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1. 00:00 thank you very much Sam for meeting me today while you’re over here in the UK thank you for coming now how did you come to realize that you were suffering from narcissistic personality disorder well how it pains me to say that I’m a typical narcissus I grew up in an
2. 00:17 abusive environment physical abuse psychological abuse verbal abuse this is usually the template upon which narcissism grows and from which it emanates I spent my life denying that anything is wrong with me I went through life oblivious to the
3. 00:37 harm I was doing to myself into others until I’ve hit rock bottom and I’ve hit rock bottom three times in my life and every time I hit rock bottom I was diagnosed by a qualified mental health practitioner as a narcissist someone within narcissistic personality disorder
4. 00:58 he didn’t sink home the first time he didn’t strike home the second time the third time I said to myself I have to find out what this thing is it’s cancerous it’s malignant I keep losing everything I have starting with the loved ones or people I believe died I
5. 01:19 loved and ending with property and finances so everything was crumbling around my ears time and again is that what you mean by the rock bottom rock bottom in so that was left I was left a penniless loveless you know I’ve been abandoned my wife divorced me in the
6. 01:39 second occasion I lost my reputation I was unable to function in my profession and so on so forth so this happened once and then twice and thrice and each and every time the narcissistic personality disorder kept cropping up kept popping up and I said myself I’ve got to find
7. 01:56 out what this is and the second time I’ve been diagnosed in jail I did time for financial fraud securities fraud and I was forcibly it was part of my probation condition so I attended a series of diagnostic tests and then quasi or pseudo therapy and again narcissistic
8. 02:21 personality disorder propped up such as I have to find out what this is and I began to search for information I was flabbergasted to discover that there was nothing on the topic literally nothing the diagnosis narcissistic personality disorder was added to the Diagnostic and
9. 02:40 Statistical Manual in 1980 that’s pretty I mean it’s quite recent in scholarly terms there have been two books on the subject one of them a popular colloquial discourse by Alexander Lowen and another one written 1974 totally inaccessible arcane language no one’s done anything
10. 03:03 hopefully the author did because no one presumably known as they and and the guy was caught he was a very famous psychologist and so on and then and then there was there were people like Scott Peck who conflated narcissism with evil and God and right and wrong and other
11. 03:22 metaphysical nonsense so there was no help there there was nothing there I had literally to to invent the language with which I could describe my own experiences at the time I didn’t have any aspirations as a as a you know an authority on the subject I just
12. 03:39 wanted to understand myself so I kept observing myself introspection and I had to invent the language with which I could describe my inner processes my inner dynamics this language later became widely accepted in today’s part of the of the scholarly discourse but at
13. 03:57 the time I had to invent it and then I went on the internet and I started internet was its inception it was very new phenomenon I started to look for like-minded you know sufferers and no one would come forth but many victims came out of the woodwork yeah family
14. 04:15 members you know spouses children neighbors colleagues parishioners you name it thousands upon thousands within less than a year I had 20,000 members and in the Internet at that time we are talking 1997 there was no internet and yet there were plenty
15. 04:36 dogs members and within 4 years there were 60,000 members and within foyers there were numerous other groups which put together would possibly amount a million members you know to this very day there are dozens of groups which cater exclusively to victims of
16. 04:51 narcissus gradually and very very slowly people began to admit that they have been diagnosed with autism so I had access to Nass to other narcissists and I began to call up their experiences and put everything together and try to systematize then I started to correspond
17. 05:06 with therapists and then with social workers and then with you know the authorities and salsa for 16 years later I have this humongous database know everything I believe there is to know about the disorder thus the bulk of it not not reflecting
18. 05:24 my own experiences but extracted from other people’s mm-hmm and and it became gradually clear to me at least that narcissism is not merely a mental health phenomenon that it has pronounced cultural and social societal and social dimensions that narcissism is something
19. 05:45 is an affliction that pertains to individuals as well as societies and cultures that narcissus tend to gravitate to certain professions where they can garner narcissistic supply attention a jewel ation admiration sense of power being feared so narcissists and
20. 06:03 psychopaths are over-represented in professions such as politics yeah the clergy showbusiness the media no offense and so on so we were now talking about job characteristics whole careers entire professions so mass ISM started as one one person’s quest and then you know an
21. 06:24 individual personality disturbance or character disturbance but now I think it’s a much wider thing much much wider thing more over in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual five narcissistic personality disorder has been conflated with or coalesced with other mental health
