Prof. Sam Vaknin (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn) is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited (Amazon) as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction. He is Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia (September, 2017 to present) and Professor of Finance and Psychology in SIAS-CIAPS (Centre for International Advanced and Professional Studies) (April, 2012 to present). Here we talk about his work on treating narcissism with Cold Therapy.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Narcissism seems lifelong, immutable. You have commented, eloquently, about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the lifetime ‘devoured’ by it, in an Instagram post (vakninsamnarcissist, 2020).[1] Yet, your intervention, Cold Therapy, is effective with Narcissism (and depression). What was the original insight into the first developments of Cold Therapy?

Prof. Sam Vaknin: That, exactly like Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a post-traumatic condition, a form of complex trauma. So, Cold Therapy is based on two premises: (1) That narcissistic disorders are actually forms of CPTSD; and (2) That narcissists are the outcomes of arrested development and attachment dysfunctions. Consequently, Cold Therapy borrows techniques from child psychology and from treatment modalities which used to deal with PTSD.

Jacobsen: In “Cold Therapy and Narcissistic Disorders of the Self” (Vaknin, 2018), you list “four misconceptions about pathological narcissism.”[2]  Why have those been the misconceptions, in particular?

Vaknin: Pathological narcissism is not merely a regression to an earlier childhood developmental phase, although such infantilization is a core psychodynamic of the disorder. There is so much more to it than that!

It is also not only a psychological defense, although narcissistic defenses and cognitive distortions play a key role in the pathology.

Narcissism is not simply an organizing principle or a schema, though, like every addiction (to narcissistic supply, in this case), it helps the addict to make sense of the world (is hermeneutic) and provides goal-orientation and direction. It comes replete with rituals, order, and structure (is an exoskeleton).

Finally, it is not strictly a personality disorder. The personality is intact and highly adaptive. Narcissism is a post-traumatic condition, amenable to trauma therapies. Like in every other form of complex trauma, emotions get dysregulated or repressed and cognitions get distorted.

Jacobsen: How are narcissistic disorders complex post-traumatic conditions, and forms of arrested development and attachment dysfunctions? How are both pampering and punishing a child, or an adolescent, forms of abuse in the creation of a narcissist?

Vaknin: Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial – the perpetrators could be parents, teachers, other adults, or peers. Pampering, smothering, spoiling, and “engulfing” the child are also forms of abuse because they do not allow the child to separate from the parent and to confront reality as an agent of personal growth and development.

See these:

http://vaksam.tripod.com/narcissismglance.html

http://vaksam.tripod.com/npdglance.html

http://vaksam.tripod.com/journal42.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20161025014451/http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=de&id=419

Narcissistic and psychopathic parents and their children – click on the links:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/NARCISSISTIC-PERSONALITY-DISORDER/kA1vtsqWAiI

The Genetic Underpinnings of Narcissism

http://vaksam.tripod.com/journal43.html

The early childhood traumas of the narcissist prevent him (or her) from completing the process of separation-individuation. S/he is not permitted to develop boundaries and to become an individual. S/he freezes in time as a Puer Aeternus, a Peter Pan.

The narcissistic child reacts by avoiding the offending and hurtful parent, an insecure attachment style that becomes entrenched throughout the lifespan. He creates the False Self and outsources many Ego boundary functions, rendering him dependent on the appraising gaze of others to buttress his grandiose, inflated self-image. Gradually, he develops an addiction to confirmatory input (narcissistic supply) because he cannot regulate and stabilize his internal environment without it.

Jacobsen: What portions of the nervous system in early childhood and early adolescence seem most impacted by the long-term abuse and trauma to create Narcissism, if known?

Vaknin: Not known. There are many studies about the neuroplastic effects of childhood abuse and trauma on the brain, but none of them is specific to NPD. There are studies about brain abnormalities in Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorders (psychopathy).

Jacobsen: How are narcissistic disorders interpersonal disorders rather than disorders of the self?

Vaknin: The concept of “individual” which regrettably permeates modern psychology is counterfactual. We are formed fully via relationships with others. To conceive of the Self as an outcome of narcissistic introversion (Jung) is disastrously mistaken.

Disorders of the personality are, therefore, problems in inter-relatedness (as the object theorists in the UK in the 1960s had postulated). Narcissism is no exception. The DSM V has adopted this stance in its Alternate Model of NPD (p. 767). I had been advocating it since 1997.

Jacobsen: What are the goals of Cold Therapy?

Vaknin: The main two therapeutic goals are to render the False Self redundant and so drive it to atrophy (“use it or lose it”) and to eliminate the need for narcissistic supply and the dysphorias that accompany its deficiencies.

In short: to get rid of the grandiosity dimension in Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

To process trauma via skilled reliving (owning the trauma and surviving retraumatization);

To foster more adaptive functioning that is not dependent on outsourced regulation, cognitive distortions (like grandiosity), and artificial constructs (like the False Self);

Replace negative coping (such as avoidance, withdrawal, defiance, or fantasy) with positive coping strategies;

To integrate distressing materials (thoughts, feelings, memories);

To lead to the internal resolution of dissonances, resulting in an equilibrium and homeostasis;

Help the client to evolve life skills such as resilience, empathy, and ego regulation.

Jacobsen: Why are no known, well-established therapies effective in the treatment of narcissistic disorders?

Vaknin:

Behavior Therapy

Replaces problem behaviors with constructive ones via conditioning and reinforcement.

Cognitive Therapy

Changes negative automatic thoughts and schemas that lead to attributional and other biases as well as errors in order to alter problematic behaviors and dysfunctional feelings and behaviors.

CBT

Third wave of behavior therapy:

Primacy of therapeutic relationship, learning principles, analyze triggers and environmental cues, explore schemas and emotions, utilize modelling, homework, and imagery.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

Developed by Linehan in 1993 to treat BPD, but used with other personality disorders and disorders of mood, anxiety, eating, and substance abuse. It is deployed mainly with female patients in inpatient or residential settings.

Emphasizes emotional and affect regulation rather than cognitions. 

Concerned with how were schemas formed via dialectic conflicts: seeks to connect affect and need to cognitive inference processes and belief systems so as to be reinterpreted with greater self-awareness.

Identifies fixation or perseveration causes by early developmental deprivation and protective attentional constriction.

Examines effects of negative reinforcement through emotional avoidance or inadequate coping skills rewarded through the partial reinforcement effect.

Involves individual therapy, group skills training, phone contact, and therapist consultation. Focuses on using validation and problem solving to counter severe behavioral dyscontrol, issues of quiet desperation, problems of living, and reducing incompleteness.

Cognitive Behavior Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP)

Developed by McCullough and adapted by Sperry. Not used with BPD.

Clients learn to analyze life situations and manage daily stressors. They evaluate which thoughts and behaviors prevent desired outcomes.

Elicitation and remediation: questions about the situation, the client’s role and functioning in it, and the desired outcome lead to a revision of counterproductive behaviors and cognitions.

Replaces emotional reasoning with consequential one.

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

Developed by Teasdale.

Fosters aware focus on thoughts, feelings, and experiences in the present with an attitude of acceptance and without analysis or judgment. 

Pattern-focused Psychotherapy

Developed by Sperry

Pattern: predictable, consistent, self-perpetuating style of thinking, feeling, acting, coping, and self-defense. Can be adaptive (competent) or maladaptive (inflexible, ineffective, inappropriate, cause symptoms, impair functioning and satisfaction).

Therapy consists of replacing hurtful maladaptive patterns (situational interpretations and behaviors) with helpful adaptive ones. 

Schema Therapy

Developed by Young

Changes maladaptive schemas: 18 enduring and self-defeating ways of regarding oneself and others, arranged in 5 domains. Schemas are perpetuated through coping styles: schema maintenance, avoidance, and compensation.

Schemas can be reconstructed, modified, interpreted, or camouflaged. 

TABLE 1.2 Maladaptive Schemas and Schema Domains

Disconnection and Rejection

• Abandonment/Instability: The belief that significant others will not or cannot provide reliable and stable support.

• Mistrust/Abuse: The belief that others will abuse, humiliate, cheat, lie, manipulate, or take advantage.

• Emotional Deprivation: The belief that one’s desire for emotional support will not be met by others.

• Defectiveness/Shame: The belief that one is defective, bad, unwanted, or inferior in important respects.

• Social Isolation/Alienation: The belief that one is alienated, different from others, or not part of any group.

Impaired Autonomy and Performance

• Dependence/Incompetence: The belief that one is unable to competently meet everyday responsibilities without considerable help from others.

• Vulnerability to Harm or Illness: The exaggerated fear that imminent catastrophe will strike at any time and that one will be unable to prevent it.

• Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self: The belief that one must be emotionally close with others at the expense of full individuation or normal social development.

• Failure: The belief that one will inevitably fail or is fundamentally inadequate in achieving one’s goals.

Impaired Limits

• Entitlement/Grandiosity: The belief that one is superior to others and not bound by the rules and norms that govern normal social interaction.

• Insufficient Self-Control/Self-Discipline: The belief that one is incapable of self-control and frustration tolerance.

Other-Directedness

• Subjugation: The belief that one’s desires, needs, and feelings must be suppressed in order to meet the needs of others and avoid retaliation or criticism.

• Self-Sacrifice: The belief that one must meet the needs of others at the expense of one’s own gratification.

• Approval-Seeking/Recognition-Seeking: The belief that one must constantly seek to belong and be accepted at the expense of developing a true sense of self.

Overvigilance and Inhibition

• Negativity/Pessimism: A pervasive, lifelong focus on the negative aspects of life while minimizing the positive and optimistic aspects.

• Emotional inhibition: The excessive inhibition of spontaneous action, feeling, or communication—usually to avoid disapproval by others, feelings of shame, or losing control of one’s impulses.

• Unrelenting Standards/Hypercriticalness: The belief that striving to meet unrealistically high standards of performance is essential to be accepted and to avoid criticism.

• Punitiveness. The belief that others should be harshly punished for making errors.

Sperry, Len, “Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of DSM-5 Personality Disorders: Assessment, Case Conceptualization, and Treatment”, 3^rd Edition, 2016, Routledge

Transference-focused Psychotherapy

Developed by Kernberg

Infants form internal representations of self-others (objects) connected via affect. A personality disorder occurs when positive and negative representations fail to integrate later in life. Such splitting affects all relationships, including the therapeutic one.

Transference to the therapist exposes the faulty relationship template and allows for its empathic correction. Identity integration is accomplished as the patient experiences negative emotions in a safe environment.

Mentalization-based Treatment (MBT)

Developed by Bateman and Fonagy.

Experience secure attachment and enhancing impulse control by empathically and insightfully reflecting on and correctly labelling one’s state of mind, especially one’s powerful emotions, and cognitive errors. This leads to improves relational skills.

Developmental Therapy

Developed mainly by Blocher, Citright, and Sperry

Regards problems in personal growth and needs satisfaction on a dimensional continuum from disordered to adequate to optimal.

Cold Therapy

Developed by Vaknin

Jacobsen: What are the first steps in formal identification and opening treatments of a narcissist with Cold Therapy?

Vaknin: The client present with a diagnosis of NPD by a clinician.

Cold Therapy consists of the re-traumatization of the narcissistic client in a hostile, non-holding environment which resembles the ambience of the original trauma. The adult patient successfully tackles this second round of hurt and thus resolves early childhood conflicts and achieves closure rendering his now maladaptive narcissistic defenses redundant, unnecessary, and obsolete.

Cold Therapy makes use of proprietary techniques such as erasure (suppressing the client’s speech and free expression and gaining clinical information and insights from his reactions to being so stifled). Other techniques include: grandiosity reframing, guided imagery, negative iteration, other-scoring, happiness map, mirroring, escalation, role play, assimilative confabulation, hypervigilant referencing, and re-parenting. It is proving to be an effective treatment for major depressive episodes (see this article about the link between pathological narcissism and depression and this article about depression and regulatory narcissistic supply in narcissism).

More about the therapy:

https://www.scribd.com/document/349440458/Cold-Therapy-Seminar-Level-1-Lecture-Notes

http://www.opastonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/cold-therapy-and-narcissistic-disorders-of-the-self-jcrc-18.pdf

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Vaknin.

Vaknin: Thank you again for your interest in my work.

References

Vaknin, S. (2018). Cold Therapy and Narcissistic Disorders of the Self. Journal of Clinical Review & Case Reports, 3(6), 29-36. https://doi.org/10.33140/JCRC/03/06/00005

vakninsamnarcissist. (2020, January 31). [Prof. Vaknin reflects on life with NPD and the creation of Cold Therapy]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B7-0NCdgQxg/.

Footnotes

[1] Vaknin’s Instagram post (2020), in full, stated:

What a cruel irony it is that I have developed Cold Therapy – the first ever effective treatment (cure, really) for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) – too late to benefit from it myself.

I am 59 years old, my health is failing. My mental illness had consumed my life – is still devouring it – as surely as the bush fires ravage homes in Australia, leaving only the ashes of Me behind.

WARNING

I will block anyone who gives me the feel good New Age crap about how it is never too late in life. Life has an expiry date beyond which it is all blood and tears and stools and wallowing in your own stench of decomposing physical and mental decrepitude. So back off with your American anodyne platitudes about how every age has its charms. Old age sucks 100%. We lie to ourselves about it in order to survive somehow in the face of our own vanishing dismemberment.

NPD is the slowest invisible cancer – but of the soul and mind. It is spiritual AIDS with nothing to abet it. It is all-pervasive, relentless, and merciless. It starts at age 3. It causes people around the narcissist to hurt and torment him purposefully and profusely as a way of getting back at him for his egregious abuse. It is Inferno and I have been its Dante since 1995. No Beatrice can help me, no god, no healer. I have been doomed by my own progenitor to a life of itinerant, profound, debilitating hurt, unlovable, shunned like a leper, feared and loathed and mocked in equal measures.

It is with impotent rage that I bequeath Cold Therapy to a world I care nothing for or about. Rage at the injustice of healing and aiding millions with my pioneering work since 1995 – except the only person who most deserved my love and my devotion and my succor: Sam.

See vakninsamnarcissist (2020).

[2] Vaknin, in “Cold Therapy and Narcissistic Disorders of the Self” (2018), stated:

a. It is not only a regression to an earlier childhood developmental phase;

b. It is not merely a psychological defense;

c. It is not simply an organizing principle or a schema;

d. It is not a personality disorder.

See Vaknin (2018).

Image Credit: Sam Vaknin.

History remains rife with failed ideas and hordes of individuals to pursue them, who create organizations falling into rather dry dust, eventually. Primarily religious interpretations of the cosmos with science taking the hindmost amount to such ideas. One idea in the fray is Creationism. Another is Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design and Creationism continue to evolve, mutually and separately. By and large, Intelligent Design and Creationism have failed, which means individuals associated with and organizations built around either/both have failed: legally, socially, culturally, scientifically, even philosophically and theologically. Legitimacy for either/both is null. Most educated peoples see them as illegitimate if not bad jokes.

