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1. 00:00 Okay. So the first question is there are many
2. 00:06 uh individual I still I know they are not aware of this narcissist and psychopaths. Can you please give a clear
3. 00:13 distinction of these two things and what percentage of population are like that in the world?
4. 00:20 As far as we well first of all thank you for having me. As far as we know you my pleasure.
5. 00:26 Thank you. As far as we know, about 1.7% of the general population suffer from
6. 00:32 narcissistic personality disorder and about 1% of the general population are psychopaths, people with antisocial personality disorder and the extreme variance of antisocial personality disorder colloquially known as psychopathy.
7. 00:48 So these are small numbers. We are talking about a total of two 2 and a half% of the general population. And
8. 00:54 that means that you are very unlikely to have come across one.
9. 01:01 Despite what all the self-styled experts are saying online, so-called experts, yes, are saying online, pathological
10. 01:09 narcissism is extremely rare and psychopathy is even more rare.
11. 01:16 Uh the difference between the narcissist and the psychopath, the differences are numerous. First of all, the psychopath
12. 01:23 is not dependent on other people for the regulation of the psychopath’s psychology. So the the psychopath self-regulates very similar to a healthy person. Healthy people self-regulate. Whereas a narcissist relies on other
13. 01:40 people in order to regulate his emotions effects his cognitions
14. 01:46 um his sense of self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence. So the narcissist is essentially a type of codependent. He depends on other people for what we call external
15. 01:58 regulation whereas a psychopath doesn’t. Second difference is that the narcissist
16. 02:04 is focused on obtaining attention. Attention could be negative. Your attention could be positive. This is known as narcissistic supply. And the narcissist uses the attention to
17. 02:15 self-enhance. In other words, to butress, to support, to uphold a grandio, fantastic, unrealistic self-image, what we call self-concept.
18. 02:26 Whereas a psychopath doesn’t a psychopath doesn’t need to um doesn’t
19. 02:32 need any external input or feedback in order to regulate his or her sense of selfworth. For example,
20. 02:40 the uh the third difference is that whereas narcissists are exclusively focused on narcissistic supply on
21. 02:47 obtaining attention, securing ador adoration and adulation and attention and maybe being feared but in any case being noticed, being noted.
22. 02:59 The psychopath is goal oriented. The psychopath is wants is after sex. He wants money. He wants access. He wants power. Whereas the narcissist couldn’t care less about any of these things. The
23. 03:11 narcissist would like to have money because money brings attention. The
24. 03:17 narcissist would like to be in power because being in power brings attention. But the focus is on attention.
25. 03:25 And uh the last diff there are many others but the last important difference is that psychopaths are able to tell the
26. 03:31 difference between reality and fantasy. They have what we call reality testing,
27. 03:37 an intact reality testing. Whereas narcissists are incapable of telling the difference between their fantasies and delusions and reality. So they are a bit
28. 03:48 psychotic. They are they are delusional. They’re not no longer with us. They’re not grounded in reality. And that is
29. 03:56 definitely not the case with the psychopath. However, there are many commonalities between the two types. For example, both of them have what we call empathy, cognitive and reflexive
30. 04:07 empathy. The ability to decode and decipher other people and then take advant advantage of this information of
31. 04:15 these vulnerabil vulnerabilities and weaknesses of other people. So this is common to both of them. Both of them
32. 04:22 display what we what we call dissociity. It’s a trait. Both of them are a bit antisocial. The psychopath is defiant. The psychopath is consumacious. He rejects authority. The psychopath is reckless. Whereas the narcissist seems
33. 04:38 simply breaks the law from time to time. He’s is a bit of a is so self-centered that
34. 04:45 he doesn’t care much about society, social edicts, mores, conventions, norms, and so on. But these are these are both antisocial types.
35. 04:56 And um there’s also the question of aggression whereas a psychopath would tend to externalize aggression
36. 05:03 would like the psychopath would be ostentatiously and visibly aggressive verbally and very often physically
37. 05:10 the narcissist would tend to be aggressive. If he if the if it’s an
38. 05:16 overt narcissist, the overt narcissist would tend to be aggressive the same way the psychopath is. But the aggression in
39. 05:23 the case of narcissism would be laced with contempt. It would be contemptuous aggression. And the covert narcissists, the vulnerable narcissist as it is
40. 05:34 mistakenly called would is likely to be passive aggressive.
41. 05:40 So this is in a nutshell. These are the differences in the commonalities in a nutshell. So that means like look sounds like psychopaths are much more they’re the high school kids. Narcissists are like
42. 05:51 primary school kids basically. Yes, you’re very spectrum. You’re very right. Actually, I believe I
43. 05:59 think that psychopaths are much more mentally healthy than narcissists. Psychopaths are much more adults than narcissists. I think psychopathy is actually not a
44. 06:10 mental illness at all. I think it’s a societal problem. It’s someone whose
45. 06:16 lifestyle, whose choices, whose beliefs do not sit well with society, do not
46. 06:22 conform to societal expectations and mores and and law and the law and so on.
