Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video.

1. 00:00 mr vagnik uh personalities like Klein Koh Kernburgg they made research on the basics of narcissistic personal disorder but no one like you made research on the
2. 00:13 behaviors tactics damages hurts of narcissism
3. 00:19 is psychology psychotry aware what it means to get abused by a
4. 00:26 narcissist or by narcissism itself not really um in my view first of all
5. 00:33 please call me Sam it will make the interview more more concise um not really the emphasis in uh
6. 00:40 academic scholarship has always been and still is the psychonamics of the
7. 00:46 narcissist the internal processes psychological processes that lead to narcissistic behaviors but the the
8. 00:54 academic literature stops where the behaviors start so as long as they're able to elucidate the motivations the
9. 01:02 attitudes the conflicts the internal conflicts and dissonances the ideology
10. 01:08 the causation what caused the disorder as long as they are they have answers to these issues they are not particularly
11. 01:15 interested in the behaviors of the narcissist and there is this belief in the academic
12. 01:21 community that psychology should not be judgmental so if we were to study narcissistic
13. 01:27 behaviors we would instantaneously become judgmental because most narcissistic behaviors are antisocial
14. 01:35 most narcissistic behaviors are damaging and harming and psychology would rather not go there not go there
15. 01:44 so while we have a when and we have had for a long time quite a good understanding of what drives a narcissist what causes pathological narcissism how the narcissist perceives the world internal
16. 01:56 conflicts within the narcissist how the narcissist resolves these conflicts by for example falsifying reality resorting
17. 02:03 to fantasy cognitively distorting the world's grandiosity and so while we've understood all this I would say by the
18. 02:09 mid70s quite perfectly um By the be the end of the 80s when I
19. 02:16 started my work there was not a single a single piece of literature on what narcissists do to other people which forced me to coin a whole new language
20. 02:27 and to come up with the phrase narcissistic abuse to set it apart from other forms of abuse the truth is that all forms of of abuse are underststudied
21. 02:39 even domestic violence even classical abuse so if I have to think hard on domestic violence I can come with a
22. 02:46 single name London Bankroft it's these areas are no go areas because they are considered to be uh moral issues of philosophy not issues of psychology
23. 02:58 like if the narcissist is hurting people and harming people it's an ethical question and should be resolved by ethic
24. 03:04 means of ethics or some other branches of philosophy utilitarianism for example
25. 03:10 but not by applying psychology it's a little like saying
26. 03:16 um we know everything about cancer and what causes cancer and what's happening in the body during cancer and so on and
27. 03:22 so forth and but we are much less interested on on when impact on of
28. 03:29 cancer on the patient's loved ones the impact of the disease on the on the
29. 03:35 people around the patient the loved ones we are much less interested on the impact of cancer on work functioning in
30. 03:43 the workplace place so it's where medicine stops medicine stops with a cancer here's a medicine
31. 03:50 take it go home very few doctors medical doctors ask you how is your life how
32. 03:56 does your husband react to it how does your wife react to it how do your children how they're coping what's happening in your workplace are you anxious are you depressed that never happens in medicine same with academic
33. 04:09 psychology and that is why to finish this long answer that is why there is a big gap there is an abyss and I would even say to some extent hostility and animosity between clinicians and academics
34. 04:25 the clinicians have to cope when I say clinicians therapists psychology psychiatrists they have to cope day in
35. 04:31 and day out with the outcomes of pathological narcissism whereas the
36. 04:37 academics are interested in the disease so they don't talk there's no common commonality of language no commonality
37. 04:44 of goals no commonality of ethos and philosophy you know so the psychology
38. 04:50 broke apart big time and when we apply it for example to narcissism
39. 04:56 majority of clinicians would tell you that narcissists are vulnerable that they're broken that they are defensive
40. 05:03 that they are compensatory most clinicians would tell you this while if you talk to academics they would tell you that's not true narcissists are
41. 05:10 arrogant narcissists are overt they are grandios yeah well the reason we have these two images of narcissism is that these are different phases in
42. 05:21 the life cycle of the narcissist when the narcissist um when the narcissist is part part of
43. 05:27 an experiment or part of a study the narcissist is arrogant self- assured self-confident and and so on overt
44. 05:34 grandio and this is the picture that academics see but when the narcissist goes through a life crisis
45. 05:41 the narcissist becomes uh very vulnerable very broken and then narcissists are much more likely to
46. 05:47 attend therapy and this is the picture the clinicians see it is not true that there are two types of narcissists it's completely untrue which is what the literature is saying it's complete nonsense all narcissists are sometimes overt and sometimes covert sometimes
47. 06:04 grandio um I mean stontiously grandio and sometimes they're vulnerable sometimes fragile and sometimes resilient all narcissists have this each and every single narcissist and yet in
48. 06:15 big parts of the literature you would read that there are two mutually exclusive types of narcissists that the reason is the divorce between clinical
49. 06:23 practice and academic study which is a big problem in psychology on the other
50. 06:29 hand we have many self-studied experts who took over the field of healing who
51. 06:37 are these people what do they collect around them they collect sometimes groups around them they admire them and
52. 06:44 are they narcissists themselves 10 years after I started my work and initially
53. 06:50 for 10 years I've been the only one so 10 years after I started my work people began to realize that there's money to
54. 06:56 be done money to be made in in the field mainly because of YouTube i think the
55. 07:03 introduction of YouTube and monetizing of videos suddenly I woke up everyone to the possibility that if you talk about narcissism you can also make money so
56. 07:15 uh 10 years after I started my work more or less in 2007206 there was an influx of people who came
57. 07:22 to the field and they're broadly divided in two groups people who claim to have been victimized by narcissists
58. 07:29 and people with academic degrees in psychology who claim to be experts on narcissism
59. 07:35 the people with academic degrees have zero credentials in the field of narcissism i'm I'm with maybe one or two
60. 07:42 exceptions all these people have never written anything never published anything never participated in a single international conference they are not qualified to discuss
61. 07:53 narcissism a PhD in psychology doesn't mean that you're expert on narcissism for example I am not an expert on
62. 07:59 schizophrenia so and I'm a professor of psychology but I would not dare to
63. 08:05 discuss what's on my field you know and yet these people do because of money so they monetize everything they create seminars and courses and consultations and so on they make a lot of money uh