The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, on broad Creationism, states, “At a broad level, a Creationist is someone who believes in a god who is absolute creator of heaven and earth, out of nothing, by an act of free will” (Ruse, 2021)

While, in a specific sense, it means “…taking of the Bible, particularly the early chapters of Genesis, as literally true guides to the history of the universe and to the history of life, including us humans, down here on earth” (Ibid.).

In other words, either a supernatural intervening mind starting everything including life or the Bible as the interpretive frame for approximately the same idea, Creationism posits divine intervention. Intelligent Design, the focus for today, refers to a slant or overlay on the core concepts of Creationism.

The Discovery Institute’s Professor Michael J. Behe and Dr. Stephen C. Meyer defined Intelligent Design as the theory “that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection” (Behe & Meyer, 2018).

Now, the idea presents as a scientific theory or, at least, a hypothesis as an alternative to evolution via natural selection. However, when digging deeper, one finds the true machinations behind its presentation, as such.

RationalWiki (2021) defines Intelligent Design, as follows, “Intelligent design creationism (often intelligent design, ID, or IDC) is a pseudoscience that maintains that certain aspects of the physical world, and more specifically life, show signs of having been designed, and hence were designed, by an intelligent being (usually, but not always, the God of the Christian religion).”

Dr. William Dembski, one of the pillars for founding the Intelligent Design movement, stated, “I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God” (Environment and Ecology, 2019).”

Also, Dembski stated, “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory (Dembski, 1999),” and, “Intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. The job of apologetics is to clear the ground — to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the spirit and people accepting the scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.”

The latter, supposedly, stated at the National Religious Broadcasters’ conference in Anaheim, California on February 6, 2000. In short, and these amount to a smidgen of definitions along the same lines of one another, Intelligent Design is distinct from Creationism.

While, at the same time, Creationism is a foundation stone for modern Intelligent Design. Where, its founders point to the religious, particularly, biblical and Christian roots of Intelligent Design, thus Creationist underpinnings and not overlay.

Ergo, Intelligent Design is not Creationism and Creationism is not Intelligent Design, though Intelligent Design is rooted in Creationism and Creationism is the parent of Intelligent Design.

The late Philip Johnson claimed Christianity as the foundation for Intelligent Design in “Reclaiming America for Christ Conference” (1999):

I have built an intellectual movement in the universities and churches that we call “The Wedge,” which is devoted to scholarship and writing that furthers this program of questioning the materialistic basis of science…

And so we’re the ones that stand for good science, objective reasoning, assumptions on the table, a high level of education, and freedom of conscience to think as we are capable of thinking.

That’s what America stands for, and that’s something we stand for, and that’s something the Christian Church and the Christian Gospel stand for-the truth that makes you free. Let’s recapture that, while we’re recapturing America.

Furthermore, he wrote in 1996, “Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get intelligent design — which really means the reality of God — before the academic world and into the schools” (Clemmitt, 2005).

In short, Creationism is about a supernatural intervening god, often about a biblical Christian God, while Intelligent Design is a social and political tool posed as scientific based on the biblical Christian God in the idiom of information theory, according to the founders of the Intelligent Design movement.

Regarding the actual people and organizations for Intelligent Design, the main one is the Discovery Institute. However, mostly, it becomes confused with Creationism in particular, while, in some sense, committed to both. Professor Michael Behe, Dr. William Dembski, and Philip E. Johnson were, probably, the core people.

Unfortunately, on their life trajectories, Dembski is without academic affiliation; Johnson died with many failures; and, Behe has been ideologically isolated within the university’s biology department. On September 23, 2016, Dembski claimed to be leaving the Intelligent Design movement, including the Discovery Institute fellowship. All associations were cut. Were they, though? No.

However, as one can expect in the socio-political battles of the religious, they never give up, never intended to relent, and continue onwards, as ever; they’re as predictable as the Sun rising. He returned circa February, 2021. All this pertains to an organizational history too.

At one time, there was The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) and its flagship publication entitled Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID). It contains all the “idiom of information theory.” You see the overlay.

Intelligent Design isn’t Creationism. Intelligent Design is an evolution of Creationism. It is masked with information-theoretic terminology and concepts. The purpose, as defined by its founders, is dishonest with social and political influence of the religious on an increasingly secular and non-Christian culture.

ISCID is a defunct organization. PCID is a failed publication. The inherent interest is not in the persistence of Creationism, as religious fundamentalists have always acted with zeal, whether a clean & polite presentation or not. That’s old, not new.

The intrinsic intrigue of the operation is the increasing levels of sophisticated gibberish to justify non-sense and religion into society — forcing religion mendaciously on the public. So, who are the agents of dishonest theology?

As defined on the website, “The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which provides a forum for free and uncensored inquiry into complex systems. The day-to-day operation of the society centers on the Archive, to which members and nonmembers may submit articles. Once uploaded onto the archive, each article has a commenting facility to which members may append comments. At the author’s request, after three months on the archive, articles passed on by the editorial board enter the quarterly online peer-reviewed journal of the society: Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID)” (ISCID, 2011a).

All information Society of Fellows information publicly available (ISCID, 2011b). In terms of the Executive Board or Board, ISCID’s Executive Director, in its main days, was William A. Dembski. Its Managing Director was Micah Sporacio. Its Chief Research Coordinator was Jed Macosko. Its Program Coordinator was Forrest M. Mims III. Its Development Officer was Terry Rickard. Its Office Manager was Stephanie Hoylman.

Yet, they had fellows specializing in different areas affiliated with institutions. Michael Behe (Biochemistry) from Lehigh University. John Bloom (Physics and Philosophy of Science) from Biola University. Walter Bradley (Mechanical Engineering) from Texas A&M University. Neil Broom (Biophysics) from the University of Auckland.

Russell W. Carlson (Molecular Biology) from the University of Georgia, Athens. David K.Y. Chiu (Biocomputing) from the University of Guelph. Robin Collins (Cosmology and Philosophy of Physics) from Mesiah College.

J. Budziszewski (Philosophy and Political Theory) from the University of Texas, Austin. John Angus Campbell (Communications) from the University of Memphis.

William Lane Craig (Philosophy) from the Talbot School of Theology, Biola. Bernard d’Abrera (Lepidoptera) from the British Museum, Natural History. Kenneth de Jong (Linguistics) from Indiana University, Bloomington. Of course, William Dembski in Mathematics. Mark R. Discher (Ethics) from the University of St. Thomas.

David Humphreys (Chemistry) from McMaster University. Cornelius Hunter (Biophysics) from Seagull Technology. Muzaffar Iqbal (Science and Religion from) from Center for Islam and Science. Quinn Tyler Jackson for “Language & Software Systems.”

Daniel Dix (Mathematics) from the University of Southern Carolina. Fred Field (Linguistics) from California State University. Guillermo Gonzalez (Astronomy) from Iowa State University. Bruce L. Gordon (Philosophy of Physics) from Baylor University.

Conrad Johnson (Clinical Neurosciences & Physiology) from Brown Medical School. Robert Kaita (Plasma Physics) from Princeton University. James Keener (Mathematics and Bioengineering) from the University of Utah. Robert C. Koons (Philosophy) from the University of Texas, Austin.

Jed Macosko (Chemistry) from La Sierra University. Bonnie Mallard (Immunology) from the University of Guelph. Forrest M. Mims III for “Atmospheric Science.” Scott Minnich (Microbiology) from the University of Idaho. Paul Nelson (Philosophy of Biology) from the Discovery Institute.

Younghun Kwon (Physics) from Hanyang University. Christopher Michael Langan/Chris Langan/Christopher Langan (Logic, Cosmology, and Reality Theory) from the Mega Foundation and Research Group. Robert Larmer (Philosophy) from the University of New Brunswick.

Martti Leisola (Bioprocess Engineering) from Helsinki University of Technology. Stan Lennard (Medicine) from the University of Washington. John Lennox (Mathematics) from the University of Oxford. Gina Lynne LoSasso (Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Neuropsychology) from the Mega Foundation and Research Group.

Filip Palda (Economics) from the l’École Nationale d’Administration Publique, Montreal. Edward T.Peltzer for “Ocean Chemistry.” Alvina Plantinga (Philosophy) from the University of Notre Dame. Martin Poenie (Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology) from the University of Texas, Austin.

Carlos E. Puente (Hydrology and Theoretical Dynamics) from the University of California, Davis. Del Ratzsch (Philosophy of Science) from Calvin College. Jay Wesley Richard (Philosophical Theology) from the Discovery Institute. Terry Rickard (Electrical Engineering) from the Orincon Corporation.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. (Psychiatry/Neuroscience) from the UCLA Department of Psychiatry. Philip Skell (Chemistry) from Penn State University. Frederick Skiff (Physics) from the University of Iowa. Karl D. Stephan (Electrical Engineering) from Southwest Texas State University.

John Roche (History of Science) from the University of Oxford. Andrew Ruys (Bioceramic Engineering) from the University of Sydney. Henry F. Schaefer (Quantum Chemistry) from the University of Georgia, Athens.

Richard Sternberg (Systematics) from NCBI-GenBank (NIH). Frank Tipler (Mathematical Physics) from Tulane University. Jonathan Wells (Developmental Biology) from the Discovery Institute. Finally, Peter Zoeller-Greer (Mathematics, Physics and Information Science) from the State University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt on the Main.

Now, with the number of academic disciplines and institutional associations, obviously, these are smart people, educated individuals. So, it would be inappropriate to claim, “Idiocy,” “Stupidity,” and the like. Individuals with a sincere belief, mostly theological, often Christian, and, in fact, predominantly Euro-American men.

Which is to say, not as a critique of the proposal of Intelligent Design, but, rather, as a sincere sociological analysis, the Intelligent Design movement, by and large, remains comprised of Euro-American Protestant Christian men with advanced degrees and prestigious connections.

Given the theological influences noted by Johnson, and Dembski, above, obviously, the American Protestant Christian communities appear as the source of Intelligent Design with highly educated American Protestant Christian men at the helm.

ISCID offered a number of services. It offered conferences and symposia with the first held on October 2002 to investigate “teleological accounts for the origin of biological information” (ISCID, 2011b).

It provided a “brainstorms discussion forum” “to get preliminary thoughts about complex systems into circulation so that they can receive critical scrutiny and be more fully developed” with “special interest” to “novel intuitions, speculations, hypotheses, conjectures, arguments, and data” (Ibid.)

Brainstorms, in fact, set a standard of not talking about “politics, personalities, and motives” (ISCID, 2012a). They were strict, stating, “Professional courtesy is to be observed at all times. Excessively long and repetitive posts are to be avoided. The start of a thread needs to present some positive insight into complex systems rather than some purely negative criticism. Threads that do not meet these standards will be closed or deleted entirely” (Ibid.).

They had reading discussion groups with books related top ISCID aiming for participation of the author (Ibid.). The had essay contests “in honor of Michael Polanyi with a cash prize of $1,000 [for undergraduates] and a graduate essay contest in honor of John von Neumann with a cash prize of $2,000” (ISCID, 2011b).

The page, on the John von Neumann Essay Prize, stated, “The John von Neumann Essay Prizeis awarded each summer to the best graduate article on complexity, information, and design submitted during the previous academic year. The article must be between 8,000 and 12,000 words (excluding abstract, bibliography, and notes). The prize value is $2,000” (ISCID, 2008).

On the Michael Polanyi Essay Prize, stated, “The Michael Polanyi Essay Prize is awarded each summer to the best undergraduate article on complexity, information, and design submitted during the previous academic year. The article must be between 6,000 and 8,000 words (excluding abstract, bibliography, and notes). The prize value is $1,000” (Ibid.). The essays well before the shutdown of operations in 2011 or the lack of management of web domain in 2011.

Their summer workshops included “bright undergraduate and graduate students as well as exceptional high school juniors and seniors” who could “have the opportunity each summer to converge on Princeton, New Jersey and learn about complex systems from some of the premier researchers in the field” (Ibid.).

Finally, internal to the system, they had a research bibliography as “an open-source, community project to develop the most comprehensive scientific bibliography resource on complex systems, information and design theory, and teleology. Users can submit entries, make comments, and create “folders” containing relevant reference information” (Ibid.).

You could make donations, become a member and gain benefits. The donations had corresponding levels of memberships, including “Regular Membership — $45-$99,” “Sustaining Membership — $100-$249,” “Friend — $250 — $499,” “Patron — $500 — $999,” “Founder — $1000 and above,” and “Lifetime Benefactor — $5000 and above (includes a lifetime membership)” (ISCID, 2013).

There were monthly donations available of “Ten dollars per month,” “Twenty-five dollars per month,” “Fifty dollars per month,” “One hundred dollars per month,” and “Two hundred and fifty dollars per month” (Ibid.).

Their memberships page had two formal membership levels — apparently, differing from donation memberships — with $25.00 for the Student Membership and $40.00 for the Regular Membership (Ibid.).

Members could access “thousands of online science journal articles,” could share “an interest in information- and design-theoretic applications to complex systems,” while membership was “open to anyone: professional, student, or lay person,” could “receive free or discounted access to online conferences, workshops, and reading discussion groups,” as well as “receive free access to ISCID research tools such as the online Bibliography.”

“Member Services,” as a web page, and some of this is repetitive, included an Online Research Library, Member Discussion Board, Edit Your Profile, Directory, Refer a member, ISCID Bibliography, Job Postings, Membership Renewal, Log out, and the beta version of ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy (ISCID, 2003).

Their “Research Tools” were, similarly, limited, with services including the ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy(Beta), aLiterature Review, anISCID Bibliography, theMESA: Monotonic Evolutionary Simulation Algorithm, and PLoS Biology & Public Library of Science. That’s about it.

Its top-page motto or phrase stated, “Retraining the scientific imagination to see purpose in nature” (Ibid.), which leads to PCID or the flagship journal of ISCID. “Purpose in nature” means teleology, so theology. It was a teleological/theological organization, not scientific.

The above-listed “Society of Fellows” was the advisory board for the peer-review of PCID. The fellows of ISCID, are the advisory board for PCID, are the peer-review for PCID. This was the structure of the organization.

PCID’s Editorial Board — not the Advisory Board/Society of Fellows — was William A. Dembski as General Editor, Jed Macosko as Associate Editor, Bruce Gordon as Associate Editor, James Barham as Book Review Editor, John Bracht as Managing Editor, and Micah Sparacio as Webmaster. Individuals could advertise with them for finance. PCID’s ISSN was 1555–5089.

They had a total of 8 issues: Volume 1.1, January — March 2002, Double Issue, Volumes 1.2 and 1.3, April — September 2002, Volume 1.4, October — December 2002, Double Issue, Volumes 2.1 and 2.2, January — June 2003, Philosophy of Mind Issue, Volume 2.3, October 2003, Volume 3.1, November 2004, Volume 4.1, July 2005, Volume 4.2 November 2005. These were purely electronic and not print versions, which makes sense moving into the 2000s and forward.

PCID was an attempt by Intelligent Design proponents to publish articles without a standard peer review process. The critique of the peer-review process was the lack of impartiality and rigour of the journal, in spite of secular presentation with information-theoretic terminology and academic patois.