47. 06:28 It’s someone who who is a law unto himself, someone who is aggressive, someone but that’s that’s a personality
48. 06:35 style, that’s a character, that’s that’s not a mental illness, that’s not a personality disorder. I think this
49. 06:41 should be eliminated from the DSM. I think it’s a mistake. I don’t think it’s a mental illness. Whereas nar whereas
50. 06:47 narcissism is a severe mental illness. Otto Kenberg who is the father of the field still alive by the way. Otto
51. 06:55 Kenberg suggested that narcissistic personality disorders and borderline
52. 07:01 personality organization are basically one and the same to to a large extent and they’re both pre-sychotic or pseudoscychotic. They’re almost psychotic. So the narcissist cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. The narcissist cannot tell the
53. 07:17 difference between external objects, people out there and their representations in his mind. So he confuses internal objects with external objects which is exactly what the
54. 07:29 psychotic person does. So it’s a form of pseudocychosis is very serious. I would
55. 07:35 say that narcissistic disorders, including borderline personality disorder, are second only to
56. 07:41 schizophrenia. They are they’re almost as bad as schizophrenia. Whereas a psychopath
57. 07:47 is someone who is perfectly functional, someone who is who is mature, someone
58. 07:54 who has a coherent, cohesive self. Whereas a narcissist doesn’t have a self. Ironically, the narcissist is
59. 08:02 selfless because his ego, if you wish, his self has been disrupted. The formation of the
60. 08:09 self has been disrupted. The psychopath has a self. The psychopath functions well in society, is goal oriented,
61. 08:17 highly accomplished and high functioning. Most psychopaths, not all of them of course, but the majority of psychopath. And the psychopath simply couldn’t care less about morality.
62. 08:28 He has no conscience and no empathy is so it’s a it’s a social problem. The
63. 08:35 psychopath is a social problem very similar to the criminal. Now imagine that we were to say all criminals are
64. 08:41 mentally ill. Everyone would laugh. This is obviously a reasonable idiotic
65. 08:47 statement. It’s nonsense. Of course not all criminals are mentally ill. But when
66. 08:53 we say psychopaths are mentally ill, for some reason it’s accepted where I think
67. 09:00 psychopaths are low lowgrade criminals that simmering criminals on the verge of
68. 09:07 criminality most of them simply because they reject society as an arbiter or
69. 09:13 society as a regulator or society as a decision maker. They are lone wolves. They they don’t believe in integrating in in society and interacting with other
70. 09:24 people. They believe other people are instruments or at best collaborators and
71. 09:30 they don’t accept the exigencies and impositions of an external law. But all
72. 09:36 psychopaths have their own behavioral code and their own uh laws, internalized
73. 09:44 law. And all psychopaths would tell you um I have my own law. I obey it. I
74. 09:50 follow it. I I have my own conscience and I have my own form of justice, you know, which I impose on others and on
75. 09:56 myself. So I think we should make a clear distinction between psychopaths who are
76. 10:03 simply people who have rejected society and narcissists who are mentally ill. It’s a clear distinction here. Wow. Wow. Okay. It it basically sounded
77. 10:14 like you know they are highly highly disagreeable personality and very borderline to they can tweak into that criminality thing um easily these
78. 10:25 psychopaths but narcissists are more Oh wow. Okay. So is it by birth? I mean you
79. 10:32 mentioned about the societal thing for psychopaths but is it from birth or is it from some abuse during that um like a
80. 10:40 nent stage? Yes. Yes. How does it happen? The formative years. Yeah. Um psychopathy has a strong hereditary component. So we
81. 10:51 believe that the state of psychopathy which doesn’t have to be mental illness. It’s a behavioral state. Yeah. It’s a
82. 10:57 it’s a confluence a combination of traits and behaviors but it doesn’t
83. 11:03 amount to mental illness in my view. uh however these traits are hereditary
84. 11:09 and they bring on the behaviors. So we have for example in psychopathy we have antagonism.
85. 11:15 We have dissoci the rejection of society. We have these are all traits and they’re all hereditary. We have negative affectivity. These are all traits.
86. 11:26 So the these traits are hereditary and we we’re inclined to believe that psychopathy and borderline personality
87. 11:32 disorder which often segways into psychopathy these two seem to be genetically to some
88. 11:39 extent genetically determined. No one is quite sure what is the contribution of genetics. No one is quite sure.
89. 11:47 When it comes to narcissism, it’s a more complicated picture. Uh regrettably at this stage, we have no rigorous serious
90. 11:56 longitudinal randomized controlled studies that would demonstrate ineluctibly and and indisputably that there is a genetic
91. 12:07 component in narcissism. We don’t have such studies. However, it tends to reason that pathological narcissism is to some extent genetically
92. 12:18 determined because narcissism, borderline psychopathy, they
93. 12:25 are all members of the same family, a family known as cluster B personality disorders. So if two of the relatives
94. 12:36 psychopaths and border lines have a strong genetic component, it stands to reason that the third relative
95. 12:43 narcissism would have a strong genetic component. And we have some indications in twin studies that there is some
96. 12:50 genetic contribution in the case of narcissism. However, there’s no dispute that even if there is a genetic
97. 12:57 determinant, even even if there is a hereditary contribution or predisposition, there’s
98. 13:04 no debate that it does not express, it does not manifest
99. 13:10 unless there is also a specific childhood environment. In other words, we know for example that every human being on earth that includes
100. 13:21 the two of us have a trait called narcissism. All human beings, no exception. And we do know that this trait is hereditary. Narcissism is very healthy. Narcissism
101. 13:33 underlies our ability to regulate our self-concept, self-confidence, self-esteem, and sense of selfworth.
102. 13:41 Narcissism is critical in the internal regulatory system. So it’s very good and
103. 13:49 very healthy. It’s good. We all have narcissism and it’s definitely genetic and hereditary.
104. 13:55 But how does it become malignant? How does it become pathological? There at this stage there’s no dispute that it is a result of a specific environment,
105. 14:07 childhood environment. There’s no debate about this. There are a few fringe figures and outliers that claim
106. 14:13 otherwise, but that’s absolutely the majority of scholars agree.
107. 14:19 And so what is this environment? People think that the this environment must include classical forms of abuse like verbal abuse, psychological abuse, physical abuse. That is partly true.
