or you might ask somebody
to take your camera
and take a picture of you
and your other half.
What you didn't do was bombard
everybody with 100 photos of you
looking like a duck with some
stupid look upon your face.
Standing in front of every monument
and view that you've ever visited.
That started from narcissists,
and it harnesses that
narcissistic trait of vanity.
So the platforms that have been
generated primarily through social media
cater precisely to our kind
by meaning that everybody
else embraces them,
making it more acceptable for us,
the actual narcissists, to
behave in a narcissistic fashion.
But it's not seen as such.
The younger generation
now is really facing
a struggle
with the construction of the false self.
Children are being taught
that your value is based on
how many likes you have,
how many followers you have,
basically what you look
like. My team is on social
media for winning the trophy.
Where are you going on vacation?
Look at me in my new dress.
They're getting more and more likes
and more and more followers and Oh,
I guess that's a good thing,
to be self-absorbed.
Because of the overabundance
of narcissists on social media,
when you open up your social media site
and look at it, you're going to say,
my God, the world is
filled with narcissists.
We live in a narcissistic hellhole.
Look at these clowns. I can't believe it.
And as you just doom scroll,
just watch the world burn.
My name is Lee Hammock.
I am a self-aware narcissist.
I have been clinically diagnosed with
narcissistic personality disorder.
I feel my TikToks my
YouTube self out here.
I just put up my backdrop right here
and set my lights up and just go.
My YouTube is at 474,000.
My Instagram is at 536
right now. Where are we at?
We have 1.9 million people on my
TikTok page, which is kind of crazy.
I'm just like, what!?
You absolutely, 100%, want to watch out
if you hurt a narcissistic person,
because vengeance is, like, sweet
to most narcissistic
and toxic people as well.
know people are going to say, you know,
like, how long does the vengeance last?
There's absolutely no time limit
on how long a narcissistic
will seek vengeance.
Hope this helps.
If I can imagine what made me a
narcissist, I would just say this:
emotional neglect and, you know,
pretty much abandonment
issues and things like that.
My dad wasn't, you know, the dad you need.
You know, we'd see him around
town and stuff like that.
He was just, you know,
out there making babies
and having other kids he wasn't
taking care of, you know,
I always wonder why,
no matter what I did, I wasn't good enough
to get, you know,
approval from this person.
I actually have a twin brother.
Same household, same everything.
But he's not like me.
I kind of shut down emotionally,
but he's, you know,
this super emotional guy.
He likes working with kids.
He's happy in what he does.
I'm kind of jealous of his happiness.
Like, why are you happy?
Good afternoon everybody. Happy Friday.
I decided to become a teacher
because I wanted to make an impact.
Remember, we talked about that breathing in
class. You are controlling your emotions.
You guys are having too much fun,
and you forgot, right? Yeah! Yeah.
It happens, it happens.
I love making connections with them.
This is my happy place.
Not having my father around.
At first I was like, well, why doesn't
my dad, like, want to be around us?
But as I got older, I accepted it.
And became better for it.
He didn't feel that love
from my dad, and I think
that that still kind of
hangs over his head today.
We've always been labeled as like
the nice one and he's the mean one.
I'm a super optimistic person.
I'm always in a good mood.
I always look at stuff in
like a positive fashion.
Yeah, but.
I feel like a deep connection
with wherever I'm at.
Like now I feel connected
to the lake out here.
I feel like it's calling out to me.
It's going, take a dive.
But, you know, I kind of
try to get connected to
wherever I'm at and just enjoy it.
See, for me, this is like... I don't feel that.
I don't feel that I have time to connect.
I see the lake and I'm just like,
I need a boat out here, you
know, like, why don't
why don't I have a boat
like, I don't feel like
stillness exists for me.
I was surprised to learn over
the course of 25 years that
the personality characteristics
I learned to treat in
jails and prisons
are actually becoming
more common in corporate positions
or high-level politicians.
That is very alarming to me
and speaks to the level
of health in our society,
because healthy societies would not
be attracted to these individuals.
And in fact, 25 years
ago, they were mostly
confined in jails and prisons
or at least not admitted
to high-level leadership.
Narcissism predicts leadership emergence.
Narcissists want to lead because
leadership gives you power, status,
attention and access to everything.
So it's great.
And they're confident they can do it
because they have the ego to think,
yeah, I can run this thing
better than anybody else.
And they act.
They just go for it.
They, interestingly,
are very socially perceptive,
which can make them
extraordinary communicators.
A lot of dictators and people
like Hitler, Mussolini,
they knew how to control a crowd,
people like Napoleon.
We look at Genghis Khan.
Sadly, our history books are
populated far more with the story
of narcissistic people than with
the good, kind, compassionate ones.
Because narcissistic people
always have and probably
always will make history.
In order to get to the top,
you have to be made of our stuff.
Politics, of course, is the
greatest example of that.
It's such a viper's nest,
infested with kind to begin with,
because that's where huge amounts of
power and access to residual benefits,
such as networks, money's life,
that it really draws my kind in.
People look around and say,
my God, we're ruled by
narcissists, psychopaths.
How can it be?
Well, we elected all of them.
What they do is they find the most
disenfranchised in their midst,
and they feed their
powerlessness by telling them,
actually, you're powerful, and I love you.
A lot of people see the
narcissist's cruelty
as just tremendous conviction.
And that message takes
the disenfranchised person
and infuses in them a
completely unseeing faith
in this narcissistic and abusive leader.
If you live in a country governed by
a narcissist, your life is at risk.
And if narcissists take over
in every possible way,
the species is at risk.
This is not restricted
to any political party,
to any side of the aisle.