The articles needed acceptance into the archive, required basic scholarly standards in relevance to complex systems as a discipline, and only required one ISCID Society of Fellows fellow to publish it. There was, obvious, conflict of interest and, probably, personal relationships between authors and requesters. The standards and output were very low.

As you can see, clear as day, the social and political intent was dishonest, as noted further above. The peer review was, in effect, dishonest, described above. So, as a service, and in concordance with, for most of them, their Saviour, I state, “…the truth will set you free.”

To further the point about low productivity, Volume 1.1, January — March 2002 published 8 articles and 3 book reviews: Inventions, Algorithms, and Biological Design by John Bracht, Are Probabilities Indispensable to the Design Inference? by Robert C. Koons, Back to Stoics: Dynamical Monism as the Foundation for a Reformed Naturalism by James Barham, A Response to Critics of Darwin’s Black Box by Michael J. Behe, Searching for Deep Variation in the Model Systems of Evo-Devo by Paul A. Nelson and Jonathan Wells, Why Natural Selection Can’t Design Anything by William A. Dembski, Dynamical Complexity and Regularity by Richard Johns, Does the association of spectral absorption bands in sunlight with the spectral response of photoreceptors in plants imply coincidence, adaptation or design? by Forrest M. Mims III, Three Issues With “No Free Lunch” by Darel R. Finley, What Have Butterflies Got to Do with Darwin? by William A. Dembski, and Finding Miller’s King by Jed Macosko.

Double Issue, Volumes 1.2 and 1.3, April — September 2002 published 7 articles and 1 interview: The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory by Christopher Michael Langan, The Impasse between the Design and Evolution of Life by Philip R. Page, On the descriptive terminology of the information transfer between organisms by Koszteyn and Lenartowicz, What is Natural Selection? A Plea for Clarification by Neil Broom, Random Predicate Logic I: A Probabilistic Approach to Vagueness by William A. Dembski, Complex Specification (CS): A New Proposal For Identifying Intelligence,Darel R. Finley, The evolution of complex information systems as movement against the pull of entropy, measured along information-space-time dimensions by Arie S. Issar, and Developing a science and philosophy of consciousness: A chat with David Chalmers.

Volume 1.4, October — December 2002 published 8 papers and 1 interview: Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls, and Reality Check for ID by William A. Dembski, Probabilities of randomly assembling a primitive cell on Earth by Dermott J. Mullan, Evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics by Granville Sewell, What Does Evolutionary Computing Say About Intelligent Design? by Karl D. Stephan,Evolution’s Logic of Credulity: An Unfettered Response to Allen Orr, by William A. Dembski, Symmetry in Evolution by Phillip L. Engle, Two Kinds of Causality: Philosophical Reflections on Darwin’s Black Box by Jakob Wolf, Some Theoretical and Practical Results in Context-Sensitive and Adaptive Parsing by Quinn Tyler Jackson, and Complexity and Self-Organization: A chat with Stuart Kauffman.

Double Issue, Volumes 2.1 and 2.2, January — June 2003 published 9 papers, 1 on policy, 1 online simulation, and 2 interviews: An Evaluation of “Ev”
 by I.G.D. Strachan, Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy? by Frank J. Tipler, On the Application of Irreducible Complexity by Joshua A. Smart, The Bacterial Flagellum: A Response to Ursula Goodenough by John R. Bracht, A Shot in the Dark by David Owen, Tegmark’s Parallel Universes: A Challenge to Intelligent Design? by Karl D. Stephan, Still Spinning Just Fine: A Response to Ken Miller by William A. Dembski, Probability of randomly assembling a primitive cell on Earth: Part II by Dermott J. Mullan, An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis For Organic Change by John A. Davison, Peer Review or Peer Censorship?
 by William A. Dembski, Vignere Encoded Text Evolution, A 21st Century view of evolution (Transcript of online chat with James Shapiro), and Ontogenetic Depth as a Complexity Metric for the Cambrian Explosion (Transcript of online chat with Paul Nelson).

Philosophy of Mind Issue, Volume 2.3, October 2003 published 1 editorial note, 8 papers, and 1 discussion: It’s on the Mind… by Micah Sparacio, Groundwork for an Emergentist Account of the Mental by Timothy O’Connor, Rational Action, Freedom, and Choice by E.J. Lowe, Functionalism Without Physicalism: Outline of an Emergentist Program by Robert C. Koons, Consciousness and complexity by Todd Moody, How Not To Be A Reductivist by William Hasker, Dennett Denied: A Critique of Dennett’s Evolutionary Account of Intentionality by Angus J. L. Menugem, Thoughts on Thinking Matter by James Barham, and Mental Realism: Rejecting the Causal Closure Thesis and Expanding our Physical Ontology, by Micah Sparacio, and Discussion Forum for PCID Volume 2.3, Philosophy of Mind Issue.

Volume 3.1, November 2004 published 7 papers: Evaluation of neo-Darwinian Theory with Avida Simulations by Royal Truman, Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research by Jonathan Wells, Problems with Characterizing the Protosome-Deuterostome Ancestor by Paul Nelson and Marcus Ross, Irreducible Complexity Revisited
 by William Dembski, Irreducible Complexity Reduced: An Integrated Approach to the Complexity Space by Eric Anderson, Irreducible Complexity by Stephen Griffith, and Some Implications for the Study of Intelligent Design Derived from Molecular and Microarray Analysis by Fernando Castro-Chavez.

Volume 4.1, July 2005 published 6 articles and 1 book review: Human Origins and Intelligent Design by Casey Luskin, Reflections on Human Origins by William Dembski, Questioning Cosmological Superstition: Separating science from myth in our theory of the universe by Rich Halvorson, What Kind of Revolution is the Design Revolution? by Jakob Wolf, The Case for Instant Evolution by John Davison, The Theory of Evolution in the Perspective of Thermodynamics and Everyday Experience by Wim M. de Jong, Review of Ric Machuga, In Defense of the Soul by Benjamin Wiker, A Review of Life’s Solution by Simon Conway Morris by Marcus Ross, and Is the Evolutionary Ladder a Stairway to Heaven? by Casey Luskin.

Volume 4.2, November 2005 published 5 articles: The Three Domains of Life: A Challenge to the concept of the Universal Cellular Ancestor? by Pattle. P. Pun, Stephen Schuldt, and Benjamin T. Pun, Information as a Measure of Variation by William Dembski, Palindromati by Fernando Castro-Chavez, On Einstein’s Razor by Quinn Tyler Jackson, and Bits, Bytes and Biology by Eric Anderson.

In total, the entire existence of the organization produced about 70 publications. It’s virtually nothing.

The Archive (ISCID, 2012b) went further on the standards for acceptance of articles prior to a single individual selecting or approving publication of an article in the Archive:

1. All discussion of papers in the Archive will take place in the Brainstorms Forum.

2. Anonymous and pseudonymous submissions are allowed (though not considered for PCID)

3. Submissions must provide positive insight into complex systems. Thoughtful and contructive critiques are allowed.

4. Professional courtesy is to be maintained. Precluded from this are discussions of politics, personalities, and motives.

5. Articles that were in the Archive that do not meet these standards have been moved to the News and Features section (Ibid.)

To their credit, “authors retain full copyright of their material. Articles submitted to the archive can be removed at any time at the author’s request. Authors grant to the society the right to display PCID articles on its site in perpetuity” (Ibid.).

The “Society Events” contains some information on undergraduate summer workshops and chat events. The chats events have the richer archival links to events. Those included conversations with Robert Wright, Lynn Caporale, James Gardner, Guenter Albrecht-Buehler, Del Ratzsch, Brig Klyce, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, James Shapiro, Paul Nelson, William Dembski, Stuart Kauffman, David Chalmers, Christopher Langan, and Ray Kurzweil (ISCID, 2012c).

Now, the News section ended on 2005, which was around the loss at the Dover trial. In short, ISCID and PCID died around the time of the most consequential legal loss for the Intelligent Design movement or community.

Reflecting on the above, it’s clear ISCID was a catastrophic failure — in spite of the depth and concertedness of the effort seen in the excavation, and included most of the most prominent and important members of the Intelligent Design community, and failed to rise under the weight of its own impotent theoretical foundations: Christian theology couched in information- and design-theoretic language.

Most of the prominent and important members of the Intelligent Design community are aging or dying. As with Johnson working for the Gospel until death, and Behe continuing in spite of the departmental isolation, and Dembski despite profound failures over years, Intelligent Design advocates will continue in the tracks of the founders, though themselves part of the same aging cohort, in general.

Which is to say, ISCID and PCID were failures, as their foundations were false, and so with Intelligent Design.

References

Behe, M. & Meyer, S.C. (2018, May 10). What is Intelligent Design?. Retrieved from https://www.discovery.org/v/what-is-intelligent-design/.

Clemmitt, M. (2005, July 29). Intelligent Design: Should alternatives to evolutionary theory be taught?. Retrieved from https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2005072902.

Dembski, W. (1999, July/August). Signs of Intelligence: A Primer on the Discernment of Intelligent Design.

Environment and Ecology. (2019). Intelligent Design. Retrieved from www.environment-ecology.com/religion-and-ecology/371-intelligent-design.html.

ISCID. (July 26, 2011b). About ISCID. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20110806053013/http://www.iscid.org/about.php.

ISCID. (April 5, 2013). Donations. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20130405174319/http://www.iscid.org/donations.php.

ISCID. (May 13, 2008). Essay Contests. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20080513011932/http://www.iscid.org/essaycontests.php.

ISCID. (2012c, February 6). ISCID Chat Events. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20120206204926/http://www.iscid.org/chat-events.php.

ISCID. (2003, February 10). Member Services. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030210105012/http://www.iscid.org/memberservices.php.

ISCID. (2006, September 25). Research Tools. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20060925023031/http://www.iscid.org/research-tools.php.

ISCID. (2011a, July 26). Society of Fellows. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20110726191604/http://www.iscid.org/fellows.php.

ISCID. (2012b, February 4). The Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20120204043714/http://www.iscid.org/archive.php.

ISCID. (2012a, February 05). What is Brainstorms?. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20120205023025/http://www.iscid.org/brainstorms.php.

RationalWiki. (2021, October 18). Intelligent design. Retrieved from https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Intelligent_design.

Ruse, M. (2021, June 21). Creationism. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creationism/.

Photo by Craig Pattenaude on Unsplash

*Edited 2022-01-31.*

The assertive face and voice of Canadian freethought is, more or less, a mosaic with the uniformity of a crumpled piece of paper. There is a series of freethought communities. There are voices for parts of the communities.

However, I see no unified voice. A singular referent for activism, whether as a whole or on particular projects, consistently, which raises an issue to me. I proposed something for some of the ex-Muslim community, humbly (and not-so humbly), which was the idea of the International Coalition of Ex-Muslims.

However, I was several years too late(!) – so missed the mark by a period of years with the proposal, as the inimitable Maryam Namazie of CEMB informed me. Ex-Muslims International, a recent shortening of the older name, was, in fact, founded in July of 2017 at the International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression.*

Within the Canadian freethought landscape, I do not see a positive singular voice for effective political campaigning at the national level. Even with some efforts by others and myself, they tend to be one-ticket items, at most.

When I interviewed a number of humanist or humanistic organizations’ leaders in Canada, “Humanism in Canada: Personal, Professional, and Institutional Histories (Part One),”[1] I found some consistent efforts within the leaderships or themes of values and the like.

At the time, for the interview with Canadian humanist leaders, Spring 2020, Cameron Dunkin was the Acting CEO of Dying With Dignity Canada, Dr. Gus Lyn-Piluso was – and is – the President of Center for Inquiry-Canada, Doug Thomas was – and is – the President of Secular Connexion Séculière, Greg Oliver was – and is – the President of Canadian Secular Alliance, Michel Virard was – and is – the President of Association humaniste du Québec, Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson was the Vice-President of Humanist Canada, and Seanna Watson was – and is – the Vice-President of Center for Inquiry-Canada.

In other words, out of the small population of Canadian society, in independent research, I found a number of common themes amongst leading humanists in the nation. I conducted group interview of its type to explore the issue, independently.

With a small population in Canada, as a whole – simply contrast the international numbers, came a small number of humanist or humanistic organizations in Canada, those individuals represented the first collective interview in the history of Humanism, as far as I am aware.

While, at the same time, even still, the number of organizations remains small; the organizations continue to make inroads into Canadian society for humanist values, especially critical thinking, science education, and advancement of human rights (e.g., reproductive rights).

There’s a decent number of directly humanist organizations and indirectly humanistic organizations: Humanist Canada[1], Center for Inquiry-Canada[2], Association humaniste du Québec (AhQ)[3], Canadian Secular Alliance[4], Secular Connexion Séculière [5], Mouvement Laïque Québécois[6], Canadian Association for Equality[7], Humanist Freedoms, Canadian Atheists[8], Libres penseurs athées — Atheist Freethinkers (LPA-AFT)[9], Canadian Humanist Publications[10], Fondation Humaniste Du Quebec[11], Dying With Dignity Canada[12], Egale Canada[13], One School System Network[14], Canadian Civil Liberties Union[15], and then a host of smaller or local humanist organizations not devoted to a particular language group or a national reach, or thematic emphasis.

There are North American wide organizations, which means an overlap into Canada and an inclusion of, for example, the United States of America, e.g., Ex-Muslims of North America and Freedom From Religion Foundation. Yet, it’s incredible no single coalition exists for direct political activism in Canada, even with a temporary existence for concerted humanist or humanistic changes to Canadian law and society.

My (rather immodest) proposal would be one akin to the International Coalition of Ex-Muslims, which became Ex-Muslims International[16], with the Canadian Freethought Coalition (CFC) or something akin to this. They’ve done an incredible job for themselves — sincerely from the bottom-up. Many overcoming individual trauma, while still paving paths.

In that, the efforts for a truly humanistic Canada should incorporate an adaptive democratic umbrella organization capable of handling unified or consensus-based political and legal assertiveness for greater efficacy at the national level.

One in which no singular leadership for a national, linguistic, or thematic, organization holds complete or absolute power, while a rotating spokesperson holds the position for speaking on timely humanist issues. Those humanist issues most Canadian humanists want forcefully, assertively directed at the federal level for downstream impacts throughout Canada.

I write this to broach the issue, as I consider this, not only a possibility but, a plausible proposal for all humanists, or humanistically oriented individuals and organizations, in Canada.

Footnotes

*CEMB hosts the largest gathering of ex-Muslims in history in London in July 2017 at the International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression with over 70 notable speakers from 30 countries or the Diaspora gathered in what is dubbed “The Glastonbury of Freethinkers” and “a Conference of Heroes” to honour dissenters and defend apostasy, blasphemy, and secularism. The sold-out conference highlights the voices of those on the frontlines of resistance – many of them persecuted and exiled. The conference made a space for crucial discussions and debates on Islamophobia and its use by Islamists to impose de facto blasphemy laws, the relation between Islam and Islamism as well as communalism’s threat to universal rights, art as resistance and Laicite as a human right. The conference hashtag, #IWant2BFree, trends on Twitter. The conference includes a public art protest of 99 balloons to represent those killed or imprisoned for blasphemy and apostasy around the world. Resolutions against the no platforming of Richard Dawkins and in support of Egyptian atheist Ismail Mohamed and CEMB at Pride are adopted. A Declaration of Freethinkers is adopted at the conference. See https://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/2019/12/cemb-timeline/.

