Today, he is a pioneering researcher of narcissism and other personality disorders, widely regarded as one of the foremost experts in the field. Some call him the Devil himself, while his narcissistic patients see in him their Redeemer.

Professor Vaknin is an exceptionally kind, cultured, and—at least seemingly—humble man. His vast erudition spans philosophy, religion, economics, and the social sciences. It is not always easy to follow where his answers take you—and of course, one need not always agree with his at times idiosyncratic views of the world.

It was providence that led me to Sam Vaknin on YouTube last July. That was when I realized how exquisitely manipulative, cunningly exploitative, and devastatingly toxic my great love had become—and that I needed to face my own responsibility in again, chossing such a pertner. Day and night I watched Vaknin’s elaborate, informative, endlessly candid, and often sprawling lectures.

For two months I woke with him and went to bed with him, trying to understand the incomprehensible—it was, quite literally, lifesaving. And now here he sits across from me in Budapest. Lacking anything better, I try to thank him with a favorite mug adorned with his favourite Minnie Mouse. He is visibly moved, then asks me: “You do know that Minnie is borderline, right?”

Sam Vaknin’s first television interview, 1979. The 19-year-old young man still speaks as a physicist to Israeli television.

A Doctor’s Self-Analysis

“Like every psychologist, I began with my own mental problems. It seems the entire profession is one vast madhouse. I was born in Israel, the child of immigrants. My parents were poorly educated and unable to cope with the challenges and demands of modern life—let alone with me. From birth I was unusual, strange, a difficult child. At one point, my teachers thought I was retarded, cognitively impaired. They sent me to the school psychologist because I was so disruptive to the others.

At four I began to read, devouring encyclopedias and the local equivalent of the Wall Street Journal between the ages of four and six. School bored me. Eventually, they discovered I had an IQ of 180, which was rather unusual. They had no idea what to do with me, so at nine I was sent to university, and by seventeen I was a lecturer.

My parents had no clue how to handle the situation. I think both were mentally ill, my mother more severely. As a result, I endured twelve years of horrific physical torture and verbal abuse. Naturally, this shaped my sense of self and personality. Serious personality disorders, psychiatric illnesses, and mood disturbances emerged, and my life collapsed.

I was ambitious, made tens of millions of dollars, became a celebrity in my country (Izrael) —but I sabotaged myself, constantly destroyed myself. I undermined my own success because, deep inside—as psychology puts it—I was a ‘bad object.’ My parents’ message worked its way into me: You are an unlovable monster, a lunatic, undeserving of recognition. And I kept confirming their verdict, again and again.

Children cannot contradict their parents; that would be too terrifying. So the child chooses instead to believe there is something wrong with him, not with his mother or father—his survival depends on them. The child creates this introjection, this parental message: You are inadequate, a loser, a failure, unlovable. And this becomes a lifelong echo in the mind.

I strove to validate, to confirm my parents’ judgment of me—by destroying myself over and over. The destruction was total. I lost everything. I ended up in prison.”

“Narcissists Cannot Individuate”

“Narcissism is not really a personality style, it is a failure to develop a self (Author: A maladaptive response to trauma) The child becomes stuck. He never goes through the normal processes of separation and individuation. Instead, he fuses with parental figures, with external sources of validation, with fantasies. He constructs what I call the False Self: a confabulated entity that mediates between him and the world.

The False Self is both a shield and a prison. It protects the child from the unbearable reality that he is unloved, unwanted, even hated. But it also imprisons him, because through it he never learns to be authentic. The narcissist grows up without a core identity—only a façade.

Individuation means becoming separate, autonomous, whole. The narcissist cannot tolerate such a process. To individuate is to risk abandonment, and abandonment is annihilation. So instead he clings—fuses—with a partner, a group, an ideology. He cannot live without external scaffolding. Without it, he disintegrates.”

Abuse, Trauma, and the Perverse Bond

“Abuse is not only beating, humiliation, neglect. It is also over-involvement, intrusion, and parentification—forcing the child to meet the parent’s needs. Abuse destroys the natural rhythm of love and hate in childhood. It teaches the child that love is dangerous, conditional, intertwined with pain.

This is why abused children—later, abused adults—so often remain in toxic relationships. To them, abuse is home. Abuse is familiar, safe in its predictability. Many prefer to stay with an abuser rather than face the terror of individuation, of being alone with themselves.

They would rather remain in destructive relationships than become strong individuals.”Borderline, Codependency, and Shared Fantasy

“The borderline is terrified of abandonment, the codependent is addicted to other people, and the narcissist is unable to exist without constant supply. All three meet in what I describe as a Shared Fantasy.

In the shared fantasy, there is an implicit contract:

• The borderline offers intensity and drama.
• The codependent offers caretaking and sacrifice.
• The narcissist offers an illusory, grandiose reality in which all partners feel special, chosen, unique.

But this fantasy always collapses, because it is built on denial of reality, on avoidance of individuation. When the fantasy shatters, all partners experience withdrawal symptoms akin to drug addicts. The pain is excruciating.”

Gender Differences and Narcissism

“Cultural factors shape how narcissism is expressed. In men, it often manifests as overt grandiosity, entitlement, aggression. In women, it may appear more covert: martyrdom, passive-aggression, somatization. But beneath the surface, the psychic structure is the same: absence of a stable self, fear of abandonment, reliance on external validation.”

The Cult of Victimhood

“Today we see the rise of what I call Victimhood Movements. Being a victim has become an identity, a source of pride, even of power. But victimhood is not an identity. It is a condition, a circumstance, not a core of being.