22. 06:45 disorders mainly personality disorders such as antisocial personality disorder borderline personality disorder but also certain mood disorders and so on so learn loss easily is integrated in an is an integral part of other mental health disorders
23. 07:01 for instance bipolar disorder has a pronounced a very clear manic phase yeah where there are very strong narcissistic manifestations Asperger’s or other autism spectrum disorders they have problems with empathy there are problems of communication so social narcissistic
24. 07:19 borderline ‘he’s usually mode line is usually comorbid code diagnosed with narcissism would you say that there is a spectrum of narcissism I cut one end you have someone who has full-on narcissistic personality disorder and then along a continuum there are people
25. 07:38 with varying degrees of narcissistic traits narcissism is a spectrum at the one end of a spectrum we have healthy narcissism which is the foundation of self-esteem self-confidence a sense of self-worth knowledge of one’s limitations and shortcomings on their on
26. 07:55 one hand and abilities and skills and talents on the other so without narcissism we we would be you know shrinking violets would be socially anxious and shy and so won’t be able to function healthy narcissism is essential and then there’s a whole spectrum
27. 08:10 healthy narcissism certain losses cystic traits personality style behaviors and so on idea at the extreme end we have malignant narcissists and usually they are also psychopathic so we have psychopathic narcissists this these people and that’s a small
28. 08:27 minority I wouldn’t say negligible but small minority of people these people tend to lack empathy they are unethical to the point of being criminal they they’re exploitative they’re abusive etcetera etcetera so yes it’s an entire spectrum moreover it depends on the social and
29. 08:50 cultural context within what within within which one operates so if you have cultures and societies which encourage narcissistic traits and behavior and reward them naturally this would tend to render people more narcissistic so take take for instance Western culture or
30. 09:09 more specifically American culture or anglo-saxon culture where ambition is rewarded certain types of unethical behaviors are not from double or even encouraged empathise is limited by choice and by design and so on so these societies inevitably would tend to
31. 09:30 single out and encourage narcissists and then people will tend to emulate them and become more and more narcissistic in other societies such as Japan for instance and so on there is collective narcissism but not individual narcissism so people would channel their narcissism
32. 09:45 through the collective they would be proud to belong to and to be getting the best country right the best of via the collective so we have collective narcissism narcissism is inevitable it’s everywhere everyone is to this or that extent a narcissist the test is the
33. 10:05 question of harm the question of ethics and the question of empathy above all question of empathy are you able to empathize despite the fact that you seek self gratification despite the fact that you are in need of narcissistic supply do are you ruthless relentless are you
34. 10:23 do you trample over people to your abuse you exploit can you sympathize with other people’s needs priorities emotions fears and so on if the answer is I can’t I have no empathy then you are malignant narcissist all narcissists treat other people as objects right but not all
35. 10:43 people who treat other people as objects are narcissus right so we have for instance sexual sadists sexual City Sade’s derive an intense sense of pleasure from inflicting pain this is like to the witnesses ooh you do have narcissists who are serial killers and
36. 11:00 a derive an intense sense of pleasure from the their omnipotence from their unlimited power over the subject of torture or subject of of killing so it all depends you need to you need to to trace the psychodynamics of each and every case no serial not two serial killers are
37. 11:21 alike for instance and to find that out would you always look back into somebody’s childhood because from what I know narcissism is not something that anybody is born with it’s something that it’s developed and I probably don’t have a whole thing but from what I understand
38. 11:35 it can be a child who is so severely abused and whether that’s you know through neglect or sexual abuse or physical abuse that they can’t deal with that and actually this like their soul goes and they are just a shell and and then there is the other side which I
39. 11:54 actually already learned recently from watching your videos online that somebody can become a narcissist because their parents have actually built them up too much there are two types of over narcissist those who are those who hark back or on the outcome of severe abuse
40. 12:08 and those who are put on a pedestal and admired and idolized by their parents and can do no wrong and so and so forth but this isn’t this distinction is an optical illusion because both types of children are treated as objects whether the child is put on a pedestal or the
41. 12:25 pedestal is put on the child in the form of abuse in both cases the child is treated as an object when the child is abused the child is being objectified and when the child is admired and idolized the child is being objectified as well the child becomes the receptacle
42. 12:43 of the parents dreams and expectations the child is put under enormous pressure to fulfill the parents aspirations and wishes and hopes in other words the child becomes an extension of the parent becomes the long arm of the parent well in the other case where the child is
43. 13:00 severely abused and harshly you know molested or whatever in that case the parent does not see the child at all the child becomes again a receptacle but this time of the parents rage of the parents inadequacies for strains aggression and so on in both
