But grandiose.

Okay.

So narcissism is, and now we have a whole crop of leaders, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, possibly Modi in India, I don’t know, but we have a whole crop of highly narcissistic and grandiose and even psychopathic leaders.

And in your book, you also write that narcissist is just so pervasive. It’s just not personality traits. It’s a personality disorder that you cannot really ever cure a narcissist. And you write that anybody who’s in a relationship with a narcissist needs to not cure, but just quit, run away immediately. That’s your advice you gave in the book. You can’t cure narcissism.

You can’t, there’s nothing to cure. It’s, as I would say, can I cure Mariam? Can I, how can I cure Mariam?

Narcissism is narcissism.

It’s not cancer. It’s not a disease that someone has. It is a disease that someone is.

So even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual says both editions, four and five, say that narcissism is all pervasive and affects every area of functioning. It’s the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, it’s not somebody.

I know. So you no more can remove the narcissism from the narcissist, then you can remove the narcissist from his narcissism. They are not two entities, eat one parasitic on the other. They’re one and the same. The narcissist does not have an identity. He has an empty schismic core. He’s a howling absence. He’s deep space. He’s a black hole.

And what remains is his narcissism. Take away his narcissism and literally nothing is left.

Literally, then only the absence is left. You can think of it as an onion. Even if you peel the onion layer by layer, layer by layer, layer by layer, and all the onion is gone. The smell of the onion lingers. Narcissism is the smell of the onion.

That means if you remove the narcissist completely, the narcissism would be left.

So narcissism is an organizing principle. It is an explanatory, hermeneutic principle. It’s an explanatory principle. It’s a worldview. It’s a theory of mind. In other words, it’s how the narcissist perceives other people, what makes them tick. It’s a theory of the world. It’s what we call internal framework.

So narcissism is the set of strategies that the narcissist, as a child, had chosen to shape himself into.

I always give an example from a famous book by Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo was a 19th century novelist in France. Victor Hugo wrote a book called The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And in one of the chapters, he described the comparticosis. Comparticosis were essentially travelers, gypsies, who used to kidnap children, babies, very tender babies, few days old. They used to kidnap them and put them in a bottle. And the child grew in the bottle, grew inside the bottle, and took on the shape of the bottle. And then they would break the bottle, and the child became a circus freak. People would come to work to watch the child in the circus, pay money, because he was in the shape of a bottle.

This is the narcissist. He grows up in a bottle of abuse. He takes on the shape of the bottle, breaks the bottle, the narcissist is still deformed. So the deformity is for life.

Nothing to be done. He had been abducted by bad upbringing, bad circumstancesis still deformed. So the deformity is for life. Nothing to be done. He had been abducted by bad upbringing, bad circumstances.

Your expressions are so powerful, they blow a person away. And I think that I was sitting with all my friends, most of them are academics, and we were discussing, and I told all of them to get the same book also because, by the way, I want to write a fabulous review on your book, it has actually blown me away.

But just, you’ve done just a big service to all of us. I was just thinking because we friends were sitting together and I told them what is a somatic narcissist, what is a covert narcissist, what is a grandiose one, cerebral one. And then suddenly there was a light bulb movement in everybody’s lives. And they were like, Oh my God, my dad friend is a cerebral one. Oh my God, I know a grandiose one.

And suddenly everything started making sense about the way you’ve characterized them. And we have friends in our lives, we have people in our family, and somehow we didn’t understand what was going on. It’s just that through you, there has been a lot of clarity in this diagnosis. I think it’s going to help us with identifying our friends, family, colleagues, there are lots of colleagues that we deal with also. And I think the clarity is incredible.

I wouldn’t want to aggrandize what I had done, but my main contribution at that time in the 90s was to give language because language creates consciousness, language arranges memories, language clarifies things, organizes, makes sense, language imbues life with meaning. There was no language. I contributed the language, not necessarily the content, a lot of the content that I wrote at that time was taken from much bigger minds like Cote and Kernberg and so, but I contributed the language, no question about it.

And now in the past few years, I’m again making original contributions, I’m reconceiving of narcissism in totally new ways.

So there was a period of 20 years where I had not been original. I didn’t contribute anything original.

