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1. 00:00 dr sam Vaknan Sam Vaknan on X also narcissistic/abuse.com this you can find out more of his research and writings uh Dr vankan is a physicist I believe an astrophysicist or cosmologist i'm not sure which we'll find out who went on into psychology and
2. 00:18 I was just telling him that some of the most interesting psychologists I know were physicists first so please welcome Dr sam Vakn thank you for having me great to be here so I want you first to tell people about your training and your arc from physics
3. 00:36 to psychology and how these things are linked in other words most people think about these disciplines as unrelated but uh I I see the links you tell me i think uh what I'm studying is complexity the universe is a complex machine if you wish machinery
4. 00:55 however the human mind is far more complex in the universe hence my transition from one simpler machine to a more complex one which is the human mind and um it was aided and abetted by the fact that I have been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder twice actually
5. 01:16 and it forced me to confront my own condition and the unsavory outcomes of this condition m I delved deep into the state of the art at the time in the in the late 80s i discovered there was no state and no art there was nothing there and so I I came up with a new language
6. 01:37 to describe my inner experience and the impact that I was having on people around me and this new language is now widely used it's mainstream and then I went into academ attempt to interact with colleagues and peers and be exposed to the latest
7. 01:54 thinking in the field and that's how how I ended up being a professor of psychology so I think my only relative advantage is the ability to look from the inside out and from the outside in which is denied to most of my colleagues and so that's what I bring to the table so to speak
8. 02:16 and and what do you consider to be one of the most efficacious sort of u management i I there's sort of different words we could use whether it's trying to help the narcissist resolve these issues or get in touch with affect or manage the condition or other people
9. 02:32 manage the condition if they're involved with it what do you feel is the most effective style it's a bleak gloomy prognosis what we can accomplish in in therapeutic settings um in clinical settings is behavior modification we can minimize amilarate and mitigate
10. 02:53 abrasive behaviors antisocial behaviors and to some extent we can nudge the narcissist to incentivize the narcissist to conform to socially accept acceptable mores and norms and conventions and expectations and so on so forth the impact is usually short-lived
11. 03:12 so there's a lot of maintenance to be done nothing fundamental can be accomplished unfortunately there have been a pair of recent studies published in uh July 2024 last year and one study claimed that narcissists tend to develop empathy as they age as they grow older mhm and the
12. 03:34 other study uh which was co-authored by some of the leading voices on narcissism Ron Stump Gunderson others this other study claimed that NPD can be cured regrettably both studies are dramatically flawed and I'm being charitable here which is not not common
13. 03:56 in my case dramatically not your style not with your condition not my style no absolutely not and and so let's let's back up a little bit uh and you're so we're talking about NPD narcissistic personality disorder but but there's a reality that narcissistic traits right there's a
14. 04:12 point at which you cross from traits into disorder and traits are more pertinent more interesting to the public because we all have them and they have predominated and become more severe I would argue across the 20th century can you talk about that a little bit
15. 04:30 yeah I think we should make a distin the first distinction we should make is between healthy narcissism and pathological narcissism healthy narcissism as the name implies is healthy it is the the cornerstone of self-confidence and self-esteem and a sense of selfworth and having a
16. 04:46 self-concept which is realistic and so this is healthy narcissism we all have it we all have a narcissism trait traits are hereditary they're genetically determined so we all have narcissism that we have inherited from our parents that has to be distinguished from what
17. 05:08 we call narcissistic style that's a phrase coin co coined by Lens Perry narcissistic style narcissistic style is someone who is a bit obnoxious exploitative not too big on empathy and so on so forth someone you wouldn't want to work with or collaborate with or get married
18. 05:27 to and but that's the style people with narcissistic style do not possess any diagnosible pathology they are what we call subclinical they cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder because certain clinical features of narcissistic
19. 05:46 personality disorder do not make an appearance in the narcissistic style for example someone with a narcissistic personality disorder is unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy unable to distinguish external um objects from internal objects in