[1] Humanist Canada is comprised of the Board of Directors with Martin Frith (President), Ric Glowienka (Vice-President), Ruth Henrich (Treasurer & Corporate Secretary), Donna Harris (Member), Kathleen Johnson (Member), Meltem Kilicaslan Greisman (Member), Sassan Sanei (Member), and Sonia Mallet (Member), and staff Dr. Anna Popovitch (Program Director), Jag Parmar (Administrative Assistant), and Karina Chu (Social Media Coordinator).

[2] Center for Inquiry-Canada’s Board of Directors is currently comprised of Gus Lyn-Piluso (President), Seanna Watson (Vice-President), Diane Bruce (Critical Thinking Chair), Zack Dumont (Science Chair), Alex Kenjeev (Policy Officer), John Varghese (Communications Liaison), Leslie Rosenblood (Treasurer & Secular Chair), Edan Tasca (Mental Health Chair), and E. Onur C. Romano, and its Leadership Team with Sandra Dunham (Executive Director of Development), Mark Maharaj (Office Manager), David Simmons (Manager of Records & Recording Secretary). Its past Board membership has been S. Wynton Semple, Debora Del Monte, Paul Zammit, Carol Parlow, Richard Thain, Jack Wallas, Zak Fiddes, Lorne Trottier, Ron Lindsay, Thomas Flynn, Derek Rodgers, Barry Karr, Ian McQuaig, Michael Gardiner, Kathryn Calder, Iain Martel, William Cranor, Gary Fitzgibbon, Dorothy Hays, Veronica Abbass, Mike Gray, Joanna Nguyen-Truong, Genessa Radke, Pat O-Brien, Wil McDowall, Danielle Russell, Kevin Smith, Blythe Nilsson, Christopher Myrick, and Sarah Pekeles.

[3] Association humaniste du Québec’s Board of Directors is comprised of Michel Virard (President), Michel Pion (Vice-President & Treasurer), Claude Braun (Administrator & Editor-in-Chief, “Quebec Humaniste”), Daniel Baril (Administrator & Spokesperson), Michel Lincort (Administrator & Secretary), Danielle Russell (Administrator), and Alain Bourgault (Administrator).

[4] Canadian Secular Alliance’s Board of Directors is Bob Lent, Glen MacDonald, Greg Oliver, and Justin Trottier.

[5] Secular Connexion Séculière leadership is comprised ofDoug Thomas (President), Barrie Webster (Vice President), Rick Dondo (Manitoba Provincial Advocate), Kayla Horan-Dmytruk (Saskatchewan Provincial Advocate), Gordon Wolters (Alberta Provincial Advocate), and Alan Danesh (British Columbia Provincial Advocate).

[6] Mouvement Laïque Québécois’s President is Daniel Baril, with assistance from Me Luc Alarie (through the Supreme Curt of Canada in the Ville de Saguenay case) and Me Guillame Rousseau as a lawyer (and associate professor of law at the University of Sherbrooke).

[7] Its current Board of Directors is made of Edward Sullivan (Chair), Sean Sullivan (Vice Chair), James Brown (President), Jill Hendry (Secretary), Lynda Yardley (Treasurer), Justin Trottier (Founder & National Executive Director), Glenn Hendricks (Director of Advancement), Mark Austerberry (Technical Director), and Denise Fong (Outreach Coordinator), and three regional boards with the Ottawa Regional Board made of John Robson (Chair), Eric Verwijs (Secretary), Jean-Jacques Desgranges, John Kingsley, Keith Savage, and Simon Gardner, Alberta Regional Board made of Sean McMurtry (Chair), Joachim Mueller, Neil Scully, Vanessa Farkas-Brahmakshatriya, Tanis Mooore, and Christine Giancarlo, and BC Regional Governance Board comprised of Paul Dowell, Roger Challis, Martin Nugter, Fiona Wang, Liam Wilson, Warren Senkowski, and Mayra F. Paiva, and Equality Advisory Fellows Hon Roger Gallaway, Barbara Kay, Jackie Orsetto, Lionel Tiger, Warren Farrell, Miles Groth, Fred Litwin, Heidi Nabert, Edward Sullivan, James Brown, Janice Fiamengo, Eleanor Levine, Rob Keays, William Spotton, Suzanne Venker, Brian Jenkins, Rev. Alan Steward, Joseph Henry, Walter Fox, Paul Sandor, Sita Kaith, Kush Gupta, Rob Whitley, Gene C. Colman, Dean Harvey, Ralph Shiell, Don Neufeld, Adam Jones, Don Dutton, Don Wright, Paul Nathanson, Tonia Nicholls, Dan Bilsker, Damuel Veissiere, and Carey Linde.

[8] Canadian Atheists is comprised of Randolf Richardson (President), Neil Bernstein (Community Advocate), and Darwin Bedford (Ambassador of Reason).

[9] Its President is David Rand. Its Secretary is Pierre Thibault. Its Treasurer is Marco DeRossi.

[10] Canadian Humanist Publications is comprised of Simon Parcher (President), Madeline Weld (Vice President), Richard Young (Secretary), and Josh Bowie (Book Review Editor), and with “Humanist Perspectives” magazine under it with Madeline Weld and Richard Young as co-editors, Rchard Young as the Art Director, Joan Perry as the Office Manager, and Josh Bower as the Book Review Editor.

[11] Fondation Humaniste Du Quebec is comprised of Sarto Blouin (President), Edouard Boily (Vice-President), Richard Aubert (Secretary), Pierre Lacasse (Treasurer), Marie-France Tremblay, Lina Comtois, Laurent Blouin, Guillaume Carpentier, Bruno Deschênes, and Alain Bourgault.

[12] At present, Dying With Dignity Canada is comprised of staff Helen Long (CEO), Candy Alexander (Development Coordinator), Alexa Bogoslowski (Office Administrator), Sarah Dobec (Communication Specialist), David Gosse (Manager, Volunteer Engagement and Chapter Development), Kelsey Goforth (Senior Program Manager), Nicole Curtis (Program Specialist), Ryan Lindsay (Director, Development), Alisha Martins (Digital Engagement Specialist), Melissa Muller (Development Officer), Samantha Shier (Program Coordinator), and Liberty Vinas (Administrative Coordinator), and Board of Directors with Bev Heim-Myers (Chair), Susan Desjardins (Vice-Chair), Ryan A. Webster (Treasurer), Fancy C. Poitras (Secretary), Wayne Cochrane (Member), James Cowan (Past-Chair, Member), Daphne Gilbert (Member), Roslyn Goldner (Member), Eva Kmiecic (Member), Sherry Moran (Member), Chantal Perrot (Member), Jonathan Reggler (Member), and Tammy Pham (Member), and Disability Advisory Council Linda Jarrett (Executive Member) and Cindy Player (Executive Member), and Patrons Council with Richard W. Ivey, Margaret Atwood, Maude Barlow, Lee Carter, Bill Cunningham and Agi Gabor, Hon David Crombie, Atom Egoyan, Charlotte Gray, Al Hancock, Nancy Ruth, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Clayton Ruby, Hon. Joan Bissett Neiman, David Wilson, and Moses Znaimer, and Clinicians Advisory Council with Valerie Cooper, Dr. Tanja Daws, Dr. Stefanie Green, Dr. Anne Kenshole, Dr. J.R. LaFrance, Dr. Robert Langford, Dr. Georges L’Espérance, Dr. Roey Malleson, Dr. Jean Marmoreo, Erica Maynard, Dr. Peter McKernan, Dr. Chantal Perrot, Dr. Vona Priest, Dr. Jonathan Reggler, Dr. Konia Troutan, Dr. Ken Walker, and Dr. Ellen Wiebe, and a First-Person Advocates’ Initiatives Council with Ed Borchardt, Sandy Doyle, Jenny Hasselman, Sylvia Henshaw, Jack Hopkins, Sue McCaffrey, Tracy McDowell, Paul Morck, Tamara Nazaruk, Chelsea Peddle, Ron Posno, Doniya Quenneville, and Stephen Trepanier.

[13] Egale Canada is comprised of Helen Kennedy (Executive Director), Kendall Forde (Director, Project Management), Jennifer Boyce (Director, Communications & Public Relations), Kim Vance-Mubanga (Director, International Programs), Robyn Johnston (Director, Human Resources), Mark Fellion (Director, Development), BevMitelman (Director, Learning), Valentyna Kulesh (Director, Finance & Administration), Dr. Brittany Jakubiec (Director, Research), and Jacki Lewis (Chair of the Board), Christine Wilson (Vice President), Dan Irving (Secretary), Robert Mitchell (Treasurer), Dali Hammouch (Director), and Susan Rose (Director).

[14] One School System Network is made of Leonard Baak (President and Principal Spokesperson), Geraint (Gegs) Jones (Chairman and Alternate Spokesperson), Paula Conning 9Coordinator, Orangeville and area chapter), and Nadine Clark (Director).

[15] Canadian Civil Liberties Union is made of the Board of Directors with Larry Baldachin, Audrey Boctor, Julie DiLorenzo, Andrew Forde, Joe Freedman, Julianna Greenspan, Nadar Hasan, Patricia Jackson, Anil Kapoor, Jonathan Lisus, Andrew Lokan, John McCamus, Ron Ness, Linda Schuyler, Simron Singh, and Steven Sofer, and staff Abby Deshman, Cara Faith Zwibel, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, Brenda McPhail, April Julian, Talayeh Shomali, Aruna Aysola, Rnadi Thomson, Kelsey Miki, Mishma Gashyna, Tom Naciuk, and a former General Counsel Emeritus with A. Alan Borovoy.

[16] Ex-Muslims International is a coalition of Ateizm Dernegi (Turkey), Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan, Atheist Iranian Community, Council of Ex-Muslims of Jordan, Council of Ex-Muslims of Morocco. Council of Ex-Muslims of Singapore, MALI — Mouvement Alternatif pour les Libertés Individuelles — Maroc, Ex-Muslim Somali Voices, Ex-Muslims of India, Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka, Ex-Muslims of Tamil Nadu, India, Freethought Lebanon, Manaarah Initiative, Atheist Refugee Relief, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, Council of Ex-Muslims of France, Council of Ex-Muslims of Germany, Council of Ex-Muslims of Scandinavia, Ex-Muslims of Norway, Ex-Muslims of the Netherlands, Faithless Hijabi, Council of Ex-Muslims of New Zealand, Ex-Muslim Support Network of Australia, Ex-Muslims of North America, and Muslimish. It is a large and rapidly growing interconnected activist collective — kudos to them.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Prof. Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited (Amazon) as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction. He is Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia (September, 2017 to present) and Professor of Finance and Psychology in SIAS-CIAPS (Centre for International Advanced and Professional Studies) (April, 2012 to present). Here we talk briefly about his work on narcissism, generally.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your raison d’être is narcissism. “Narcissism” is rooted in the Greek myth of Narcissus. Narcissus rejected a nymph, Echo. His punishment: eternal love with his reflection in water. Narcissists, as you state, love their reflection, not themselves. This raises the distinction between the False Self and the True Self. What distinguishes the False Self from the True Self?

Professor Sam Vaknin: The True Self in the unconstellated (unintegrated) precursor to the Self. It includes introjected object-representation (voices and inner objects – “avatars” – which represent caregivers, such as parental figures).

Abuse during the formative years disrupts the integration of the True Self and its replacement by a False Self: a godlike construct that performs several functions.

1.    It serves as a decoy, it “attracts the fire”. It is a proxy for the True Self. It is tough as nails and can absorb any amount of pain, hurt and negative emotions. By inventing it, the child develops immunity to the indifference, manipulation, sadism, smothering, or exploitation – in short: to the abuse – inflicted on him by his parents (or by other Primary Objects in his life). It is a cloak, protecting him, rendering him invisible and omnipotent at the same time.

2.    The False Self is misrepresented by the narcissist as his True Self. The narcissist is saying, in effect: “I am not who you think I am. I am someone else. I am this (False) Self. Therefore, I deserve a better, painless, more considerate treatment.” The False Self, thus, is a contraption intended to alter other people’s behaviour and attitude towards the narcissist.

In a full-fledged narcissist, the False Self imitates the True Self. To do so artfully, it deploys two mechanisms:

Re-Interpretation

It causes the narcissist to re-interpret certain emotions and reactions in a flattering, socially acceptable, light. The narcissist may, for instance, interpret fear as compassion. If the narcissist hurts someone he fears (e.g., an authority figure), he may feel bad afterwards and interpret his discomfort as empathy and compassion. To be afraid is humiliating – to be compassionate is commendable and earns the narcissist social commendation and understanding (narcissistic supply).

Emulation

The narcissist is possessed of an uncanny ability to psychologically penetrate others. Often, this gift is abused and put at the service of the narcissist’s control freakery and sadism. The narcissist uses it liberally to annihilate the natural defences of his victims by faking empathy.

This capacity is coupled with the narcissist’s eerie ability to imitate emotions and their attendant behaviours (affect). The narcissist possesses “emotional resonance tables”. He keeps records of every action and reaction, every utterance and consequence, every datum provided by others regarding their state of mind and emotional make-up. From these, he then constructs a set of formulas, which often result in impeccably accurate renditions of emotional behaviour. This can be enormously deceiving.

Jacobsen: Why does the narcissist love their “reflected-Self,” as in the myth of Narcissus, rather than their True Self?

Vaknin: Because it provides all the above-mentioned functions. For the same reason that people love god. It is a proxy ideal parental figure and it renders the narcissist divine-by-association: omniscient, omnipotent, brilliant, perfect, infallible, and so on. Gradually, the narcissist comes to identify himself (or herself) with the False Self (which started off as a fantastic imaginary friend in a paracosm). Looking at it this way, narcissism is a private religion: the False Self is the deity, the narcissist is the worshipper, and the True Self is the human sacrifice.

Jacobsen: What differentiates the Ego, the Superego, and the Self? What is the nature of narcissism regarding these, in general?

Vaknin: I regard the trilateral model as metaphorical, not as “real” or “objective” in any sense.

In the narcissist, the False Self usurps the role of the Ego and fulfils its functions: mediation between the individual and the world and a sense of personal continuity.

The False Self pretends to be the only self and denies the existence of a True Self. It is also extremely useful (adaptive). Rather than risking constant conflict, the narcissist opts for a solution of “disengagement”.

The classical Ego, proposed by Freud, is partly conscious and partly preconscious and unconscious. The narcissist’s Ego is completely submerged. The preconscious and conscious parts are detached from it by early traumas and form the False Ego.

The Superego in healthy people constantly compares the Ego to the Ego Ideal. The narcissist has a different psychodynamic. The narcissist’s False Self serves as a buffer and as a shock absorber between the True Ego and the narcissist’s sadistic, punishing, immature Superego. The narcissist aspires to become pure Ideal Ego.