This is endemic in leadership.
Tell me what you've gone
through with this man?
For seven years, I've been in connection
with an extremely dangerous person
who represented himself
to me as a therapist.
What state would you say you were in
when you first had contact, and what
was his prediction of what you needed?
I was in a very bad state.
I was in a major life crisis
and I was looking for help.
And this first session
ended with his verdict.
You're extremely ill. You're sick.
You need help.
If you want to heal,
here I am.
I will be your healer, your fixer.
Lean your shoulder on me. I will help you.
My therapy sessions were
happening very often.
It started twice a week,
then three times a week,
then four times a week.
Looking back now, at the
so-called therapeutic process,
I realize that it had never been therapy,
but a bunch of brainwashing
mind-control techniques.
He acted under false premises
because he's not a therapist
at all. He doesn't have
any legitimate credentials.
He extorted a lot of
financial means from me.
I ended up paying him all my savings.
I could never imagine
what was going to follow.
Grandiose narcissism is
almost what I call sort of
armchair textbook narcissism.
Look at me, unempathic, jerky narcissist.
That's grandiose narcissism.
Grandiose narcissists are offensive.
They know who they are.
They just want you to see it
and check them out. And high-five.
This is where you see your leaders,
your politicians, your cult
leaders, all these folks.
That's what people think.
But that misses a big part of the
narcissism landscape. And that's
something called vulnerable narcissism.
Vulnerable narcissists often look at
first blush as being sort
of socially unskilled.
They definitely don't have that
swagger and charisma of
the grandiose narcissist.
You run into somebody vulnerable,
and they're always hunting
for people looking down at me,
or they're threatening me,
so they can get enraged easily.
So there's a really brooding anger
to the vulnerable narcissist.
You talk to somebody, you think they're a little
depressed, and all of a sudden you're like,
whoa, there's an ego in there.
I didn't know there's a huge ego in there.
Both are toxic, grandiose, and vulnerable.
Hi, my name is Sarah Crowson.
I am a self-aware narcissist.
Female narcissists
are more covert
because we're the damsel in distress.
All men want to save us.
You are so easy
to manipulate. It's ridiculous.
Oh, my tire needs changing.
Will you change my tire?
In my childhood, there
was no unconditional love.
What the fuck is that?
One thing that reminds me of this
is my sister and my favorite movie,
Mommie Dearest.
Yes, Mommie Dearest.
Because we would watch that,
and we would get drunk
and just laugh and laugh
because that was our mother.
She would just beat the shit
out of me, and I didn't care.
I started oil painting
as a fuck you to my ex.
I wanted the rest of the
world to give me kudos
and stuff in him, see how good I am,
and shit that's fucking stupid.
I need to be admired
for everything that I do,
and if it looks like shit,
I'm just going to throw it in the garbage.
Yeah, so I have to be the best, and then
I can post it for my likes.
Being in a relationship
with somebody like me,
I am being triggered all the fucking time.
After being triggered,
you are a threat and you
have to be destroyed.
Hi, I'm Barry Sonnenfeld,
or you don't want Hi.
I'm Barry Sonnenfeld.
Sorry.
Hi, I'm Barry Sonnenfeld, I'm a film
director and producer and an author as well.
I was the cinematographer
on Raising Arizona,
Misery, Big, when Harry Met Sally,
and I directed Addams Family,
Get Shorty, Men in Black,
and RV with Robin Williams.
A child needs to be loved.
A child needs to be looked after.
When you have two narcissistic parents,
you're often put in danger.
I mean, I was really put in danger
because they cared more
about themselves than me.
They both were very narcissistic,
very controlling.
My mother's method was through depression.
I was constantly being told
she would commit suicide.
The first time, I was maybe five
years old, my dad woke me up.
I was sound asleep.
He said, go talk to your mother.
She wants to die.
So I was forced to convince my
mother not to commit suicide.
She kept saying, Barry,
I can't live any longer.
I don't want to live any longer.
So I went in and I got my coin collection,
and I offered her my coins.
If she wouldn't kill herself.
And she laughed and agreed
not to kill herself.
Now there's dad.
Sonny was a salesman,
had multiple affairs.
Dad didn't keep it a secret from my mother
I guess.
And, I'll tell you the
difficult part of this story,
because they had this
very unhappy marriage.
My parents let
her cousin Mike,
who was a child molester,
live with us in our apartment
in Washington Heights.
And he molested myself.
Two different kids had lived
in my apartment building,
various cousins,
of both sexes.
As long as they were prepubescent,
Mike would have no problem,
fondling girls as much as boys.
It was so upsetting that
I went to see my father.
So I said, dad,
why did you let this happen?
And dad said, you know, Barry,
there are three reasons,
that was interesting, that he had three.
He said, first of all, child
molestation didn't have the same stigma
back then that it has now.
Second of all, your mother was so upset
because of all the affairs I was having
that I thought having Mike
around would bring her happiness.
And third of all, I never
thought Mike was molesting you.
I only thought he was
playing with your penis.
My name is Doug Buggle.
I am 52 years old.
I work in the power tool industry
as a territory manager,
and I have two children.
I have a daughter who's 26 years old,
and I have a son who is 18.
There are so many things
that I love about off-roading.
You just get out here in the middle
of the desert or the mountains,
and really, your challenge is to get
through these obstacles unscathed.
I met Tammy in 2004.
She was very pretty. She was very funny.
She was very kind to me.
But
that was the fake persona
that she invented.
I knew nothing of narcissism or
narcissistic abuse for 12
years that we were married.
None of it was real.
The entire marriage was a sham.
Love bombing is actually a hook.
It's a dangerous hook.
She doted on me.
