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1. 00:00 No text the video you're about to watch is an excerpt from two long conversations I've
2. 00:07 had with Michael Shelonburgger in the video I say that in
3. 00:13 my view mental illnesses should be divided into groups the so-called mental illnesses
4. 00:20 with a biological neurological physiological uh basis these mental illnesses should
5. 00:27 be removed from the DSM and introduced into classical medical textbooks these are medical conditions with
6. 00:34 psychological or mental expressions and manifestations i also suggest that all
7. 00:40 the other so-called mental illnesses are not illnesses at all they are relational or they have to do with social expectations and mores they are more of
8. 00:51 they are more social problems than clinical entities they are also highly dependent on context changed in context and they either disappear or they become
9. 01:03 positive adaptations in other words mentally healthy reactions having said all that I also
10. 01:10 said that I consider Donald Trump and Elon Musk narcissists to be narcissist i consider them to be people with narcissistic personality disorder which is by current definitions a mental
11. 01:23 illness and then Michael in his own inimitable gracious and gentle way
12. 01:30 suggested that I may be contradicting myself on the one hand I say that these
13. 01:36 so-called mental illnesses are not illnesses at all on the other hand when it comes to Donald Trump and Elon Musk I
14. 01:43 am all too ready to apply the label of mentally ill to these two
15. 01:51 personalities what gives am I being hypocritical so I would like to
16. 01:59 disambiguate and explain myself a bit more and then you'll be able to watch
17. 02:05 the excerpt and make up your own mind most of what we call today mental
18. 02:12 illness as I said are actually re relational societal dysfunctions
19. 02:19 anomalies variances i suggest that there is a huge variance and variability in the human mind and
20. 02:26 that pathizing a part of this spectrum is not helpful unless it can be
21. 02:33 unambiguously and unequivocally reduced into a neurobiological biochemical or
22. 02:39 physiological condition in other words unless it is actually a medical problem
23. 02:46 but unfortunately we all have to use the vernaculars and the vocabularies we are
24. 02:52 given when I use this vernacular this vocabulary and when I say Trump and Musk
25. 02:58 are mentally ill what I actually mean to say is Trump and Musk are a danger to society
26. 03:06 they do not conform to the statistical mean or average when it comes to interpersonal relationships and social
27. 03:14 functioning and because of this nonconformity they hurt people they harm
28. 03:20 people they're dangerous in many ways that's all I'm trying to say so I
29. 03:26 conform I I follow the relational societal undertoe undertoe undercurrent
30. 03:34 in the diagnostic and statistical manual and to a large extent in the international classification of diseases
31. 03:41 i call it mentally ill because there's no other language there's no other way to say this neurode divergent is an
32. 03:49 idiotic word mind you and I've explained why I consider it a stupid word in another video so I'm not going to use
33. 03:55 this word all I'm left with is mentally ill realizing and understanding that
34. 04:02 most mental illnesses in the diagnostic and statistical manual actually are not medical clinical entities
35. 04:10 they represent failures or problems or anomalies or dysfunctions or deviance in
36. 04:20 social interactions and interpersonal relationships i'm forced to use the phrase mentally ill because in my discipline all alternative vocabularies have been roundly rejected see for the
37. 04:33 for example the much maligned work by Thomas Sans and by laying in both cases
38. 04:41 they proposed a new language they have been soundly rebuffed and excommunicated actually so we are left only with this highly inadequate and many times counterfactual um
39. 04:54 dictionary and so having said that we should be able to
40. 05:03 identify predators um psychopaths narcissists people who are harmful to themselves and to others and we should be able to protect ourselves against them and yes in my view and it has been
41. 05:19 my view since March 2016 when I was the first to propose that Donald Trump
42. 05:25 suffers from narcissistic personality disorder in an interview I gave to American Thinker a conservative website
43. 05:32 so it has always been my view and it is my view now that both Donald Trump and
44. 05:38 Elon Musk are dangerous people and the only words I have to
45. 05:44 express this is to say that they're both seriously sick and mentally
46. 05:50 ill i disagree with the pathizing
47. 05:56 of human behaviors human propensities and human traits which are on a basically infinite
48. 06:04 spectrum the same way I disagree with the pathizing of some sexual behaviors or sexual propensities predelections and