64. 08:17 the other group the self-styled victims so they are self-styled experts and self-styled victims these are people who
65. 08:23 have decided uh that they are fully qualified to diagnose diagnose other people so they've diagnosed their husbands and their wives and their neighbors and their mothers and their fathers and everyone and his dog diagnosed everyone
66. 08:36 then say okay you see um she or he is a narcissist that makes me a victim but
67. 08:42 the no one questions the foundation how do you know that they're narcissist you claim to be a victim but how do you know the person who has allegedly victimized you is a narcissist and not just a
68. 08:54 classic abuser who is not a narcissist so the field is highly corrupted and and contaminated with money but not only money victimhood is an identity and
69. 09:06 victimhood gives the victims power empowers the victims because victimhood confers rights and rights confer obligations of other people additionally
70. 09:17 victimhood is an identity makes your life meaningful imbuss your
71. 09:23 life with sense it has explanatory power it can explain what has happened to you explain your biography and so on
72. 09:30 victimhood is also a way forward it's goal oriented in the sense that you have to maintain your victimhood there's
73. 09:36 something we call competitive victimhood you have to compete with other victims in a hierarchy of victimhood you have to
74. 09:43 virtue signal you have to send all the time signals i'm a victim i'm a I'm a No one has ever been victimized the way I have been victimized and finally victimhood is proof that you are an
75. 09:54 angel because you've been victimized precisely because you are unusually
76. 10:01 empathic extremely nice and kind compassionate caring and so on so forth so it is self aggrandizing the
77. 10:08 victimhood online is self aggrandizing and we see it in the movement of empaths and super empaths and galactic empaths
78. 10:15 and supernova empaths i'm kidding you not these are real phrases you know so these people who are in all
79. 10:22 probability covert narcissists in all probability they've found a way to
80. 10:28 aggrandise themselves to obtain narcissistic supply by pretending or actually believing selfdeceiving into the belief that they are victims so we have two groups we have charlatans corn artists dilitans and other seriously
81. 10:46 unscrupulous immoral people most of them with academic degrees who are taking
82. 10:52 advantage of vulnerable people and making money off them and we have another group of self-d deluded people
83. 11:00 or even manipulative people who claim to be victims and by virtue of having been victimized by a single narcissist it
84. 11:08 makes them an expert on narcissism and now they can heal other people and and so this is the picture academia doesn't want anything to do with any of this
85. 11:19 that's why not a single expert on narcissism true expert is online you
86. 11:26 cannot find Keith Campbell you cannot find Jean Twangi you cannot find Otto Kernburgg you cannot find Not one of
87. 11:32 them has a YouTube channel they don't want anything to do with the online scene it's totally contaminated
88. 11:38 adulterated and I'm a bit angry at my colleagues because I think they have a moral social
89. 11:45 moral obligation to educate people it's what they're paid to do and yeah it's very nice to educate in a conference in a in a lecture hall where you have captive audience that cannot actually
90. 11:56 challenge you and so on but the real education is out in the field with sweat
91. 12:02 and blood and soil you know that's where the real education you need to go out there the way I'm doing and you need to
92. 12:08 subject yourself to criticism and worse you you need to be ready to absorb this this is your obligation as educator yet
93. 12:16 not one of them is doing this okay assuming me as a victimized where can I go the psychology psychotry doesn't isn't aware of my abuse
94. 12:29 and the selfize experts are not educated and only want my money so I'm alone
95. 12:36 depends if you insist on labeling your suffering if you insist to say my suffering
96. 12:42 belongs to this particular class the class is narcissistic abuse then you're
97. 12:48 trapped because then the first stage would be to prove to yourself that you've been abused by a narcissist and
98. 12:54 then you would have to go to online charlatans or former alleged victims and
99. 13:01 then you are really trapped and you will be taken advantage of you they will take all your money they will perpetuate your
100. 13:07 suffering they will imbue you with a victimhood mentality and identity because that means you keep go making
101. 13:14 money for them you know and so on that is only if you insist to diagnose to
102. 13:20 diagnose the people who have abused you but if you say "Listen I don't care what
103. 13:26 my abuser is i don't care if he's a narcissist or a psychopath or who cares i care about the way I have felt i have felt bad i have felt tortured i have
104. 13:37 felt ego egoistonic i It was a horrible nightmarish surrealistic experience and
105. 13:44 now I need help in decoding this experience and emerging from it in
106. 13:50 exiting and then recovery and healing this most therapists can do so therapists are not qualifi most therapists are not qualified to diagnose narcissism and they know very little
107. 14:02 about narcissism i agree with this premise i agree of course most therapists never even heard of narcissistic abuse um so I agree with all this but on the other hand I'm also
108. 14:14 saying that it's irrelevant because if you go to a therapist and you say "When I am with my partner I feel
109. 14:22 that he's controlling me or manipulating me." 90% of therapists know what to do even if they've never heard of narcissism you said a very interesting uh sentence in one of your lectures no healthy per person deals with a narcissist that
110. 14:39 means most of the people who are bearing the narcissistic abuse are broken
111. 14:45 themselves uh have some kind of trauma u it's hard to face this what you said
112. 14:53 that no real mental healthy person is dealing with a narcissist what do you mean with that i think I would I would exchange the word healthy for functional no fully functional person um and I
113. 15:06 didn't mean that healthy people or functional people cannot fall prey to the narcissist the narcissists are very good at leveraging uh weaknesses and everyone has weaknesses pushing buttons
114. 15:17 penetrating defenses identifying your vulnerabilities they're very good at this they have cold empathy cognitive
115. 15:23 and reflexive empathy which they use so healthy people definitely fall victim fall prey to narcissists and so on but the difference between healthy and unhealthy people is that healthy people
116. 15:34 realize it very fast and walk away so they are they're victimized for 3 months or 3 weeks or 3 days and they walk away
117. 15:42 whereas unhealthy people or people who are less functional dysfunctional they tend to stay and they tend to stay for a
118. 15:50 variety of reasons um and I don't know if you want me to go to these reasons so the first the first the first uh reason why dysfunctional you can say broken you can say damaged these are value judgments but dysfunctional people
119. 16:08 stay in relationships is because of the resonance they resonate with the narcissist the ideological background in
120. 16:16 other words the background of causation the the the personal biography is identical between narcissists and their victims both narcissists and victims
121. 16:27 come from dysfunctional households from families who failed to provide
122. 16:33 appropriate good parenting so they both come from the same tribe
