Shmuel "Sam" Vaknin (born April 21, 1961) is an Israeli writer.[1] He is the author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited (2001), has been the editor-in-chief of the former website Global Politician, and runs a private website about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).[2] He has also postulated a theory on chronons and time asymmetry.Vaknin was born in Kiryat Yam, Israel, the eldest of five children born to Sephardi Jewish immigrants. Vaknin's mother, who he claims may have been a narcissist, was from Turkey, and his father, a construction worker, was from Morocco. He describes a difficult childhood, in which he writes that his parents "were ill-equipped to deal with normal children, let alone the gifted".[3] He left home to serve in the Israel Defense Forces from 1979 to 1982 in training and education units. Between 1980 and 1983 he founded a chain of computerized information kiosks in Tel Aviv, and in 1982 worked for the Nessim D. Gaon Group in Geneva, Paris, and New York City. It was in the mid-1980s that he became aware of difficulties in his relationship with his fiancée, and that he had mood swings. In 1985 he sought help from a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Vaknin did not accept the diagnosis at the time. From 1986 to 1987 he was the general manager of IPE Ltd. in London. He moved back to Israel, where he became director of an Israeli investment firm, Mikbatz Teshua.[2] He was also president of the Israeli chapter of the Unification Church's Professors for World Peace Academy.[1] In Israel in 1995 he was found guilty on three counts of securities fraud along with two other men, Nissim Avioz and Dov Landau. He was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment and fined 50,000 shekels (about $14,000), while the company was fined 100,000 shekels.[4][5] In 1996, as a condition of parole, he agreed to a mental health evaluation, which noted various personality disorders. According to Vaknin, "I was borderline schizoid, but the most dominant was NPD," and on this occasion he accepted the diagnosis, because, he wrote, "it was a relief to know what I had Less