At first I contributed the language, then I stopped being original. And then a few years ago, I started being original again.

So I wouldn’t like to aggrandize myself and say that I, you know, but I did help in the sense that when you wanted to describe a cerebral narcissist before I came on the scene, you didn’t even know what you wanted to say. You didn’t, you couldn’t organize it, you know. And then I told you, listen, this guy is a cerebral narcissist. And you said, wow, yes.

Now I understand. Yes. He’s a cerebral narcissist, you know.

And I think that you be too modest. I’m not trying to realistic.

No, what I’m trying to say to you is I’ve never been accused of modesty.

I try to make you understand that my mother is a clinical psychiatrist and there are lots of people who come to her and she deals with a lot of personality disorders. And I got very interested in psychopaths and narcissists and schizophrenia. And I did a lot of research. I’m an academic myself. So I did a lot of research in many YouTube channels, many books. There are so many podcasts on psychopaths and narcissism. I listened to all of them because I was very interested.

Once I hit you on YouTube, I never went back to any one of them. Because even if you didn’t coin everything, you coin narcissistic injury.

But sometimes the words that you use in your lectures or in your books, they are so powerful.

Like when you talk about the absence or when you saw there’s nobody there, it just hits you because some of us who’ve been exposed to narcissist, everything becomes crystal clear, which that clarity I did not get through other researchers and professors.

Well, that’s a perfect example, because I did not coin nor did I invent the concept of empty schizoid core that was coined and invented by a group of a British psychologist in the sixties. They were known as the British Object Relations School. And among them were Winnicott, Gantrip, big names, Fairburn. So they coined this. And then Jeffrey Seinfeld in 1991 expanded on it and he created the coherent concept of empty schizoid core.

So here’s the perfect example. It’s not my contribution. I was not original on this.

But what I do attempt very much to do in my, at least on my YouTube channel, because I’m also an academic. I mean, I teach in universities, I publish papers and so on, but on my YouTube channel, what I try to do is bridge the gap, bridge the abyss between academe and the masses and the public.

And I regret to say that my colleagues online in their YouTube channels are focused on making money, not focused on bringing the latest to the people. Their knowledge, if there is any, is antiquated, wrong, and they are absolutely obsessed with making money.

And I’m not, there’s no, there’s no advertising on my channel. I don’t allow advertising on my YouTube. I’m not selling anything.

I think I have a mission to, as I did starting in the nineties, in the nineties, all these YouTube experts, so-called experts, self-styled experts, all these coaches and so on. When I started my work, there were teenagers, all of them were teenagers.

So I’ve been doing this for 30 years, spreading the word, disseminating the knowledge. And I keep doing this.

There are some original contributions. I contributed the language, definitely. There are some new original contributions that I’m making, but I rely on the shoulders of giants.

All these had been said before. It’s extremely unfortunate that people with academic degrees and credentials lower themselves in a way, prostitute themselves for money. And very often compromise their integrity as academics.

I don’t want to go beyond this, but I am very disappointed in what is happening online. I understand a victim of narcissistic abuse who would just go online and share her grief and share her pains and try to help others.

I don’t expect from such a person, any rigor, any deep knowledge, any, but I do expect from a doctor, I do expect from a professor or an online doctor to have integrity, not to use, for example, terms which are not clinical terms and are very misleading like empath.

And yet all of them do, because they make a lot of money. I expect these self-styled experts and coaches not to perpetuate and propagate the victimhood status and mentality of people just to make money.

And yet that’s precisely what they’re doing.

No way.

Sam, we only watch your videos. We don’t stop watching all of them ever since we’ve discovered you, but we’re looking forward to your new books and new research and you’re saying you’re coming up with new theory, the new exciting information on narcissists.

And after talking to you, I’m actually feeling a bit bad for the narcissist. I’m feeling a bit sad for him.

You think we should be bad for them?

It’s a tragedy. It’s a human tragedy. It’s a wasteland. Harvey Clutterer had observed already in 1942 that in an ordered proportion of what he called psychopaths, but today we know it’s not psychopaths, it’s narcissists and borderline, but he called them psychopaths because there’s no words. There’s no language.