123. 16:39 they both belong to the same tribe narcissism is a post-traumatic condition
124. 16:45 so narcissists are able to resonate with the victim in a way that no one else can
125. 16:53 and the victim feels immediately understood accepted maybe for the first time in her
126. 16:59 life she feels totally penetrated in the emotional and intellectual sense
127. 17:06 as if there is a merger or a fusion as if they're becoming one that's why you have phenomena like twin flames and soulmates and other such nonsense online it reflects the fact that the minute the narcissist sees the victim and the victim sees the narcissist there is an
128. 17:23 electric electric charge that passes between them there's some kind kind of instant binding and bonding some
129. 17:30 ethereal superglue that puts them together and that is their identical background so that's the first reason this resonance the second reason is the narcissist is
130. 17:42 able to efficaciously cater to the psychological needs of victims
131. 17:50 most most victims of narcissists have never experienced unconditional love parental unconditional love for example and the narcissist provides them with a simulation or simulacum of unconditional
132. 18:04 parental love most victims have never experienced self-love they're very
133. 18:10 self-critical self-rejection rejecting self-hating self-loathing even and here
134. 18:16 comes the narcissist he idealizes the victim and the victim is finally able to fall in love with herself finally able
135. 18:24 to experience selflove because now all her imperfections have been removed by
136. 18:30 the narcissist and what's left is ideal it's of course a replay or reenactment
137. 18:36 or recreation of the original dynamic between mothers and newborns where the mother idealizes the newborn in order to be able to provide sakur and and
138. 18:47 sustenance and because raising raising a child is sucks it's a really really
139. 18:54 horrible thing absolutely horrible experience and in to be able to do that the mother idealizes the baby so the narcissist idealizes the victim or the
140. 19:05 partner the way a mother would idealize the baby and for the first time the
141. 19:11 victim feels loved and unconditionally loved by the narcissist and self-loved
142. 19:18 she is able to love herself the third element is that the narcissist
143. 19:26 strikes a fustian deal with the victim we can say victim we can say partner we
144. 19:32 can say the Nazis strikes a Fostian deal which is very similar to the deal which dictators strike with their nations with
145. 19:41 their followers and the deal is this um I'm going to be I'm going to be a stable
146. 19:47 presence in your life i'm going to be a rock going to be there but in exchange for my presence in exchange for my unconditional love in
147. 19:59 exchange for everything I'm giving you you have to suspend your judgment you
148. 20:05 have to divorce reality you have to isolate yourself socially from family and friends and you have to become 100%
149. 20:13 dependent on me in an addictive way you have to become addicted to me that's the Fostian deal and it applies to dictators as well what a dictator does dictator
150. 20:24 says you don't have to take responsibility for anything anymore everything would be my responsibility you don't have to make decisions i will make all the decisions you will never be held accountable
151. 20:35 pass all this on transfer all this to me so you could live a life that is
152. 20:43 anxietyfree that is S sa said that anxiety angst is
153. 20:49 created because of the fact that we have to make choices what the dictator does it takes away your your capacity or even need to make choices he is making the choices for you same with the narcissist
154. 21:02 the narcissist says uh forget your anxiety forget your depression forget all you don't need
155. 21:08 anymore to worry never worry again i'm here and I'm where the buck stops and
156. 21:14 I'm the last destination and I will make all the decisions for you that is a an
157. 21:20 irresistible addictive proposition very few people can can refuse and so
158. 21:27 gradually the victim finds himself embedded and immersed in a fantastic space which is utterly has nothing to do
159. 21:34 with reality isolated so unable to reach out to other people to for example regain reality
160. 21:41 testing or simply suck and support so she her dependency on the narcissist is total and in many many cases this dependency
161. 21:54 feels good one I think of the common myths online is that a relationship with
162. 22:00 a narcissist feels bad but the people online who are complaining the victim the real victims the self-style victims all of these people have felt bad in the relationship
163. 22:11 but they are not a representative sample they are what we call self- selecting sample only people who feel bad go
164. 22:19 online you don't have people who feel good with the narcissist go online they don't go online and so consequently we have no idea maybe the vast majority of people actually feel very good with the narcissist and only a tiny minority feel bad and they're the ones who are going
165. 22:35 online they're the ones who are visible we don't know we don't have statistics um the narcissist also provides you with
166. 22:47 what I would call heightened heightened uh existence when you're with the narcissist everything is intense
167. 22:54 um in many cases everything is dramatic it's it's colorful there's color in
168. 23:02 relationships with non-narcissist everything is black and white or gray everything is predictable everything is
169. 23:09 while with the narcissist you never know you become addicted to dopamine addicted to you have you become you're on a
170. 23:16 constant high there's a rush this is a form of addicting you to to the process
171. 23:23 so the narcissist provides this in the case of the borderline for example the borderline needs drama uh drama is a major regulatory function
172. 23:34 borderline uses drama to regulate her internal environment so she needs drama and the narcissist is a great source of
173. 23:40 drama um at the same time the borderline needs stability and and uh external
174. 23:47 regulation the ability to regulate her moods and emotions from the outside the narcissist provides this the the borderline um is very averse to routine
175. 24:01 and the narcissist is never routine he's always surprising is always shocking is always so there's the the match is is
176. 24:09 perfect between certain types of personalities and and and the narcissist and finally and there are many more reasons to be with a narcissist but finally
177. 24:20 if you have the tendency to harm yourself if you're selfharming if you're self-rejecting self-loathing
178. 24:27 self-destructive self-defeating and then narciss the narcissist is the instrument
179. 24:33 of your downfall it's exactly like a borderline would cut herself with a razor the narcissist
180. 24:41 victim cuts herself with the narcissist the narcissist becomes her knife her
181. 24:47 cigarette it's a She uses the narcissist to harm herself to destroy herself to
182. 24:53 defeat herself to so the narcissist I would say is like a Swiss knife like a
183. 25:00 Swiss knife you have everything you need is there you just have to open it and whatever your needs are are fully met so
184. 25:08 this attracts people with borderline personality disorder people with dependent personality disorder also known as codependence this attracts people pleasers it
185. 25:19 attracts uh people who have come from a familial environment where they've never
186. 25:26 received love unconditional love and they don't have to be mentally ill but they there is this deficiency uh people with what Rosenberg calls