She called me her Superman.
She actually bought me Superman
logo floor mats for my Jeep.
I could do no wrong.
He started emailing and
texting and painting me.
I'm not going to do the normal thing
of it's going to take time
to build trust and intimacy.
The more you get to know me, because
I don't want you to get to know me.
I just need you to
fall hard,
very quickly.
You've been drawn into
something really intense.
We never felt understood like this before.
You feel this person is all in.
It feels magical. When people
tell me "magical connection,"
I'm usually like, "Run away."
It's one of the first steps
before the real insidious abuse can
happen, because they need
you very much in love
and then very much alone.
Suddenly, your friends won't
be good enough for you.
We might be talking about not
being allowed to visit your family,
your parents.
In 12 years, that we were married,
my parents came over for
Thanksgiving one time.
They'll find fault,
and they won't act happy
when they're around them.
She would complain about them.
She would nitpick at everything they did.
Little subtle,
sly comments here and there.
They'll make them feel very uncomfortable.
They're trying to get rid of them.
My dad said, "You know what, Doug?"
He said, "We never felt
welcome in your home."
It's all going to get
framed as the people that
have concern for you are
actually trying to hurt you.
Like up is down, down is up.
They scare you into thinking that
the only safe place is with them.
Once they're isolated,
anything can be done to them.
All of a sudden they'll
start to devalue you.
They'll start the little put-downs.
It's such a change from what
you've just come from, where
you could do nothing wrong.
She would nitpick every single thing
if a cup was out of place, if a
piece of clothing was out of place,
if the dishes were
loaded not to her liking.
I mean, just simple little
things, but they add up.
And so what I found myself doing
was trying to get ahead of her.
I know she's coming home.
Make sure everything's
exactly the way she wants it.
You know, my son told me,
dad, he goes, I didn't like who
you were when you were around her.
We would be playing video
games or watching a movie.
And as soon as she
pulled into the driveway
and opened that door,
I would jump off the couch.
I would turn the TV down,
I would make sure I was attending to her,
and my son would just go off and
disappear and go into his room.
Over time, you become
dependent on this person
and you can't function without them.
And that's their goal.
Narcissists are notorious for gaslighting.
You can take a victim from
being totally in command of their lives,
to a total and utter mess.
In that movie,
you will see the psychological abuse
that gaslighting is.
Picture it's gone again.
Where have you hidden it this time?
00:39:10:20 - 00:39:14:02 To take it?
Why should I take it? It's no use to me.
Bella, where's the picture?
He's systematically driving her mad.
He's driving you mad, in order to
discredit anything that you say
as the ravings of a lunatic.
I found out that a lot of the stuff
that I was constantly being yelled at
or being accused of losing, he was hiding.
That's like the very
definition of gaslighting.
They're getting a kick out of
literally driving you insane,
making you feel crazy,
and making you question your own sanity.
What the narcissist subtly does
again and again over time is
they weaken your confidence in
your ability to assess reality.
They need that.
They need you to be unsure...
They need you to be uncertain.
So many victims
cannot work out what the hell is
happening in their relationship,
and they think that they're going mad.
Physical, emotional and sexual abuse
escalated and slowly started trickling in.
But I got to say, it's the
psychological abuse that is the worst.
That's the stuff that to
this day is so hard to undo.
It's probably the worst
form of abuse that there is.
It actually goes to a soul level.
It's full of drama, and theater,
and silent treatment,
and false accusations,
and suddenly you're
looking at this person who
you don't even recognize.
The mask is off.
The narcissistic person
is no longer "trying".
She discarded me in a way,
as to where, she threw me away
like I am human trash.
I was not a person to damage.
I was a function. I was a means to an end.
Your supply is no good anymore,
and they're getting rid of you
to make space for more supply.
My personal relationship with Sam is warm,
as you've seen. Like we joke around a lot.
I don't have a problem with that,
as long as it occurs within
certain boundaries and limitations.
You know, he's a narcissist.
I constantly feel that I'm
superior to other people.
First of all, because objectively,
I am superior to other people.
I have a very high IQ.
There's no question in the relationship
of who has the superior intellect
or who has the superior knowledge.
I'm not competing with Sam.
My IQ was 190.
In the whole world, there
are eight people with 190,
not eight thousand. Eight.
You're the person who
knows about this subject.
You're the expert in the field.
You know more than me.
He's a civilized, decent, honorable guy.
He has his own ethics.
But yes, he has personality disorder.
Undoubtedly he's not,
he's not mentally well,
by his own admission.
I really thought I was going to go to
my grave with everything that happened.
It wasn't until Westworld came
along and I got to be Dolores.
That helped me through my own
trauma and my own waking up.
Westworld is a theme park
that is designed by humans
to be a land of make believe.
Dolores is character,
and all of the robots
that exist within this park
don't know that they're robots.
You're not real.
People can choose to be nice to her,
or they can choose to abuse her
and do just unspeakable,
horrific things to her.
The themes of that first season
just kept kind of blowing my mind.
Like even the fact that my
perpetrator was the Man in Black.
It was so hard not to see Brian.
Every time I had to do a scene with him.
Like, I remember doing that final scene
and I was given just the most
beautiful monologue to say.
It was like everything I
had always wanted to say
to anybody that had ever hurt me.
And especially Brian.
One day...
You will perish.
Your dreams forgotten, your horrors faced.
And by the end of that
first season, I was awake
just like Dolores.
I came across this podcast,
and there was a woman host, and she
had a psychologist on.
So I started listening.
In about ten minutes in,
the word narcissism came up.
And all I knew about narcissism was is
somebody who is into themselves. Right?
