Info on Sam Vaknin

Normal? wrote:
I may have misphrased myself. By "helpful" I meant "intended to help." The book was never intended to help anyone. Above all, it was meant to attract attention and adulation (narcissistic supply) to its author, myself.

It also helped you financially Sam.

LifeSong wrote:They think that he cares about them; rather he is laughing at their gullibility to come to him for help. There IS a certain irony in that, isn't there? A woman has been hurt by a narcissist and then goes to an uber-narcissist for understanding and help. Hmmmm.

Yes - if you think about it in that respect isn't Sam's the ultimate scam? He scams the people desperate to learn about how they've been scammed. It's like a policeman stealing your wallet while you are crying to him about your house being burgled, and describing the thieves.

LifeSong wrote:It isn't so much his words but his tone that offends me and puts my guard up. It is the unspoken intention behind the words.

Yes - yes exactly! It isn't so much what he says as the connotations of his words, the subliminal message as it were. I didn't realise it as I first read his book but the intonation is similar to being hit over the head repeatedly with a mallet. All of his sentences are declarative in tone, yet hyperbolic and 'over-done', bordering on oppressive or bullish. I could only ever read a page or two at a time - I know now it was because the voice was tapping in to a little part of my brain (and there wasn't much left of it functioning at the time) that doesn't want to be told what to do, how to think, then disparaged for veering from the 'path'. It was far too close to the experience I was trying to get over.

If I met him now though I'd just tell him to sod off.

maria wrote:- his writing is pop-psychology, so his distinctions (like cerebral/somatic, inverted narcissism) are not to be taken too seriously (not based on empirical results)

OK, yes it is pop-psychology - but so is at least 98% of all over-the-counter "psychology"-literature. Or indeed the vast majority of ALL the world's book-publishing output. And don't get me started on music - or what passes as "music" - , or cinema, food, journalism, etc. etc. etc. Pop is the worst plague of the English-speaking world.

Anyhow, straying back to topic - I find Vaknin's patois somewhat strangely alluring (perhaps even evocative at times, if I may); take this passage, for example:

..."Who can measure the inconsistency of heart of those who walk beneath the light of the moon? Why has Fate not locked our breasts against the wild play of unworthy passions? Why must we bow, like a frail reed shaken with the wind, before the storm of life? O hostile Fate! O Appetite, thy name is Cat! With the herring head in my mouth I climbed to the roof, like pious Aeneas, intending to get in through the attic window. I then fell into the state that, dividing my Self in a curious way from my Self, yet seemed to be my real Self. I believe I have expressed myself clearly and accurately, so that everyone will recognize the student of psychology plumbing intellectual depths in this account of my strange condition. Let me continue!
That strange feeling, compounded of desire and reluctance, numbed my senses - overpowered me - resistance was useless - I ate the herring head!"

---------
- now, if that doesn't stir the pit of my unflinching soul, then what else does?!
~ Friderika

^ Oopsla, I should've checked the cover prior quoting... Goddamn paperbacks. Nevermind. Let's turn it to trivia then.

So, whoever is first to name the source (title / author / narrator) of the above, gets a free tub of the finest sardella-pâté as reward.

~ Johannes

- nobody???

Bloody philistines...

^ okay, I give in - it was Murr. (Katers Murr - or in english, The Life & Opinions of Tomcat Murr, by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Probably my favourite book ever. You can buy it on Amazon shall you ever wish.)

~ consumer Kreisler

This is a rant to clarify my stance on sticky threads, and it is not meant to be directed at anyone in particular; not even the people quoted.

littlewing wrote:I suggested that Lifesong's thread become a sticky note because there are so many recurring questions about Vaknin.

indarkness wrote:Yes please make this thread a sticky.

maria wrote:I think making a sticky about Vaknin is a good idea.

littlewing wrote:He dominates the content of google searches on narcissism and many people fail to dig deeper beyond his website and his forums. I myself took the path of least resistance and joined one of his forums before I did adequate research.

Understood, and this is a good and compelling argument AGAINST polluting this forum by adding yet one more item to the already disgustingly large number of existing static and stale sticky threads. If you delete one of the existing garbage stickies, then by all means, add this one in its place, if you must but please don't make it worse than it already is. I do not object to the topic or content of this thread, but I strongly protest against the continued theft of screen real estate by an ever-growing number of mostly stale threads of little or no interest to anyone except the occasional passer-by who had the luck to find this forum but who was too lazy to search Google and who was too lazy to use the search feature of this forum.