187. 25:38 self-love deficit all these kinds of people would gravitate towards the narcissist however the the common myth
188. 25:44 is that the narcissist selects them chooses them that is completely untrue
189. 25:52 it is true that specific types of people are attracted to the narcissist it is
190. 25:58 not true that the narcissist is attracted to specific types of people completely untrue because narcissists don't see other people as external and
191. 26:09 separate and consequently they focus on what they can get from people so it
192. 26:15 could be sex or services or supply narcissistic supply sadistic supply or
193. 26:21 stability presence in the narcissist's life to reduce abandonment anxiety so
194. 26:27 but the narcissist is focused on what's in it for me what can I get from that individual and that is the focus and then the the individual could be anything could be empathic not empathic
195. 26:37 codependent borderline psychopath another narcissist narcissist couldn't care less and and so on yesterday I told
196. 26:46 you meet you you tell me that I said it I don't remember but I believe you fully
197. 26:52 yeah I know I should say but you say that I said and I don't remember saying it but I believe carefully and then I asked myself why why would I why would I say
198. 27:03 that and it occurred to me that it is a perfect metaphor for the narcissist internal world you know because common
199. 27:12 mia means that I recognize your externality it's uh no I'm serious
200. 27:18 understand you yes it's the dative dative so I recognize your externality whereas if I say common
201. 27:25 it's as if it's about me it's it's kind of accusative It's internalized yes it's
202. 27:32 I think it's a great metaphor for exactly the way narcissists see people you know and um it's interesting that I
203. 27:39 said it because uh probably it reflected an attitude where you are uh I am the
204. 27:47 the center i am the topic of any action that you can make it's I am the the
205. 27:53 action is happening inside me not outside me so it's I I found it an
206. 27:59 interesting metaphor you invented many phrases like narcissistic abuse no
207. 28:06 contact you were shunned for it for a long time now everybody says no contact
208. 28:12 is the best but nobody says about the source who invented this
209. 28:19 we live in an age of uh rampant plagiarism and not only online but definitely in academ but within the specific discipline of
210. 28:30 psychology plagiarism is a way of life even if you go back to Freud I would say
211. 28:36 that Freud has knowingly plagiarized or stolen or appropriated or whatever 80%
212. 28:43 of his work 80 not 18 He did zero
213. 28:49 he stole from Jane he stole from Adler he stole from I mean so it's a way of
214. 28:55 life in psychology and one very common practice in psychology is to reinvent the wheel and call it another name
215. 29:02 so every every day literally there's a new study with amazing shocking revelations and discoveries and so on which you can easily find the exact
216. 29:13 equivalent in the 1970s and 60s and 50s and 40s and 30s and 20s even so everyone
217. 29:20 is busy um inventing new names for old things claiming counterfactually
218. 29:28 to have discovered something new this is absolutely the practice in psychology this would never ever happen
219. 29:35 in physics i have a PhD in physics this would never ever happen in physics ever no one would for example reinvent E equals MC2 relativity theory no one would reinvent relativity theory and call it some other name and say I discovered it no one
220. 29:51 would do this the professional standards in psychology are so exceedingly low that 80% of studies 81% of studies cannot be
221. 30:04 replicated just the other day I made a video about a new study this study
222. 30:12 has the names of Gunderson and Roning Stam they're giants in the field of of narcissism and the study says that narcissism narcissistic personality disorder can be
223. 30:23 cured it is based on eight people eight all of
224. 30:29 whom have other mental health illnesses so four of them have borderline
225. 30:36 personality disorder in addition to nar narcissistic personality disorder and so on and so forth the study is flawed
226. 30:44 methodologically and otherwise it's a beginner it's a rookies study it's shocking absolutely shocking and yet
227. 30:50 this is the standard do you know what is the average number of people studied
228. 30:56 average number of of people in a typical narcissism study
229. 31:02 i'll let you guess what's the average number of participants in a typical study of narcissistic personality
230. 31:08 disorder maybe 200 2.5 2.5 most studies on narcissism uh contain three participants
231. 31:20 all of whom have coorbidities and in the majority of these studies these are actually not narcissists these
232. 31:27 are people with dark personalities where the narcissism is subclinical
233. 31:33 but the media is collaborating the BBC called me one day for an interview and
234. 31:39 there was a new study that said that narcissism narcissists can develop empathy late in life they can develop
235. 31:45 empathy as if it were some kind of I don't know new skill new new software from Microsoft they can develop empathy
236. 31:52 okay I'm open-minded i never prejudge i go and read the so I read the study and
237. 32:00 I saw that all the participants they had dark triad personalities
238. 32:07 dark triad personality is not narcissism it is subclinical narcissism therefore
239. 32:13 the whole study is nonsense but when I tried to say it on BBC they became very
240. 32:19 angry they became seriously angry they started to say "You see why we don't interview
241. 32:26 academics because academics are splitting hairs and we hate this and the public hates this." They became rude and
242. 32:33 disrespectful and so on so the media is collaborating with this immediately when this pseudo
243. 32:41 study about the cure for narcissism was published with eight people mind you
244. 32:47 immediately it was headline news all over the world that's how I heard about it i was in Vienna and people hundreds
245. 32:53 of people writing to me there's a cure for narcissism narcissism is cured they found a cure and so all over the world
246. 33:00 so there is a collaboration between commercial interests especially the media uh unscrupulous
247. 33:08 um people in in the field and I I am so sad because people who used to be my
248. 33:15 role models and my standards they've also been corrupted by the 15 minutes of fame and by the money they can make even people like I Gunderson
249. 33:26 and Waring Stam gave their name to this study which is shameful and embarrassing
250. 33:32 cringeworthy to I even I am not Gunderson even I would not give my name
251. 33:39 to such a study ever mind the inducement you know but it's tempting because immediately you're
252. 33:46 interviewed on CNN on this or that you become famous for a while I'm observing the market of books scientific books and
253. 33:53 studies for five years now and I recognize that there are rising studies
254. 34:00 and books like me the power of narcissism like in Germany from a psychologist who is teaching at the
255. 34:07 University of Müster and I call it in my reviews toxic toxic trash because I saw
256. 34:15 him on TV and I mostly recognize narcissistic behavior
257. 34:21 real real deep And uh you said in one of your lectures um we are lost we are lost
258. 34:28 to narcissism it's very dystopian what you said are you serious what you say what you tell me
259. 34:36 there is a there is a current in academia of scholars and self-styled