The narcissist’s Ego cannot develop because it is deprived of contact with the outside world and, therefore, endures no growth-inducing conflict. The False Self is rigid. The result is that the narcissist is unable to respond and to adapt to threats, illnesses, and to other life crises and circumstances. He is brittle and prone to be broken rather than bent by life’s trials and tribulations.

The Ego remembers, evaluates, plans, responds to the world and acts in it and on it. It is the locus of the “executive functions” of the personality. It integrates the inner world with the outer world, the Id with the Superego. It acts under a “reality principle” rather than a “pleasure principle”.

This means that the Ego is in charge of delaying gratification. It postpones pleasurable acts until they can be carried out both safely and successfully. The Ego is, therefore, in an ungrateful position. Unfulfilled desires produce unease and anxiety. Reckless fulfilment of desires is diametrically opposed to self-preservation. The Ego has to mediate these tensions.

In an effort to thwart anxiety, the Ego invents psychological defence mechanisms. On the one hand the Ego channels fundamental drives. It has to “speak their language”. It must have a primitive, infantile, component. On the other hand, the Ego is in charge of negotiating with the outside world and of securing a realistic and optimal “bargains” for its “client”, the Id. These intellectual and perceptual functions are supervised by the exceptionally strict court of the Superego.

Jacobsen: How do narcissists manage the balance between their sadistic superego and False Self?

Vaknin: The irony is that narcissists are “self-less”. The narcissist’s True Self is introverted and utterly dysfunctional. In healthy people, Ego functions are generated from the inside, from the Ego. In narcissists, the Ego is dormant, comatose. The narcissist needs the input of and feedback from the outside world (from others) in order to perform the most basic Ego functions (e.g., “recognizing” of the world, setting boundaries, forming a self-definition or identity, differentiation, self-esteem, and regulating his sense of self-worth). This input or feedback is known as narcissistic supply” .Only the False Self gets in touch with the world. The True Self is isolated, repressed, unconscious, a shadow.

The False Self is, therefore, a kind of “hive self” or “swarm self”. It is a collage of reflections, a patchwork of outsourced information, titbits garnered from the narcissist’s interlocutors and laboriously cohered and assembled so as to uphold and buttress the narcissist’s inflated, fantastic, and grandiose self-image. This discontinuity accounts for the dissociative nature of pathological narcissism as well as for the narcissist’s seeming inability to learn from the errors of his ways.

In healthy, normal people ego functions are strictly internal processes. In the narcissist, ego functions are imported from the surroundings, they are thoroughly external. Consequently, the narcissist often confuses his inner mental-psychological landscape with the outside world. He tends to fuse and merge his mind and his milieu. He regards significant others and sources of supply as mere extensions of himself and he appropriates them because they fulfil crucial internal roles and, as a result, are perceived by him to be sheer internal objects, devoid of an objective, external, and autonomous existence.

The narcissist is an even more extreme case. His Ego is non-existent. The narcissist has a fake, substitute Ego. This is why his energy is drained. He spends most of it on maintaining, protecting and preserving the warped, unrealistic images of his (False) Self and of his (fake) world. The narcissist is a person exhausted by his own absence.

The healthy Ego preserves some sense of continuity and consistency. It serves as a point of reference. It relates events of the past to actions at present and to plans for the future. It incorporates memory, anticipation, imagination and intellect. It defines where the individual ends and the world begins. Though not coextensive with the body or with the personality, it is a close approximation.

In the narcissistic condition, all these functions are relegated to the False Ego. Its halo of confabulation rubs off on all of them. The narcissist is bound to develop false memories, conjure up false fantasies, anticipate the unrealistic and work his intellect to justify them.

The falsity of the False Self is dual: not only is it not “the real thing” – it also operates on false premises. It is a false and wrong gauge of the world. It falsely and inefficiently regulates the drives. It fails to thwart anxiety.

The False Self provides a false sense of continuity and of a “personal centre”. It weaves an enchanted and grandiose fable as a substitute to reality. The narcissist gravitates out of his self and into a plot, a narrative, a story. He continuously feels that he is a character in a film, a fraudulent invention, or a con artist to be momentarily exposed and summarily socially excluded.

Moreover, the narcissist cannot be consistent or coherent. His False Self is preoccupied with the pursuit of Narcissistic Supply. The narcissist has no boundaries because his Ego is not sufficiently defined or fully differentiated. The only constancy is the narcissist’s feelings of diffusion or annulment. This is especially true in life crises, when the False Ego ceases to function.

The narcissist’s superego is comprised of infantile, harsh, sadistic introjects. It is frozen in time, in an early stage of personal development, devoid of reflective self-awareness. It is much closer to the Id and leverages its aggression against the self.

The narcissist is besieged and tormented by a sadistic Superego which sits in constant judgement. It is an amalgamation of negative evaluations, criticisms, angry or disappointed voices, and disparagement meted out in the narcissist’s formative years and adolescence by parents, peers, role models, and authority figures.

These harsh and repeated comments reverberate throughout the narcissist’s inner landscape, berating him for failing to conform to his unattainable ideals, fantastic goals, and grandiose or impractical plans. The narcissist’s sense of self-worth is, therefore, catapulted from one pole to another: from an inflated view of himself (incommensurate with real life accomplishments) to utter despair and self-denigration.

Hence the narcissist’s need for Narcissistic Supply to regulate this wild pendulum. People’s adulation, admiration, affirmation, and attention restore the narcissist’s self-esteem and self-confidence.

The narcissist’s sadistic and uncompromising Superego affects three facets of his personality:

1.     His sense of self-worth and worthiness (the deeply ingrained conviction that one deserves love, compassion, care, and empathy regardless of what one achieves). The narcissist feels worthless without Narcissistic Supply.

2.     His self-esteem (self-knowledge, the deeply ingrained and realistic appraisal of one’s capacities, skills, limitations, and shortcomings). The narcissist lacks clear boundaries and, therefore, is not sure of his abilities and weaknesses. Hence his grandiose fantasies.

3.     His self-confidence (the deeply ingrained belief, based on lifelong experience, that one can set realistic goals and accomplish them). The narcissist knows that he is a fake and a fraud. He, therefore, does not trust his ability to manage his own affairs and to set practical aims and realize them.

By becoming a success (or at least by appearing to have become one) the narcissist hopes to quell the voices inside him that constantly question his veracity and aptitude. The narcissist’s whole life is a two-fold attempt to both satisfy the inexorable demands of his inner tribunal and to prove wrong its harsh and merciless criticism.

It is this dual and self-contradictory mission, to conform to the edicts of his internal enemies and to prove their very judgement wrong, that is at the root of the narcissist’s unresolved conflicts.

On the one hand, the narcissist accepts the authority of his introjected (internalised) critics and disregards the fact that they hate him and wish him dead. He sacrifices his life to them, hoping that his successes and accomplishments (real or perceived) will ameliorate their rage.

On the other hand, he confronts these very gods with proofs of their fallibility. “You claim that I am worthless and incapable” – he cries – “Well, guess what? You are dead wrong! Look how famous I am, look how rich, how revered, and accomplished!”

But then much rehearsed self-doubt sets in and the narcissist feels yet again compelled to falsify the claims of his trenchant and indefatigable detractors by conquering another woman, giving one more interview, taking over yet another firm, making an extra million, or getting re-elected one more time.

To no avail. The narcissist is his own worst foe. Ironically, it is only when incapacitated that the narcissist gains a modicum of peace of mind. When terminally ill, incarcerated, or inebriated the narcissist can shift the blame for his failures and predicaments to outside agents and objective forces over which he has no control. “It’s not my fault” – he gleefully informs his mental tormentors – “There was nothing I could do about it! Now, go away and leave me be.”

And then – with the narcissist defeated and broken – they do and he is free at last.

More generally:

In the patient with a personality disorder, the sadistic and disparaging inner voices that constitute the Superego (in Freud’s parlance) are implacable. If the patient is successful these introjects, or inner representations (of narcissistic parents, for example), become virulently envious and punitive. If the patient fails in his endeavours, these internalized avatars feel vindicated, elated, euphoric and morally justified in their quest to inflict pain and castigation on the patient.

But why does the patient not resist? Why doesn’t s/he rebel against these embedded tormentors, at least by doubting their omniscience, infallibility, and veracity? Because it feels good to satisfy them (it feels good to cater to mother’s emotional needs and thereby to be a “good boy”, for example). It is a masochistic Stockholm Syndrome, a shared psychosis (follies a plusieurs). The patient doesn’t experiences these harsh juries sitting in judgement over him, his traits, skills, and actions as alien, but as an integral part of himself. Their gratification at his self-immolation is also his.

Jacobsen: What is the fundamental difference between individuals with low to moderate narcissistic tendencies and individuals with a formal diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)?

Vaknin: Len Sperry distinguished between narcissistic style and narcissist disorder. Millon contributed the mezzanine level: narcissistic personality. These are gradations. The differences between these three reflect a higher intensity, all-pervasiveness (effects on all realms of life) and the escalation of the effects of the various narcissistic behaviors and traits on the individual and on his human environment.

Jacobsen: Narcissism comes with internal processes and externalized behaviours, including abusive. What is the internal landscape, or matrix of cognitive and emotional processes, of a narcissist? What are the externalizing behaviours of narcissism, the signifiers?

Vaknin: Both types of narcissists – overt and covert (fragile, shy, vulnerable, inverted) – are invested in extracting narcissistic supply to regulate their fluctuating sense of self-worth. They also lack empathy.

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM, 2013) includes a dimensional model of NPD.

The DSM V re-defines personality disorders thus:

“The essential features of a personality disorder are impairments in personality (self and interpersonal) functioning and the presence of pathological personality traits.”

According to the Alternative DSM V Model for Personality Disorders (p.767), the following criteria must be met to diagnose Narcissistic Personality Disorder (in parentheses my comments):

Moderate or greater impairment in personality functioning in either identity, or self-direction (should be: in both.)

Identity

The narcissist keeps referring to others excessively in order to regulate his self-esteem (really, sense of self-worth) and for “self-definition” (to define his identity.) His self-appraisal is exaggerated, whether it is inflated, deflated, or fluctuating between these two poles and his emotional regulation reflects these vacillations.

(Finally, the DSM V accepted what I have been saying for decades: that narcissists can have an “inferiority complex” and feel worthless and bad; that they go through cycles of ups and downs in their self-evaluation; and that this cycling influences their mood and affect).

Self-direction

The narcissist sets goals in order to gain approval from others (narcissistic supply; the DSM V ignores the fact that the narcissist finds disapproval equally rewarding as long as it places him firmly in the limelight.) The narcissist lacks self-awareness as far as his motivation goes (and as far as everything else besides.)

The narcissist’s personal standards and benchmarks are either too high (which supports his grandiosity), or too low (buttresses his sense of entitlement, which is incommensurate with his real-life performance.)

Impairments in interpersonal functioning in either empathy or intimacy (should be: in both.)

Empathy

The narcissist finds it difficult to identify with the emotions and needs of others, but is very attuned to their reactions when they are relevant to himself (cold empathy.) Consequently, he overestimates the effect he has on others or underestimates it (the classic narcissist never underestimates the effect he has on others – but the inverted narcissist does.)

Intimacy

The narcissist’s relationships are self-serving and, therefore shallow and superficial. They are centred around and geared at the regulation of his self-esteem (obtaining narcissistic supply for the regulation of his labile sense of self-worth.)

The narcissist is not “genuinely” interested in his intimate partner’s experiences (implying that he does fake such interest convincingly.) The narcissist emphasizes his need for personal gain (by using the word “need”, the DSM V acknowledges the compulsive and addictive nature of narcissistic supply). These twin fixtures of the narcissist’s relationships render them one-sided: no mutuality or reciprocity (no intimacy).

Pathological personality traits

Antagonism characterized by grandiosity and attention-seeking

Grandiosity

The aforementioned feeling of entitlement. The DSM V adds that it can be either overt or covert (which corresponds to my taxonomy of classic and inverted narcissist.)

Grandiosity is characterized by self-centredness; a firmly-held conviction of superiority (arrogance or haughtiness); and condescending or patronizing attitudes.

Attention-seeking

The narcissist puts inordinate effort, time, and resources into attracting others (sources of narcissistic supply) and placing himself at the focus and centre of attention. He seeks admiration (the DSM V gets it completely wrong here: the narcissist does prefer to be admired and adulated, but, failing that, any kind of attention would do, even if it is negative.)

The diagnostic criteria end with disclaimers and differential diagnoses, which reflect years of accumulated research and newly-gained knowledge:

The above enumerated impairments should be “stable across time and consistent across situations … not better understood as normative for the individual’s developmental stage or socio-cultural environment … are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., severe head trauma).”

It is important to note that the DSM is used mostly in North America. The rest of the world uses local variants of the ICD.

There is a revolutionary paradigm shift regarding personality disorders in the 11th edition of the ICD (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems), published by the WHO (World Health Organization). Watch this video for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZB0JE4mzaw

Jacobsen: Those externalized behaviours can be abusive, e.g., narcissistic abuse. What is narcissistic abuse?

Vaknin: In 1995, I coined the phrase “narcissistic abuse” to describe a subtype of abusive behavior that was all-pervasive (across multiple areas of life) and involved a plethora of behaviors and manipulative or coercive techniques.

Narcissistic abuse differed from all other types of abuse in its range, sophistication, duration, versatility, and express and premeditated intention to negate and vitiate the victim’s personal autonomy, agency, self-efficacy, and wellbeing.

The victims of narcissistic abuse appeared to present a clinical picture substantially different to victims of other, more pinpointed and goal-oriented types of abuse. They were more depressed and anxious, disoriented, aggressive (defiant reactance), dissociative, and trapped or hopeless owing to learned (intermittently reinforced or operant conditioned) helplessness. In short: they were in the throes of trauma bonding (Stockholm syndrome), a kind of cultish shared psychosis (folies a deux).

Repeated abuse has long lasting pernicious and traumatic effects such as panic attacks, hypervigilance, sleep disturbances, flashbacks (intrusive memories), suicidal ideation, and psychosomatic symptoms. The victims experience shame, depression, anxiety, embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, abandonment, and an enhanced sense of vulnerability.

C-PTSD (Complex PTSD) has been proposed as a new mental health diagnosis by Dr. Judith Herman of Harvard University to account for the impact of extended periods of trauma and abuse.

Jacobsen: For the most extreme cases of narcissism to the most minute, what are the principles for dealing with them if one cannot enact the no contact rule

Vaknin: Here is a video that describes all the techniques I know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euGhNMifaw8

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Vaknin.

Vaknin: Thank you again for your patience and perseverance!

Image Credit: Sam Vaknin.

So, how academically productive was the Intelligent Design movement in its most singular project, the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design?

Not much. By which I mean, ignoring popular books, and the like, what was the productivity of the proposition of Intelligent Design at its height when it founded a full-purpose organization and journal to challenge evolution via natural selection?