By the way, I'm lazy too, and if you feel this is a compelling reason to go out of your way to do me a great disfavour in the sanguine hope that you're helping me, by stroking and encouraging my laziness, then why not make all threads started by me sticky? While you're at it, you can sticky all threads I've replied to as well, including this one. If you do this for me, which I sincerely hope you will not, I shall thank you by saying goodbye, because I'm too lazy to scroll past the first page of threads merely to find the interesting and novel content that I'm truly and honestly really here for, and which I therefore hastily presume everyone else to be here for. I'm not interested in static and stale threads. If I were interested in static information I would go to Sam Vaknin's site and read all of his stuff as well as join his mailing list because his writing certainly is a great deal better than that of most people here, including most of my own writing, and especially this rant. In fact, it is because I'm lazy and because I'm interested in novel content that I haven't looked once at most of the sticky threads in all the time I've spent here, yet have tremendous confidence in their worthlessness . I'm prejudiced against sticky threads, and I automatically devalue them in my mind and promptly and resolutely dismiss them as worthless with extreme prejudice, based almost purely on their quality of being sticky, and to a lesser extent based on their almost invariably lacklustre and uninteresting titles. I despise sticky threads more than the Nazis despised Jews, and more than the Jews despise Nazis. If I had the resources to build and run a complex of death camps for sticky threads, I would do so with zealous devotion and determination if it were not for my deficits of attention, motivation and patience.

Thanks for listening. I feel better now. I exaggerated a little, I acknowledge, but make no mistake: sticky threads contribute to making this forum less useful, and if they grow sufficiently in number so as to force me to scroll past the first page of the list of threads in order to find novel content, then I'm out of here for good, and I probably won't even care to say good bye, nor could I possibly care less whether you deeply miss me or whether you rejoice, cork up the champagne, and chant "good riddance" in unison, because obviously, if you like sticky threads your opinion is of no significance to me, and I would in fact rather be hated than loved by you, because to be hated by people with outrageously bad taste is an outstanding proof of brilliance, excellence, magnificence and superiority, and one of the finest awards imaginable, possibly surpassed only by a Nobel prize.

I guess I didn't feel as much better as I first thought, but I think I'm OK now. Thanks again for listening.

dolfin80 wrote:I had no idea who Sam was ... All i knew was that i was emotionally abused over at N "support" forum for having an opinion, then abused for apologising for having an opinion. Then blocked from the site. Rejection is a form of emotional abuse. I only went there for support not to be emotionally abused even more. Then i read the thread here about others being [banned] from that same site. [That's] how i discovered Sam. I had watched "I [Psychopath]" just a few weeks ago on ABC ... but never knew that Sam was the star of it until finding this forum and i certainly did not know that this criminal has a "support" forum for abused women. How is this legal people?

I've finally realised that emotional abuse is a serious matter, because it is childhood psychological trauma that creates personality disordered people such as Sam Vaknin and myself. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the schizoid and narcissistic disorders stole over 25 years of my life, but this is no reason to shoot my parents and day care providers. The sweet taste of revenge is surpassed by little in this world, but that ought not to distract from the truth that vengeance is perfectly useless for almost any goal of significance.

It is legal because emotional abuse is such a difficult issue to define with precision or to prove beyond reasonable doubt, and therefore it cannot be readily codified into law with any degree of satisfaction in the accuracy and clarity of the resulting text. Such laws would be a lot more ambiguous than the DSM-IV or even the tax laws. As a result of such ambiguity, the resulting legislation would be hazardous and harmful to society, and its enforcement would add tremendously to the already great waste of resources rampant within almost any judicial system. Among other things, such legislation would create new victims out of nothing at all, because innocent people would easily find themselves convicted of crimes.

In general, Sam Vaknin's writings on narcissism are informative and at times, they are even helpful and useful, which is more than what can be said about some of the competition. In particular, Vaknin's writings are infinitely more useful than the rants about them.

The forums run by Vaknin are an entirely different matter. Unlike his writings, which are generally beneficial, his forums appear to be predominantly harmful. This is my general impression based on an ever-growing body of evidence. Your own story, as quoted above, lends additional support to the hypothesis that Sam Vaknin's support forums are harmful. This should in no way distract you from the fact that his writings are generally accurate and backed by a vast body of material, including the writings of distinguished experts such as Kernberg and Kohut in addition to the author's first hand experience and the anecdotal evidence provided by others, recently corroborated by my own first hand experience, unbeknownst to Vaknin.

In summary:

• Informative, generally accurate, and potentially useful: Vaknin's writings on narcissism, including the web site and book. This much is clear, based on my own research and that of others.
• Potentially informative, accurate and interesting: Vaknin's mailing list, the Yahoo group narcissisticabuse. My reason for saying "potentially", is that my opinion is preliminary, and I feel that further research is needed.
• Predominantly harmful, and potentially destructive: Vaknin's support forums for abused victims. This much seems clear from the reports I've taken part of.

dolfin80 wrote:I have learnt that the internet is a dangerous place. I'm glad i found this forum to validate my experiences.

The Internet can be a dangerous place. In general, it is not unless one is foolish. I lost $75 or so once on eBay, but that is exceptional, and hardly the end of the world.