260. 34:43 scholars but even real scholars who suggest that pathological narcissism and psychopathy
261. 34:50 are positive adaptations there are studies already many years Kevin Dutton Makobi I mean
262. 34:57 this these are at least 20 25 years studies and these people are saying that
263. 35:04 um narcissism and psychopathy are not good or bad by themselves it all depends
264. 35:10 on the context societal cultural historical context and when we look at civilization as it is constructed today and the technologies that enable the civilization
265. 35:22 then to be a narcissist is a good adaptation is a positive adaptation in other words if you're a narcissist you
266. 35:28 are likely to secure more beneficial better outcomes in your own life so in the individual level it makes sense to
267. 35:35 be a narcissist in July 2016 New Scientist which is a leading science
268. 35:41 magazine published a cover story and the cover story said "Parents teach your
269. 35:47 children to be narcissists." So when there is a professor like this who says that
270. 35:53 me power or narcissism is good or or whatever while instinctively or reflexively I
271. 36:01 want to oppose this and to say what are you talking about it's a destructive disorder it's pernicious it's toxic it's
272. 36:08 I have to check myself back because within our current civilization they have a point actually and I always give the example imagine that I pick up the phone and I call Donald Trump and say "Don Don because we're on first name basis i said Don listen um I just came
273. 36:27 to the realization that something is very wrong with you can you come to my office please?" Don says "Of course Sam
274. 36:33 for you anything." and he comes to my office and said "Don listen you have narcissistic personality disorder and
275. 36:40 it's a horrible disease it distorts your perception of reality it ruins your relationship with people it makes you
276. 36:47 obnoxious and unloved and so on so forth you need treatment." Donald Trump would
277. 36:53 look at me and say "Why do I need treatment i've had the most beautiful women in the world i'm twice president
278. 36:59 of the United States i'm a multi-billionaire give me one good reason why I need treatment and I won't have such a reason
279. 37:07 i would ask him do you feel good with yourself of course I do everyone else is an idiot everyone else is I'm godlike so
280. 37:15 there's no there's no good argument to say that narcissistic personality disorder in the case of Donald Trump was
281. 37:22 a pericious adverse influence it was actually a positive adaptation now when
282. 37:29 Donald Trump started his life society was very different and initially indeed he kept failing and his life was a chao chaotic roller coaster initially because
283. 37:40 society was different but then in the 80s society started to change of course with acceleration in the '90s the tech bubble and so on society started to change and as society started to change
284. 37:52 people like Donald Trump became actually well adopted whereas normal healthy people became ill
285. 38:01 adopted and he rose to the top which would have never happened for him in the 50s and 60s never Donald Trump would never have risen to the top in the 50s 60s and 70s would never have but so I
286. 38:17 also give the example that in psychology there's no there's no
287. 38:23 moral judgment and there is no value judgment we don't say that something is bad or good and that is the difference
288. 38:29 between professionals and laymen if you go to a lay person and you say is depression good or bad
289. 38:36 99% of people would tell you depression is bad it's a very bad thing but a
290. 38:42 professional a mental health professional theoretician a clinician a scholar they would never say this they
291. 38:48 would say depends and the example I give in my lectures is this in Awitz
292. 38:55 in Awitz if you did not have depression you were mentally ill if you were in
293. 39:01 Avitz cheerful and joyful and enjoyed the situation and loved Awitz and never went to go something is wrong with you
294. 39:07 you're mentally sick mentally ill however if you were severely depressed and even suicidal that would have been a
295. 39:14 healthy reaction in Awitz so it all depends on context and in the
296. 39:21 context of today's world narcissism and psychopathy they are the way the way to go they're good for you and the more
297. 39:30 narcissistic you are and even psychopathic the more likely you are to succeed and make it
298. 39:36 it is true that these personalities end up in devastation they're all self-destructive inevitably all they all
299. 39:44 end in in ruins the bunker ruins or some other ruin they all end in ruins and yes
300. 39:52 it will end badly for the species and it will end badly for these individuals but in the meantime they will have a
301. 39:59 good time they will be on top and they will enjoy life the way healthy normal people will not and now healthy normal
302. 40:07 people in this civilization are feeling bad they're depressed they're anxious they're egodistonic
303. 40:13 healthy normal people in this civilization actually develop mental illnesses that's why we have an
304. 40:20 explosion of mental illness a pandemic of depression and anxiety depression
305. 40:26 rates went up 500% in in less than 40 years among young people anxiety rates are up 300% um in in 40 years 40 years is nothing in
306. 40:38 terms of humanity in terms of history it's nothing it's a blink of an eye and yet the prevalence of mental illness is
307. 40:45 to the point that onethird of the population uh in industrialized societies onethird
308. 40:51 of population have diagnosible mental illnesses how can this be because the environment
309. 40:59 has changed and what used to be healthy and normal is now pathologized or leads to pathology
310. 41:05 living as a single is also increasing you say that in this loneliness we can analyze the the we can analyze the
311. 41:13 facets and aspects and angles of modern civilization one of which is loneliness or automization that's one aspect but there are many others and uh when you put all these aspects
312. 41:24 and angles and dimensions together you you actually come up with an environment
313. 41:30 that is ideally suited to narcissists and psychopaths and is a very bad habitat or ecosystem for non-narcissist and non- psychopath who and they feel
314. 41:41 uncomfortable increasingly more uncomfortable in this new world in this new civilization and so we are living in the age of narcissism and psychopathy you suggested
315. 41:53 not to differ between cluster B personality you said the borders have to be break broken down now we have ICD1 is it a progress yeah ICD1 is decades ahead
316. 42:05 ahead of the DSM the text revision of the fifth edition of the DSM was published in 2022
317. 42:13 and uh what they did is they copy pasted literally copypasted verbatim the text
318. 42:20 of the DSM4 the DSM4 was written in the late 1990s things we've learned a few things since then yet this newly learned knowledge is
319. 42:31 nowhere to be seen in the DSM in the DSM for example you don't have vulnerable narcissism
320. 42:38 which we know for sure is a facet of narcissism in the DSM you don't have complex trauma CPTSD
321. 42:45 and so on so the DSM is antiquated the knowledge in the DSM is is some of it
322. 42:52 wrong simply wrong whereas the ICD is not subject to commercial pressures dsm
323. 43:00 uh is subject to commercial pressures by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies whereas the ICD
324. 43:06 is written by the World Health Organization so it's free of pressures icd reflects current knowledge current