108. 14:33 Whenever the child is not allowed to separate from the parent, whenever the
109. 14:39 child’s nesscent boundaries, emerging boundaries are denied. Whenever the
110. 14:45 child is penalized for expressing itself from becoming, whenever the child is not
111. 14:52 allowed to develop a self, an ego if you wish, call it whatever you want, a core
112. 14:59 identity, a kernel, whenever the child, in other words, is not allowed to separate, individuate,
113. 15:06 that’s the clinical term. This on rare occasions gives rise to
114. 15:12 pathological narcissism. As I said in response to your first question, it’s rare.
115. 15:20 But such childhood environment is a precondition for the emergence of pathological narcissism. Now what am I talking about? There are many ways to breach the child’s emerging boundaries.
116. 15:33 There are many ways to prevent the child from becoming a separate individual, separate entity. There are many ways. So
117. 15:40 one way of course is sexual abuse. You’re breaching the child’s bodily
118. 15:46 boundaries definitely. Another way is physical abuse. Same verbal abuse, psychological. These are the classical forms. But also if you pedestalize the
119. 15:58 child, if you idolize the child, if you tell the child that he can do no wrong,
120. 16:05 if in other words you’re preventing the child from interacting with reality, you’re preventing the friction with reality, which is the great teacher. Reality is a great teacher.
121. 16:16 So you’re preventing, you’re not allowing the child to mature, to grow up, to develop, to become an adult.
122. 16:24 That’s an example of abuse. If you instrumentalize the child, if you use the child for some goal or some some gratification,
123. 16:35 for example, if you as a parent use the child to realize your own unfulfilled
124. 16:41 dreams. You wanted to be a pianist or an actress and you failed and now your child will be the actress. Your child will be the
125. 16:52 pianist. You are a medical doctor. So your child will also be a medical doctor. When the child becomes an
126. 16:58 extension, an instrument, that’s abuse. When you parentify the child, when the
127. 17:05 child becomes your own mother or father, you are childish, you are selfish,
128. 17:11 you’re narcissistic, you’re self-centered, you are emotionally absent, you are depressed, and then the
129. 17:18 child becomes your caretaker, your caregiver. You know, the child is the parent. That’s parentification. That’s abuse. When you’re overprotective,
130. 17:30 you don’t allow the child to interact with other peers, to go out to the on the street and so on because you’re terrified. You’re insecure. That’s abuse. You’re not allowing the child to flourish and to become especially via interactions with peers. So there are
131. 17:46 many ways to abuse and traumatize the child. Many many. And all of them lead
132. 17:52 in 1.7% of the cases to the formation of a narcissist or the emergence of a
133. 17:58 narcissism. Now is this somehow genetically or hereditarily determined?
134. 18:04 What I’m saying is that even if there is a genetic component, it’s only a predisposition.
135. 18:10 It’s a template. It’s a fertile ground. But it takes an abusive,
136. 18:17 wrong, bad parenting to create a narcissist even when the
137. 18:23 predisposition exists. Jesus, you you change the understanding
138. 18:31 of the word abuse. My goodness. Okay. Now, so these narcissistic people, they
139. 18:38 will become, you know, teen and adolescence and all these things. So we will try to understand how they
140. 18:45 interacting with others and what their red flag you know how they can get it
141. 18:51 like okay something is not right. So first how do narcissist show up in teenage relationship like friendship
142. 18:58 dating even within the families for say they don’t we cannot diagnose
143. 19:04 pathological narcissism prior to age 21 and many scholars say that we cannot
144. 19:10 diagnose it prior to age 25. There has been there’s been a redefinition of what we call adolescence and now we regard people under the age
145. 19:21 of 21 to be adolescent. You have studies by twing Campbell many
146. 19:27 others which the viewers can go into if they want to learn to to learn more. But
147. 19:33 there are two periods in in human life in human development in the lifespan. There are two periods where
148. 19:41 overt grandio narcissism is healthy and recommended
149. 19:47 and that is early childhood between the ages of 18 and 36 months and teenage
150. 19:53 years adolescence. In other words, in these two periods in life, you need to be an overt, grandio,
151. 20:04 selfish, defiant, even consummacious narcissist, a bit antisocial. You need to be because
152. 20:12 it’s healthy. It’s healthy to be like that. And I will go a bit and elaborate
153. 20:18 a bit on this. As a child, you’re 18 months old. You’re 18 months old. You’re
154. 20:25 attached to mommy. Mommy’s mommy is the world. You know nothing but mommy. Mommy feeds you.
155. 20:33 Mommy shelters you. Mommy changes your diapers if you’re still in diapers. Mommy’s there for you. She provides what
156. 20:39 we call object constancy, a sense of sta safety and stability. This is known as a secure base function of motherhood.
157. 20:47 And so mommy is is it mommy’s universe. And then starting at age 18 months,
158. 20:55 you feel the urge to let go of mommy and begin to explore the world. Walk a few
159. 21:02 steps and run back to mommy. And then walk a few more steps, few additional
160. 21:08 steps and run back to mommy. This is known as separation. So
161. 21:15 to let go of mommy, you need to be seriously grandiose.
162. 21:21 Mhm. You need to feel that you have godlike powers,
163. 21:27 that you can take on the world without mommy. You need to be a narcissist
164. 21:35 to let go of mother when you are which is the only protection you have the only reality you have the only source of
165. 21:42 substance and subsistence the only guarantee for your continued survival
166. 21:49 to let go of this and to walk away and explore the world
167. 21:55 and discover other people you need to be fantastically grandio
168. 22:01 In other words, you need to be a narcissist. So, narcissism is very healthy at this
169. 22:07 stage, at this phase in human development because it allows you to explore the world, to discover the
170. 22:14 world. When you’re a teenager, you need to reject your parents. You need to reject your parents. You
171. 22:25 need to def to define yourself. You need to form opinions.
172. 22:33 You need to explore various identities including various sexual orientations
173. 22:39 and other types of identities and so on. And you’re doing all this on your own.