LifeSong wrote:

littlewing wrote:I suggested that Lifesong's thread become a sticky note because there are so many recurring questions about Vaknin. Her post was very informative and comprehensive so I thought it would be helpful for newbies. Her perspective is biased, but nothing she says is exaggerated or untrue. I highly doubt she had an ulterior motive in starting a new thread about Vaknin instead of continuing with an old one. Maybe she didn't want to dig through her old posts, she had new information, or she wanted to address the issue in a way that would answer questions commonly asked by current active users. Of course people can google Vaknin, but they still want the opinion of people on the board because his influence over the topic of narcissism causes so much confusion, especially among victims. He dominates the content of google searches on narcissism and many people fail to dig deeper beyond his website and his forums. I myself took the path of least resistance and joined one of his forums before I did adequate research.

Yes to all of this, and then some.

Especially the first two sentences, I presume. You could at least have thanked her for her nice ego-stroking, or Narcissistic Supply (was this term coined by Vaknin?). As a pathological narcissist, I had great trouble thanking people for anything, and I only did so at times where it was a formality required by standards of common courtesy and politeness.

My interpretation of your reply is as follows. Basically, what you say amounts to "I told you so!", and in my fantasy I imagine you beating your chest. In other words, you aggrandise yourself, rather than show the person whose words you comment on some well deserved gratitude for complimenting you by saying nice things about your writings. That's what it looks like from here, and I thought you should be aware of it, because I'm certain that you do not wish to come off as a narcissist. Although perhaps I get some Schadenfreude out of this, I'm also genuinely curious about other people's opinions on the matter, and I suppose it takes one to know one.

littlewing wrote:I suggested that Lifesong's thread become a sticky note because there are so many recurring questions about Vaknin. Her post was very informative and comprehensive so I thought it would be helpful for newbies. Her perspective is biased, but nothing she says is exaggerated or untrue.

For detail, I refer you to my lengthy analysis of her comments on Vaknin. I raised some questions which have not been addressed, and in the absence of clarification or further evidence, I am indeed inclined to suspect that some of what she said might be exaggerated or untrue. However, my disagreement on such details is irrelevant as to whether this should be a sticky thread. Rather, I protest to the addition of yet another sticky thread to a forum that already has much too many, on the grounds that these threads tend to be stale, often locked, and thus almost inevitably of only brief interest to readers, and mostly only to a few passers-by. Many of the people who would benefit most from such a sticky thread will not even find this forum. Yet, such sticky threads continuously and almost indefinitely steal screen real estate and divert time and attention from more novel, relevant and deserving threads, and thus plague regulars like myself, and this is especially aversive to me since I have attention deficit disorder. I hope I've eliminated all doubt by now.

littlewing wrote:I highly doubt she had an ulterior motive in starting a new thread about Vaknin instead of continuing with an old one. Maybe she didn't want to dig through her old posts,

But that's precisely what she did! She dug the archives archaeologically, copied the text of an old post of hers, and reposted it as a new thread. She may not even know the full truth herself as to why she did this, and for that reason, the issue may be impossible to resolve with certainty, even if she were to cooperate. In any case, although I had and perhaps still have a bit of curiosity about this matter, as far as I'm concerned, it's history, purely academical and theoretical and of little or no practical relevance, except, possibly, to the extent that a successful resolution of this matter might help prevent further time-consuming controversy.

littlewing wrote:she had new information,

Such information could have been added to the old thread, just as easily as it could be added to this thread.

littlewing wrote:or she wanted to address the issue in a way that would answer questions commonly asked by current active users.

The fact that the original post of this thread appears to be a verbatim reproduction of the initial post of an old thread would appear to contradict the interpretation you suggest. Furthermore, the fact that the thread supposedly was for the benefit of newbies, or more accurately, passers-by, suggests that the questions of "current active users" were of lesser importance.

littlewing wrote:Of course people can google Vaknin, but they still want the opinion of people on the board

Yes, and Google would find such a discussion too, whether it is sticky or not. Moreover, the search feature of this very forum would find it too, if it were to be used. Although I'm too lazy to use this feature much myself, the laziness of passers-by with an interest in Vaknin is hardly sufficient justification for the creation of a continuous annoyance to regular participants with a focus on other issues.

littlewing wrote:because his influence over the topic of narcissism causes so much confusion, especially among victims. He dominates the content of google searches on narcissism and many people fail to dig deeper beyond his website and his forums. I myself took the path of least resistance and joined one of his forums before I did adequate research.

Yes, but while this is a valid concern and indeed a tragedy, making this a sticky thread is not a satisfactory solution in any way to such concerns. Besides, if this topic is really as popular and important as you imply, then this thread will remain active and prominently visible indefinitely and for legitimate reasons, rather than for the mere Ersatz reason of stickiness.