325. 43:13 knowledge is known as dimensional approach or trait approach we say that the the very idea of personality disorder is probably wrong we are
326. 43:26 talking about combinations of traits we talk about combinations of traits and
327. 43:32 these combinations of traits are along a spectrum the spectrum is known as dimension
328. 43:38 so let's apply it to what in North America they call narcissistic personality disorder there is no
329. 43:45 narcissistic personality disorder in the ICD which is a diagnostic manual used by 80% of humanity 80% of humanity do not recognize the diagnosis of NPD okay so
330. 43:59 let's compare the two in ICD uh a patient a patient or a client comes
331. 44:06 to the clinic so the practitioner the clinician opens the ICD and says this
332. 44:13 patient has an anastia in other words this patient has obsessive compulsive features this patient is antagonistic likes likes conflict provokes conflict
333. 44:24 argues all the time and and so on this patient is dissoci which is another word
334. 44:30 for antisocial and so on and so forth so the the the
335. 44:36 clinician picks up traits like Lego like Lego cube picks up traits and puts them
336. 44:43 together in a profile in a clinical profile that is unique to that client and to no other client this is customizable medicine it's tailored
337. 44:54 medicine it's really advanced so then imagine that the patient got anastia dissociity antagonism negative
338. 45:03 affect a effectivity the patient always feels rageful angry envious so this is
339. 45:09 called negative affectivity imagine you put all these together what you get is a
340. 45:15 is narcissistic personality disorder but it's not called this way and then these traits you grade them you say are they serious like severe less severe less
341. 45:29 less severe or just hints so you place the patient on a dimensional spectrum
342. 45:38 and then you have the perfect picture you have the perfect picture of a client you know the client's traits you can
343. 45:44 anticipate behaviors you know how bad it is how severe and so on so forth and
344. 45:50 this is how it should be done consequently in the ICD we don't have this bizarre bizarre differential
345. 45:57 diagnosis any clinician would tell you any clinician would tell you that a client is one day narcissistic two days later it's a borderline and 4 days later is a psychopath any clinician would tell you that a narcissist goes home and experiences some crisis or
346. 46:15 collapse or he's not getting supply or something he becomes a borderline he is emotionally disregulated he
347. 46:21 develops suicidal ideiation becomes borderline and then as a borderline he's
348. 46:27 he feels stress he feels anxiety and so on and he reacts by acting out the compensation acting out he becomes a psychopath so what's the meaning of all these idiotic distinctions you know and uh
349. 46:40 consequently what hap what's happening today with the DSM is that people regularly are diagnosed
350. 46:47 with eight diagnosis 10 diagnosis regularly it's a
351. 46:53 regular thing like you're diagnosed with narcissism borderline uh mood disorder substance abuse disorder da when we know for example that substance use disorder
352. 47:05 um is very very common in specific so-called personality disorders we know
353. 47:11 for example that border lines abuse substances a lot and so do narcissists and psychopaths and so on is it really a
354. 47:19 separate disorder i don't think so i don't think so at all i think it's an outcome of internal dynamics which are perfectly captured by the trade domains of of the ICD icd is by far my favorite
355. 47:33 book in the DSM they attempted to create what they call alternative models but they put them in page 881 if I'm not
356. 47:44 mistaken 818 they dumped them at the end of the book and uh these alternative
357. 47:50 models are limited to three or four personality disorders they didn't dare to go further and they definitely did
358. 47:56 not dare to unite everything under a single diagnosis of personality disturbance or personality problems or
359. 48:03 character problems or call it as you will they didn't dare go this way they
360. 48:10 admitted it there was a recent few weeks ago um con convention of the American
361. 48:16 Psychiatric Association and the woman in charge of writing the DSM6 admitted openly in a press conference "We are not revising the DSM because we
362. 48:28 have to consider money and what the insurance companies will say openly." A shocking admission from an alleged ostensible scholar who is there to
363. 48:42 so the scene in the United States is completely corrupted again regrettably the media the mass
364. 48:50 media and social media they never heard of the ICD they never heard of the ICD so they are
365. 48:56 stuck together with the DSM 25 years ago and this results in a in an
366. 49:03 indescribable mess so there's attempt to understand if borderline is CPTSD or CPTSD is this or
367. 49:10 narcissism is psychopathy so they confuse psychopathy with narcissism they confuse it's an indescribable method and
368. 49:17 yeah let's have a short look at France they call narcissists perverts even now yeah
369. 49:25 this was so far behind this was a construct proposed by Rakamir
370. 49:32 it is an example of what I said earlier all Vakamir did he stole the idea of
371. 49:39 malignant narcissist from Otto Kernburg and he renamed it magakamir did not contribute a single original thing in any of his two books and multiple
372. 49:50 articles not one everything is copy paste from Kernburgg and then he called it perverse pervert narcissism perverse Narcissism and so he
373. 50:01 became a great innovator a great and this is what they do in psychology they steal earlier work rename it and then
374. 50:09 they are considered to be geniuses who came up with new ideas and because no one in psychology has institutional
375. 50:15 memory when I talk to my colleagues and by now I've had colleagues in Russia and I've had colleagues in United Kingdom
376. 50:21 and I've had colleagues in Macedonia and I' I've had colleagues everywhere i taught in universities all over the world Nigeria Africa you name it
377. 50:29 when I talk to colleagues never mind where many of them are totally unaware of the
378. 50:35 history of psychology and many of them have never heard of the vast majority of major scholars in psychology i'm lucky if they heard of Freud because the emphasis today is on
379. 50:47 statistics i had a look at the curricula of uh
380. 50:53 psychology in Switzerland it's about and I don't think I'm exaggerating 40 50%
381. 50:59 statistics i asked do you teach uh Freud and no Lan
382. 51:06 no do you teach Okay you don't like Freud and Lakan i understand i don't like them either do you teach I don't know Skinner do you teach uh Bura who is a major figure in modern psychology do
383. 51:17 you nothing they never heard of these people it's not that they have decided not to teach them they've never heard of
384. 51:24 them so the student graduates never heard of the history of his own discipline or her own discipline and
385. 51:35 they go into the field and they make a study and they think they've discovered something new ironically this has a clinical name it's called recency bias uh narcissists when a narcissist learns something they believe that they are the
386. 51:51 first to discover it this is a clinical feature it's a pathological feature so a narcissist
387. 51:57 would uh would uh sit at home and come up with an idea it happens and then the
388. 52:03 narcissist would say "That's my idea." But when you show the narcissist that
389. 52:09 this idea had existed 10 years ago and 20 years ago and 30 years ago and 40 years ago and 2,000 years ago the