174. 22:45 You’re the sole judge and the sole arbiter and the sole decision maker
175. 22:51 throughout this process because you reject the authority of others. You reject the wisdom of others. Rejecting others is a critical part of healthy
176. 23:02 adolescence. Adolescence is about a second a second separation.
177. 23:08 Adolescence is a reenactment of separation individuation in early
178. 23:14 childhood. It’s a second it’s a replay. But in order to reject all other people,
179. 23:20 you’re rejecting your parents, you’re rejecting teachers, you’re rejecting the authorities, you’re rejecting sometimes
180. 23:26 your own your peers. In order to reject all these people and to convince yourself believe that you
181. 23:33 are the greatest possible authority on everything and you know there’s uh you can form opinions, you can make
182. 23:39 judgments, you can shape shift, you can mold yourself and sculpt yourself. You
183. 23:45 need to be seriously deluded and grandiose. Seriously.
184. 23:51 So being a narcissist when you are 2 years old and being a narcissist when you are
185. 23:58 15 years old is very good for you. It’s very healthy. It’s exactly what you need. That’s why we do not diagnose pathological narcissism in adolescence
186. 24:09 because path what is called pathological narcissism starts only in adulthood. If as an adult
187. 24:17 you are fixated at this stage. So Freud makes a distinction between
188. 24:23 primary narcissism which is essentially healthy and secondary narcissism.
189. 24:29 Secondary narcissism is when primary narcissism continues into adulthood.
190. 24:37 So you have an adolescent mindset as an adult. You refuse to grow up. You refuse to make commitments and investments. You feel entitled without any commenurate
191. 24:48 effort. You have a view of the world which is black and white. Splitting. It’s called a splitting defense. All these are purial. They’re immature. If
192. 24:59 this persists into adulthood, then and only then I can call you a
193. 25:05 narcissist. But only then. Wow.
194. 25:11 Okay. Now little older. Okay. And
195. 25:17 Okay. Sorry. So the early science teens, I’m not asking that question. I’m coming to the adult. Okay. So now they are into
196. 25:24 adulthood and the romantic which is a complicated one sector and another is
197. 25:30 professional relationship. Okay. How uh how they behave and how we distinguish
198. 25:38 as a normal human being between this strong confidence and this narcissistic behavior.
199. 25:45 First of all, narcissists make no distinction between romantic intimate relationships and um professional career
200. 25:56 interpersonal relationships. They don’t make any distinction because essentially they’re incapable of intimacy and love.
201. 26:02 They have no access to positive emotions. As far as they’re concerned, any interaction with another person is
202. 26:10 identical to any other interaction with any other person. So a colleague at work and your wife as a narcissist, you would interact with them identically. You
203. 26:21 would use the same scheme, the same template to interact with both of them. And this template is known as the shared fantasy. You would create a narrative.
204. 26:33 The narrative would be self aggrandising, self-enhancing. And you would expect people to fit into
205. 26:39 the narrative, to participate in it, and to affirm, to confirm that the
206. 26:45 narrative, the shared fantasy is not a fantasy, but is real, is a reality. And you would have this expectation from your wife, from your from your children, from your pastor or guru, from your work
207. 26:59 co-workers, from your boss, and from the government and institutions. Narcissists interact the same way with all others,
208. 27:06 other human beings. Also, because they cannot tell the difference between external objects and internal objects,
209. 27:14 they cannot they don’t experience the separateness and externality of other people. As far as they’re concerned, as far as narcissists are concerned, they’re interacting with a playground of
210. 27:27 internal objects. Each internal object represents a person, stands in for a
211. 27:33 person. It’s a placeholder or a snapshot as I call it in my work. Okay, so that’s a general introduction. What’s the difference between self-confidence and pathological narcissism or
212. 27:45 grandiosity more precisely? Grandiosity is a cognitive distortion. In other
213. 27:51 words, grandiosity is the inability to perceive reality appropriately.
214. 27:57 And when reality intrudes or presents itself, the reframing and rewriting of reality, the falsifying of reality. So this is grandiosity. It’s a filter kind of membrane through
215. 28:09 which a narcissist apprehends reality through a glass darkly.
216. 28:16 Self-confidence is grounded in reality. It’s one of the it’s a main indicator of
217. 28:23 mental health. If you have self-confidence and self and a robust sense of self-esteem, it’s usually
218. 28:30 grounded in reality. You know what you’re good at, you know your accomplishments, you own your
219. 28:36 accomplishments, and you’re proud of these things just justly so. So that’s the first
220. 28:43 distinction. Whereas pathological, narcissistic, ostentatious, in-your-face
221. 28:49 self-confidence and self-esteem is not grounded in reality. It’s an outcome of fantasy and consequently it’s very
222. 28:56 fragile, very brittle. Real self-confidence is grounded in reality. Number two, when you challenge when you challenge the narcissist, they react with rage and aggression,
223. 29:12 their self-confidence, ostentatious and conspicuous as it is, is very brittle.
224. 29:19 It’s very fragile. And so any threat to it is perceived as existential threat and they react with
225. 29:26 enormous aggression. A really self-confident person if you challenge them and they’re not narcissist. They’re just self-confident. They they’re not they’re not likely to
226. 29:37 react this way. They don’t react with rage and aggression and there is no hierarchy of there is no
227. 29:43 hierarchy of threats basically to them. It’s all same. Uh you mean narcissism?
228. 29:49 Yeah. two narcissists. There is no hierarchy of threads. They are all similar same.
