Courtesy Photo: Sam Vaknin
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When pornography enters the metaverse, all narcissists’ “romantic” needs will be fulfilled. That’s according to Sam Vaknin, a psychology professor with an expertise in narcissism who authored Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, a must-read ebook that accompanies his highly successful YouTube channel.
“Pornography by definition is an autoerotic trigger. It helps us to masturbate, and when pornography will mesh and merge with artificial intelligence apps, with sex robots and similar technologies…then there will be a convergence of pornography as an autoerotic trigger on the one hand and as substitute surrogate intimate partners,” Sam Vaknin said in an interview with News Link Live.
Later adding, “So, then narcissists – or people who are narcissistic – will not be seeking real life partners because they will have all their needs fulfilled online and via the metaverse.”
According to Freud, as a child, the narcissist fails to developmentally advance beyond autoeroticism to object-love (Vaknin 34). Environmentally, that’s because of abuse meted out by parent(s) who fail to address the narcissist’s needs. The budding narcissist then develops a grandiose false self, both omnipresent and omniscient, which supplants the true self as a defense mechanism in order to ward off further trauma.
“Narcissists remain autoerotic for life,” said Vaknin. “Narcissists use people’s bodies to masturbate with; they use people to mirror them erotically; so, they use people as they would a mirror. They get aroused by their own bodies and by their own minds; they gravitate toward people who are self-denying and non-existent in the sexual act so that they can end up having sex with themselves.”
Thus, having sex with avatars in the metaverse will be the perfect sexual experience for the narcissist, who seeks out self-abnegating sexual partners. And it’s not just the narcissists, Vaknin says the emergence of the metaverse will create a ubiquitous paracosm that will create an illusion of self-sufficiency for all humanity, further isolating people from one another.
“The metaverse is a very, very, very dangerous phenomenon, not because of pornography, but because it will encourage us to migrate from the real world – or what’s left of it – into what’s called a paracosm, a kind of fantasy which is all inclusive, self-contained and creates an illusion of self-sufficiency,” he said.
To hear my full interview with Vaknin, click this link or go to the podcast page of this website.
Work Cited
Vaknin, Samuel. Malignant Self-Love : Narcissism Revisited. Skopje, Narcissus Publications, 2015.
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