390. 52:15 narcissist would deny it or the narcissist reads something somewhere or is exposed to some video or
391. 52:22 something and acquires a new bit of information in the narcissist's mind this new bit of information has just happened doesn't have a history
392. 52:33 this is called recency bias and psychology has a lot of recency bias people are simply ignorant simply ignorant that's why all in all I'm sorry
393. 52:44 to say but psychology is a pseudocience right now not extremely far from astrology okay uh let's go to another bias are
394. 52:55 narcissists are evil are they devils are they monsters even you say they are
395. 53:02 snakes in the grass they are creators of the dark what is it exactly in the inner
396. 53:08 psyche of a narcissist are they really evil monsters devils so I think we should distinguish between
397. 53:15 evil the word evil from the word demon evil is a value judgment moral judgment
398. 53:22 a moral judgment you say something is right something is wrong something is good something is evil that's a moral judgment it divides the world in two
399. 53:29 it's a splitting defense on a collective level we create morality plays where there are all evil people against all good people and so on so forth but all in all it's a value judgment and value
400. 53:43 judgments have no place in psychology we should never say that something is evil
401. 53:49 or good in psychology demon is another thing demon is a
402. 53:55 language it is simply an antique antiquated language that survived from
403. 54:01 the middle ages or before the middle ages survived from 2,000 years ago to this very day
404. 54:08 so if I were to say someone is possessed by the devil as far as I'm concerned it's not an
405. 54:14 ontological statement it's not a statement about reality but it's simply the use of another language to describe
406. 54:22 the same phenomenon while I would say this person has narcissistic personality
407. 54:28 disorder and false self someone else would say this person is possessed by
408. 54:34 the devil now the question is is one language preferable to another does do these languages provide different levels of
409. 54:45 insight and understanding do these separate languages capture the the
410. 54:52 ontological the capture reality in ways which are better than the other let me
411. 54:58 put it this way if I say someone is possessed by the devil do I gain additional knowledge that I do not have
412. 55:06 if I use the language of psychiatry if I say narcissistic personalities or false
413. 55:12 self and I think the the answer is that each of these languages provide additional information that is missing in the other
414. 55:24 but I do not judge i do not say possessed by the devil is primitive these are stupid people they don't know what they're talking about because it's for me just a language of course the
415. 55:36 stupid people are those who believe that the devil exists and is really inside someone's body these are the stupid ones
416. 55:43 but the majority of people don't don't treat it as a real as reality a statement about reality they treat it as
417. 55:49 a language as a metaphor so if you talk to clergy and so on that's why the Vatican for example refuses to recognize demon possession except in super extremely rare cases refuses to
418. 56:01 authorize exorcism in the overwhelming vast majority of cases because Vatican denies the reality of demon possession
419. 56:09 except again in super extreme cases so it's a language issue i think actually
420. 56:17 that one of the big mistakes of psychology uh and it's a primal a primal sin is
421. 56:25 that psychology has discarded completely all previous information we have had about human nature
422. 56:32 and so for example in the New Testament you find the most perfect description of nar narcissism I've ever come across and
423. 56:39 believe me there I have read everything there is in multiple languages three
424. 56:45 years the best description of narcissism is there and but if you discard the the old the new Testament because it's junk
425. 56:52 it's rubbish stupid people primitive people that didn't know what they were talking about you're you are giving up on a repository of of thousands of years of observations coded and codified into specific texts and that is unwise
426. 57:09 and within psychology we have the same situation today they are discarding Ziggman Freud and Carl Yung and Lakan they're throwing them to the garbage
427. 57:20 because they're not sufficiently scientific and they did not use statistics there is this stupid belief
428. 57:26 that if you use statistics you are scientists yeah so because everyone and his dog in the field of psychology want to be the new Einstein and they want to be they want to feel that they are the physicists of the soul yeah so they give up on on Jung they throw to the garbage
429. 57:43 Freud and so on which is which is insane because these people were giants they had true deep profound insight into the human psyche you know but this is
430. 57:55 this is the situation with scientism scientism in general is a bias bias that
431. 58:01 says the most recent knowledge is the right knowledge everything that came
432. 58:08 before the most recent knowledge is junk and trash and nonsense and we should ignore it and castigate it so as a
433. 58:15 psychologist I would say Timothy 3 letter Paul where the narcissist is described is a moral standard it's moral
434. 58:23 so is the narcissist an he knows what is right and what is wrong is it a
435. 58:31 guideline timothy I mean Timothy and not only Timothy there narcissism is described multiple times in the Old
436. 58:37 Testament and the New Testament is actually not a moral standard he describes specific type of people he
437. 58:43 says there will be people like that like that like that and then he says stay away from them so it's what we call a
438. 58:49 prescriptive text a text that say gives you direction tells you what to do how to behave it's not a procriptive text proscriptive text is text that says tuck t this is
439. 59:01 bad this is evil so we have we have procreative text but whenever they
440. 59:08 discuss narcissism they're much more practical they're pragmatic they say these are bad not bad these are like
441. 59:14 don't don't mess with these people they are they they they you will end up badly so stay away from them don't don't respect them don't talk to them don't do business with them and and so on so for
442. 59:27 example the ten commandments is not procriptive there is no value judgment in the ten commandments it's a set of prescriptions this is what you should do you should do A B C D E nowhere in the ten
443. 59:40 commandments it says if you don't uh respect your mother and father you are an evil person it simply says respect
444. 59:48 your father and mother so which is by the way the attitude and the philosophy
445. 59:56 of modern psychology in modern psych because initially psychology was procriptive you had value
446. 60:03 judgments initially a very early psychology but today in psychology we
447. 60:09 don't judge we tell you what to do we recommend to you what to do or how to behave in order to optimize out positive
448. 60:16 outcomes but we don't judge and we don't uh divide it into evil and good and in
449. 60:22 many cases we can ask you two questions in modern psychology you come to the clinic a clinician would ask you two
450. 60:28 questions do you feel good with yourself and are you functional do you function in a variety of settings if you are totally psychotic and you believe that you are talking to God himself every night and Christ is your roommate but
