Talk:Sam Vaknin

I've tagged the Wikipedia section as lacking in 3rd party sources. There's no indication that anyone beyond the subject finds his writings on this topic interesting. If no 3rd party sources can be found in a reasonable time I'll delete the material. The subject has opinions on many topics, but if no independent source takes note of them neither should we.   Will Beback  talk  21:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I've tried to tidy this a little: before and after.

I removed the WP section as self-referential. I also removed the education as the details were unclear. His cv said he was born in 1961 but started technical college in 1970, and as this isn't explained or mentioned by secondary sources (that he went to college when he was nine), I just left it out. Also, the PhD certificate says he "majored" in physics, and people don't major when doing PhDs, so again I left it out because it was unclear. I also left out his description of his parents, which seemed a little unfair; even though they're unnamed, they and others know who they are, and they may still be living. Otherwise, I just tidied the writing, and added some details from secondary sources. I also added an infobox. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 14:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Self-published works by Sam Vaknin have been used as sources for various articles related to narcissism. The issue of whether those should be regarded as reliable for Wikipedia purposes is being discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard‎#Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited by Sam Vaknin. Editors are invited to give their views.   Will Beback  talk  21:21, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Some people seem to repeat the argument vaknin wasn't diagnosed as a psychopath in the documentary "I, Psychopath" and they argue, Vaknin only scored 18 where the cutoff for psychopathy was 30, which is not correct. In the film, they used a so called screening version of the PCL (PCL:SV), where the total score is not 40 but 24, and the psychopathy-cutoff thus is located at 18, not 30. So, with a result of 18 out of 24 (twenty-four, NOT forty!!!) he was a clinically diagnosed psychopath. In both PCL-versions, the cutoff for psychopathy is 3/4 of max score (18/24 and 30/40), so if we convert his 18 point result into the 40-point-scale we will finally get the 30 points which is the PCL-R cutoff for psychopathy. (Conversion is done by (18/24)*40=30). So it is right what's written there in the article, he MET the requirements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.81.171.124 (talk) 20:51, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Where did you get this "information" from??? It is NOT mentioned in the film "I, Psychopath" and both Vaknin and the hostile director Walker insist that he was administered the FULL test zadanliran (Zoran) 77.28.18.75 (talk) 13:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Vaknin's Google Scholar page: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Yj7C8wOP-10J

Vaknin has a Ph.D. from California Miramar University (in philosophy). His dissertation (thesis) is titled "Time Asymmetry Revisited" and is available from UMI and the Library of Congress. His work on time-space influenced many young physicists. Recent example: “Upper Time Limit, Its Gradient Curvature, and Matter” by Eytan H. Suchard (Journal of Modern Physics and Applications 2014, 2014:5) http://scik.org/index.php/jmpa/article/view/1317/640

Vaknin maintains a repository of his philosophy essays here: http://philosophos.tripod.com Some of his work influenced other philosophers and thinkers. See this example where his work on definitions affected this group of computer scientists: http://www.scribd.com/doc/38546033/Enterprise-Architecture-Definition

This Wikipedia entry does not reflect a lot of the info available on the talk page for this entry. Few people know that they can find additional info on the talk page, so this is a great pity. 77.29.87.135 (talk) 12:09, 15 December 2013 (UTC) Zadaliran (Zoran)

Sam Vaknin clearly states on film at the end of 'I, psychopath' ... "the Phd was aquired in a diploma mill, diploma mill in the United States means a place where you buy your degrees. So it's a diploma mill, not a real Phd". With this in mind the section mentioning his Phd work should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.215.244.101 (talk) 15:25, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I believe that it was a valid PhD but anyway whether it was or wasnt a valid PhD is incidental. Vaknin produced a credible body of work on chronons (see Chronon#Work_by_Vaknin) which was substantively referenced as being an important and significant body of work by Suchard in his work (see Chronon#Work_by_Suchard) laying out the latest thinking on chronons. Suchard himself refers to Vaknins work as being PhD work. Vaknin also includes the PhD on his CV (see http://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html ). Here he says "The rumour that I had obtained my degree from a diploma mill is maliciously (and libellously) false......" http://samvak.tripod.com/rebuttal.html . --Penbat (talk) 16:11, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I do not agree that it is incidental whether or not his PhD is valid, seeing as the page states that his work on chronons was a PhD thesis. It is misleading to include this work under such an introduction. I see the references to Vaknin and Suchard's work have been removed from the Chronons page for good reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.53.18 (talk) 13:07, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Vaknin has a Ph.D. from California Miramar University (in philosophy). His dissertation (thesis) is titled "Time Asymmetry Revisited" and is available from UMI and the Library of Congress. See: California Miramar University, available on Microfiche in UMI and from the Library of Congress http://lccn.loc.gov/85133690 77.28.20.77 (talk) 11:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC) Zadanliran (Zoran) 12:35, 05 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this should be subjected to more scrutiny. The article states that the dissertation was written in 1982. But the university cited appears to have been founded in 2005. — Preceding unsigned comment added by O5o7 (talk • contribs) 09:48, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