49. 06:11 preferences sexual orientations I disagree i don't think homosexuality should have ever been pathologized for
50. 06:18 example gender dysphoria also in my view is wrongly pathized
51. 06:25 but having said that we need to accept the arbitrary designation of mental illness when we come to describe it come to tackle come
52. 06:36 to attempt to understand someone like Donald a Donald Trump or an Elon Musk
53. 06:42 two people who are seriously
54. 06:48 abnormal if that's a more acceptable word they deviate from normality in ways
55. 06:55 which are seriously harmful and delterious and problematic not so much to themselves as
56. 07:03 to everyone around them those who are brainwashed and belong to their cults
57. 07:09 will come to regret it those who are not are already suffering and now on to our conversation
58. 07:18 regarding the current state of psychology and how very often it has
59. 07:24 been and is weaponized and welcome to public thank
60. 07:32 you happy to be in the in public finally great to be here my my readers will see an introduction to you but here's your your terrific book i think it's a can be safe to be said it's a classic in the
61. 07:44 field you're an expert on narcissism uh we've spoken before i'm eager to speak with you again because we're spending even more time uh looking at your ideas and ideas around
62. 07:55 psychopathology generally i thought we could start with a broader question um
63. 08:01 I'm very curious to hear your view of how you think about psychopathologies in
64. 08:08 general we tend to think at least in the popular discourse I'm not so sure about in the expert discourse we tend to think
65. 08:15 about different categories we talk about serious mental illness in which I believe we classify things like bipolar
66. 08:22 disorder and psych and schizophrenia there's also psychiatric disorders um
67. 08:28 and then there's personality disorders and I wonder do you is that how you divide up different
68. 08:35 psychopathologies um and I'm also curious to hear your view of those who argue that there's really just a single
69. 08:42 psychopathology that manifests differently in different people and how your own views may vary from uh those of
70. 08:50 the conventional views i'll start with the first of all thank you for for having me for the opportunity thanks for No text
71. 08:57 coming i'll start with the last part of the question um actually what people are claim some
72. 09:03 people some scholars are claiming is that there is a single personality disorder okay and that that single
73. 09:09 personality disorder is the only viable clinical entity and it manifests in a variety of ways with different emphasis on different trait domains and this is
74. 09:20 the philosophy that has been incorporated into the 11th edition of the international classification of
75. 09:26 diseases which is a diagnostic manual in use by 80% of humanity the diagnostic and statistical manual is actually in use only in North
76. 09:38 America and some parts of the United Kingdom less than 20% of humanity h so the dominant diagnostic manual does not recognize the separateness of alleged
77. 09:49 personality disorders but groups them all together under a single umbrella and
78. 09:55 what they do is a Lego approach in the ICD in the international classification there's a Lego approach there's a list
79. 10:03 of traits and when a patient comes when a patient attends therapy or in a clinical setting or whatever you just pick and choose the traits that apply to the patient you combine them into a highly idiosyncratic individualized
80. 10:19 profile which fits the patient like handing glove obviously all the problems imminent in
81. 10:27 inherent in the DSM are avoided this way we don't have coorbidities we don't have what we call the polythetic problem where you could end up having the same diagnosis as I do and yet we share only
82. 10:40 one one criterion in common because there's a list of nine criteria and you need to satisfy five of them you need to meet five of them and so I could have criteria number 1 2 3 4 5 and you would
83. 10:52 have five 6 7 8 nine we would both have the same diagnosis but the only thing in
84. 10:58 common we would have is criterion number five which is of course ridiculous all this is avoided with the ICD so this is
85. 11:05 the answer to the letter part of your question as to the first part there's always been a
86. 11:11 debate um whether the notion of mental illness is not merely some kind of an
87. 11:18 experiment in social control or social engineering whether it's real whether
88. 11:24 what we call mental illnesses are verifiable verit veritable clinical
89. 11:30 entities the same way cancer is or tuberculosis or whatever and the answer is is very
90. 11:38 compounded because clearly there's a group of mental illnesses which are biological or neurobiological in nature
91. 11:46 that this could be developmental biochemical whatever we can trace them back to the body and then this would