And then she started to give examples,
and I was like, oh, wait a minute,
this sounds eerily familiar.
And I'm listening to this.
And suddenly it's starting to make sense.
And then I go home and I
start doing all this research.
And then, I was watching a video of
this male psychologist, and it was
a covert female narcissist wife.
It's like I was sitting
here in the room with him
and he was talking about my marriage,
and I realized she's a covert narcissist.
Oh my gosh. And when that,
when that clicked for me,
it was like, wow. I had a why.
Once I built up the courage
to finally leave Tammy,
I walked in the door,
and I see my son there,
and I just started crying
and I said, it's over. It's like
this nightmare is over.
And, Jared
jumped out of his chair,
and he gave me the biggest hug
and he said, thank God that wretched
woman is out of our lives forever.
That was his exact words to me.
After a person has been
through narcissistic abuse,
it can really crush
their conceptions of what is love,
what is family, and above
all else, what is trust.
I never really thought
being molested by cousin Mike the
child molester had an effect on me.
I was going to get over it, get over it.
But I think I haven't,
and that makes me really
angry at my parents.
Because they knew when
they could have stopped it.
They really, really knew.
And they were so selfish
that they sacrificed
me for their own needs.
That's not right to do to a child.
I have a limited range of emotions,
so I don't experience joy
or happiness or sadness.
I experience power, fury, antipathy,
hatred, jealousy,
and remaining negative emotions.
I have no emotional empathy.
I don't experience love.
Many people say, "Gee, doesn't it
bother you that you can't be happy?"
No, not interested in it.
I'm hugely effective the way that I am,
and having that limited range of
emotions works perfectly well for me.
In order for me to fit in,
I create a passable impression of happiness.
Even though I don't experience it,
I know how to frame my face.
I don't go to tears,
I don't cry, it's weak.
But certain narcissists do.
Even though one feels nothing.
Empathy is the experience
of understanding and
to some degree, feeling another
human being's emotional state.
Even if you are not having a
simultaneous experience to them.
It's how we create loving,
connected, sustained human
relationships which actually
are the fabric of existence.
It's how we survived as a species.
There's no one place in the brain
where empathy resides,
but we see that a particular
network in the brain
activates when people
are feeling empathetic.
And we know this from
neuroimaging studies,
where we can show people images
that would inspire empathy,
like a puppy being hurt
or a child being hurt,
and it activates certain
parts of the brain.
But we do tend to see that
people that get these diagnoses
of, say, narcissistic personality disorder
can have decreased activation in
these key centers involved in empathy.
The assumption is that they're
not really feeling empathy
the way others do.
For the narcissistic person,
they know that you're supposed to
care about other people's feelings,
but they actually have contempt
for other people's feelings.
Oh, this empathy thing is
what all these folks want.
I'm going to try that to get what I need.
Everybody stops.
Oh, they're incapable of empathy.
Yeah. That's the tip of the iceberg.
They're not capable of humaning
in any meaningful sense.
I look like a human being.
I talk like a human being.
I make some of you smile sometimes,
so I can reach into you.
And I can push the right buttons.
You'll want me too.
I'll even imitate empathy.
I'll even cry if you want.
But I am not you,
and I am not like you in
any possible meaningful sense.
None.
It is true that in the postmodern world,
narcissists and psychopaths
are better adopted than
people with emotions and
what we call healthy people.
They are ruthless,
they're callous, they are goal oriented.
They know how to manipulate
people, and they do.
So all these are advantages
in the modern environment.
A true narcissist is absolutely
invincible in many ways.
It gets what he wants and he
plays everyone all the time.
And he does it highly efficiently.
Narcissism is about becoming the demon.
I need to feel God-like.
There's about 6 billion of
us who shouldn't be here.
I don't know if it ever
goes into the movie,
but I call them eat-to-shit machines.
They procreate, they consume resources,
they pollute, they contribute nothing.
They directly compete with far
more superior life forms like me.
These people should not be here.
I'm all for eugenics,
but on a scale that would
terrify most people.
The biggest question is,
can narcissists change?
There are some folks who believe
that there can be meaningful change.
I have to tell you from my seat as
a clinician, I'm not as convinced.
So right now, let's just
say that the jury is out.
But I put my good money on, No.
They really can't change.
I have lived the most amazing
cinematic Hollywoodian life. I have
done everything known,
but I've never been there.
I have observed my life
as though it were a movie.
I never participated in it.
I never enjoyed it.
I never loved,
I've never been loved.
You are human. I am not.
We don't belong to the same species.
I'm a
howling, giant black hole
and there's nothing but that.
No one can help me with my emptiness.
No one's love, no one's attention.
It's never enough. It's a black hole.
It's a bottomless pit.
I envy every human being who smiles.
I envy people who cry.
I even envy depressed people.
I'm incapable of any of this.
My problem is that I don't exist.
Can you tell me how to exist?
Is there an algorithm as to how to exist?
Is there a user manual?
Can someone teach me how to exist?
Of course not.
There's no way around
this fundamental problem.
How does it make me superior?
I'm sorry.
So, I'm very angry.
I'm very angry at not ever having existed.
Because I think I had many gifts.
They were taken away from me.
When I was essentially
helpless as a child.
You know?
I couldn't defend myself.
That's how superior I feel.
I hope, I'd answered the question.
He abused my trust.
He became kind of my second father,
as he described himself.
I received an email
called "Adoption Papers"
where he suggested to adopt me.
Simultaneously, I was receiving
very confusing signals from him
of a very intimate, sexual nature.
He would be pressuring me and telling me that,
"Deep inside you, you're a slut and a whore."
"Let me welcome and
embrace your sexuality."