451. 60:44 you're happy with this totally happy you don't have anxiety you don't have depression and so on and also you
452. 60:51 function well at work and you have a great family who loves you and who love you and you you have many many friends
453. 60:58 you go to the pub with and so you're totally functional and you're happy with yourself why would we why would we treat
454. 61:05 you there's no reason to treat you because we don't judge there's no judgment here we treat people when they
455. 61:13 feel bad and when they cannot function okay let's let's talk about judgment uh
456. 61:19 you demanded that legal system should hold narcissists for their misde more
457. 61:25 accountable is legal system is justice really aware what they are dealing with
458. 61:32 with people who are covering their misdeeds who are faking who are acting
459. 61:38 like uh yeah like thespbians uh it's sometimes very hard to discover what who
460. 61:48 that is and they make blameshifting and everything and the so-called victims like spouses are sitting there losing everything are destroyed psych psychologically
461. 62:01 physically uh getting poor everything and the narcissist and and the judge says yeah I cannot prove that you were abused tell
462. 62:13 me show me is it a problem really is the legal system aware of it it's a general problem in in jurisprudence and and legal systems uh you cannot
463. 62:24 p criminal criminalize and I think also you should not pathize the variance in the human species the
464. 62:32 fact that people are not the same differences the variability you cannot pathize it and definitely you should not criminalize it so there is a huge debate whether psychopathy for example is a mental illness my opinion it's not a
465. 62:47 mental illness it's a var variability it's a it's simply people who are different same I I think to some extent are people
466. 62:58 with narcissistic style people with narcissistic style are simply different the psychopath does not respect the law the psychopath is defiant psychopath is
467. 63:09 reckless consumious rejects and hates authority um assumes risks seeks novelty and so on is this a mental illness i don't think
468. 63:20 so at all it's a specific type of person can we criminalize this we can't it's
469. 63:28 not okay to criminalize differences among people that's the beginning of authoritarianism and worse when you
470. 63:35 criminalize differences with people you end up in our soy
471. 63:41 slope which we should never embark on what we can criminalize are behaviors
472. 63:47 yes of course and the outcomes of behaviors and so here we are starting to have a problem whereas the psychopath's behavior is overt conspicuous ostentatious goal oriented
473. 64:00 directional linear the psychopath is a machine a device that is going from A to
474. 64:06 B so you can say going from A to B is criminal and psychopaths end up in
475. 64:12 prison robert hair the greatest scholars of psychopathy in in recent generation
476. 64:19 after cleair uh studied did most of his studies in uh in prisons he studied psychopaths in prisons only much much later with babyak he studied psychopaths among chief executive officers of Forbes 500 and the
477. 64:36 in the pre prevalence of psychopathy among this group is much higher than the general population
478. 64:42 so with psychopath is Psychopath kill psychopath steal psychopath rape i mean it's easy it fits
479. 64:50 well into the current uh criminal code you don't even need to rewrite the code
480. 64:57 they end up doing crimes you know it is a lot more controversial and subtle and
481. 65:03 and nuanced and gray zone with the narcissist
482. 65:09 because whereas the psychopath is an exaggeration of a typical human being
483. 65:15 you want money the psychopath wants money the only difference between you he will kill to get money you will not you
484. 65:23 want sex he wants sex you will not rape he will rape the psychopath will rape
485. 65:29 but the psychopath is recognizable you can recognize yourself in the psychopath and you can recognize the psychopath in yourself it's just an exaggeration of you he will go to great
486. 65:41 lengths to be you to to realize your dreams and fantasy you don't have the courage you could say you could look at
487. 65:48 it another way you don't have the courage to be a psychopath but you can't say that a psychopath is
488. 65:54 inhuman or that a psychopath is partially human or that the psychopath is so alien that it's impossible to
489. 66:02 understand you can't say this psychopaths are common and that's why we believe today in psychology that
490. 66:08 psychopathy is much more common than we know and that actually the overwhelming vast majority of psychopaths are people
491. 66:14 around us they have families they go to work they and so on
492. 66:20 it's not the case with narcissism narcissism is is alien
493. 66:26 narcissism is only partially human it's exactly as if aliens extraterrestrials
494. 66:35 have landed on Earth and integrated with us somehow intermarried had children you
495. 66:41 know there is a story in the Bible about the Nephilim the giants in the Bible in
496. 66:47 in Genesis there is a story about a race of giants who came down to earth and coupled with human females and they created a new race so I would think of
497. 66:58 narcissists this way they are extraterrestrial alien artificial intelligence use any metaphor that fits
498. 67:06 you and they interbreed with humans and so their behaviors
499. 67:14 could and often are destructive and dangerous and so on but to criminalize
500. 67:20 these behaviors is a is a major problem because
501. 67:26 uh because they are so alien you can criminalize a psychopath because
502. 67:33 psychopath is you but you cannot criminalize narcissistic or it's very difficult to criminalize narcissistic
503. 67:39 behaviors because it's so outside the remmit of human experience this is why I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse it's unique
504. 67:50 and so we can criminalize some elements so in some countries Australia Canada United Kingdom and so on they have
505. 67:58 recently criminalized coercive control it's when the narcissist limits your freedom to act in a variety of ways
506. 68:05 isolates you and punishes you if you attempt to display any sign of independence or agency so this is a
507. 68:12 crime now in some jurisdictions not in all that is typical narcissistic behavior but it it's also a psychopathic
508. 68:19 behavior it's also a borderline behavior albeit in a different way so it's not uniquely narcissistic
509. 68:26 how do you criminalize uh how do you criminalize a strategy
510. 68:33 that gradually strips you of your identity and replaces it with an alien identity how do you criminalize how do you even identify this how do you even prove this the problem with criminal
511. 68:44 code is that there is a standard of proof it is evidence-based what evidence can you introduce uh for the destruction of one one's identity which is very common in narcissistic abuse what evidence can you can you produce in
512. 69:00 court to for gaslighting
513. 69:06 gaslighting is a psychopathic behavior but some narcissists are psychopathic and they engage in gaslighting how can you prove this in court gaslighting is when the narcissist
514. 69:18 undermines your belief in your own perception of reality you begin to doubt that you're perceiving reality correctly that you're gauging it appropriately you begin to the doubt is so extreme and so
515. 69:30 all pervasive that you're beginning to think that you're crazy how to prove this in court
516. 69:36 you go to the judge okay imagine there's a law that gaslighting is illegal criminalized we criminalize gaslighting
517. 69:43 how do you prove this