92. 11:53 include schizophrenia and and probably autism spectrum disorder we're beginning to believe that ADHD belongs there and
93. 12:01 so on so forth because they're traceable back to the body in my humble opinion they should be removed from the DSM they're actually medical conditions m
94. 12:12 these medical conditions manifest in in what used to be called psychological ways but these are medical conditions
95. 12:18 through and through we know for example this the psychotic disorders schizophrenia being among them these are
96. 12:27 utterly biochemically determined in in the brain so there is this group which
97. 12:33 is unequivocal and there there's not much debate about this group however the overwhelming vast majority of of other mental disorders
98. 12:44 and mental illnesses and mental issues and mental what have you they're highly debatable and they're highly debatable
99. 12:51 first and foremost because they reflect values and beliefs they are doxastic
100. 12:57 they're axiological they're not clinical they're not um monovent they're not so
101. 13:06 homosexuality used to be a mental illness until 1973 and now it's not um similarly in my
102. 13:15 opinion antisocial personality disorder has nothing to do with mental illness it's a preference it's a
103. 13:23 personal style it's a it's someone who does not respect the the rule of law
104. 13:30 someone who is defiant and reckless consider society to be comprised of weaklings and and exploitable opportunities someone who is not nice to be with you
105. 13:41 wouldn't want to get married with them or become a good friend with them but I don't see where the mental illness is here you
106. 13:47 know um there's a big debate about narcissistic personality disorder these people used to be called a-holes before
107. 13:54 the DSM came on board mhm also there and to generalize the problem these are
108. 14:01 relational disorders if you if you isolate a
109. 14:08 narcissist and there's a big question whether the diagnosis remains the a narcissist can be a narcissist only in relationship to other
110. 14:19 people otherwise the narcissism is not discernable not diagnosable the very language of the
111. 14:26 criteria including the alternative model in the DSM which is the
112. 14:32 latest innovation in diagnosing narcissistic personality disord all these criteria the entire text discusses the narcissist
113. 14:43 relationship or relatedness to other people incapacity to experience intimacy
114. 14:49 inability to empathize with people exploitiveness envy and so
115. 14:55 It's directional it's relational it's context dependent it's exactly like you would
116. 15:01 say well tuberculosis erupts only when you spend time in a
117. 15:07 cruise ship with middle middle class uh white males obviously it's not a clinical
118. 15:14 entity so there's a a problem here there are additional problems of course and
119. 15:21 um but I think this is the core issue the the fact that take away the context
120. 15:29 and the diagnosis disappears that's an extremely bad sign that we are dealing with cultural judgments we call it
121. 15:37 culture bound syndrome cultural judgments we're dealing with prejudices we're dealing with biases and and so on
122. 15:45 one could conceive of civilizations where narcissistic personality disorder would be a positive
123. 15:51 adaptation and a competitive edge or advantage what could one could
124. 15:57 definitely recall civilizations in the past where psychotic disorder was a was
125. 16:06 revered and venerated because these people were in direct contact with God they were emissaries they were prophets they were you know so psychotic disorder was considered to be a sign of elevation social elevation membership in some
126. 16:22 hallowed elite and and so so it's um whenever whenever we we discuss mental mental health behind all this there is the
127. 16:35 cartisian problem or older than the cartisian problem of body mind is there such a thing as mind that
128. 16:43 is utterly irreducible to the body and if there
129. 16:49 is these deviations when they are context dependent do they represent something
130. 16:56 that is invariable something that is objective something that is you know
131. 17:02 ontological or do they represent some flaws perhaps and biases in epistemic
132. 17:09 processes in the epistemology of the whole thing and we are very far from from having an answer to this do you have an opinion about that yourself
133. 17:20 No text i think the DSM when it is was first published in
134. 17:27 1952 had 109 pages today the DSM is
135. 17:33 1,168 pages i don't know of any other field which has experienced such explosive growth in the space of eight of 70 years it's a strong indication
136. 17:44 that something is seriously wrong with the profession with the discipline i believe that well over 90%
137. 17:52 of the things in the DSM should be completely removed they are not these are not illnesses these are not even disorders these are variations on a theme and the theme is the human soul or
138. 18:04 the human psyche or call it whatever you wish the human mind we we refuse to accept variability