And because I don't want
to have sex with him,
I don't want to celebrate life.
So that's why sex with him is
needed for me to get healed.
He blackmailed and manipulated me.
And ultimately, he tried to totally
mentally, physically, emotionally
and psychologically destroy me.
Even after that,
I didn't find strength to
go forward and to speak up.
But later, other women reached out to me.
And every story is a horror movie.
It's not thriller, it's pure horror.
I was like, damn it,
I can't be silent anymore.
The therapist who abused me is Sam Vaknin.
I need to talk to you
IT'S URGENT!!!
I've been contacted by a group of women.
There's five of them.
Turns out that since 2015,
when I started using Sam to do seminars
with, and to help platform him,
he's been using his
persona as a therapist,
and as a psychology professor
to bait, target,
and single out individual women
for financial and sexual exploitation.
When I say sexual exploitation,
we're talking about some of
the most depraved, degrading
sexual practices I've ever heard of.
And when I asked these five women,
how many people they think it is in total
in the seven years since
I've been working with him,
they're estimating between
25 and 30 other victims.
He's not a professor.
He's not a doctor.
He doesn't have a degree in psychology.
He's a complete, total charlatan.
He's an utter piece of shit.
People are getting hurt here.
He's broken them. He's really,
really, really broken them,
in a way that has left shrapnel
and shards in the emotional
and psychological flesh
that will take years to remove.
Evil.
Evil man.
So he made sure to make the discard phase
as cruel as possible.
He took off his mask very abruptly,
and you saw the monster.
And then I told him stop it,
I can't anymore. Just go away.
He said,
be careful what you wish for,
because once I'm gone,
the only way out for you
is out of your window.
It's okay. You're on the 20th floor.
You won't even feel anything.
His ultimate goal is to
make you commit suicide.
It's like his mark,
his signature, "suicide via Vaknin".
I am your instrument of destruction.
It's like suicide by Vaknin.
How dangerous do you think this man is?
I think he's extremely dangerous
because he's an expert in what he's doing.
Because this is the only
thing he's doing all his life.
He's obsessed about
destroying lives of people.
It's his fix.
It's so dark out there, Isla.
It's really, really, really dark.
Sam leveraged this idea of himself
as being a benevolent healer
and a psychology professor,
and as a therapist
to gain a position of authority and trust
over these women and with these women.
And then he fully abused that trust.
They don't want to be made public.
They don't want to go to the police,
because they're deeply ashamed
and he's threatened them. He's told them,
"if you tell anybody
what I've done to you,
I'm going to expose you to your family.
I'm going to expose you to employers.
I'm going to expose you to the
academic institutions you work for.
I'm going to ruin your reputation.
He's trapped them.
It's a horrifying, torturous position
that he's put these women in.
The man is a fucking animal,
and he belongs in prison.
A smear campaign is a concerted attempt by
a narcissistic person to
get back all the power.
They're going to take anyone
down who pulls their mask off.
This is all part of the larger gambit of
the narcissistic person chronically
positioning themselves as the victim,
when in fact they are the offender.
I was sitting in my attorney's office,
and my paralegal asked me, have you read
Tammy's declaration? And I said, no.
And she said, well, she's now accused
you of domestic violence and abuse.
And I just slumped over,
put my hands on my face.
And I just started to weep and cry
because I couldn't believe it.
I have never abused anyone
or anything in my entire life.
She knew that just saying those
things would just devastate me.
That was probably the
worst moment of my life.
And I'm still not over that.
Even though I've been vindicated,
it was all denied in court.
There were no repercussions
because it was all false.
She just did it to crush my soul.
Because that's what narcissists do.
I will not be collaborating
any longer with Richard Grannon
in any way, shape or form,
in any forum and in any setting.
To disintegrate someone and
to destroy them takes time.
I want to clarify, I am not associated
directly or indirectly
with anything that Richard Grannon does.
Thankfully, he's out of my life for good.
I need to erase you.
I need you gone, and I'll do
anything to accomplish this.
Ahhh, red wine, a men's best friend.
I just got rid of one,
not wine, a fake friend.
Fake former best friend.
I will be unstoppable and relentless.
It will go on long after the provocation.
You're my mortal enemy.
He cheats, he lies, he betrays.
Do not forgive and do not forget.
It's an enemy.
Treat him as such.
And so you've provoked me on Wednesday,
four years later, I will still
engage in a smear campaign.
So I need to destroy you.
Whatever it takes.
Weak people pleasers
end badly. Badly.
Very, very badly.
In due time.
He has a clear and obvious intent
to completely destroy my reputation.
He wants to put me out of business.
He's also shown me in the interim
period that he's prepared to lie
and lie and lie and say
anything to take revenge on me.
This is one of his
flying monkeys right now.
Hello?
Yeah, this is Richard?
Speaking.
You can't keep doing what
you're doing, ahhh Richard.
Your bribery and your death threat.
I've reported all... everything.
Sam is helping me out.
Seriously, you need to go see
a healthcare professional.
You're mentally ill.
You can't keep doing that to people,
and you can't keep doing
that to your followers
and your clients.
It's wrong.
Whatever...(inaudible)
Hello?
Yeah. She's under him. She's under him.
Sam has knowingly
weaponized mentally ill
women to come and attack me.
As you can hear, this woman
is not in her right mind.
One of the things that I have to
accept about this situation is that
I thought I knew
who and what Sam Vaknin was,
and I clearly didn't have a fucking clue.
And I'm learning that the hard way.
No contact is something I call sort of the
ultimate strategy
for managing any kind of
narcissistic or toxic relationship,
and basically involves exactly
what it sounds like, no contact,
and I mean no contact.