20. 06:04 other words other people from the representation of these other people in the narcissist mind narcissists people with narcissistic personality disorder are fully embedded in fantasy they're divorced from reality they have what we call in an impaired reality testing none
21. 06:22 of these things applies apply to someone who is merely possessed of a narcissistic style so in a way there's a spectrum everyone has healthy narcissism then some people have a narcissistic style and some people are far gone they have developed
22. 06:41 the clinical features which regrettably are irreversible and cannot be kind of cured or healed or I I would argue in this country at least I'm aware that the I think pandemic of childhood trauma and certainly of cumulative adverse childhood experiences
23. 07:00 however you want to frame that uh has contributed to these traits in such a way that dysregulation and empathic failure in many circ circumstances have become the norm and that's been a lot even though it's not a personality disorder per se or not even related to
24. 07:17 the traits it's a two two things plus throw in some substances and now you really have problems um would you agree with that and then what does a society do that's comp that's constituted of these folks studies um from the 1980s onwards especially the latest studies by Twinger
25. 07:37 and Campbell and similar scholars have demonstrated conclusively that there is a rise in the incidence and prevalence of narcissism the the trait narcissistic style and even narcissistic personality disorder especially among young people young people being young people under
26. 07:56 the age of 25 later studies um extended this to the age of 35 so yes it seems that there is some kind of narcissism pandemic i'm saying pandemic because this is not limited to the United States there was a major scholar by the name of Theodoro Milan who suggested that
27. 08:15 pathological narcissism is an American disease he said can't find it anywhere else that's regrettably untrue you can definitely find it we've exported it like we do everything we've infected the world like we do with everything else but but that's a you know that's
28. 08:31 farfetched to think that but but let me but let me stop you i'm going to stop you and let me stop you and say okay so we're now getting into the the sweep of this and I want to get into your theories about the the sweep of personality across human history and I
29. 08:47 want to tell you a quick story that I think my listeners have heard unfortunately my wife has heard me say this a million times so I worked in a psychiatric hospital from the early 80s till 2010 and when I first arrived and I'm an internist I'm not a psychiatrist
30. 09:00 but I I was very interested in psychiatry i was a neurobiologist sort of by training and and um and so I paid attention i watched very carefully what was going on because I wanted to learn about all this and everybody had an admitting sheet that came in the
31. 09:12 hospital uh and the way they used to construct the mitting sheets was there was an axis one which is the acute psychiatric illness and then axis 2 which were the personality disorders and most people had at least trait or possible personality disorder and some
32. 09:26 had frank you know disorder diagnosed when I first got there in 1984 85 the the personality disorders were actually all over the place they were ABC the dependence there was obsessed compulsive all kinds of stuff and towards the end of the 80s I noticed that borderline
33. 09:44 particularly for the females predominated and they all came in I kid you not with at least 10 lawsuits under their belt everyone every single one and then I noticed that group started moving in they were usually very smart and they started moving into the legal system
34. 10:04 they became the lawyers and the judges and then the politicians i was like "Oh my god." Alongside of that the entire spectrum of personality disorders became completely stuck in cluster B which is sociopath narcissist and borderline and primarily those that
35. 10:23 had diagnosible disorders sociopath and borderline and I thought "Wow I think this is the childhood trauma clearly I'm seeing something." And that was it that was the end of it and hasn't changed since uh it's actually gotten worse uh so I've heard you say that really what
36. 10:39 was happening was the borderline style was taking over and and in a weird way sociopathy is sort of borderline for the male um speak to this tell me where I'm right where I'm wrong and I'm all ears well we use the term antisocial um so sociopaths and even psychopaths are
37. 10:59 not Yeah are not are not there's a huge debate as you know in the community yeah i don't want I don't want to parse those hairs out yeah that that's a whole another thing maybe one day we'll talk to have that conversation yeah um I I think the problem is with the DSM
38. 11:18 actually that I don't see in statistical menu it's an antiquated text much behind the cutting edge uh research mhm i'll give you an example i'll give you an example the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder in the in the latest iteration
39. 11:38 of the DSM5 the text revision in 2022 the text has been copied verbatim from the the DSM4 a text which was written in 1998 so that's the state-ofthe-art with the DSM that's why we are you aware of the history there Sam are you aware of the history they they they when they were