The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) self-defined as a “cross-disciplinary professional society that investigates complex systems apart from external programmatic constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism. The society provides a forum for formulating, testing, and disseminating research on complex systems through critique, peer review, and publication. Its aim is to pursue the theoretical development, empirical application, and philosophical implications of information- and design-theoretic concepts for complex systems.”

The language of ISCID reflected information- and design-theoretic concepts of Information Theory without a necessary foundation in it, but, rather, a more direct ground in teleology and theology.

To quote the motto at the top of the organization web page, “Retraining the scientific imagination to see purpose in nature.” “Purpose in nature” means a teleological or theological foundation in place of a naturalistic scientific one. So, ISCID was a teleological-theological organization, which would extend to its publication, Progress in Complexity, Information and Design or PCID.

I was wondering about the social and political efforts of highly educated and intelligent fundamentalist religious people through the “Teach the Controversy” campaign and others.

The long list of Intelligent Design organizations, too, with the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design and its Progress in Complexity, Information and Design, the Discovery Institute[1], the Center for Science and Culture[2], Truth in Science[3], the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center[4], the Biologic Institute[5], the Access Research Network[6], the Foundation for Thought and Ethics[7], Michael Polanyi Center[8], and a number of others.

ISCID had a “Society of Fellows”[9] as the Advisory Board for PCID. So, the fellows of ISCID were the advisory board for PCID were the peer-review for PCID. This was the structure of the organization into the publication, intrinsically harkening to a direct conflict of interest.

PCID’s Editorial Board — not the Advisory Board/Society of Fellows — was William A. Dembski as General Editor, Jed Macosko as Associate Editor, Bruce Gordon as Associate Editor, James Barham as Book Review Editor, John Bracht as Managing Editor, and Micah Sparacio as Webmaster. PCID’s ISSN was 1555–5089.

They had a total of 8 issues: Volume 4.2, November 2005, Volume 4.1, July 2005, Volume 3.1, November 2004, Philosophy of Mind Issue,
 Volume 2.3, October 2003, Double Issue, Volumes 2.1 and 2.2, January — June 2003, Volume 1.4, October — December 2002, Double Issue, Volumes 1.2 and 1.3, April — September 2002, and Volume 1.1, January — March 2002. This was an electronic publication.

PCID attempted to and did publish articles without standard peer review. It lacked impartiality, rigour, and had conflicts of interest. The articles needed acceptance into the archive, then only a single ISCID Society of Fellows fellow was needed to publish it. Regardless of the dishonest approach to academic inquiry, what, to the original point, was the productivity of PCID of ISCID?

Volume 1.1, January — March 2002 published 8 articles and 3 book reviews: Inventions, Algorithms, and Biological Designby John Bracht, Are Probabilities Indispensable to the Design Inference?by Robert C. Koons, Back to Stoics: Dynamical Monism as the Foundation for a Reformed Naturalismby James Barham, A Response to Critics of Darwin’s Black Box by Michael J. Behe, Searching for Deep Variation in the Model Systems of Evo-Devo by Paul A. Nelson and Jonathan Wells, Why Natural Selection Can’t Design Anythingby William A. Dembski, Dynamical Complexity and Regularityby Richard Johns, Does the association of spectral absorption bands in sunlight with the spectral response of photoreceptors in plants imply coincidence, adaptation or design?by Forrest M. Mims III, Three Issues With “No Free Lunch” by Darel R. Finley, What Have Butterflies Got to Do with Darwin? by William A. Dembski, and Finding Miller’s King by Jed Macosko.

Double Issue, Volumes 1.2 and 1.3, April — September 2002 published 7 articles and 1 interview: The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theoryby Christopher Michael Langan, The Impasse between the Design and Evolution of Lifeby Philip R. Page, On the descriptive terminology of the information transfer between organismsby Koszteyn and Lenartowicz, What is Natural Selection? A Plea for Clarificationby Neil Broom, Random Predicate Logic I: A Probabilistic Approach to Vaguenessby William A. Dembski, Complex Specification (CS): A New Proposal For Identifying Intelligence,Darel R. Finley, The evolution of complex information systems as movement against the pull of entropy, measured along information-space-time dimensionsby Arie S. Issar, and Developing a science and philosophy of consciousness: A chat with David Chalmers.

Volume 1.4, October — December 2002 published 8 papers and 1 interview: Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls, and Reality Check for ID by William A. Dembski, Probabilities of randomly assembling a primitive cell on Earth by Dermott J. Mullan, Evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamicsby Granville Sewell, What Does Evolutionary Computing Say About Intelligent Design? by Karl D. Stephan,Evolution’s Logic of Credulity: An Unfettered Response to Allen Orr, by William A. Dembski, Symmetry in Evolution by Phillip L. Engle, Two Kinds of Causality: Philosophical Reflections on Darwin’s Black Box by Jakob Wolf, Some Theoretical and Practical Results in Context-Sensitive and Adaptive Parsing by Quinn Tyler Jackson, and Complexity and Self-Organization: A chat with Stuart Kauffman.

Double Issue, Volumes 2.1 and 2.2, January — June 2003 published 9 papers, 1 on policy, 1 online simulation, and 2 interviews: An Evaluation of “Ev”
 by I.G.D. Strachan, Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?by Frank J. Tipler, On the Application of Irreducible Complexityby Joshua A. Smart, The Bacterial Flagellum: A Response to Ursula Goodenoughby John R. Bracht, A Shot in the Dark by David Owen, Tegmark’s Parallel Universes: A Challenge to Intelligent Design?by Karl D. Stephan, Still Spinning Just Fine: A Response to Ken Millerby William A. Dembski, Probability of randomly assembling a primitive cell on Earth: Part IIby Dermott J. Mullan, An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis For Organic Changeby John A. Davison, Peer Review or Peer Censorship?
 by William A. Dembski, Vignere Encoded Text Evolution, A 21st Century view of evolution (Transcript of online chat with James Shapiro), and Ontogenetic Depth as a Complexity Metric for the Cambrian Explosion (Transcript of online chat with Paul Nelson).

Philosophy of Mind Issue, Volume 2.3, October 2003 published 1 editorial note, 8 papers, and 1 discussion: It’s on the Mind…by Micah Sparacio, Groundwork for an Emergentist Account of the Mentalby Timothy O’Connor, Rational Action, Freedom, and Choiceby E.J. Lowe, Functionalism Without Physicalism: Outline of an Emergentist Programby Robert C. Koons, Consciousness and complexityby Todd Moody, How Not To Be A Reductivistby William Hasker, Dennett Denied: A Critique of Dennett’s Evolutionary Account of Intentionalityby Angus J. L. Menugem, Thoughts on Thinking Matterby James Barham, and Mental Realism: Rejecting the Causal Closure Thesis and Expanding our Physical Ontology, by Micah Sparacio, and Discussion Forum for PCID Volume 2.3, Philosophy of Mind Issue.

Volume 3.1, November 2004 published 7 papers: Evaluation of neo-Darwinian Theory with Avida Simulations by Royal Truman, Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Researchby Jonathan Wells, Problems with Characterizing the Protosome-Deuterostome Ancestor by Paul Nelson and Marcus Ross, Irreducible Complexity Revisited
 by William Dembski, Irreducible Complexity Reduced: An Integrated Approach to the Complexity Spaceby Eric Anderson, Irreducible Complexity by Stephen Griffith, and Some Implications for the Study of Intelligent Design Derived from Molecular and Microarray Analysisby Fernando Castro-Chavez.

Volume 4.1, July 2005 published 6 articles and 1 book review: Human Origins and Intelligent Designby Casey Luskin, Reflections on Human Originsby William Dembski, Questioning Cosmological Superstition: Separating science from myth in our theory of the universe by Rich Halvorson, What Kind of Revolution is the Design Revolution?by Jakob Wolf, The Case for Instant Evolutionby John Davison, The Theory of Evolution in the Perspective of Thermodynamics and Everyday Experienceby Wim M. de Jong, Review of Ric Machuga, In Defense of the Soulby Benjamin Wiker, A Review of Life’s Solution by Simon Conway Morrisby Marcus Ross, and Is the Evolutionary Ladder a Stairway to Heaven?by Casey Luskin.

Volume 4.2, November 2005 published 5 articles: The Three Domains of Life: A Challenge to the concept of the Universal Cellular Ancestor? by Pattle. P. Pun, Stephen Schuldt, and Benjamin T. Pun, Information as a Measure of Variationby William Dembski, Palindromatiby Fernando Castro-Chavez, On Einstein’s Razorby Quinn Tyler Jackson, and Bits, Bytes and Biologyby Eric Anderson.

In total, the entire existence of the organization produced 8+3+7+1+8+1+9+1+1+2+1+8+1+7+6+1+5 equals 70 items, if the count is right — or thereabouts. That’s, basically, nothing of consequence. The articles, as far as I know, have been cited by almost no one, which is to state unequivocally, “Intelligent Design failed as an intellectual movement.” It’s an academic joke.

Yet, individuals persist with the only persons with the hope for acceptance, which is misrepresentation to the general public, i.e., lying to the public. In short, professional researchers, by a vast margin, don’t give a damn about Intelligent Design. They don’t use its concepts or work. It’s seen as a useless field, as seen in the, by citation count, utterly worthless publications listed above.

In sum, the Intelligent Design movement has been a catastrophic failure, academically speaking: thus, unproductive and worthless at its height when the most concerted and serious effort was put forward by its academics and autodidacts (Q.E.D.).

Footnotes

[1] The Discovery Institute is comprised of staff Pam Bailey (Dallas Operations Manager, Discovery Institute Dallas), Caitlin Bassett (Policy Analyst and Communications Liaison, Center for Science & Culture and Center on Wealth & Poverty), Steven J. Buri (President), Jennifer Burke (Development and Communications Manager), Bruce Chapman (Chairman of the Board), Robert L. Crowther, II (Director of Communications, Center for Science & Culture), John Felts (Education & Outreach Coordinator), Keri D. Ingraham (Director, American Center for Transforming Education), Nathan Jacobson (Web Designer and Developer), David Klinghoffer (Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News & Science Today, Center for Science & Culture), Jessica Lambert (Development Assistant, Center for Science & Culture), Casey Luskin (Associate Director, Center for Science & Culture), Andrew McDiarmid (Media Relations Specialist and Assistant to CSC Director Dr. Stephen Meyer), Jackson Meyer (Program Assistant and Event Coordinator), Stephen C. Meyer (Director, Center for Science & Culture), Brian Miller (Research Coordinator, Center for Science & Culture), Dan Nutley (Director, IT), Erik L. Nutley (Program Director), Scott S. Powell (Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth & Poverty), Daniel Reeves (Director, Education & Outreach), Ted Robinson (Development Volunteer, Center for Science & Culture), Eric Schneider (Stewardship Officer, Major Gifts, Center for Science & Culture), Steve Schwarz (Director of Finance & Operations), Donna J. Scott (Development Assistant, Center for Science & Culture), Leslie Thompson (Finance Assistant), Kelley J. Unger (Director, Discovery Society, Center for Science & Culture), Gary Varner (Assistant to the Managing and Associate Directors), Andrea Waggoner (Donor Care Coordinator, Center for Science & Culture), John G. West (Vice President, Discovery Institute, and Managing Director, Center for Science & Culture), Thomas Winkler (Regional Ambassador, Center for Science and Culture), and Jonathan Witt (Executive Editor, Discovery Institute Press, Senior Fellow and Senior Project Manager, Center).

[2] The Centre for Science and Culture is comprised of Program Director Stephen C. Meyer, Managing Director John G. West, Senior Fellows Günter Bechly, Michael J. Behe, David Berlinski, Paul Chien, Michael Denton, David DeWolf, Marcos Eberlin, Ann Gauger, Guillermo Gonzalez, Bruce L. Gordon, Richard Gunasekera, Michael Newton Keas, David Klinghoffer, Paul Nelson, Bijan Nemati, Jay W. Richards, Richard Sternberg, Richard Weikart, Jonathan Wells, John G. West, Benjamin Wiker, Jonathan Witt, and Fellows John Bloom, Raymond Bohlin, Walter Bradley, J. Budziszewski, Robert Lowry Clinton, Jack Collins, William Lane Craig, Michael Flannery, Brian Frederick, Cornelius G. Hunter, Robert Kaita, Dean Kenyon, Jonathan McLatchie, Scott Minnich, J.P. Moreland, Nancy Pearcey, Pattle Pak-Toe Pun, John Mark N Reynolds, Henry F. Schaefer III, Geoffrey Simmons, Wolfgang Smith, Charles Thaxton, and Forrest M Mims.

[3] As of 2007, Truth in Science was comprised of the Board of Directors Stephen A. Hyde (Chairman), Professor Andrew McIntosh, Phillip Metcalfe (Vice Chairman), John Perfect, and Maurice Roberts, Council of Reference members Stuart Burgess, John Blanchard, Gerard A. Chrispin, George Curry, David Harding, Pastor of Milnrow Evangelical Church, Lancashire, Dr Russell Healey, Derek Linkens, John MacArthur, Albert N. Martin, and Steve Taylor, and a Scientific Panel membership with Geoff Barnard, Paul Garner, Arthur Jones, and Tim Wells.

[4] Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center is comprised of Administration Team Mario Lopez (Information Support Technician), Dennis LaVorgna (Chief Financial Officer), Ryan Huxley (President & Director of Public Relations), Casey Luskin, and Steve Renner, and Advisory Board John Baumgardner, William Dembski, Michael Behe, Mark Hartwig, the late Phillip Johnson, Jay Wesley Richards, Dennis Wagner, and Jonathan Wells, and Board of Directors with Ryan Huxley (Board Chair), Eddie Colanter (Vice-Chair & Co-Founder), Brit Colanter, H. Wayne House, Stephen J. Huxlery, Dennis LaVorgna (Chief Financial Officer), Mario Lopez, and Casey Luskin (Co-Founder & Secretary).

[5] Biologic Institute is comprised of Douglas Axe (Director), Günter Bechly (Senior Research Scientist), Stuart Burgess, Brendan Dixon, Winston Ewert (Senior Research Scientist), Ann Gauger (Senior Research Scientist), Guillermo Gonzalez, David Keller, Matti Leisola, Philip Lu, Robert J. Marks II, Colin Reeves, Richard Sternberg, Jonathan Wells, and Lisanne Winslow.

[6] Access Research Network is directed by Dennis Wagner, Steve Meyer, Mark Hartwig, and Paul Nelson.

[7] Jon A. Buell was the Founder and President, and William A. Dembski was the Academic Editor, for the failed organization.

[8] William Dembski was the co-founder with Bruce L. Gordon. It is defunct.

[9] “On a Mission For Never: Dr. William Dembski (1960-)” (2022) stated:

[2] The Executive Board or Board of ISCID was the Executive Director as William A. Dembski. Its Managing Director was Micah Sporacio. Its Chief Research Coordinator was Jed Macosko. Its Program Coordinator was Forrest M. Mims III. Its Development Officer was Terry Rickard. Its Office Manager was Stephanie Hoylman.

They had a Society of Fellows. Those fellows had listed specializations and institutional affiliation. Michael Behe (Biochemistry) from Lehigh University. John Bloom (Physics and Philosophy of Science) from Biola University. Walter Bradley (Mechanical Engineering) from Texas A&M University. Neil Broom (Biophysics) from the University of Auckland.