It appears that nobody has ever verified the validity of the PhD thesis. Nearly nowhere is this thesis even referenced – barring Suchard, whose work (e.g. 1806.05244 on arXiv) lacks all rigor and is equally solitary. The Library of Congress does list Vaknin's paper as a dissertation thesis, but is this seriously a strong enough basis for Wikipedia to state the PhD as fact? ... If this listing is the strongest evidence, one should write exactly that. --2A02:8071:195:2C00:0:0:0:52 (talk) 19:06, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

In fact, the criticism at the top of this section from 2014 already says it all. For convenience, here is the video recording of Vaknin admitting to the PhD being bought at a diploma mill (though maintaining that it is a technically valid PhD): YouTube. In light of this, the section in the article is completely untenable.--2A02:8071:195:2C00:0:0:0:52 (talk) 19:14, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Since when is an obscure and controversial documentary film a source for Wikipedia?

As to your vandlism: Vaknin and the director of "I, Psychopath", Ian Walker, are avowed enemies, as the documentary makes abundantly clear. Vaknin and Walker are having numerous aggressive fights on camera! Vaknin and others pointed out repeatedly that the segment you are referring to was added AFTER the film was first released and involves malicious editing of Vaknin's words.

Vaknin was actually calling attention to the swindlers who run diploma mills!

Walker, the hostile and Vaknin-hater "director", took Vaknin's words out of context to create the impression that Vaknin was referring to his own PhD which Vaknin denies even in that segment!

Vaknin says clearly and repeatedly: "I have a PhD, I worked 2 years for it, there was a campus, my doctoral dissertation was peer reviewed, it is available in the Library of Congress" and so on. The concluding sentence in this fake segment is Vaknin's statement about diploma mills PhDs IN GENERAL - NOT about Vaknin's PhD in particular!! It was clearly cut (the film "jumps" suddenly) and added to create a false impression!

It is very clear when you watch it: The director cut an unrelated sentence into the film maliciously to give a false impression.

This "I, Psychopath" an old canard that keeps creeping up as you would have seen had you bothered to read this page thoroughly and had you done minimal research online.

What you did to the article was total vandalism. Zadanliran (Zoran) 77.28.14.186 (talk) 12:35, 01 March 2021 (UTC)

Has there been any independent writing (ideally, a study of effectiveness) about Cold Therapy? I'm thinking we should either mention it in the article or mention the absence of it. —C.Fred (talk) 19:30, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Footnotes [12] and [13] are dead. The links are below, respectively:

http://www.analyst-network.com/profile.php?user_id=79

https://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/941

Furthermore, I could find no archived versions of either of these pages or anything suggesting that the website "analyst-network.com" has ever existed. 170.52.76.106 (talk) 01:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The redirect Inverted narcissist has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 7 § Inverted narcissist until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 16:59, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Inverted narcissists has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 7 § Inverted narcissists until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 16:59, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

It seems like at least almost all information about his biography is based on claims he himself has made in media appearances. Other claims lack any type of citation. It seems like it can be very difficult to determine the veracity of these claims. Not to say people necessarily lie, but it is probably a good idea not to blindly rely solely on what someone says about him/herself. Yes, the coverage is from various sources, but all lead back to him. If possible, it would be great if we could find independent sources which do not rely on Vaknin's statements to verify the stages of his life. Of course, it may be difficult, as he wasn't always as well-known as today, and thus, publishing information on him in, say, the 80's was unlikely to have been seen as necessary or even at all purposeful. BlockArranger (talk) 22:21, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