44. 13:17 cases the child is perceived as an inert inert container for the parents psyche or psychology no I think individual not as an individual at all actually pair these parents do not allow the children abuse children to develop boundaries a person sense of personal autonomy a
45. 13:37 sense of personal worth a sense of their own future and their they don’t allow them to develop their own path they usually micromanage the child they usually impose on the child they may isolate the child socially and otherwise they regard everyone else who might
46. 13:56 enter the child’s life is competition so let much later in life the child is not allowed to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend and if they do then the mother or the father we don’t try to denigrate the future spouse and then when they have children etc etc so there’s always
47. 14:13 a state of ownership of domination by the parent and it is not really very important in which way you abuse the child by idolizing the child or by trampling on the child so let’s this distinction is all very important parents with mental health
48. 14:31 issues including bipolar and definitely borderline their children have a much higher chance of developing narcissism narcissism is a defense mechanism it’s a coping strategy its main role in early childhood is to fend off pain to fend off hurt the child creates something
49. 14:53 called the false self false self is everything the child is not and wish that he were so the false self is omnipotent or powerful for surface omniscient knows everything and above everything the false self is invulnerable impermeable not prone and
50. 15:09 not able to experience pain so it’s like that it is the false self that interacts with the offending parent with the hurtful parent with a parent that inflicts pain but because the false self is incapable of experiencing pain the child is protected the true self is
51. 15:26 behind this shell like a castle and a moat so there is a true self’ underneath there is a true self’ underneath now of course the longer one uses the immediate say using for lucid situation the longer one uses the false self to interact with the
52. 15:41 world the less capable the true self becomes the more dilapidated the more depleted the more atrophied finally it’s dead so we are left only narcissus like me are left only with the false self but the false self is a concoction it’s a piece of fiction it’s a narrative it’s a
53. 15:59 story that I have told myself when I’ve been abused and so on so forth in order to fend off to put a wall between me and the pain how do you know there’s no real you left inside out how do you really know that how do you feel it all because there isn’t a single thing I do and a
54. 16:19 single thing I feel that cannot be directly and exclusively traced to the false self there is nothing there I don’t need the Edit assumption of a true self to fully explain myself it’s like God you know in science scientists say I don’t need God to explain the world no
55. 16:36 one knows why why abuse children react so differently to the same set of circumstances same set of parents and same same treatment someone become narcissus others develop borderline personality disorder then there’s you know a very tiny minority developed
56. 16:52 multiple or dissociative identity disorder and so forth and no one really knows why there are the most evident speculation or in open would be genetics so the propensity or the predilection to react in a certain way might be embedded in in one specific genes but that’s a
57. 17:11 very highly unsatisfactory explanation my personal belief is that it’s simply a
58. 17:20 winning coping strategy a child an abused child tries everything to sway the parents to love him to try to restore sanity into essentially an irrational erratic unpredictable capricious volatile dangerous situation and so he tries you know autism he tries to emulate the abusers
59. 17:44 by becoming unpredictable volatile suicidal that would be the borderline solution he tried it tries everything not with certain children certain solutions would work the parents are never the same they are younger with one child older with the other they are
60. 18:01 they’ve gone through their own life experiences they’ve evolved or devolved insane and so and so forth so I would tend to think that children adopt mental health disorders as both shields and adaptive strategies in accordance with what works and what works changes in
61. 18:22 time and with the children yeah and as the abuse changes and as the abuser everything changes it’s not a static situation parents who are for instance Psychopaths or Sadie’s would tend to perfect the abuse they would make it with I would render it more subtle more
62. 18:39 stealthy and ambient abuse some of them would discover that that they can use other people to abuse so there is abuse by proxy they enlist and recruit other people to do their bidding others would grow old and will ameliorate and they’re psychopathic and narcissistic qualities
63. 18:58 will disappear gradually so the loss trial would not well not have been abused or the first to have been abuse etc itself so this is also static situates a river and one can never enter the same river twice so one can never have the same solution to abuse do you
64. 19:14 think somebody with narcissistic personality disorder or borderline like myself do you think we can never be happy Trudy happy oh no this is mostly are happy they’re happy because they are the happy-go-lucky they cruise through life and through the world the reeking
65. 19:31 enormous damage they are akin to hurricanes very damaged in the wake and so on but they always energetic they always swirl around they always you know they’re very happy Muslim body lies enough yes I’m not more line is something completely different but the