Not on a holiday, not on a birthday,
not an errant card here or there. None.
But since no contact is not
available to most people, there
are other things that we can use
to manage the narcissistic
relationships we do have in our lives.
Number one, if you only remember
rule number one, you're good to go.
Never call them out.
A lot of people will saunter over to
the narcissist and say, hey, guess what?
You're a narcissist.
And what happens is by the
end of that conversation,
the narcissist has now told you no,
you're the raging narcissist.
And in a majority of cases,
they've made such a strong case.
You believe them,
don't ever call them out.
Number two, don't blame yourself.
Narcissists are equal
opportunity perpetrators.
They will do this to anyone.
The key is to not personalize
what they're doing to you.
Number three, don't fall
for the future faking.
They will make promises to
you to the ends of the earth.
I'm going to therapy.
You're right.
I'm going to change.
Don't fall for that.
Number four, build a firewall.
Think of what a firewall
is on your computer.
It controls information in and out.
Firewalling is also a
technique for communicating
with a narcissistic person.
I don't want any of their
toxic stuff coming in,
so I'm not going to overengage with them.
I'm not going to defend myself.
I'm not going to get into it with them.
And I'm going to be very careful
about not sharing the
vulnerable stuff about myself,
because they'll use it to harm me,
so I'm not going to share it.
Number five, gray rocking.
Gray rocking is, in essence, turning
yourself into gray rock, making yourself
so uninteresting,
so unemotional, and so unengaging
that the narcissist will either not
engage with you or be disinterested.
Number six, boundaries.
Boundaries are everything in
narcissistic relationships.
Because a narcissistic
relationship is a 24/7 battle
of them trying to annex your boundaries
and you feeling more and more
and more encroached upon.
There was a kind of
an induction. There's a kind of a seduction.
There was a kind of a love bombing.
I was subjected to a lot of praise.
I was told that I was a
brilliant public speaker,
that I had a brilliant mind, that I had
an intuitive understanding
for psychoanalytic theory.
The obvious parallel to draw would be
to say, okay, you have father issues.
It is partly that,
but it's not that simple.
I also saw Sam as being like me,
as kind of, a lost child,
somebody that I had like a
sympathetic resonance with because
of his childhood.
But the effect on me has been horrendous.
It's been really, really painful.
And it's kind of sent me
into a personal crisis.
Maybe inside of my head,
part of my defense mechanism is,
oh, here we go. Sam's doing
the old Count Dracula routine.
I might be just thought it was
shtick or something amusing.
Knowing what I know now, that's
just a frank admission of who he is.
I feel guilty because I've given
him access to other people.
I've given him validity.
I've given him a platform and a name
that meant that vulnerable men and women
would go to him and ask him for therapy,
and I've assisted in that.
Makes me feel physically sick.
Richard,
it's so nice to meet you.
I thank you so much for coming here.
I'm sorry. It's a bit chilly.
Should we walk? Yeah.
I really appreciate you
coming to meet me in person.
And also for.
Well, not just yet,
but connect me with the victims.
But I think, as you suggest, it's
important we don't do that just yet.
Oh, they can be, they scare easily,
so we have to be very careful with them.
Yeah. And also because they're
in different countries,
it's not as simple as you go
to a local police station,
and say, "my therapist, who works in
that office down the road, has done this".
It's because across countries,
it makes it far more complicated.
There's that. And then there's a tremendous
amount of guilt and shame on their part.
They're very embarrassed
by what's happened.
They really desperately
don't want it to go public.
So I've been trying to
explain to them that legally,
there just isn't that much I can
do unless they go to the police
and they're willing to go forward
with some sort of witness testimony.
If I am with an intimate partner,
I have merged infused with her.
Then I start to separate from her.
I start to separate from her
by becoming her inner critic.
I supplant her inner critic.
And so I criticize her, analyze
her, castigate and chastise her.
So this is my way of pushing her away.
So I merge and fuze.
Then I begin to cut her off.
I cut her off partly by
becoming her inner critic.
Then I discard her.
It doesn't do the trick for me.
It's yeah, I feel separated,
but definitely it's adulterated.
I need a much higher grade of heroin.
If she dies
or attempts suicide,
goes crazy
or is totally broken,
like totally,
the separation is much stronger.
The drug is much more potent,
and I vicariously experience separation.
And this is as close as I can
ever get to feeling that I exist.
So here I am,
as much the face of
justice as we can get right now,
because it's media. No one is going
to do anything about this guy.
He's going to keep doing what
he's doing unless we expose him.
And it's the power of the media that
does that, the power of storytelling.
So, looking at me going
there with a camera
is absolutely crucial.
So yeah, I'm feeling so sorry.
I tell people from the
very off through my work,
I am a narcissistic psychopath.
I do what you would
determine to be bad things.
I'm upfront and honest about it,
and yet they still believe
that at the heart of it,
there's a good person
somewhere trying to get out.
There really isn't.
I am what you would understand
to be an evil person,
and I haven't got a shred
of redemption about me.
I'm unapologetic for that.
I'm being clear about it.
And yet you still believe to the contrary.
And you call us the deluded ones.
I don't think people like the idea that
evil is walking not only amongst them,
but might be sleeping next to them, and
may be their next-door neighbor.
We're encouraged to think
in this childish way
that everybody's of good intent.
People don't do this kind of thing.
It's not a Disney movie.
Everything doesn't work
out okay in the real world.
Catastrophes are real, tragedies are real.
The good guys don't always win.
People tend to believe
in the best in people.
They tend to believe that
they're not lying to them.
Especially if you're not
lying to other people.
And therefore when they are duped or
they find out that
they've been manipulated.
