Sam Vaknin's opinion of us.

Nightowl9910 wrote:

IHaveEveryDisorder wrote:Sam Vaknin's academic credentials are from a diploma mill, and he is a diagnosed psychopath. He is considered by many to be a fraud.

I've heard that before! I read that before on Wikipedia but since have never been sure what to think on how much truth there was in that. Though certainly not discounting that as being a likely possibility! Admittedly, I've only just recently been finding stuff out about him. I'm sure there's still much I don't know!

There was a documentary on him called "I, Psychopath" where he flat out admits both.

At least we're not as nutty as the guy who owns this website...

http://www.timecube.com/

IHaveEveryDisorder wrote:

Nightowl9910 wrote:
There was a documentary on him called "I, Psychopath" where he flat out admits both.

Many thanks for the mention! Will have to find out more on that.

Vaknin has written some of the most intelligent things that I have ever read. Vaknin is one of maybe 10 people about whose intellectual superiority I don't doubt at all.

(And I wrote one of these anti-Sam threads, so I guess I know what I'm talking about.)

It's just that he's a narcissist, and he's old. He has no intention to change or reach maturity. Therefore, his psychoanalytic theory is of course biased - he's a narcissist, he can't distinguish between the truth and his opinion. And that makes him fail in many respects. But you can't seriously call him anything but ultra-intelligent after reading this article of this, for instance:

http://samvak.tripod.com/psychophysics.html

And if you take them out of context, all of his assertions about the inner life and behavior of narcissists are accurate. It's just the big picture which is wrong - and he tends to produce serious #######4 whenever he leaves his field of expertise, such as "accusing" you guys of lack of empathy. But again, this is because he's a narcissist. Every factoid that he hears about other PDs seems like it's related to him - to narcissism - in a way because he has a narcissistic delusion of omnipresence. And he can't distinguish between this pathological thought and the truth, as I've said above, so for him, everything is narcissistic, and other PDs are just cheap imitations. It's #######4 of course, but it's completely understandable.

I actually feel sorry for him.

Ah, well, I asked him about it and he's corrected it - turned out it was a mistake and he didn't mean it.

I think he is intelligent, too. Whether he's right about the things he states, I wouldn''t know... some of it I don't believe, definitely. His generalisations about personality disorders are incorrect - I read something about them all being manipulative and abusive

Oh, and as for the psychopath thing - I watched that documentary too, and I don't think he was officially diagnosed, was he? However, he was actually trying to prove he was a psychopath on it (I think? I'm sure it was mentioned) and he knew the criteria. Even I could fake ASPD.

unreal wrote:Vaknin has written some of the most intelligent things that I have ever read. Vaknin is one of maybe 10 people about whose intellectual superiority I don't doubt at all.

(And I wrote one of these anti-Sam threads, so I guess I know what I'm talking about.)

I'm glad you ventured further beyond all that silly Narc shtick. Don't miss out on his non-psych works as well, they're the best.

I eschew narcissists. They baffle with bullschtick and nothing more. That's just part of their m.o.

Even I could fake ASPD.

Are you sure about that? I'm a narcissist, and I couldn't.

unreal wrote:

Even I could fake ASPD.

Are you sure about that? I'm a narcissist, and I couldn't.

In a questionnaire, definitely. In a structured interview, probably. If someone went into a LOT of depth with their questions, I'd probably slip up. I could probably act like one for a while.

I don't know, of course, but from some of the questions that were asked of him, I really don't think it was a valid test.

Just because i find it hard to show it, doesn't mean I lack it. I find that i have quite a bit of empathy, I just don't show it.

How do you know if you lack empathy or not? You may have empathy but that doesn't mean you don't lack when compared to other people. Someone with Narcissistic PD who tramples all over people's feelings may honestly feel that they don't lack empathy just because they know that they have some and they feel that's enough.

Since empathy is an inability to understand the feelings of another person, if for example we feel rejected when there is none could this not be considered lack of empathy?