139. 18:11 it was Eric from the famous psychoanalyst who said that we are using psychology and psychiatry to force
140. 18:19 people to conform to industrial expectations to become productive workers or productive consumers or whatever so this is a social scheme it's
141. 18:30 or scam it's about social control it's not so much about medicine or you know
142. 18:37 again with the exception of disorders or illnesses that can be directly traceable to the body and where intervention has
143. 18:46 immediate impact and so hallucinations for example you give thorosine the
144. 18:52 hallucinations disappear end of story so that's but these should not be as an incentive these are not mental illnesses
145. 18:58 these are medical conditions and and do you is that your view both of No text personality disorders and psychiatric disorders or just personality disorders listen the discipline is a
146. 19:10 pseudocience that's a problem psychology forget psychiatry psychiatry is glorified glorified
147. 19:19 prescriptions psychiatry is the glorified science of handing out prescriptions yeah so it's a branch of
148. 19:26 pharmacology in effect so forget psychiatry put it aside psychology es including clinical
149. 19:32 psychology perhaps especially clinical psychology because there's a lot to be said for developmental psychology and
150. 19:38 child psychology and so when it comes to clinical psychology it's a pseudocience and even worse it can never
151. 19:45 become a science for a variety of reasons let's start with the fact that your subject matter is very malleable
152. 19:52 and very mutable the very fact that you're conducting a study or an experiment on on a human being changes
153. 19:59 that person mhm and then when you try to replicate the study even using the same
154. 20:05 people they're not the same people anymore 24 hours have elapsed mhm they
155. 20:11 got divorced in the meantime they got laid i don't know they're changed people you know so there's a problem with the
156. 20:17 subject matter then there's a problem with the undergeneration of hypothesis because the field is highly
157. 20:25 non-rigorous and relies on on non-representative or self- selecting
158. 20:31 samples it is unable to come with testable hypothesis consequently we have the
159. 20:38 replication crisis 80% 80% of all studies and experiments in psychology cannot be replicated never
160. 20:49 mind what you do what kind of science is this this is the core problem these people they use
161. 20:56 statistics they think they are scientists i have a PhD in physics that's a science used to be even there
162. 21:03 the situation is deteriorating but used to be a science when when I when I studied physics that's a science
163. 21:09 using statistics doesn't make you a scientist wearing a white robe in a government funded laboratory doesn't
164. 21:16 make you a scientist make you makes you perhaps a scammer con artist but not a scientist there's no science there
165. 21:24 psychology is a branch of literature exactly like economics by the way which is a branch of
166. 21:30 psychology these so-called social sciences or these are pseudociences and
167. 21:37 what they're good at is descriptive they're very good at capturing um situations they're very good at leveraging language to somehow um
168. 21:49 capture the essence of some condition or some environment or some interaction or
169. 21:55 some people specific group of people and so on so yes there's value there's merit in psychology and not you know but it's
170. 22:03 not a science doki was a possibly the most preeminent psychologist ever
171. 22:10 so and Freud of course thought considered himself a neurologist and by the way a lawyer very few people know that he considered himself a neurologist
172. 22:21 but what he was what really was he was a great author and he wrote wonderful
173. 22:27 literature you know essays and stuff and flights of the imagination and all kinds of inventions and plagiarizing here
174. 22:35 there a few of his colleagues all of his colleagues actually so this was a guy
175. 22:41 similarly when we go today to the behavioral scientists and the experimental scientists
176. 22:48 and it's nonsense it wouldn't pass first year in
177. 22:54 physics so I'm disenchanted with this whole pretention to science that's a long way of answering your question sam what are the
178. 23:05 implications of what you're saying the implications are that we should stop No text pathologizing the wide spectrum the incredibly wide spectrum of human behavior human the human brain is by far
179. 23:20 the most complex entity we know of in the entire universe i have the benefit of being a
180. 23:28 astrophysicist on the one hand and a professor of psychology on the other so I can compare there definitely the brain
181. 23:36 is so hyper complex that it puts the universe to ridicule universe is nothing
182. 23:42 compared to the brain so inevitably the brain produces