40. 11:59 developing the DSM5 they wanted to do away with access to and have it all centered around narcissism so and then they abandoned it and they just went back to the '90s all of a sudden it was weird yeah although there there are traces of this debate you have what we
41. 12:13 what we call the alternative model there's DSM you have the alternative model of narcissistic personality so but what I'm trying to say is that there's another book and that other book is called the International Classification of Diseases it's a diagnostic manual
42. 12:26 that is used by 80% of humanity actually the DSM is used only by 20% of humanity in the international classification of diseases there is no narcissistic personality disorder or for that matter any personality disorder there is a single diagnosis of personality disorder
43. 12:45 and what the what the ICD does it gives you as a clinician it gives you a list of traits and then it's like Lego bricks you know and then the ICD says pick and choose the traits which fit your client the presentation of a client best right and then each and every client each and
44. 13:02 every patient ends up with a highly idiosyncratic specific profile no two clients end up being diagnosed with the same thing and so if you combine for example dissociity which is antisocial behavior unencancia which is obsessivecompulsive features um negative effectivity
45. 13:22 the the ability to experience only negative emotions and antagonism if you combine these four what you end up getting is basically a narcissist narcissistic personality disorder but it's a much more flexible system and much less counterfactual much more
46. 13:37 attuned to reality because people people can be divided and classified categorically that's completely wrong any clinician would tell you that someone presents with narcissistic personality disorder and two days later there's a crisis and he becomes
47. 13:53 borderline and then 3 days later he's angry at you he becomes a psychopath and and so on so forth it's it's contextual yeah yeah i you're sort of moving back towards psychoanalysis frame for this but but be that as it may talk to me about the borderline trend because
48. 14:07 because that's I heard you talking to Shelonburgger about that and that's fascinates me because if that's true I I know of no other way to deal with borderline other than containment unless the borderline's highly motivated and wants to deal with you know their
49. 14:21 borderline stuff but uh what what is happening and what can we do about it is really my question I think So what's happening is we are collectivizing mental health disorders in other words we're transitioning from clinical entities diagnosis to
50. 14:40 organizing principles and hermeneutic explanatory principles we are organizing society and we're making sense of society and we're making sense of collectives and we're making sense of professions and we're making sense of events borrowing terms and and
51. 14:58 concepts from clinical psychology so today if you want to explain the behavior of a certain politician you're going to say well that's a narcissist if you want to make sense of certain certain trends I don't know the the war in Ukraine or whatever Middle East or
52. 15:13 whatever you would say well these leaders behave in a borderline manner they're disregulated emotionally and so on so forth so I think we are using mental health diagnosis to make sense of the world and to organize our reality in a way which would make sense but this
53. 15:29 also has an impact on individual behavior because the context and the narrative that governs your life what gives meaning to your life also dictates your behavior and also dictates how you experience yourself your inner experience so if the overriding narrative is
54. 15:50 borderline personality disorder you are likely to develop borderline behaviors and you're likely to experience yourself the way a typical borderline would and I think that's what we are doing we are we are developing a borderline narcissistic and to some extent psychopathic
55. 16:06 civilization and then individuals conform to these narratives and become these things there's a kind of um radiation if you wish ambient radiation and so the the how to deal with this problem is not individual problem is not with individuals it's not about containing
56. 16:30 individuals or even containing small collectives and so the problem is is we have to redefine the civilization we live in and regrettably it's very difficult to do because of technology we have created technologies that enhance and butress these features these
57. 16:53 pathological features in our civilization in our contemporary civilization so we you may well get rid of some civilizational artifacts but you will never get rid of the technology so it's the technologies that that's driving the pathologization the the of
58. 17:12 our civilization of our society and that is very difficult to dig into that to dig into that a little bit are you talking about the screens you're talking about the phone obviously and the fact that the there's a lack of actual human interaction through the or limited human
59. 17:29 interaction through the phone among other things these are the the well-known grievances when it comes to modern technologies but I think the problem is a bit more profound a bit deeper i think we are using technologies to signal these are most of our