66. 19:46 line is premise torn unhappiness the main dynamic of borderline is the sadness the enormous reservoir of sadness which acquired early life and which one is desperately trying to get rid of or to transform into other energies and emotions and that is a rakul Ian
67. 20:06 probably impossible task I have been claiming for a long time now that narcissism borderline other cluster B personality disorders actually private cases of dissociative identity disorder they’re private cases of multiple personality I think people with for
68. 20:22 instance borderline and narcissistic traits actually have two personalities one is the protector the protector is the narcissist the role of analysis is to make sure that the crazy borderline will not kill the organism you know will not kill both of them you know it’s very
69. 20:38 common in multiple personality where there is one personality which protects all the others usually that personality also communicates with the outside and so this would be my explanation for this combination don’t forget also that in our need to tell you that the dominant
70. 20:55 psychodynamics of borderline is abandonment anxiety there’s enormous fear of abandonment anxiety now one way of avoiding abandonment anxiety is by by saying I’m impervious to abandonment I don’t care about abandonment I will never be abandoned because i’m i’m
71. 21:11 perfect I’m brilliant I’m Omni potent and who would want to abandon someone like me I mean it’s inconceivable that I should be abandoned and so on so the narcissist also tries to change narcissists in a borderline also tries to change the abandonment anxiety
72. 21:25 dynamic and therefore the attachment style the way the borderline bonds this type of borderlines would sometimes bond with other people as borderlines and then they would experience a huge abandonment anxiety there would be constantly afraid to be
73. 21:41 dumped they would become codependence they would be clinging and needy and volatile and erratic and I know what and finally they would live on of suicidal ideation and attempts suicide and and many of them choose to bond as narcissus because when they bond is narcissus all
74. 22:00 these risks don’t exist narcissus is a protective teflon layer between them and life then actual abundant them and ping so really people like myself with borderline like yourself with Narcisse but Lance order and people with dissociative identity
75. 22:18 disorder we’re kind of really all all the same and that we weren’t able just to stay ourselves through our childhoods and we needed to create another self at least one other selves that’s not a new concept people like kernberg and in the 80s and
76. 22:34 many other scholars suggested that the personalities of narcissism borderlines and so on are what we call disorganized they are chaotic I prefer to use the term fragmented they are fragmented each fragment of use and otherwise what should have been normal personality each
77. 22:51 fragment attains its own personality like traits and characteristics and functions pretty autonomously now we have this galaxy of shredder shred ‘add personality with this galaxy of shreds of personality shrapnel it’s like a bomb exploded and we you know we have the
78. 23:11 shrapnel and each each element interacts with the environment and with other people in a different in a different way each element develops gradually a function which reflects its strengths and capacities and so on in the case of all the light narcissus the narcissist
79. 23:26 as I said protects the bolan light the borderline bonds where the narcissus cannot so the borderline makes the initial contact and experiences the emotions but once the emotions are clear and strong the narcissus takes over in order to fend off the hurt and
80. 23:41 inevitable pain and so on these are very complex dynamics of personalities which were shattered by by experiences which the child at the time deemed unsustainable and the child could not cope with these experiences I’m really grateful that you gave me your book I’m
81. 24:01 so looking forward to reading it but then just before I might find some answers for myself in there just for anybody else whether they have narcissistic personality disorder solely or they have the the trades as part of borderline or but what can they do
82. 24:20 of course therapists are self-interested they are selling a product in a service so they are bound to tell you to the product and service be helpful and useful and so on it will not be there is no way to cure or heal or glue together this fragmented shrapnel personality the
83. 24:37 blows in early childhood and early adolescence have been so massive that the cracks are unfixable the edifice is crumbled there’s no way of putting it back it’s Humpty Dumpty what can be done to some extent is behavior modification counterproductive self-defeating
84. 24:54 self-destructive and socially unacceptable or antisocial behaviors can be identified and techniques and strategies can be learned on how to modify these how to alter them in a way which would render them partly socially acceptable and definitely not
85. 25:12 self-defeating and self-destructive in with regards to other aspects there’s medication so for its depression can be treated with medication obsessive compulsive disorders can be treated with medication so if you put together a medication and very modest goals for
86. 25:29 therapy when modifying one two or three or five behaviors which have proven over the course of your life to have damaged you if you put these two realistic goals together you might end up being marginally better off than you are no one can fix who you are a personality
87. 25:49 disorder is a disorder of your entirety it’s a disorder of all of you it permeates every single cell of your being of your psychology your psychodynamic there is no way to change all of you there is a there are ways to change some behaviors and some traits but never all of you