When people cling to victimhood as their only organizing principle, they remain frozen in trauma. They refuse individuation. They outsource their power to abusers, to society, to history. To heal, one must relinquish victimhood, mourn the trauma, and move on to build an authentic self.”

Identity as Illusion

But perhaps none of us are truly real in the way we imagine. Individuation is not about discovering some immutable essence. It is about weaving a coherent, flexible, compassionate narrative that allows us to live, to love, to lose, and to continue.”

On Narcissistic Abuse and No Contact

“In the end, identity itself is largely an illusion. It is a story we tell ourselves, a narrative we weave out of memories, roles, and borrowed fragments. The narcissist’s tragedy is that he knows this too well—and therefore despairs of ever being real.

Returning to narcissistic abuse—you say that once we realize we are dealing with such an abuser, we must immediately go, flee, and wherever possible apply the principle of full no contact. Is there a practical guide for this, one that goes beyond simply not picking up the phone?

No contact is a concrete, 27-step strategy designed  by me, to isolate the victim from every dimension of narcissistic abuse. Such abuse is like water: it always seeks the path of least resistance. The strategy only works if every single step is applied without compromise. Its essence is to protect the victim and their loved ones from the abuser. If communication is unavoidable—for example, because of shared children—then it must pass through intermediaries who filter the messages according to set criteria. This requires training and skill.

But of course, even if we physically separate from the abuser, we may still hear their voice, their words, in our minds.

The Aftermath: Grief and Internalized Voice

What lies behind this difficulty?

The victim of narcissistic abuse typically endures prolonged grief. They must mourn many dimensions of the relationship: the person, the shared dream, the shared fantasy. They will never again see themselves as ideal as they once did through the narcissist’s gaze. They mourn who they might have become. The injuries are often severe. In America, this prolonged grief—lasting more than a year—is now recognized as a disorder in its own right. Sadly, this is without exception: every patient I have met carries this burden.

Worse still, silencing the internalized voice of the abuser is almost impossible. The narcissist is practically absent—indeed, was never really present. They delegate both roles of the relationship to the victim, who creates the abuser within themselves. They are, in reality, one.

It is like a black hole: nothing is there, yet everything nearby is affected. The victim’s “mass” and trajectory are altered; this “nothing” reshapes them. And because a normal human cannot interpret nothingness, they fill it with content—they conjure their abuser within their own mind. Thus, both figures are them, and of course, one cannot escape oneself.

Since the infection is total and pervasive, the most effective solution is to lose one’s mind. A more merciful alternative, however, is the detachment I earlier called individuation. At first, this may resemble schizophrenia, as we purge certain internalized childhood voices. But at the end of the process—known as constellation—a new, integrated, authentic self is born.

If we frame this optimistically, then after such abuse, the victim can be reborn, provided they undertake the work on themselves.

Recovery, Individualization, and Relationships

When I said there is no learning, no solution, I meant that we cannot endlessly recreate the same situation hoping that this time it will turn out differently simply because we have acquired new knowledge.

Yet we can work on ourselves, instead of saying, “From now on I will only choose partners who are not narcissistic.” This is the wrong approach, because it looks outward. Never try to change your environment. Within certain limits, you can only successfully shape yourself, and from that emerge new choices, decisions, and consequences.

Much of the self-help industry encourages changing oneself for an external goal—earning more money, finding the “right” partner. As long as this effort is outward-focused and goal-oriented, it is doomed. Improving ourselves should only be for our own sake, not for our children, our finances, or a partner.

Regarding the victim’s responsibility in narcissistic abuse, we cannot speak of culpability, because responsibility exists only when engaging with an external entity—like the state or our children. But victims do very well if they work on themselves, detach, and become who they were always meant to be. Many effective methods exist for this.

Here arises another obstacle: most people fear detachment—in many senses, emotionally and financially intertwined, living lives of mutual dependency. Much of this is rooted in the erroneous 19th-century romantic ideal. Until that time, love and relationships were more transactional, yet healthier.

In the early 19th century, a romantic ideal spread from Germany to England: love could only be experienced in one very specific way. It demanded that one almost vanish, cease to exist, and then be reborn through the functioning of the beloved. In some sense, this was highly religious, paralleling the life of Jesus. We had to sacrifice ourselves to be resurrected through the loved one. Humanity became stuck in this paradigm, so that modern love has become one of fusion and total merging.

When contemporary people encounter the necessity of detachment and individuation, they are terrified, equating it with loneliness—which is not true. They don’t dare try; instead, they remain in dysfunctional, painful, destructive relationships rather than becoming sovereign, strong individuals capable of handling solitude.

Nietzsche’s message as a side note to this romanticism did not help: the self-actualized Übermensch is, by nature, alone. You may be weak and spineless, in which case relationships can enter—or you work on yourself, grow, and become a superhuman, but then solitude is your fate. Kierkegaard, as a religious thinker, saw the leap of faith as the path to happiness, foreseeing that it separates us from humanity.

For a long time, it seemed there were only two paths: dependence or complete autonomy. Yet people do manage to live in healthy relationships.

Here is a revised and edited version of a mercilessly detailed, monumental interview I did with world-renowned narcissism expert and self-confessed psychopath, Professor Sam Vaknin in 2022, while I was exploring the dynamics behind abusive relationships. It is a long, deep, sometimes disturbing, yet endlessly captivating and unique dive into the mind of one of the most intriguing people you can meet.

Have a safe journey!