7 Phases of Shared Fantasy: Why Narcissist Needs YOU - Analysis about Narcissism. Sam Vaknin. This is a summary of my shared fantasy-dual mothership framework for the narcissist’s intimate interpersonal relationships. 7 Stages of shared fantasy: 1. Co-Idealization (lovebombing, introject and narcissist all good because he owns object) 2. Dual mothership in a shared fantasy (recreation of childhood) 3. Need to reenact separation leads to mental discard which results in narcissistic injury (narcissist not omniscient, his judgment was wrong) 4. Devaluation of external object to restore grandiosity (make ego-congruent sense of the discard of an hitherto idealized object). 5. Devaluation of introject via splitting defense (introject now all-bad, narcissist grandiosely all-good) 6. Real life discard: projection of introject to you in an attempt to integrate it with external object. Projection-integration fails owing to abandonment anxiety triggered by introject inconstancy and your refusal to own split, all-bad introject. Devalued, split, all-bad introject remains as internal object, in narcissist's mind. This creates anxiety (bad object internalization-introjection) 7. The only way to reintegrate this internal object and reduce anxiety is by re-idealizing the external object and the corresponding introject. This is impossible if the narcissist has been mortified. He then departs from his previous version and reinvents himself which allows for self-idealization (grandiosity restored). Sam Vaknin. Q.: 7 Phases of Shared Fantasy: Why Narcissist Needs YOU