229. 29:55 When I say when I use the word narcissist in the context of of this discussion, I’m referring exclusively to
230. 30:03 people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. However, there are many other people
231. 30:10 and these people have what we call a narcissistic style. Narcissistic style is when you are not
232. 30:18 so empathic, when you’re obnoxious, when you’re exploitative, when you’re a bit abusive and so on. So this is a style. And so we do distinguish between
233. 30:30 gradations of narcissism. We do make this distinction especially in the international classification of diseases
234. 30:37 which is the diagnostic manual which is used by 80% of humanity. So in the 11th
235. 30:43 edition of the ICD this diagnostic manual we make a distinction between three layers or
236. 30:50 three gradations of narcissism on a spectrum. However only people diagnosed
237. 30:56 with narcissistic personality disorder according to the DSM which is the other diagnostic manual only such people can
238. 31:04 be called narcissists. The others are jerks or a-holes or but
239. 31:10 they are not they are not narcissists. So this is a disamiguation of the
240. 31:16 clinical terms that I’m using. A a a narcissist
241. 31:22 a nar narcissism pathological narcissism is very defensive. It’s defensive because the fantasy, the
242. 31:32 core, the the self-concept is divorced from reality, is easily undermined and
243. 31:38 challenged because it’s nonsensical, it’s inane, it’s stupid. The narcissist
244. 31:44 is is protecting this narrative. And consequently, whenever you challenge
245. 31:50 the narrative, whenever you doubt it, whenever you question, even innocuously, you’re not hostile. You’re just asking
246. 31:56 something like take two people one of them two of them are clinical psychologist example okay two of them
247. 32:03 are clinical psychologist one of them is a narcissist and one of them is not
248. 32:09 okay both of them both of them are highly self-confident and then you ask uh where did you where
249. 32:17 do you teach where is your professorship the narcissist is likely to explode
250. 32:24 become enra raged and aggressive like what you are doubting me you are challenging me you are implying that I’m not a professor you are you know that would be the reaction of of the narcissist the other guy the clinical psychologist who is highly
251. 32:40 self-confident would tell you I’m teaching in the Commonwealth Institute in Cambridge United Kingdom he wouldn’t
252. 32:46 regard your question as some kind of uh wicked wicked suspicion or wicked
253. 32:52 doubting or attempt to undermine his status or whatever. So this reactance,
254. 32:58 this is called reactance. This reactivity is very indicative of of narcissism.
255. 33:05 Um and never appears with someone whose self-confidence is grounded and justified and so on. So so if you want
256. 33:12 cut a long story short, it’s already late to do that, but I’ll try to cut a long story short. If you want to
257. 33:18 ascertain whether someone is a narcissist or not, ask him a question. Ask him a question about the narrative, about the self-concept, about the fantasy or about the story that he’s
258. 33:30 telling about himself. And if he answers the question normally and you know he doesn’t regard it as any slight or any insult or then it’s it’s a
259. 33:42 healthy person. But if he explodes on you, he wants to bite your head off or whatever, that would be a narcissist. So
260. 33:50 this can happen in the on the first interaction or the second interaction or how long it takes
261. 33:56 or for okay and if the person like if I’m dealing with them and if I have I
262. 34:04 built emotional resilience within me for whatever reason will that help or still
263. 34:10 like they can manipulate and they can they can help for us. I mean for me there are two there are two typical reactions of people who are exposed to narcissist. But before I come to that I
264. 34:22 want to make clear what this exposure does. Studies in Harvard have shown that
265. 34:30 people are able to spot narcissists and react to them within 3 seconds.
266. 34:37 Other studies, many other studies, not one, have demonstrated that people
267. 34:43 identify narcissists correctly. Narcissist, people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. People identify them correctly based on
268. 34:54 a 30 secondond video or an email. People diagnose other people correctly
269. 35:03 as narcissist between 75 and 90% of the time based on
270. 35:10 a video whose length is 30 seconds. We have a very powerful reaction to
271. 35:17 narcissists as human beings. And this reaction even has a name. It’s the uncanny valley reaction.
272. 35:25 And it immediately creates an innate sense of discomfort.
273. 35:32 Something’s wrong. Something is off key. Something is halfbaked. And then people who are exposed to narcissist choose one of three
274. 35:43 solutions. Solution number one, they idealize the narcissist. They disconnect from the real narcissist and they create in their own minds
275. 35:56 a representation of the narcissist that is elevated, ideal, perfect, amazing,
276. 36:03 fascinating, incredible, unprecedented, unique, drop deadad gorgeous, um,
277. 36:09 brilliant, genius, whatever. They rewrite the narcissist. And from that moment on,
278. 36:15 they’re no longer interacting with the real narcissist. They’re interacting with a representation. These people are actually narcissistic themselves because this is what narcissists do. So this is
279. 36:26 one possible reaction. Second possible reaction, people become desensitized. Being exposed to the narcissist on a on a lengthy basis, long-term basis time and again
280. 36:42 uh creates desensitization. There’s a lot of resentment.
281. 36:48 There’s a lot of of disappointment. There’s a lot of pain and hurt.
282. 36:54 All this is true. But they detach. They disconnect from the narcissist. They’re no longer reactive to the narcissist. They go cold. They go gray. It’s called gray rock. They they simply freeze. It’s
283. 37:07 a kind of freeze reaction. They they they dean animate themselves. They die. They die internally and externally.