J. Budziszewski (Philosophy and Political Theory) from the University of Texas, Austin. John Angus Campbell (Communications) from the University of Memphis. Russell W. Carlson (Molecular Biology) from the University of Georgia, Athens. David K.Y. Chiu (Biocomputing) from the University of Guelph. Robin Collins (Cosmology and Philosophy of Physics) from Mesiah College.

William Lane Craig (Philosophy) from the Talbot School of Theology, Biola. Bernard d’Abrera (Lepidoptera) from the British Museum, Natural History. Kenneth de Jong (Linguistics) from Indiana University, Bloomington. Of course, William Dembski in Mathematics. Mark R. Discher (Ethics) from the University of St. Thomas.

Daniel Dix (Mathematics) from the University of Southern Carolina. Fred Field (Linguistics) from California State University. Guillermo Gonzalez (Astronomy) from Iowa State University. Bruce L. Gordon (Philosophy of Physics) from Baylor University.

David Humphreys (Chemistry) from McMaster University. Cornelius Hunter (Biophysics) from Seagull Technology. Muzaffar Iqbal (Science and Religion from) from Center for Islam and Science. Quinn Tyler Jackson for “Language & Software Systems.”

Conrad Johnson (Clinical Neurosciences & Physiology) from Brown Medical School. Robert Kaita (Plasma Physics) from Princeton University. James Keener (Mathematics and Bioengineering) from the University of Utah. Robert C. Koons (Philosophy) from the University of Texas, Austin.

Younghun Kwon (Physics) from Hanyang University. Christopher Michael Langan/Chris Langan/Christopher Langan (Logic, Cosmology, and Reality Theory) from the Mega Foundation and Research Group. Robert Larmer (Philosophy) from the University of New Brunswick.

Martti Leisola (Bioprocess Engineering) from Helsinki University of Technology. Stan Lennard (Medicine) from the University of Washington. John Lennox (Mathematics) from the University of Oxford. Gina Lynne LoSasso (Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Neuropsychology) from the Mega Foundation and Research Group.

Jed Macosko (Chemistry) from La Sierra University. Bonnie Mallard (Immunology) from the University of Guelph. Forrest M. Mims III for “Atmospheric Science.” Scott Minnich (Microbiology) from the University of Idaho. Paul Nelson (Philosophy of Biology) from the Discovery Institute.

Filip Palda (Economics) from the l’École Nationale d’Administration Publique, Montreal. Edward T.Peltzer for “Ocean Chemistry.” Alvina Plantinga (Philosophy) from the University of Notre Dame. Martin Poenie (Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology) from the University of Texas, Austin.

Carlos E. Puente (Hydrology and Theoretical Dynamics) from the University of California, Davis. Del Ratzsch (Philosophy of Science) from Calvin College. Jay Wesley Richard (Philosophical Theology) from the Discovery Institute. Terry Rickard (Electrical Engineering) from the Orincon Corporation.

John Roche (History of Science) from the University of Oxford. Andrew Ruys (Bioceramic Engineering) from the University of Sydney. Henry F. Schaefer (Quantum Chemistry) from the University of Georgia, Athens.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. (Psychiatry/Neuroscience) from the UCLA Department of Psychiatry. Philip Skell (Chemistry) from Penn State University. Frederick Skiff (Physics) from the University of Iowa. Karl D. Stephan (Electrical Engineering) from Southwest Texas State University.

Richard Sternberg (Systematics) from NCBI-GenBank (NIH). Frank Tipler (Mathematical Physics) from Tulane University. Jonathan Wells (Developmental Biology) from the Discovery Institute. Finally, Peter Zoeller-Greer (Mathematics, Physics and Information Science) from the State University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt on the Main.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The American Civil Liberties Union describes Intelligent Design as follows, “Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific set of beliefs based on the notion that life on earth is so complex that it cannot be explained by the scientific theory of evolution and therefore must have been designed by a supernatural entity.”

LiveScience describes Intelligent Design as follows, “Creationism’s latest embodiment is intelligent design (ID), a conjecture that certain features of the natural world are so intricate and so perfectly tuned for life that they could only have been designed by a Supreme Being.”

Professor Michael Ruse describes Intelligent Design as follows, “Intelligent Design Theory is the claim that some features of organisms are so complex – ‘irreducibly complex’ – that they could not possibly have come into existence through normal causes, through processes of blind law, and hence demand the supposition of a designer who thought them up and put them into place.”

Wikipedia describes Intelligent Design as follows, “Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as ‘an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins’. Proponents claim that ‘certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.’ ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.”

RationalWiki describes Intelligent Design as follows, “Intelligent design creationism (often intelligent design, ID, or IDC) is a pseudoscience that maintains that certain aspects of the physical world, and more specifically life, show signs of having been designed, and hence were designed, by an intelligent being (usually, but not always, the God of the Christian religion).”

The National Center for Science Education describes Intelligent Design as follows, “‘Intelligent Design’ creationism (IDC) is a successor to the ‘creation science’ movement, which dates back to the 1960s. The IDC movement began in the middle 1980s as an antievolution movement which could include young earth, old earth, and progressive creationists; theistic evolutionists, however, were not welcome. The movement increased in popularity in the 1990s with the publication of books by law professor Phillip Johnson and the founding in 1996 of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (now the Center for Science and Culture.) The term ‘intelligent design’ was adopted as a replacement for ‘Creation science,’ which was ruled to represent a particular religious belief in the Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987.”

Intelligent Design remains an evolution on Creationism with the three main co-founders, most likely, seen in Phillip E. Johnson, Michael Behe, and William Dembski through the Discovery Institute and The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design.

Phillip E. Johnson (June 18, 1940 – November 2, 2019) died as one of the co-founders, self-described as the father, of Intelligent Design, the Wedge Strategy, and the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Professor Michael Behe is (January 18, 1952 – Present) one of the co-founders of Intelligent Design with the concept of Irreducible Complexity, participant in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005) case, and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Dr. William Dembski (July 18, 1960 – Present) is one of the co-founders of Intelligent Design with the concept of Specified Complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

The main co-founders of the ideas and institutions of Intelligent Design are dead or aging. It’s struggling, greatly. In the history of research into this domain, the idea is examination of the actual patterns of behaviour rather than statements about oneself or by others.

Dr. William Dembski is a smart, educated, affable, and persistent person. However, even in spite of the robust efforts within the domain of Intelligent Design, he resigned every single formal association with the Intelligent Design community, which includes the Discovery Institute fellowship (held for two decades at the time). The resignation occurred on September 23, 2016. This comes with a caveat of a return about one year ago.

He understands – must, in full, the decisions made at each stage of professional development. Individuals and organizations since the 1990s or earlier have been working against the dishonest incursion of religious orthodoxy into public schools and scientific culture, including sincere believers, e.g., Ken Miller and others.

Thus, the opposition to Intelligent Design is not religious or non-religious; similarly, with David Berlinski’s agnosticism leaning towards theism, Intelligent Design isn’t always Protestant Christian.^[1]

Dembski, amongst other founders, has been clear about the intent and ultimate conclusion of Intelligent Design, in spite of presentation in modernistic information- and design-theoretic terminology as, fundamentally, about the “Christian God.”

One clear example is in the creation of an organization by Dembski, The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design^[2] (ISCID), and its flagship publication, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID).

It was a 501(c)3 non-profit devoted to design-and information-theoretic research through the journal, PCID. It folded and ceased operations as recent as 2011. Obscure and prominent members of the Intelligent Design community contributed to it. This is common, failures.

This reflects the persistent and personal history of Dembski. After graduate school, Dembski failed to acquire a university position, so was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow only at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. That was a loss.

He founded the Michael Polanyi Center and then only had Bruce L. Gordon to start without selection via the regular consultation channels in a university. Dembski after some controversy with the President of the university at the time, Robert B. Sloan, was removed as director of the center. That was a loss.

There was a lost legal case – famous – in 2005 entitled the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District or Dover trial. The verdict was Intelligent Design was not tested in the proper process of peer-review in a scientific journal. That was a loss.

With The Inner Life of the Cell, a graduate student, S.A. Smith, brought forward the issue of use of unlicensed content, so misuse of content. Dembski was warned about it. He went ahead and used it, anyway. That was a loss.

Dembski helped form the Evolutionary Informatics Lab in the Summer of 2007. Baylor administration deleted the website. The reason: It violated university policy. A policy against personal views presented as if representative of Baylor University’s views. The website was reposted with a 108-word disclaimer. Dembski doesn’t run it. The disclaimer states the university’s views aren’t there, in short. That was a loss.

Dembski, rather sadly, in fact, took a son to Todd Bentley for faith healing hoping for a miraculous cure for the autism of his son. Faith healing does not work, though one can understand the sense of desperation or hope for a miracle at the hands of a charlatan (Todd Bentley). That was, unfortunately, a loss.

With the resignation from all associations in 2016, and the earlier collapse of ISCID and failure of PCID, those amount to a retreat and a double loss, respectively. In short, the resignation from Intelligent Design was preceded by years and years of professional failures. Although, onwards as ever (as predictable as ever), Dembski returned in February, 2021.

This is the pattern within the Intelligent Design movement as a whole. Fundamentally, it is about the presentation of an information- and design-theoretic linguistic frame within a secular – as in divorced from religious convictions – orientation for social and political influence of religion on the general public.

In the words of Dembski, it is about religion, theology, God, and, in particular, the Protestant Christian interpretation of the Theity (intervening god), “Intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. The job of apologetics is to clear the ground — to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the spirit and people accepting the scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.”

Also, Dembski stated, “I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.” In short, and to quote him again, “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

Dr. William A. Dembski, in this sense, is the incarnation of the proverbial canary in the coal mine for Intelligent Design and Creationism. As with Johnson, they either pretend to retreat/never give up, or simply die. With an aging leadership and movement, this will possibly be the trajectory for them – an unto death path of failures.

Therefore, science-minded individuals, whether religious or not, must remain vigilant, even hypervigilant of pseudoscience, whether Intelligent Design, Creationism, or otherwise.

Footnotes

^[1] As an aside, if wanting to give resources or congratulations/gratitude to individuals doing great work in advancement of scientific education on behalf of the public, the National Center for Science Education is incredible.

Its Board is comprised of Kenneth R. Miller (President), Michael Haas (Treasurer), Benjamin D. Santer (Secretary), Vicki Chandler, Sarah B. George, Joseph L. Graves Jr., Michael B. Lubic, Michael E. Mann, Naomi Oreskes, and Barry Polisky.

Its staff includes Ann Reid (Executive Director), Lin Andrews (Director of Teacher Support), Glenn Branch (Deputy Director), Stuart Fogg (IT Specialist), Heather Grimes (Program Coordinator), Cari Herndon (Curriculum Specialist), Nina Hollenberg (Member Relations Manager), Rae Holzman (Director of Operations), Deb Janes (Director of Development), Paul Oh (Director of Communications), DeeDee Wright (Assistant Director of Teacher Support and Science Education Research Specialist), and Buster Yamamoto Reid (Director of Fun).

Barbara Forrest, Nick Matzke, Kevin Padian, Robert T. Pennock, Neil Shubin, Eugenie Scott/Genie Scott, and a host of others, have been incredibly important, too, and so deserve tremendous accolades for their life of efforts.

^[2] The Executive Board or Board of ISCID was the Executive Director as William A. Dembski. Its Managing Director was Micah Sporacio. Its Chief Research Coordinator was Jed Macosko. Its Program Coordinator was Forrest M. Mims III. Its Development Officer was Terry Rickard. Its Office Manager was Stephanie Hoylman.

They had a Society of Fellows. Those fellows had listed specializations and institutional affiliation. Michael Behe (Biochemistry) from Lehigh University. John Bloom (Physics and Philosophy of Science) from Biola University. Walter Bradley (Mechanical Engineering) from Texas A&M University. Neil Broom (Biophysics) from the University of Auckland.

J. Budziszewski (Philosophy and Political Theory) from the University of Texas, Austin. John Angus Campbell (Communications) from the University of Memphis. Russell W. Carlson (Molecular Biology) from the University of Georgia, Athens. David K.Y. Chiu (Biocomputing) from the University of Guelph. Robin Collins (Cosmology and Philosophy of Physics) from Mesiah College.

William Lane Craig (Philosophy) from the Talbot School of Theology, Biola. Bernard d’Abrera (Lepidoptera) from the British Museum, Natural History. Kenneth de Jong (Linguistics) from Indiana University, Bloomington. Of course, William Dembski in Mathematics. Mark R. Discher (Ethics) from the University of St. Thomas.

Daniel Dix (Mathematics) from the University of Southern Carolina. Fred Field (Linguistics) from California State University. Guillermo Gonzalez (Astronomy) from Iowa State University. Bruce L. Gordon (Philosophy of Physics) from Baylor University.

David Humphreys (Chemistry) from McMaster University. Cornelius Hunter (Biophysics) from Seagull Technology. Muzaffar Iqbal (Science and Religion from) from Center for Islam and Science. Quinn Tyler Jackson for “Language & Software Systems.”

Conrad Johnson (Clinical Neurosciences & Physiology) from Brown Medical School. Robert Kaita (Plasma Physics) from Princeton University. James Keener (Mathematics and Bioengineering) from the University of Utah. Robert C. Koons (Philosophy) from the University of Texas, Austin.

Younghun Kwon (Physics) from Hanyang University. Christopher Michael Langan/Chris Langan/Christopher Langan (Logic, Cosmology, and Reality Theory) from the Mega Foundation and Research Group. Robert Larmer (Philosophy) from the University of New Brunswick.

Martti Leisola (Bioprocess Engineering) from Helsinki University of Technology. Stan Lennard (Medicine) from the University of Washington. John Lennox (Mathematics) from the University of Oxford. Gina Lynne LoSasso (Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Neuropsychology) from the Mega Foundation and Research Group.

Jed Macosko (Chemistry) from La Sierra University. Bonnie Mallard (Immunology) from the University of Guelph. Forrest M. Mims III for “Atmospheric Science.” Scott Minnich (Microbiology) from the University of Idaho. Paul Nelson (Philosophy of Biology) from the Discovery Institute.

Filip Palda (Economics) from the l’École Nationale d’Administration Publique, Montreal. Edward T.Peltzer for “Ocean Chemistry.” Alvina Plantinga (Philosophy) from the University of Notre Dame. Martin Poenie (Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology) from the University of Texas, Austin.

Carlos E. Puente (Hydrology and Theoretical Dynamics) from the University of California, Davis. Del Ratzsch (Philosophy of Science) from Calvin College. Jay Wesley Richard (Philosophical Theology) from the Discovery Institute. Terry Rickard (Electrical Engineering) from the Orincon Corporation.

John Roche (History of Science) from the University of Oxford. Andrew Ruys (Bioceramic Engineering) from the University of Sydney. Henry F. Schaefer (Quantum Chemistry) from the University of Georgia, Athens.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. (Psychiatry/Neuroscience) from the UCLA Department of Psychiatry. Philip Skell (Chemistry) from Penn State University. Frederick Skiff (Physics) from the University of Iowa. Karl D. Stephan (Electrical Engineering) from Southwest Texas State University.