This article seems one-sided , containing no discussion of controversy or critique. Is this article a promo piece? Avi (talk) 13:11, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposed to frame any article in accordance with WP:RELIABLE sources with a WP:NEUTRAL point of view. The ratio between what is understood as critical or promotional is to be WP:BALANCED; however, all content must be written in a neutral WP:WIKIVOICE which shall in itself not be WP:CRITICAL nor WP:PROMOTIONAL. Please provide examples of what is promotional in order for us to be able to engage in further discussion, or attempt to fix something yourself -- be WP:BOLD. However, I note that too much content it based on WP:PRIMARY sources, as WP:VERIFIABILITY cannot rely on readers being supposed to evaluate the reliability and WP:INDEPENDENCE of the content directly published by Vaknin, either on YouTube, as trancripts, or his books. While you sort out the matter you posted about, I will add a maintenance template to the article, which we can hope will motivate editors to improve this article.

In case you, the reader, do not understand this: liks such as WP:THIS are shortcuts to relevant texts regarding the topics I mention. Please familiarize yourself with them in order to better understand WP:EDIA and its rules. BlockArranger (talk) 22:12, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

@Zorandimitrovskiskopje (also pinging @BlockArranger since you have also been in discussion too). I appreciate the efforts to clean up this article and include secondary sources, but I am concerned that the edits may be making things worse rather than better. I will illustrate this by examining some recent edits and explaining what the problems are:

• Text: "and expanded its meaning to include any form of maltreatment that aims to deny the victim agency, independence, personal autonomy, core identity, and social succor." A reference was recently added to support the youtube primary source, but this secondary source does not support Vaknin saying anything close to this . see WP:V. The secondary source needs to specifically support the text, not be vaguely related.
• Text "Vaknin observes that, having failed to developed affective empathy during the formative years, narcissists possess "cold empathy" (cognitive and reflexive)," The recently added citation mentions Vaknin once, and the reference to him does not mention cold empathy or how affective empathy is developed etc. Same problem as above WP:V
• Text: "and trauma and abuse in early life, especially in childhood and adolescence." adds a primary source (a youtube video). Although the edit summary suggests that secondary sources are being looked for, we need to start with those secondary sources and not add yet more primary sources which is a major problem in this article already. see WP:PSTS and WP:OR
• Text:"[They] provide the narcissist with an obsequious, unthreatening audience… the perfect backdrop." This edit , adds this source , which does not mention this quote. It is also a Psychology Today blog, written by a non-expert (Li has a MSc in Business Administration). It is not a reliable source. (see WP:RS, and WP:BLOG.)

This is just a few examples of the problems I have found in about 20 minutes of looking at just a few of the most recent edits. I can only imagine that there are more issues to be found. You shouldn't feel bad, Zorandimitrovskiskopje, as there is lots to learn about editing Wikipedia, but I don't want you to waste your time further, because these edits/sources etc all need to be deleted (at least to support what they currently do). I am thinking that the most efficient thing may be to do a massive revert to before all the primary sources and recent attempts to clean up were made. That way, if you want to expand the article, you can start with reliable secondary sources and see what they say and then add summaries of that. But I am open to a different approach if you guys have one. Slp1 (talk) 13:20, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the addition of primary sources has not really helped improve the state of this article; indeed, I was the one originally requesting secondary sources documenting the biography and work of the subject of this article. I have however hoped that if, as has happened, there is elaboration on more of Vaknin's postulations in regards to psychology are added, it would give rise to the emergence of good content that can be verified i secondary sources and then condensed. In the long term, we shouldn't really have an WP:INDISCRIMINATE collection of things that can be found about Vaknin. Furthermore, also think we should get rid of YouTube citations. BlockArranger (talk) 13:51, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that you understood the primary source/original research problem. But unfortunately, the addition of secondary sources has failed also to improve the article: trying to find secondary sources to support things already written and supported by primary sources is virtually impossible to do, and what we have now is text that purportedly has reliable secondary sources, but in fact they don't support the text as written and/or are not reliable. It is obscuring the major problems here. An article needs to summarize what reliable secondary sources say about the topic. As I said, I think the only real option to pare back to an article to one without the bloat from primary, unreliable sources, and expand the proper way, by summarizing what other people say about Vaknin in reliable sources. But I am open to other ideas. Slp1 (talk) 14:04, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Since a few days have passed and the problematic edits and sourcing have continued without any suggestions about how else to solve this issue, I have reverted to an earlier version of the article, without the excessive material cited almost entirely to primary sources linked to Vaknin, or unreliable sources. There were, however, a few actual reliable sources that could be used to expand the article with material summarized from them: Here are some reliable sources from the deleted material that might have material that is worth including:

• How Narcissists Took Over the World VICE
• RESEARCH INTO THE VOICES OF THE PSYCHOPATHIC PREDATOR: AN ANALYTICAL CASE STUDY Kreuter, Eric Anton
• Moi, narcissique et cruel: Portrait d’un narcissique maladif qui avoue que son égocentrisme peut le rendre cruel RTS
• Emotions and Affects of Convolution Lisa Blackman
• "Recognising Narcissistic Abuse and the Implications for Mental Health Nursing Practice". Issues in Mental Health Nursing. 40 (8): 644–65
• "They're Narcissists, and They're Proud". nymag.com.
• Unadulterated Arrogance: Autopsy of the Narcissistic Parental Alienator.

less good but probably useable:

• Never Satisfied: Narcissists Crave Their Narcissistic Supply
• Do You Think of Narcissism as an Autistic Spectrum Disorder?
• The Gullibility of the Narcissist: What You Need to Know

Slp1 (talk) 01:14, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Some more useful reliable secondary sources:

• They Say Narcissism Is Untreatable. This Narcissist Is Giving It a Try Anyway
• Dr Sam Vaknin - the global narcissist database
• The Girl's Guide to Predators - Page 214
• The Puritan Culture of America's Military U.S. Army War Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Responsibility from the Margins - Page 159

Slp1 (talk) 23:20, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

More useful secondary sources.

• Crompton, Simon (2007). All About Me: Loving a Narcissist. London, England
• Rokelle Lerner The object of my affection is in my reflection
• "After the rain: How the West Lost the East." Publishers Weekly, vol. 247, no. 32, 7 Aug. 2000, p. 59. Gale In Context: Biography, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A64077176/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.
• On narcissim: the mirror and the self : By Rachel Cusk New Statesman 2013
• Long, Owen. "The rise of the professional narcissist: diagnosed narcissists are discovering how to thrive--by doling out advice to other narcissists." New York Magazine, vol. 58, no. 19, 8 Sept. 2025,
• "Greek crisis will not spill over to Macedonia." Macedonian Business Monthly, vol. 9, no. 93, Nov. 2009, p. 2. Gale OneFile: News, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A222935063/
• International Crisis Group. Macedonia’s public secret: how corruption drags the country down. International Crisis Group, 2002. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep46057.
• Surviving the narcissist. Winnipeg Free Press. 2005

Slp1 (talk) 21:59, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

A few more:

• The Myth of the Born Criminal Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the Creation of the Modern Degenerate By Jarkko Jalava, Stephanie Griffiths, Michael Maraun U of Toronto 2015
• Narcissism in the Workplace: Research, Opinion and Practice by Andrew J. DuBrin · 2012
• The New Narcissus in the Age of Reality Television By Megan Collins · 2017

Slp1 (talk) 23:08, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

As suggested by Primefac, I am readding some of the deleted material: in particular a summary of the recently proposed sources which was a more positive direction at least. I have made with some comments about each one. For the record, in my opinion, while some of these are useful and useable for some specific edits, but they are not the high quality, secondary sources that we are really looking for per WP:BESTSOURCES.

• Vaknin-Rangelovska Foundation I will add this link as one of his websites.

• Jerusalem Post deadlinks: I have updated the links; but it is worth noting that reliable sources do not need to available online, although obviously it helps the other editors and readers if they are. See WP:SOURCE

• Prof. Sam Vaknin is appointed to lecture as a visiting professor at SEEU - South East European University - Latest News- Would probably be a good source that he was appointed as a visiting professor there in 2024, but strangely there is no other sign of him on the university website which I would normally expect. I wonder what being a visiting professor actually means there.

• Sam VAKNIN | Faculty Member | Doctor of Philosophy (Physics) | Psychology | Research profile essentially self-published. But we have better sources for the Phd so not needed anyway.

• https://ciaps.org/faculty/ CIAPS is Commonwealth Institute for Advanced Professional Studies. I will correct the name for now. But the other issue of whether this is a reliable source for being a professor remains to be determined. Maybe with some changes to the wording?

• Chronon Field Theory -a self-published book, but probably good enough for saying that Suchard expanded Vaknin's theory.

I have a busy day so might not get to some of these till tomorrow, if someone else doesn't get to them first. 16:07, 8 November 2025 (UTC) Slp1 (talk) 16:07, 8 November 2025 (UTC)