284. 37:14 So the narcissist has a mortifying effect on people. He kills them in effect mentally. So that’s the second
285. 37:21 solution. And the third solution which is by far the most common is when people
286. 37:27 become narcissist themselves. Attempting to counter the narcissist
287. 37:34 aggression, unmitigated abuse, constant haranging and harassing. And in
288. 37:41 an attempt to survive in this environment, they begin to adopt narcissistic behaviors and traits. So they become
289. 37:49 aggressive or counteraggressive. This is called reactive abuse. They they their empathy
290. 37:56 levels decline precipitously. They become less empathic. They become defiant. They so gradually they get infected. Narcissism is contagious. They get infected with the narcissism virus and
291. 38:14 they increasing increasingly come to resemble the narcissist more and more
292. 38:21 and they lose their core identity. They lose who they used to be and who they
293. 38:27 they were. And and this process is called in clinical terms estrangement. They become estranged from themselves. they become alienated and they feel and
294. 38:38 so these kind of victims would say I don’t know what came over me or that’s not me I’ve never done something like this before or I’m um I don’t know myself anymore you know this these
295. 38:50 sentences are indicative of the third solution the emulation and imitation and
296. 38:56 absorption of the narcissist the contagion of the narciss of narcissism the infection you’re infected the virus
297. 39:03 has entered your mind the narcissist takes over your mind literally. We are
298. 39:09 talking about literally taking over the mind. We have studies about starting about 12 years ago. There’s a a mechanism, a process known as entrainment.
299. 39:20 Entrainment is when you’re exposed to sounds which are repetitive. Uh music,
300. 39:27 mantras, abuse, verbal abuse. It’s usually repetitive. When you’re exposed to such sounds, your brain synchronizes
301. 39:36 with the brain of the abuser or the musician or so. Both brains begin to
302. 39:43 emit exactly the same frequencies and exactly the same ways and cannot be told apart using EG
303. 39:51 electronifography. So our brains synchronize physically the
304. 39:57 waves become identical when we are exposed to the same sounds which are
305. 40:04 structured harmonious and so on. So verbal abuse has this function and the narcissist entrains your brain and essentially what the narcissist does
306. 40:17 also does he installs in your brain an application. It’s like you’re a smartphone and the narcissist installs an app. This application is the narcissist’s
307. 40:28 voice. It’s an what we call an introject. The narcissist voice is in your head, inside your mind. And the narcissist introject, this voice of the narcissist is looking for other voices
308. 40:40 in your mind that might might collaborate with him. So for example, if
309. 40:46 you had a mother and this mother kept telling you, you’re ugly, you’re stupid, you’re a failure, you you’re
310. 40:52 disappointing me, you’re not a good son, or whatever, the narcissist would install install an introject in your
311. 40:59 mind. And this introject will collaborate with your mother’s introject. They will make a coalition.
312. 41:06 This process is known as clustering. They will make a cluster. And they will both now be telling you that you’re ugly and stupid and failure and disappointing. And so both of them they
313. 41:18 amplify each other. When the narcissist is gone from your life, you you were discarded or you abandoned
314. 41:29 the narcissist or the narcissist has died or whatever. The voice is still there. The introject is there and it is 100% active.
315. 41:40 You have been infested. It’s a parasite inside your mind. Everything I’m saying is based on neuroscience. This is not
316. 41:46 conspiracy theory or crazy things, you know. So, it’s there and you need to be
317. 41:53 deprogrammed as if you were a member of a cult. You know, when we we take out members of cults, we try to deprogram them. They’ve been programmed. The neuroplasticity of the brain is
318. 42:05 sometimes your friend. the ability of the brain to rewire itself, to rearrange
319. 42:11 itself, to rearrange the furniture if you wish. This is sometimes a friend when you recover from some life crisis. It’s your friend. But it’s sometimes an enemy because if someone leverages this neuroplasticity, they can rewrite and rewire your brain
320. 42:30 in a penicious, insidious, nefarious way. They can render your brain your own enemy, your enemy. And you need help with this. You need to rewrite your
321. 42:41 brain. And and and find yourself because you’re lost. There’s no no identity
322. 42:47 there. The narcissist narcissism is a very interesting phenomenon because the narcissist
323. 42:54 applies to you all his deficiencies. So for example the
324. 43:01 nar narcissism pathological narcissism is a failure in separation individuation. It’s when the individual
325. 43:07 has not been allowed to separate from the parental figures and therefore never became an individual.
326. 43:15 So the narcissist will not allow you to separate will not allow you to be an individual.
327. 43:21 Narcissism the narcissist doesn’t have a doesn’t have a functioning self.
328. 43:27 Instead, there is an emptiness. It’s clinical clinical what I’m saying. There is an emptiness. Actually, emptiness is one of the diagnostic criteria
329. 43:38 of borderline personality disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual. So there is a void, there is a black hole there where a functioning self should have been. We call this process identity diffusion or identity
330. 43:54 disturbance. There’s no identity, no core identity. So the narcissist takes away your identity.
331. 44:00 Mhm. The narcissist introduces his own absence into you.