183. 23:48 behaviors which are highly variable on a spectrum that is infinitely wide and
184. 23:54 cannot be reduced or captured or fully described ever period
185. 24:01 so when we are faced with this variability instead of instead of developing a sense of humility and
186. 24:09 modesty neuroscientists for example claim to fully understand the brain and discover specific genes that cause you
187. 24:15 to gamble pathologically or to lie or to sleep with your wife if you have one why
188. 24:21 if you don't have a wife there's another gene for that and so on and there's another brain synapse and another area
189. 24:27 of the brain that this is so immature it's the pursuit of celebrity at the
190. 24:33 sacrifice of integrity it's immature it's wrong it's
191. 24:40 so we need we need to to humbly accept the variability of human nature we need
192. 24:47 to stop pathologizing everything that does not conform to our middle class western
193. 24:55 male prejudices and biases it's called weirdo the weird the
194. 25:01 weird bias white you know um
195. 25:07 so and then we need to begin to think about some of these things positively from from the positive the advantages that they confer it's extremely unlikely that evolution would have given rise to
196. 25:25 um developments which would have been detrimental to our future and I'm
197. 25:32 talking about psychosis and so on these again are my malfunctions of a complex machine okay happens with your laptop
198. 25:39 let alone with your brain no I'm not talking about this i'm talking about variations of style variations of
199. 25:46 preferences variations of of um emotionality and so on rather than
200. 25:52 pathize them we should begin to ask ourself why did evolution give rise to them how can we leverage the advantages embedded in them advantages the
201. 26:03 rayi what was what was the intention of all this what was because uh we tend to
202. 26:11 uh we tend to anthropom anthropomorphos evolution we say that it's goal oriented what was the goal so
203. 26:18 to speak what did it what did evolution have in mind when it gave rise to narcissism or to psychopathy
204. 26:26 and indeed there are there's a growing um kind of trend in academ where scholars are beginning to ask themselves perhaps psychopathy is a positive
205. 26:39 adaptation in certain circumstances so for example leaders perhaps we have
206. 26:46 psychopathic leaders are better leaders psychopathic surgeons we know that psychopathic surgeons are better
207. 26:52 surgeons we know that there's an over representation of psychopaths among chief executive officers of of uh
208. 26:59 Fortune 500 companies that's a fact um so maybe it's some kind of
209. 27:05 positive adaptation depending on the circumstances of course we shouldn't let psychopath psychopaths run a muck and
210. 27:12 rampant in every situation in every context in every but maybe we can use
211. 27:18 them harness this energy harness this power similarly with narcissists um border lines and and so
212. 27:26 on so rather I think we should completely flip the flip the our
213. 27:32 viewpoint rather than focusing on pathologizing and by implication inferiorizing because you're mentally ill i'm superior to you i'm healthy you know rather than create this instant
214. 27:43 hierarchies of flawed human beings and allegedly perfect human beings you know which is a defense mechanism known as splitting it's an infantile defense mechanism i'm the therapist i'm the
215. 27:55 psychologist i'm perfect close to perfect i'm the standard you are the patient you're flawed you're deformed
216. 28:02 you're defective you're damaged i'm going to fix you there's a lot of pathology in the in the therapeutic
217. 28:08 process a lot and not all of it is on the side of the patient so we need to
218. 28:14 get rid of this paradigm this paradigm is relatively new when psychology has been conjured up
219. 28:22 and it has been conjured up in the late 19th century scholars such as W in
220. 28:29 Germany and uh James in the United States they didn't discuss pathology the
221. 28:35 focus was not on pathology the focus was on understanding the human mind attention memory and so on pathology was
222. 28:41 nowhere to be seen where path the concept of pathology emerged was
223. 28:47 essentially in France in Paris where there was a group of conmen con artists
224. 28:53 kidding you not who came up with this p with this concept of pathology
225. 28:59 established hospitals and made a fortune of this new
226. 29:05 notion completely novel notion this notion was so groundbreaking so mindshattering that people like Zeban Freud traveled all the way to Paris to study this perplexingly novel
227. 29:20 idea of pathology mental illness mental illness is a very new invention very
228. 29:26 new if you were to go back to the time of Jesus there were no mentally ill people there were people in touch with
229. 29:33 God obviously like Jesus himself but there were no mentally ill people there were
230. 29:40 people who were dysfunctional so their families were very protective of them even the family of Jesus wanted to kind