60. 17:44 technologies have two two features or to and they're not bugs they're features number one to escape reality these are fantasyprone and fantasy based technologies they afford and they provide provide us with alternatives to reality it's a rejection of reality or
61. 18:01 what Hervey Cleley called a rejection of life and the second clinical feature is signaling so there are three types of signaling basically there is existence signaling like hey I'm here i need to be seen notice me pay attention to me and so on
62. 18:19 so this is existence signaling and this is social media for example there is virtue signaling and that sits well with victimhood movements and with grievances grievance-based discourse and so on so that's virtue signaling and you have invulnerability signaling i'm resilient
63. 18:39 i'm strong i'm superior i'm you know I I'm a winner i'm going to prevail and the technologies allow us to signal in these three ways and at the same time all this signaling is taking place in a totally fantastic symbolic space so we we we have completely divorced reality
64. 19:02 and our civilization is responsive to these technologies so what's happening is because we live in a fantastic symbolic space people with narcissism for example have an advantage because narcissism is a fantasy defense no one does nar does fantasy better than
65. 19:20 narcissists so they have an advantage in a fantasybased civilization similarly because a lot of this signaling has to do with victimhood and with emotional dysregulation and with aggression externalized aggression internalized aggression passive
66. 19:36 aggression and so on it caters to the typical structure of a borderline personality the borderline personality organization so it's a really vicious cycle technology caters to these needs to pathize civilization and civilization is becoming more pathologized the more
67. 19:55 these technologies prevail and become more widespread and you know I'm thinking of you you we started with a conversation about comp complex versus complicated systems and complex systems include things like how you know fireflies begin to flash
68. 20:14 together or how birds fly in these very coordinated flocks and things and I I think you're you're signaling that as what uh uh the the social media and the the technologies are able to deliver but I get what you're saying i'm persuaded what you're saying is is true once again
69. 20:34 though my my instinct and it's a bad one well let's let's you play it out for me h you said it's hard to change h how do we change it what what can be done if we can signal all this aggression and dysregulation virtue signaling it seems like we could signal other things as
70. 20:51 well that was my idea about radio back in the early '90s we could use it to do something good i'm sure there'll be unintended consequences but couldn't we somehow infiltrate it with something better there's an underlying assumption in what you're asking and it it raifies a kind
71. 21:09 of value judgment that narcissism and borderline are by definition bad or should should be dispensed with the depending on the context narcissism could be a positive adaptation and um you mentioned leadership and so on so perhaps if we do get to that we
72. 21:29 can discuss this but it could be a positive adaptation psychopathy as well yes borderline borderline as well look there's a reason there's a reason these conditions so-called I'm using a bad word but these constructs have been maintained through human genetic history
73. 21:45 they have adaptive advantages in certain circumstance but borderline is something kind of comes on in different situations and I I've I've had conversations long conversation with psychiatrists like why why that disorder and and what what what
74. 21:59 the only construct I've seen people come up with is they're sort of the canary in the coal mine they're super sensitive to things and alert the rest of us to stuff that could be dangerous but I don't know you you tell me well um certain features have been
75. 22:15 linked to creativity for example h Isen and others linked creativity to what they called psychoticism and neuroticism and so on so certain features in borderline are linked to creativity um borderline the emotional regulation dysregulation of border lines um could
76. 22:32 feed into um certain types of arts and and crafts and so on that's one example nothing nothing is bad or good in itself i I keep giving an example i agree i completely agree with that completely these are just these are just names these are just things that humans
77. 22:51 experience yes yeah i I keep giving the example if you if you were and excuse me for the perhaps politically politically incorrect example but if you were an inmate in Awitz and you were happy golucky and cheerful and joyful and you know something's
78. 23:06 wrong with you on the other hand if you develop depression in Awitz you were mentally healthy you died it's an appropriate healthy reaction hey and you're more likely to die if you're depressed that that's what uh blank author's name that's what he observed
79. 23:24 but it's it's a healthy reaction it's a it's an appropriate reaction to it's a realistic reaction yeah realistic i would even say appropriate it's appropriate to be depressed in these in these uh circumstances so nothing is bad or good in itself it depends on the
