He acknowledges that his theories on narcissism are not accepted by academics in the field, for instance his theory that narcissism is akin to a form of artificial intelligence.[5] <--- whereas I believe it is akin to a form of demonic possession

artificial intelligence how

like the person creates a separate intelligence in their own head?

without getting too much into the word intelligence

yes

the person creates a false identity, a false ego

a false intelligence

they create "another me"

that is used as a shield to cover up their TRUE "me" which for various reasons is stunted or near-absent

the classic stimulus would be childhood abuse

where the child sequesters away his true self to create an impervious facade

impervious doesn't mean strong willed, they can be exceptionally weak willed

masochistic

but the true self remains defended

exposure of the true self becomes acknowledgment of the trauma, reliving the trauma in a sense

as until they can get over it, their true self can never "come out"

and can therefore never grow

I believe the exact same thing occurs in homosexual men

why the manifestations are different I don't know, maybe it is more holistic for the narcissist etc.

maybe the stimuli are exclusively sexual in the homosexual case

A SOCIAL SELF

A CONSTRUCT TO MANIPULATE OTHERS

true self-false self theory goes far beyond the above

HMM

you could call it social self too, but there is a danger there of conflation because the false self is for most of these people, effectively their true self

their private self

some of them have insight, almost all of them will feel the hole of absence

of their true self

but they cannot really grasp it

I have been led to think that something similar to this state can be induced by mass media in ordinary people

all "hipster lies" create or come from false selves

where someone pretends to enjoy something, but doesn't really

but can even come close to, or actually fully believe that they do "enjoy" it

enough to identify with it strongly

hence the phenomenon of a mass of people who its obvious don't like metal music at all

but will nevertheless attempt to identify with it

not appropriate, they don't have another identity they want to muddy up the metal with

and in these cases also, there would the element that the true self is right there in the background

so you may actually end up with a mixed state, where someone genuinely likes one or two metal acts that for some reason they became receptive to

and the rest is false

you can apply this argument to leftism as a top-down social phenomenon, where most people deep down don't agree with it