231. 29:46 of protect him from his own devices and misbehavior and so on but they didn't say you know he's crazy we're going to do there was no such no such idea or it
232. 29:58 all emerged in Paris and then of course Freud realized what it could do for his career he had a floundering career he was a coke addict he was at the very end
233. 30:10 he was hitting rock bottom and then he came across the idea of pathology i mean in in Paris he went
234. 30:17 there he met Shiao he met Jane he met all these guys and he came back to he returned to Vienna and he established
235. 30:24 psycho analysis and from that moment on we are stuck with the idea of mental illness from that moment on
236. 30:31 psychoanalysis has been discarded as a scam widely discarded as a scam
237. 30:37 definitely in in modern western academ is not taught and he's not Carl Sean um
238. 30:44 in his book the demon haunted world mention psychoanalysis is a prime example of a of a scam
239. 30:53 so but many of the ideas of psychoanalysis the seeds planted
240. 30:59 sprouted the unconscious for example or the very concept of pathology and that's
241. 31:06 how it all started i think we need to get rid of the whole field and to say these
242. 31:13 evidently clear clinical entities are medical conditions equivalent to cancer
243. 31:19 or whatever and all the rest is nonsense and should be deleted none of it is
244. 31:27 No text meaning the serious mental illnesses schizophrenia bipolar disorder depression you would keep biologically traceable mental illness mental illnesses that have a biological template and biological neurobiological engine these are real but they are
245. 31:44 medical conditions so they they should teach them in and the rest of so-called
246. 31:50 psychology we should begin to treat it as literature descriptive nice interesting fascinating and so on but
247. 31:57 not science psychiatry is just the psychiatry is just a pharmacology of the
248. 32:03 medical conditions that we used to call mental illnesses like psychosis like schizophrenia yes like like bipolar like
249. 32:11 so we need psychiatry because they know which medicines to give end of story No text sam you mentioned that the uh various personality disorders have positive
250. 32:23 benefits and you gave the example um of psychopathy and the leadership qualities
251. 32:30 of it can you describe the benefits of the other personality disorders you mentioned narcissism and borderline
252. 32:37 there are no It's a It's a fascinating question i'll explain to you why
253. 32:44 we tend to attribute we tend to attribute values so we say depression is
254. 32:50 bad like who would say depression is good finally one person would say depression is a great thing best things
255. 32:56 in sliced bread you know who would say that no one would say that everyone agrees it's bad that's not true that there's no bad and good this context and I'll give you an
256. 33:08 example where depression is actually a sign of mental health awitz if you were not depressed in Awitz
257. 33:16 you me you were mentally ill if you were you were happy golucky cheerful joyful
258. 33:22 smiling and laughing in Awitz you would admit that something was wrong with this kind of person depression was a healthy
259. 33:30 reaction in Awitz it denoted mental health mentally healthy people in Awitz
260. 33:38 were depressed so as you can see context matters dramatically same with these personality
261. 33:45 disorders they're not good or bad in essence there are no advantages or
262. 33:52 disadvantages which are inherent and which are emergent and which are context
263. 33:58 independent non-ontextualized that's not the case but in certain contexts these
264. 34:05 personality disorders constitute evolutionary advantages and positive adaptations i give an example of the psychopath a military a military leader
265. 34:16 it's an advantage to be a psychopath because you need to send people to their death and you need to sleep well at
266. 34:22 night after that and you need to have dinner and breakfast and so on and you've just killed killed actually you were an agent in the death of 600 people
267. 34:34 or 6,000 people or like Napoleon 60,000 people so psychopathy is very helpful when you're a military leader or a politician who is sending people to their death via military leaders same
268. 34:45 with a surgeon what surgeons do they cut people with knives that's what they do they take a
269. 34:52 knife and they cut you in most in most context you would
270. 34:58 end up in prison for doing this or worse but in the context of the operating room you are revered and
271. 35:06 venerated for your accomplishments as a surgeon so it helps to be a psychopath when you're a surgeon
272. 35:13 so that's an example of psychopathy in action in context in highly specific context similarly a narcissist for
273. 35:21 example narcissism would be very helpful when you are an entrepreneur and establishing a startup because to establish a startup you need to have a grandio vision of