80. 23:38 context i think we are living in a civilization that is that is irreversible i don't believe it can be turned back and I think since this is the case we need to begin to adapt ourselves to narcissism to psychopathy and to borderline as features of our current civilization
81. 24:00 we need to accept this let me I I hear you and and I I don't think that's wrong in any sense again we're it's hard the language gets a little murky here using words like that but but but I I I think what I would like to look for is a way to optimize the reality
82. 24:18 right how how do we adapt and optimize this trend and and I guess that's why I keep focusing on borderline because excess borderline and predominance of borderline it it gets difficult to live with it's not an optimization so you tell me how we do that and then we're
83. 24:35 going to have to wrap up a little bit so go ahead finish up here everyone reacts to an an incentive system you can create an incentive system which would channel narcissism and render it productive you can create an incentive system for border lines for
84. 24:51 example border lines react to the twin anxieties abandonment and engulfment if you play with these two anxieties as as levers you can utterly regulate the borderline so we can use these twin anxieties we can construct environments where the penalty would be abandonment and the
85. 25:09 reward would be avoidance of engulfment for example and thereby get the best out of the borderline we can create an environment where the narcissist's grandiosity would be catered to his self-concept would be upheld and so on so forth and this energy would be
86. 25:25 channeled towards managing companies um I don't know running the world and and what have you yeah yeah there are energies fighter pilots yes there are energies there studies have shown that that the the prevalence of psychopaths among surgeons is much higher than the
87. 25:43 general population and among chief executive officers yeah so that's why I never thought I'd never think of these words as I never think of these terms as pjorative i I and and yet the there's there's an interesting phenomenon personally I have
88. 25:57 maybe you can give me a little insight into this is therapeutically when I was tasked with helping people with these predominant traits um I did very poorly with narcissist and very well with border lines and it's it's kind of interesting I never never understood why
89. 26:13 but you we we knew that you know with my team I put together everybody had their own strengths and weaknesses with different particular personality styles and whatnot some people even did better with the bipolar older patients whatever my thing was I could really help the
90. 26:25 border lines I could not help the narcissist what do you think that is that's absolutely the fact the prognosis for borderline is is much better than the prognosis for narcissists and the reason I think is that border lines possess empathy and they they possess
91. 26:40 access to positive emotions whereas narcissists don't border lines can tell can tell the difference between reality and fantasy which narcissists cannot border lines have a self-concept which is a bit grandio OS as well but is still geared towards external regulation
92. 26:57 towards obtaining regulation from the outside so it's more about ironically ironically it's about health maintaining a healthy so but it's help me if you help me if you can is their sort of position like like good luck and and then the the narcissist the only time I
93. 27:12 ever reach narcissist when I would is when I would tell them I had trouble with that style uh and they'd be shocked they'd be like what why would you have trouble with me i I I want help i what and and and they and years later they'd come back around it was very interesting
94. 27:27 but listen I I I could go all day i want to get into the weeds with you about psychopathy versus sociopathy and whatever all these different things that the people argue about and the dark triad and things and I hope we can get you back to talk about these things
95. 27:38 because you're I I I love that i love that physicist brain working on this stuff because you're not even though you have a subjective experience with all this you're not locked into that subjective experience and and that's uh very very interesting to me and uh we we
96. 27:54 have a tendency as humans to see everything anthropomorphically in some fashion or other i mean you know when we think about aliens coming in they always are shaped like us as opposed to who knows what you know just or just a bacterium that inserts itself into our animal
97. 28:10 cells and creates or burn plant cells and creates a mitochondria i I don't know uh we don't think about it that way but I I do appreciate your thinking uh it's been a privilege to talk to you i and I do hope you'll let me talk to you again where can people go to read more
98. 28:22 and learn more about your your ideas just Google the name it's uh it's an avalanche okay all right i will do so and uh I'll be uh uh deeper in your material when I get back next time so thank you so much Professor Vancen thank you thank you for having me son thank you you bet very
99. 28:40 interesting