Richard Sternberg (Systematics) from NCBI-GenBank (NIH). Frank Tipler (Mathematical Physics) from Tulane University. Jonathan Wells (Developmental Biology) from the Discovery Institute. Finally, Peter Zoeller-Greer (Mathematics, Physics and Information Science) from the State University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt on the Main.

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

A binary theologian, a ‘virgin,’ sodomites and phonies, and an elderly pederast walk into a bar, what is the highly unlikely outcome though probable interpretation?

—

Christian is a Philosopher that comes from Belgium. What identifies him the most and above all is simplicity, for everything is better with “vanilla ice cream.” Perhaps, for this reason, his intellectual passion is criticism and irony, in the sense of trying to reveal what “hides behind the mask,” and give birth to the true. For him, ignorance and knowledge never “cross paths.” What he likes the most in his leisure time, is to go for a walk with his wife.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s an old Roman Catholic Christian fundamentalist phrase, “God wills it,” which is said Deus Vult in the original Latin. In 1096, it was the chant for the First Crusade. Many modern Roman Catholics harbour a wish to attain a crusaders mindset in combatting everything un-Christian/non-Christian/not them. They name groups after it, publications under it, and, in this sense, harken back to a time when Roman Catholics waged holy war. They want holy war in a time of global secularization and the rise of women. The extraordinary psychological and ideological insecurity is telling. In fact, studies have been produced, wherein psychopaths are known to want to become CEOs and the like; they’re drawn to these professions. However, lesser known, a highly ranked profession on the list of careers preferred by psychopaths: Clergy. It’s all highly informative. I take this long winding path due to our prior writing on this subject matter of the Roman Catholic Church and an apparent trembling upper lip based on our words from lots of disgruntled readers. You were trained within the Vatican, as a non-Catholic, under the auspices of Opus Dei in an expensive Opus Dei schooling, working on a Ph.D. in metaphysics in Rome, while meeting the hierarchy and, thus, knowing the structural dynamics of the Roman Catholic Church from the inside for an extended amount of time. In short, you can be, by some minds’ qualitative metrics, seen as a sincere threat. Gnoseology deals with metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, logics, empirics, consciousness, and being, as a start. This means, as well, the foundations of the Roman Catholic Christian faith or religion, not simply a new basis on knowing. In some sense, your freemasonic personal history, Opus Dei familial story, Jewish origin, academic training within Rome, and the like, created one of the most potent brews for critical commentary. As an aside, for those reading, if within a Roman Catholic relationship, community, or family happening to feel oppressive or coercive or restrictive to personal boundaries and freedoms, or an individual distant and questioning the theology and their faith, there are options to transition out of the Roman Catholic Church, including various atheist, agnostic, freethinker, and humanist organization, even theist and atheist Satanic organizations with some political activism. You can find atheist resources at https://www.atheistsites.net. Your local freemasonic hall would happily invite a tour or a new membership. Humanists International has a directory of humanist organizations at https://humanists.international/about/our-members/. The Satanic Temple has plenty of local chapters listed at https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/join-us. You can learn a bit about the public knowledge basics of freemasonry at https://beafreemason.org/. There is a revivalist movement around Paganism. You can find those online, whether neo-Pagan, humanistic Paganism, and the like. Secular and humanistic versions of religious organizations exist all over the world. Of course, wonderful feminist organizations are everywhere, too – simply Google “Feminism” or “feminist organizations,” etc. You’ll find your way. So, know, you’re not alone, have options, already have the internal strength within you, and can find a fit based on personal temperament and psychological profile – find what works for you, not what’s forced on you. You can always email me at Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com. Back to Gnoseology, how is “supreme wisdom” defined here, as in “The Devil’s Chaplain: God Cannot Create the Nothing”?

Dr. Christian Sorensen: In my opinion, the supreme wisdom is certainly something not explicitly verbalizable or  writable through any  type of content ; and much less has a sacred, universal and immutable character.  The reason for the aforementioned, has to do with a purely logical order, since intelligence always seeks to find answers in confrontation with the unknown. Therefore, if the supreme wisdom was represented by some kind of knowledge, in terms of anything identifiable  with the truth, it would necessarily have resolved to some extent the process of intellectual search ; at least with  partially cognitively constructed responses, capable of actually appeasing the sensation of existential emptiness. If the above, would have been in such manner, then supreme wisdow, could have summoned towards an intersubjective noetic consensus, and should have  redounded in  favor of  commonwealth;  all of which could not be more anachronistic and further from reality.  In consequence, I  consider that rather it’s  related to a hypothetical place, than with an inductive or deductible knowledge, which instead I would denominate : as  somewhat found in another place ; in the sense of being vinculated to a hollow space, and that will make possible a synthetic spiral chain of antithetical premises. Furthermore, what is going to be recognized empirical and commonly as this species of wisdom, especially from a fundamentalist religious perspective, as occurs with the Roman Catholic Church, would regard more with a formula to perversely  legitimize  physical and psychological abuse of conscience, by emphasizing notably the sexual connotation of these ; and through sickly focusing on gender discrimination of them,  since what most obsesses the power structure of  catholicism, is the  repression and subjugation of the screams of silence  deployed from their corrupt control networks, which is not at all surprising for their limited intelligence, but that nevertheless stuns for their stupidity  without limits; because not even the pontiff emeritus, manages to hide its puerile attempt at seduction with the most helpless victims.

Jacobsen: What are the limits of the experimental-empirical method? What are the limitations of the hypothetico-deductive method? Those defined within the sphere of “individual scientific disciplines.”

Sorensen: I consider that both methods have limitations that are equivalent, since they operate circularly and tend to reverberate tautologically   on similar  points. Said circularity, would hardly admit a cyclical dynamics, due to the fact that it does not incorporates a tertiary and integral term : capable of representing a higher synthesis around its hypothetical approaches on behalf  of the particular terms induced, and of the generalities deduced from the discursive conclusions.  Regarding the experimental empirical method, which is a reduction of the deductive hypothetical method, applied in the field of individual sciences, the bias  is even greater ; since the hypothetical statements  are not going to be able of being empirically refutable. Likewise even if they were, only  their character of falsehood and of provisional validity, could  be affirmed with certainty.

Jacobsen: How is this individual reason “becoming consciousness along time”?

Sorensen: The individual reason, will become  consciousness along time, in  what I am going to denominate conscious reason; and as such would be  recognized  in the inverse  process of  « zeitgeist », regarding which, there is a greater gradient in favor of  unquestionable answers as counterpose to what  would be unanswerable questions.  In consequence,  consciousness is going  to installed, at the moment in which  a discontinuity or cut occurs at the level of discursive synthesis ; and  as an outcome, of what I consider integral or comprehensive antithetical terms. According to the last,  opposites would return  and convert again in thesis, in order to constitute  questions of problematic nature.

Jacobsen: The “macro or universal reason” as a “permanent consciousness.” How is this functioning in relation to the “consciousness along time”? Why the asymptotic revelation in time? Does this mean accessibility for all beings with reason to this unfolding?

Sorensen: The macro  or universal reason unfolds, because from my point of view,  this is only relative  to consciousness along time, but is never vinculated with respect to permanent consciousness ; since in the dimension of the latter, time would only be absolute: that is to say,  identical to what is understood as an omnipresent temporality.  Its revelation, for his part, seen from a dimension of temporality, is asymptotic , because this reason from its ontological evolution; would  be in a permanent process of retractive compression and extensive decompression, without  having a determinable origin or end. The being with reason, on the other side, would be completely interdicted during this  revelation or unfolding; since the being  with reason and the last, would flow as two parallel lines,  and only  phenomenologically, that is to say hypothetically, would  converge at some supposed vanishing point.

Jacobsen: Why is there this logical break between the theological mythologies and the theology? How does this play out in a critical analysis of the creation story of Roman Catholicism with a dying and resurrected God-man, a virginal birth, and a variety of miraculous occurrences within the narratives?

Sorensen: In my opinion theology, is  essentially mythological and therefore antithetical to reason, since the means to approach it, always concerns faith, which represents  necessarily a supernatural gift from God ; and in consequence, absolutely denies what the will to power could be. Indeed then, it’s a present, that God confers as a  theological virtue ; in order to accept  unwaveringly, religious beliefs, as dogmas.  The logical break is twofold, because in its origin, it is  imperatively based on faith and not on reason; and due to the fact, that commutes the myth for ideas with the pretense of being clear and distinct, when actually they are just   allegorical and fabulous speculations, devoid of all logical consistency and of any  coherent meaning. Actually,  not only  transgresses  logical principles of  identity, non-contradiction and exclusive third party ;  but also brutally distorts and subverts reality.  Through this sort of magic mechanism, this  violates all sense and judgement of reality ; even going to the point of considering the  person of Jesus as a demigod, and  his apostles as saints, when historically deep down, they were just a sectarian group of phonies, who did nothing but to sodomize each other. Or even, to venerate a woman as a virgin,  when in reality what she did was to hide in the crowd, so as not to be publicly stoned to death ; for being a fornicating adolescent, who felt overwhelmed by her low passions. And as if the above were not enough, in order to put a finishing touch , the immaculate, gets married with an elderly man, who today would have been accused of pederast ;  but to whom the Roman Catholic Church scandalous and aberrantly, venerates to this day, as a holy and chaste male.

Jacobsen: How is the light peering into the Roman Catholic, and even Islamic, theological worlds now?

Sorensen: In the Roman Catholic theological world, par excellence, the light is a sort of halo, that penetrates through the hole of a cavern, in order to project inside it, not only monstrous images and deceptive shadows ; but also  to circulate the figures of people tied to each other and queuing, to be dragged and thrown into an abyss unseen, by a hierophant who dupes them with the surrounding darkness.

Jacobsen: What is the idea behind a single universal subject that’s there and an eternal becoming of what will arrive? Are there any forerunners to this idea?

Sorensen: The background of said idea, unlike what some precursors such as Spinoza proposed, is that what exists, and which represents representatively the single universal subject ; has a pulsatile expanding and retracting cyclicity, whatsoever in no case, would be equivalent to a periodic circularity. Therefore the above, could never be understood, as a subjective process of ontological repetition. Quite the contrary, it should be comprehended, as a process of spiral movements, where it would only be possible to discern, the folding points at every turn with respect to which, it could only be affirmed that they are coincident with the moments repeated in each of the turns.  The deductible therefore, would be a subjectivity that remains asymptotically unfinished,  in the twilight of time and in the becoming of eternity.

Jacobsen: What is the basic formulation of this “trinitarian logic”?

Sorensen: Trinitarian logic, fundamentally expels from the symbolic universe of the subject, understood as individual reason ; the concepts and the idea of antithesis and opposition, respectively, regarding being and not-being. The above means,  that both : concepts and idea, would act operationally in unison. In consequence, negation as such, would not exist ; and only the potentially becoming of something, in terms of  somewhat that interrupts its being for beginning anything  else,  might occur. Therefore then, what I will name the tertiary term,  will not be more than the generalization of a continuous sum of infinite deductions, in the discursive process of reasoning ; that would enable to admit, a conclusive synthesis as  hypothetically valid, but not necessarily as an empirically formal truth.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Sorensen.

Sorensen: I expect that not only the angel snuggles up: but also the nun.

—

Photo by Vladimir Šoić on Unsplash

Prof. Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction. He is Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia and Professor of Finance and Psychology in SIAS-CIAPS (Centre for International Advanced and Professional Studies). Here we talk briefly about his philosophy of nothingness.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Our focus today is the proposal of “nothingness” in a specific sense by you. To start in negation, what is not “nothingness,” in your sense?

Professor Sam Vaknin: Nothingness is not about being a nobody and doing nothing. It is not about self-negation, self-denial, idleness, fatalism, or surrender.

Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, what is nothingness?

Vaknin: Nothingness is about choosing to be human, not a lobster. It is about putting firm boundaries between you and the world. It is about choosing happiness – not dominance. It is accomplishing from within, not from without. It is about not letting others regulate your emotions, moods, and thinking. It is about being an authentic YOU.

Jacobsen: How does this nothingness connect to Neo-Daoism and Buddhism?

Vaknin: It would be best to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ePaN70SyM&t=1s

Jacobsen: We live, as many know, in an era of narcissism. You brought this issue to light in 1995, particularly pathological narcissism. What are the roots of the ongoing rise in individual and collective narcissism?

Vaknin: The need to be seen and noticed in an overcrowded and terrifyingly atomized world. Ironically, narcissism is a cry for help, a desperate attempt to reconnect. There is no such thing as an “individual”: we are all the products of our interactions with others (object relations). But, increasingly, technology is rendering us self-sufficient and isolated. So, our social instincts metastasize into narcissism: dominance and hierarchy replace sharing and networking.

Jacobsen: How does one choose happiness over dominance, authenticity over being fake, and humanity rather than lobster-kind, with this form of nothingness?

Vaknin: We need to choose happiness over dominance (be human, not a lobster); Choose Meaning over complexity; Choose fuzziness, incompleteness, imperfection, uncertainty, and unpredictability (in short: choose life) over illusory and fallacious order, structure, rules, and perfection imposed on reality (in short: death); Choose the path over any destination, the journey over any goal, the process over any outcome, the questions over any answers; Be an authentic person with a single inner voice, proud of the internal, not the external.

Jacobsen: What is the importance of living a life worth remembering in the philosophy of nothingness?

Vaknin: Identity depends on having a continuous memory of a life fully lived and actualized. At the end of it all, if your life were a movie, would you want to watch it from beginning to end? Nothingness consists of directing your life in accordance with an idiosyncratic autobiographical script: yours, no one else’s. Being authentic means becoming the single story which only you can tell.

Jacobsen: What type of personality or person can accept nothingness in its fullest sense?

Vaknin: Only those who are grandiose are incapable of Nothingness. Grandiosity is the illusion that one is godlike and, therefore, encompasses everything and everyone. Grandiosity, therefore, precludes authenticity because it outsources one’s identity and renders it reliant on input from others (hive mind).

Jacobsen: How is nothingness an antidote to narcissism?

Vaknin: Narcissism is ersatz, the only self is false, others are instrumentalized and used to regulate one’s sense of faux cohering oneness. Nothingness is echt, harking back to the only true, authentic voice, eliminating all other introjects, not using others to regulate one’s internal psychological landscape. Narcissism is alienation, it interpellates in a society of the spectacle. Nothingness gives rise to true intimacy.

Jacobsen: What is the ultimate wisdom in the philosophy of nothingness?

Vaknin: Identify the only voice inside you that is truly you. Peel the onion until nothing is left behind but its smell. Rid yourself of introjected socialization. Become.

Jacobsen: Then, to conclude, what is the motto or catchphrase of nothingness in this sense?

Vaknin: Do unto yourself what you want others to do to you.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Vaknin.

Vaknin: Much obliged for having me. Always a pleasure.

Image Credit: Sam Vaknin.