274. 35:34 yourself so you need to have the vision thing bush the vision thing and you need
275. 35:40 to believe in yourself in a way which is delusional
276. 35:47 counterfactual otherwise you are a bad entrepreneur and your startup will flop and a prime example of course is Elon Musk I mean Elon Musk should have been No text
277. 35:58 bankrupt like nine times already and none of his companies should have succeeded in none of his endeavors and enterprises and initiatives yet he is an
278. 36:06 extreme extreme narcissist and that kept him alive and his companies floating and made him the richest men in the world
279. 36:12 possibly also one of the most influential ones all because of his narcissism people ask me is narcissism
280. 36:18 bad should they be treated I said vast majority of cases it's a good idea to somehow intervene and isolate the
281. 36:25 narcissist nearest and dearest from the most egregious outcomes of narcissism but imagine that I go to Donald Trump
282. 36:32 and I tell him don't you know we're on first name basis don't Listen um I I'm
283. 36:39 an authority on narcissism and I think you're a narcissist and you need help i'm going to help you free of charge you're the president would look good on my resume i'm going to help you free of charge he's going to ask me "Why do you
284. 36:49 think I need help i'm a multi-billionaire twice elected president i had all the most gorgeous
285. 36:55 women in the world i What why would I need help my narcissism was a positive
286. 37:02 adaptation." had he been able to say such a sentence yeah my narcissist is a positive adaptation it led me
287. 37:10 places it it it is my biography it's without my narcissism I probably
288. 37:16 wouldn't wouldn't be here mhm so it's context dependent similarly
289. 37:23 um let's take for example the paranoid paranoid personality disorder it's very good to be par paranoid when you are in a hostile environment
290. 37:34 environment that is out to get you to be a paranoid in such environment has a survival value and I can continue with each and everyone each and everyone borderline personality disorder which is
291. 37:46 yeah I was going to ask borderline yeah much it's considered to be the pits you know the critical
292. 37:53 feature in borderline personality disorder is what is known as emotional dysregulation it's when the borderline is overwhelmed by his or her emotions drowns in them is incapable of
293. 38:04 controlling them and they disable her or render her dysfunctional that's a key feature in borderline there are other
294. 38:11 features of course but that's a key feature let's focus on this
295. 38:17 one um emotional dysregulation is either
296. 38:23 reactive it reflects something that has happened in the environment in other words exogenous or
297. 38:29 indogenous it is reactive to something that's happening inside the borderline and it has the pronounced
298. 38:39 advantage of uh disambiguating situations whereas the vast majority of us are very we are very dishonest in
299. 38:50 communicating emotions for example you may be sitting there and thinking who is this why am I spending time with
300. 38:56 him and so on but you're extremely unlikely to communicate this we're extremely dishonest
301. 39:02 90% of human communication is is dishonest if not more the the borderline is very honest about her emotions because she can't
302. 39:13 help it so there is a a template of honest emotional
303. 39:19 communication she externalizes the emotions she can also externalize aggression whatever you say about
304. 39:25 borderline it's an honest disorder now in situations where honesty is at a
305. 39:32 premium or has survival value in these situations the borderline would have an
306. 39:38 advantage so for example I think that border lines would have an advantage in show
307. 39:44 business where the externalization of emotions and the ability to experience
308. 39:51 them in a direct unmitigated unmediated way would have a tremendous advantage
309. 39:58 and I think many actors and actually borderline actors um rock stars I mean
310. 40:05 many of these celebrities I think they're actually borderline I don't know diagnos but they appear the biography
311. 40:11 seems to be Amy Winehouse you know this type Mhm their border lines it comes it
312. 40:18 comes at a cost obviously at a personal cost but it's also an adaptation they wouldn't have become famous and creative and and indeed just to finish the answer I think for example famous psychologist suggested that creativity
313. 40:34 is intimately linked with what he called psychoticism so he linked creativity
314. 40:40 with mental illness which now is mainstream we do believe that mental a
315. 40:47 modiccom of what we call mental illness and I call variability a modiccom of mental illness is required for you to be
316. 40:56 creative so nothing is is bad or good nothing is advantageous and disadvantageous nothing is wrong and right nothing depends 100%
317. 41:07 1,000% on the context