It's shocking.
There is beauty.
There is aesthetics in
destroying another human being,
in penetrating,
in rearranging the furniture,
the mental furniture,
and taking over her mind
and doing with it as you please.
There is an infinite power
in eradicating another person.
Godlike power.
It's intoxicating. Of course.
So I have added him on social media,
and I've written to him,
and seeing that I saw him on a show
with a big UK television
presenter, interviewing him.
So I've arranged to
meet with him on Monday.
That's in two days time.
The email.
It's so interesting to look at this,
because they start off quite formal.
However, once it seems
that I'm actually going
to be there, that's when I'm noticing
slight shifts in the language.
It's more informal.
Good afternoon Isla, please call me Sam.
Oh, because I've been
calling him Professor,
so I believe that I am now being groomed.
I am the next target.
I don't want him to harm another woman.
He needs to be stopped.
Here we go. No going back now.
We're very tight to catch
the flight to Croatia.
Okay,
found it.
Im just praying this
isn't a wasted journey.
We've made it.
Three flights.
Pretty tight connections,
and all the equipment arrived.
Thank you.
Ok?
Yes.
Great.
I've no idea what's
going to happen tomorrow,
but I do feel a huge
sense of responsibility,
I'm a representative
for all of the victims.
I have no doubt in my mind
that he's a very bad man,
a very bad man.
So this is the location that we're going
to be doing the interview tomorrow.
Anyway, I'm looking at the graffiti:
"I keep my hair tied.
I've got my wings to carry me."
He said, Yeah. E.T.A. seven minutes.
You guys stay here.
You go down, right?
Oh, God. It's freezing.
He's over there.
He's behind us. Yeah, he's over there.
That's him. He's behind us.
Hello!
We finally meet.
How are you? Isla.
All right, we're going in here.
In we go.
Here we go.
Oh, great space.
Yeah.
Hello.
This is Professor Vaknin.
I'm Sam.
Professor Vaknin.
It's a pleasure to be with you, finally.
And my first question,
which is a huge one, which is,
Do narcissists ever feel remorse
for what they've done to their victims?
Do they ever feel remorse?
Very few narcissists would
perceive other people as victims.
The majority of narcissists
would self-victimize.
Would assume a victim identity.
They would reframe the situation,
they create a new narrative
where this might have been,
for example, inevitable
or provoked.
They would say:
"I abused her because she
needs to wake up to reality.
This is tough love, you know?"
That's why I abuse her.
That's why I criticize her.
That's why I denigrate her.
Because that's the only
way to wake her up,
and she must face reality.
Otherwise she would be taken
advantage of. I'm protecting her.
They would claim
victimhood in the situation
and may end up, for example,
sexually assaulting someone.
Would they view it as sexual assault?
or would they view it as...
Yes...
Or would they know the difference
between right and wrong?
Yes, as far as, they would reframe it.
They would say, my assault
is justified because
she has been teasing me
or provoking me or
misleading me or whatever.
That's a due punishment.
Or maybe she's been stupid enough
to invite me to her hotel room.
She deserves it. She had it coming, etc.
So there's a lot of
justification narratives.
How do narcissists react if...
they're exposed, called out, or found out?
The most likely reaction,
the narcissist would devalue
the source of the exposure.
So if you were to expose the narcissist,
criticize the narcissist,
disagree with the narcissist
or attack the narcissist,
So, now he's skinless.
There's no firewall.
He's in direct touch with reality.
He cannot deny anymore that,
having considered himself a
genius, he's actually an idiot.
Having considered himself accomplished,
he's actually a failure.
He cannot deny this anymore.
All the defenses crumble
and he's left face to face
with this internal monster.
The shame.
The shame is overwhelming.
You force him to face reality.
He resents it, his defenses emerge
and he attacks you.
You're an abuser. You're victimizing me.
It would devalue your morality,
your conduct or misconduct
or attributed misconduct.
It would say you are a bad person.
That's why you're behaving this way.
So he would demonize you.
But we do need to be aware,
because narcissists are dangerous.
I would strongly advise against
having sympathy for narcissists,
under any pretext.
And so, I think we should
judge other people by
the consequences of their actions,
and their ability to control
and modulate their behavior
and their willingness to do so.
Narcissists are seriously dangerous.
It's really bad.
Really bad.
In a sense, it's a form of psychosis,
and many things are affected.
But one of the things that's not affected
is the ability to tell right from wrong.
The ability to choose.
The narcissist, for example,
is fully, fully aware
of his or her actions
and the impacts that his actions
would have on other people,
but he couldn't care less.
So, are you aware of the bad
that you have done in your life?
My private life is out of bounds,
as I thought we had an agreement on...
Oh yeah, yeah.
But, I'm talking about,
you know, professionally.
Are you aware?
Are narcissists aware?
No, you as... in your profession.
So, you are talking about my private life.
I thought we had
an understanding not to
include my private life.
Because I do. I do have
to ask about your work.
My work has nothing to do...
As a professional and taking advantage
of victims through your role,
through your profession.
What I have seen is hundreds
and hundreds of documents
which have been shown to me,
including photographic evidence
of harm that you have done to victims,
to therapy patients,
and you, in your professional
role, taking advantage of them,
impacting them psychologically
and abusing them, sexually coercing them,
and knowingly infecting them with HPV...
I'm actually unaware of this...
Sleep deprivation,
contracts of behavior...
I have been shown this,
and I need to ask you about that.
I'm sorry. This is outside the
confines of what we have agreed.
Do you know that you've
done wrong to these women?
I'm sorry, but we have agreed
not to discuss my private life.