So Harvey Clickley in 1942 had observed that a sizable proportion, trying to adjust the comment, a sizable proportion of narcissists and borderlines are actually highly emotional, highly intelligent people. Their emotional growth had been stunted by abuse. And so they reverted to an earlier form and it’s an enormous waste.

I’m arguably one of the leading authorities on cluster B personality disorders. I know everything there is no narcissism. I invented some of it. I discovered some of it and yet emotionally I’m two years old. I’m two years old. I have never known positive emotions. My inner experience is that of utter howling emptiness. I’m a waste in every possible sense of the word because without emotions and emotional apparatus, there’s a limit to self actualization and realization of potential. Potential is very limited when you don’t have this critical tool.

For example, you don’t get along with people, you know, you don’t have to read people. I mean, you can read their vulnerabilities, but you cannot read their positivity, cannot read their totality. So it limits me. Of course, I’m age 60 and I’ve paid a horrible price. I haven’t lived 10% of the life I could have lived.

And it’s a tragedy by any definition, any waste is a tragedy. Anyways, narcissism had been a pandemic long before COVID and it’s getting much, much worse.

Studies by Twenge, later Campbell, others had demonstrated between 1997 and 2018 that narcissism is on the rise among college students, admittedly, but seems to be on the rise among beyond.

And narcissism, as we look around, is clearly on the rise. It’s associated with atomization, the breakdown of institutions, the exigencies of economic recessions, income inequality, envy.

I mean, narcissism is exploding in 1997. I coined the phrase narcissism epidemic later borrowed by Campbell and others. It’s not an epidemic, it was wrong. It’s a pandemic because you see narcissism on the rise in China, in Iran, in Israel, in Russia, wherever you go, it’s become the bone tone. It’s become the new thing, the new normal.

And narcissism is about waste of human potential as individuals, as collectives. No wonder we cannot get our act together in this pandemic. We cannot get our act together.

If we analyze, it’s all narcissism, selfishness, entitlement, defiance, recklessness. These are all narcissistic features.

I mean, in a narcissistic civilization and society, self-efficacy, the ability to secure favorable outcome from the physical environment and from the human environment, self-efficacy is declining. Narcissism is very dangerous to the species, not only to individuals, because we are losing our edge as a species. We can no longer get our act together.

Those were profound words, Sam. With this thought, I want to thank you so much.

Thank you.

I was so honest, your thoughts, everything was a breath of fresh air. I look forward to talking to you again on some other multiple pastelic disorder. I look forward to your new books and I hope you come to Cambridge soon. I look forward to having a lecture in Cambridge with you, with my friends and big thanks.

It was a real pleasure talking to you.

Thank you and please thank Hayam for his help.

Yes, he’s next to me. I’ll share the podcast with you pretty soon.

I will not release the video until you had released the podcast.

Do you want me to release the video?

I can release the video today, as you wish.

It’s your call, my friend.

He’s a Muslim and he’s fasting.

Thank you very much.

He will do it, but once he opens his fast and everything, so I can’t push him on that.

No, I’m not pushing anyone. I’m just asking, do you want me to release the video before the podcast?

We can agree on a time because what happens is even if I do upload it tomorrow, it takes about a day to get approved.

So once you share the video with me, I’ll take the audio from it and let’s give ourselves 24 hours and we can upload it probably simultaneously.

So let me understand.

I will release the video, then I’ll provide you with a link or I’ll provide you with a file, then you will extract the audio and you will use it for the podcast.

He was saying share it with him first, he’ll get the audio, then we’ll release it together.

I’ll raise it together.

Okay. Then I will upload the file and let you know.

Yeah, you can upload it on Google and share me the.

No, I’ll send you with transfer.

I hope you’re happy one day because you look like a really nice guy.

I’m not a narcissist at all.

I am a nice guy. I’m a nice narcissist. I’m the only nice narcissist.

I think you’re a good guy.

I get good vibes.

Still, you’re honestly everything is so nice.

I enjoyed the conversation sitting next to you.

I’m not going to feel sad because I think you’re a good guy.

Well, okay. If you repeat it often enough, you may yet convince me.

Anyway, take care.

See you.

See you in Cambridge for sure.