332. 44:06 It’s it’s a cloning process. The narcissist is trying to clone you
333. 44:12 in his image because the narcissist is godlike in his own mind. The narcissist is a god. And exactly like God created
334. 44:20 men in his own image. At least in the Bible, the narcissist tries to recreate you in his own image by cloning you. Cloning in you is absence. Cloning in
335. 44:32 you his lack of separation and externality. Cloning in you is inability
336. 44:38 to tell external from internal. Cloning in you is fantasy. He wants you to
337. 44:44 become him, an extension of him. That’s why he converts you into an internal object because as an internal object he can manipulate you and control you and
338. 44:55 so on. When you are external when you have personal autonomy, independence, friends, family, when you
339. 45:03 make choices and decisions, you’re dangerous. You cannot be controlled. You cannot be manipulated. He needs to take
340. 45:10 all this away from you. He needs to isolate you. He needs to suppress you. He needs to deanimate you. he needs to
341. 45:16 kill you metaphorically. And this is the big difference between narcissistic abuse and all other forms of abuse. And that is why I coined the phrase
342. 45:27 narcissistic abuse in the 1980s because it’s not like all other forms of abuse. It’s about killing you literally. I mean metaphor. Yes. Wow. Oh my goodness. So, do they
343. 45:41 mellow down with age? Um there is a debate about this but the
344. 45:49 consensus is that they don’t. Um there are some traits for example antisocial
345. 45:55 behavior tends to ameilate with age in psychopaths as well beyond the age of 45
346. 46:02 most psychopaths are no longer psychopaths beyond the age of because they are no longer they no longer behave in antisocial criminal ways. They have learned their lessons. they they have a
347. 46:14 family they are you know they become more normal more similarly borderline personality disorder 81% of pe of people
348. 46:22 with borderline personality disorder can no longer be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder after age 35. So
349. 46:30 these disorders amilarate and disappear with age. There is a remission not a relapse
350. 46:39 narcissism. So the psychopathic elements in narcissism amilarate with mellow with
351. 46:47 age amilarate with age. Narcissist becomes less defined, less reckless, less consummatious, more pro-social,
352. 46:55 more pro-social, more communal and so on. So this yes this part yes the
353. 47:01 borderline elements in narcissism mellow with age, disappear with age. for example, emotional disregulation because they are also because they are also experiencing this hurt or whatever
354. 47:12 this problem. We are not sure why. We actually tend to believe that it has something to do with the brain that it is bio neurobiology
355. 47:20 not life experience. We believe that but we don’t know. We don’t know. Okay. However, the core of narcissism,
356. 47:26 for example, the inability to experience empathy, the lack of access to positive emotions, the impaired reality testing,
357. 47:34 the negative affectivity, the constant experiences of experience of negative emotions such as hatred, envy, rage, and
358. 47:41 so all these remain intact unto death. They do not change through the lifespan.
359. 47:49 So the narcissist is still exploitative, still to some extent obnoxious and abrasive, lacks empathy, uh is unable to tell the difference between reality and
360. 48:00 fantasy, is is grandiose, is entitled, demanding and so on. So all these
361. 48:07 survive into death and we cannot even modify them meaningfully in therapy. We can change
362. 48:14 behaviors in therapy. We can alter or modify the narcissist’s abrasive
363. 48:20 behaviors, for example, with with success, I would say, but we cannot touch the core. We cannot change the core. It’s there for life. And that’s why I insist that
364. 48:34 the narcissist is his narcissism or her narcissism. Narcissism is the narcissism. Take away the narcissism and nothing is left.
365. 48:45 By the way, half of all narcissists are women. I’m using the male gender pronouns because that is good Victorian literary convention and I’m into
366. 48:57 literature. I’m an author of fiction and po I’m a poet. So I’m using these conventions. But half of all women
367. 49:04 nowadays uh half of all narcissist I’m sorry uh are women.
368. 49:10 Okay. Wow. So I will um ask just one or two questions. you can finish in next five six minutes or whatever. Okay. All right. So what was the question? So um
369. 49:22 so psychological wound I’m not like I’m skipping few in few questions raised by
370. 49:29 no go ahead. Raised by parents I’m not asking you that what role Okay.
371. 49:36 So what role does selfawwareness play when we are dealing with this
372. 49:42 narcissistic in in in the society? Yeah, you mentioned some data like 30 seconds of video and all these things. How what
373. 49:50 are the steps we can take? I mean detaching them or distancing them is one but how we can put something in our head
374. 49:58 that okay this is something wrong or I have to take this step more organically more strongly.
375. 50:06 Your intuition is a great guide. Intuition is wrong 50% of the time when it comes to the world, to reality, to events, to objects, but intuition is
376. 50:17 right minimum 75% of the time, usually closer to 90% of the time when it comes
377. 50:23 to other people. So you should trust your intuition completely. Intuition, for example, is a
378. 50:29 far better guide than psychological evaluation. So when you come across someone you feel
379. 50:37 uncomfortable, you feel there are unanswered questions and even if you are uncomfortable about
380. 50:43 a single thing they’ve done, you’ve been you’ve been dating this person for 3 hours and they’ve done a single thing
381. 50:50 that you’re uncomfortable about. Trust your instincts. Walk away.
382. 50:56 That’s my first piece of advice. Second piece of advice, maintain your principles and boundaries and do not compromise. Never mind how lonely are you are, never mind how sex
383. 51:08 starved you are. Never mind how craving human company and companionship you are.
384. 51:14 Maintain your principles and boundaries and walk away the second someone attempts to breach them. So
385. 51:22 if you for example uh if one of your principles is that um
386. 51:28 you participate in the decision making as to which restaurant to go to and which film
387. 51:35 to see and your partner insists that he will decide which restaurant to go to or
388. 51:41 and which film to see. Walk away. Do not compromise your principle. Don’t say ah
389. 51:47 it’s okay it’s a minor issue. Why should I make a big deal about about it, you know, of it? You know, I’m lonely. I I
390. 51:54 haven’t dated for months or years and that’s my first opportunity. I should compromise. It’s, you know, human
391. 52:00 interaction is about compromise and concerns. Don’t do not. You have principles and boundaries that have developed and you developed for a good reason. Never give them up.
392. 52:14 The third uh piece of advice that I I would give is monitor the speed and the
393. 52:20 elacrity of the interaction. Healthy people interact with you slowly,
394. 52:26 incrementally, gradually. If it’s too fast, walk away.
395. 52:34 So the narcissist, for example, if you on you’re on a date, the narcissist would would offer to move in with you on
396. 52:41 a first date, offer to marry you on a second date, and you would be planning how many children to have with you on a third date. And that’s a very slow narcissism. It’s a slow narcissist. That is that is a strong indicator that something is very wrong. That’s not how
397. 52:57 people interact. If a narcissist tells you you’re his best friend after two meetings, if someone tells you you’re
398. 53:04 his best friend after two meeting, it’s a bad sign, that’s not how friendships are made. If a narcissist tells you, I
399. 53:11 love you after three meetings. It’s an incred. It’s a warning sign. It’s a red alert. People don’t love other people so fast and without a lot more knowledge, a
400. 53:23 lot more acquaintance, a lot more intimacy. Something’s wrong. Monitor the speed.