And of course, I have not done
wrong to anyone, as far as I know.
So if we were to look through
the documents and photographs
that you've had sexual
relationships or sexual...
We've had an agreement not
to discuss my private life.
It's not private. It's your job.
It's your profession.
You're a therapist, and you have vulnerable
patients that come to you for help...
I'm not a therapist.
I'm a Professor of Psychology.
You work in that role as
a counselor for women.
If you persist with this
line of questioning,
in contravention of what we've agreed...
It's not contravention because it's my...
It's contravention...
It's my duty as a professional
to look at how you conduct yourself
as a professional, and I need
to address that with you.
But that's not the topic
we'd agreed to discuss.
Do you feel bad for what
you've done to these women?
I'm not going to discuss...
When they come to you and they're
broken, and they need help.
You think you deserve to be in jail?
I'm available to continue to talk to you
on narcissistic personality disorder.
As an expert on the topic.
Do you think you deserve...
If you wish, and if you don't, then.
To be brought to court
for what you've done.
Is there anything that you would
want to say to these women?
Look, Isla,
I suggest that we terminate...
just...
How do we close this?
Are you denying what I'm asking you, Sam?
As a professional, it's my job
and my duty to do my due diligence.
I will show you my
photos with the clients.
He didn't use any sexual
coercion with them.
Lydia, you're very wrong in
what you're saying right now.
Don't participate.
You're right of course,
but we had an agreement as to
the topics of the interview.
But it's not personal.
It is personal.
It's professional.
But I can't have someone as a...
And this is unethical
behavior on your part.
But I disagree.
You could have written to me.
Listen, this is what I
would like to discuss.
And then I would have agreed or disagreed.
But to spring it as a truth,
it's a kind of trap,
that is extremely unethical behavior.
And you should know
that as a documentarist.
I disagree.
I think what I've seen is unethical
and damaging and criminal...
Did you see it yourself?
I have...
Can you send it to me?
I have been shown.
Things will unfold in a proper manner.
To spring it as a trap
that is extremely unethical behavior
and you should know
that as a documentarist.
He's very, very angry,
very angry and
scared
and a little bit in shock.
But he wanted to frame it as
you had committed a moral wrong.
Him abusing women, having sex
with them, manipulating them,
trying to persuade them to kill
themselves, sleep deprivation.
That's his personal life.
That's not immoral.
You asking questions about
that is what's immoral.
Which when people see this who've been
the victims of narcissistic abuse.
Yeah...
They'll resonate with that...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what's immoral.
You're being immoral by
asking me, not what I did.
The argument of, oh, this is personal.
No, it's not.
He is being paid to provide
counseling therapy...
So he's offered therapy.
He specifically uses the word therapy.
He's used it multiple times.
He can't weasel his way out of that.
He can try and claim it wasn't therapy.
He can try and claim
it's nobody's business.
It absolutely is in the public interest.
Yeah, he is fucked.
I went out there,
and throughout the interview,
he almost admits or explains
every single thing that he's done.
He even talks about rape
and sexual assault.
Is it your greatest hope
that he ends up in jail?
What I really would like
is that not a single woman anymore
would end up being his victim.
So my biggest dream is that
he doesn't have any access to
any woman anymore in his life.
But knowing how compulsive the fucker is,
knowing how deceptive he is,
the best way to keep him
away from people would
of course be if he goes to jail.
You paid him to be a professional.
And he completely took advantage of you.
The reason I think it's so difficult
for men to speak out against abuse
from a female narcissist is because
we have this stigma as men that
we are supposed to be strong and tough.
We're not supposed to show our emotions,
we're not supposed to be weak.
And so I think for a lot of men,
it's very difficult to admit that
they can be abused.
But I want everyone to know
that abuse has no gender.
It's okay to come out.
It's okay to be emotional about
it or be vulnerable about it.
You know, there is a light
at the end of the tunnel.
That grief process.
It's very real for people
going through that revelation
and then that resurrection, if you will.
To me, there's nothing more beautiful
than a survivor of narcissistic abuse.
It inserts this really gorgeous,
rich poetry into a person.
For them to have gone through something
like that and still be standing.
I believe survivors of narcissistic
abuse who make it to the other side are
actually the most interesting
people in the room.
It's weird. Any time I go back
to the places where things happened.
Like just looking over there and
seeing the balcony where we first met.
And you know, I'm only a few houses away,
but it's just a lifetime away.
I think for so long I didn't come forward because
of everything that could happen, you know?
And then once you rip the
band-aid off and all the things
you were worried about happening do
happen, the retaliation, the blackmail,
all of it, the smear campaign.
But you're still standing
and nothing's ever going to break you
as much as you were broken before.
You know, I can't take
back what happened to me.
But, you know, I might be
able to help somebody else,
you know, maybe get there
before somebody else does.
That'll be nice.
We are in a pandemic of
pathological narcissism.
We should start educating the public
about their existence
and how much damage they can cause.
The perplexity, the suffering,
and destruction they can reap
upon society is far greater than perhaps
all the other mental disorders combined.
You only have to look at
the idols of our culture,
the most important people in our culture,
to see that only a highly narcissistic and
psychopathic culture would support them.
It's not the narcissists
or the psychopaths
that are the problem. It's the rest of
us who follow them, who listen to them.
The world is presently
overrun by this phenomenon,
and more and more toxic people
are running more and more of the show,
causing more and more harm to
everybody else in the population.
If you want to look at all of the
various ills of the world in terms of
war, greed,
the trafficking of individuals,
the destruction of the environment,
then invariably behind
it is one of our kind.
So long as the normals and the empaths
remain unaware
of narcissists moving in their midst,
then we will prevail.