401. 53:30 Speed is a major tell when it comes to Nazis. They move too fast because it’s not real. As far as they’re concerned,
402. 53:36 it’s a video game. It’s an imitation. It’s a fantasy. They are they don’t
403. 53:42 perceive this as real. There’s no consequences. Whatever they are saying has no consequences. So, they make
404. 53:48 promises. The one of the major signs of Nazism is
405. 53:55 fantastic promises, you know, and if it’s true, too good to be true, it’s
406. 54:01 100% of the times not true. Common sense, intuition. You don’t need
407. 54:07 to read textbooks. You don’t need to listen to this interview or to experts or just follow follow your gut instinct
408. 54:14 and insist on who you are. Do not compromise your identity. Do not become
409. 54:20 someone else. Even minimally, even 0.1%. Do not become someone else. I’m not talking about compromising. Of course, you could compromise, you know. It’s not
410. 54:31 a question of but don’t compromise who you are. Don’t compromise your identity.
411. 54:38 Be you at all times. If anyone challenges this, wants you to be someone else, they’re not dating you. They’re
412. 54:45 not befriending you. They’re not working with you. They’re working with some image, some idealized version of you
413. 54:51 that has nothing to do with. When I mention speed, it also applies to idealization. If the Narcissist tells
414. 54:57 you that you’re the greatest genius since Albert Einstein, don’t fall for it. Don’t feel flattered.
415. 55:05 Don’t say wonderful. Don’t don’t get addicted to this. If if he tells you
416. 55:12 that you’re drop deadad gorgeous, that you are amazingly beautiful and you know that you’re not, you know, you’re a bit
417. 55:20 on the plump side. You don’t fall for it. Don’t fall for it. The speed and the
418. 55:27 unreality of it. Test reality all the time. All the time. Ask yourself, does
419. 55:34 this sound real? Could it be that I’m more of a genius than Albert Einstein? probably not. So,
420. 55:42 it’s unreal and it’s fast. How do you know that I’m a genius? We’ve spent 20 minutes together. You know, just common sense. You know, here’s the principle. Bring your grandmother with you to all your
421. 55:58 dates and meetings and so on and listen to what she has to say. Don’t not don’t don’t bring her physically. Sometimes she may be dead. Yeah. But bring her voice with you. Your grandmother is
422. 56:09 wise. Your grandmother is old. She’s seen everything. She’s witnessed everything. She knows. She knows best.
423. 56:16 Forget psychologists and psychiatrists and textbooks and YouTubetubes and take your grandmother with you. She will tell
424. 56:23 you. She will tell you this guy is not real. This guy’s fake. This guy is crazy. Lives in fantasy. This guy’s insane. Or this guy wants your money or just wants to have sex with you or whatever. So take your grandma with you. That’s my
425. 56:38 advice. Your inner grandma. Yeah. So we are on the last stage of it.
426. 56:45 And the last question, how Okay. Can people fully heal after
427. 56:53 this torture? Yes. Yes. The prognosis is excellent. And if you do some self work and then followed by therapy um the prognosis is almost 100% healing.
428. 57:07 Don’t confuse healing with memory. You need to remember the trauma. You need to remember the torture. You need to it’s part of who you are. It’s part of your history. And it’s the only way to learn
429. 57:19 and grow. So we’re not talking about erasing what had happened. We’re not talking about, you know, pretending it
430. 57:25 it had never happened. No, that’s not healing. That’s denial. It’s not healing. Healing means integrating your
431. 57:33 experiences, integrating your experiences. Owning them, embracing them, acknowledging them, and benefiting
432. 57:39 from them. So, on my channel, there is a on my YouTube channel there’s a playlist. It’s titled narcissistic
433. 57:46 abuse, healing, and recovery. There are well over 200 videos there. It’s free of charge. Just go there and start to watch
434. 57:53 the videos. Then look for a therapist whose expertise is toxic abusive
435. 57:59 relationships, recovering from them, healing and work with these kind of therapies.
436. 58:06 And your chances of emerging from this um intact, fully functional, back to your old self, the chances are very
437. 58:18 close to 100%. Um but you will always remember the bad
438. 58:26 times. You will always be in pain and hurting and so on because this is life. Life is
439. 58:33 about loss. Loss. Loss is the great teacher. The only teacher. As we grow up, we
440. 58:40 constantly lose. We lose our childhood. We lose our adolescence, our youth. We
441. 58:46 lose our mother. We lose our father. We lose friends. We lose jobs. We lose We lose. It’s about los losing. And we need
442. 58:54 to embrace these losses. They are our friends, you know. And what the narcissist has been, whatever else the
443. 59:00 narcissist may have been, abuser, torturer, horrible person and so on, he was a great teacher.
444. 59:07 The narcissist is a great teacher. He has taught you lot about yourself, about life, about
445. 59:15 avoiding similar situations and similar people in the future. And he made you grow up.
446. 59:21 He he he catalyzed the narcissist catalyzed the process of maturation. You became mature. You became wise. You acquired wisdom. Don’t give all this up.
447. 59:33 It comes with a price tag. Of course, it comes with a price tag. The pain, the bad memories, the hurt. But what in life
448. 59:41 does not come with a price tag? Everything has a cost.
449. 59:49 Excellent professor. Thank you very much for your time. It’s an honor and privilege to be you and to talk to you.
450. 59:56 Thank you. Thank you for having me. Go. Thank you. Nice. A nice morning there. Evening. Evening. I’m sorry. Nice evening there. Evening. Yeah. It’s like 9:00 at night. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry about that. A nice
451. 60:07 evening there. No, that’s Should I stop the recording? I stop the recording. Yes, I will stop the recording.