Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture with Bob Drury and Tom Claven, co-authors of Blood and Treasure. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Thursday, May 13th, at noon, historian Jonathan Zimmerman and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Signa Wilkinson will present their new book, Free Speech. This brief but bracing book tells the story of free speech in America and makes the case for why we should care about it today. And on Tuesday, May 18th, at 7 p.m., we will host a panel discussion titled, Celebrating the Women's Suffrage Centennial. Our panelists will discuss the centennial of the 19th Amendment in 2020, the events that were planned across the country and what we learned during that turbulent year. In Blood and Treasure, Bob Drury and Tom Claven describe the inevitable conflict along the Trans-Apollachian frontier between Western-moving European colonists and the Native Americans who already live there. Using the story of Daniel Boone in the decades leading up to and through the Revolutionary War, Drury and Claven paint a vivid picture of a bloody struggle that changed the course of the newly emerging nation. In a recent book review in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Cousins called Blood and Treasure the author's finest work to date and said, Drury and Claven excel not only in superb portrayals of Boone and his white frontier contemporaries, but also in the evocation of the Eastern Woodland Indians, their way of life, their heart-wrenching efforts to protect their land from white encroachment. Bob Drury, a New York Times best-selling author and military correspondent, is the author, co-author, or editor of nine books. He has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Darfur and has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Men's Journal and GQ. Bob has been nominated for three national magazine awards and a Pulitzer Prize. Tom Claven was a reporter for the New York Times, served as managing editor at the East Hampton Star and was the editor-in-chief of the Independent Group of Weekly Newspapers and was a columnist and contributing writer at the Express News Group on Long Island. He has written for several prominent magazines, including Smithsonian, Parade, Readers Digest and Golf. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and the National Newspaper Association. Tom and Bob have co-authored several books and four of them, Dodge City, The Heart of Everything That Is, Halsey's Typhoon and The Last Stand of Fox Company have been New York Times bestsellers. Now let's hear from Bob Drury and Tom Claven. Thank you for joining us today. Mr. Ferriero, thank you for that lovely introduction. It was wonderful, David, and I'm so heartened that you got the pronunciation of Appalachian, correct? I can't tell you how many times we've been... It's not Appalachian, it's Appalachian. I'd also, before we even begin, I have to thank Doug Swanson for setting this all up at the National Archives and for the two men that make this happen. Brian and Jason in the sound and video booth, we wouldn't be here without you. So thank you all. Thank you all, whoever is out there in YouTube land for tuning in. I guess that's how you do. Am I too old? Tom, do I get tuning in right? Would you tune into YouTube? Works for me. So, I don't know. How about if I start with dispelling a few myths about the man whose name is in our subtitle, Daniel Boone and the Fight for America's First Frontier. First off, Daniel Boone did not die at the Alamo. That was Davy Crockett. You would not believe how many people confused the two, you know? So Boone met his end in San Antonio, Texas in 1836, no, no, no, no, no. Boone lived to the ripe old age of nearly 86, and he died in Missouri. And the second is, and this is another one that is almost universally believed, Daniel Boone did not wear and hated coon skin caps. That again was Davy Crockett. Boone was an average, he was of average height for a man of his era, 5758, but his cousins on his mother's Welsh side were big men, giants almost for the year, for the time, 63, 62, and Boone always considered himself short. He had a complex and he thought that a coon skin cap would make him look even shorter, so he liked a nice tall hunters cap. All right, with that out of the way, we can blame Walt Disney, I suppose, who cast the actor, Best Parker, as both Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett in the Disney television shows of the 50s and 60s. So it's a funny thing. When Tom and I first came up with the germ of an idea for this book, Daniel Boone was so far, he wasn't even on our radar, on our radar, I was going to say so far off our radar, but he was not even on our radar. What we wanted to do, and what we hope we have done, is written a biography of an era, not of an individual, an era when the stirrings of the Atlantic-bound 13 colonies were suddenly looking west, when the concept of manifest destiny was in the air, and although the phrase manifest destiny was not to be coined for another half century, another 50 years, but we wanted to write about this volatile era, and of course we thought that we needed a guide, someone who was going to take us through this era, and what had worked so well in one of our previous books, which David mentioned, the heart of everything that is, Red Cloud was the perfect guide for that era a century later. So naturally we thought an American Indian might do the trick. We looked at Pontiac, the Ottawa Pontiac rebellion, I'm sure you've heard of it. This flame burned bright, but it was doused way too soon for our purposes. Tecumseh came a little bit later than the time frame we wanted to write about. There's some of the lesser indigenous head men, little turtle, black fish, you probably never heard of these corn stalk. They were protagonists, wonderful protagonists, and they're in our book, in and of their own right, but they couldn't carry, they didn't live long enough to carry the entire narrative. We even looked at French men and Brits, I mean the two countries, two European countries were such a overwhelming presence on the North American continent from Canada to west to Fort Detroit, across the old Northwest, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, South to Kentucky, and the 13 colonies in itself, but there was not a French or an Englishman who lent itself. Yet as we got deeper and deeper into our research, one name just kept appearing, Boone, where there was George Boone, Daniel's grandfather, where there was Squire Boone, Daniel's father, and of course Boone, Boone seemed to be, he was the zealot of the era we wanted to write about, or for younger viewers out there, I guess the farthest gump of the era, and we could, I remember Tom thinking, well Boone's been done, and I remember you telling me we're not doing a biography of Daniel Boone, we're going to use Daniel Boone as the guy to take us through this time frame, and I thought that was such a smart idea, I worried that Boone was overdone, but once again Tom, you kind of hit the nail on the head when you said, there's always more stuff besides what you read in high school, or what Walt Disney put on the screen, do you agree? I think that's very true of Daniel Boone, first of all, even though there have been some books about Daniel Boone, I mean David Mac Farragher is one example of a very good book by Daniel Boone, we didn't think anything had been done recently, and also again we were not writing a biography of Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone was a, he was our guide, he was our pathfinder through the story, as he was through the Cumberland Gap, as he was through the Appalachian Mountains, as he was through Kentucky, as he was through Missouri, and so there's that aspect of it, and I think to me a big part about the book that connects to Boone, but connects to many of the other characters, and connects to, I think the heart of our story, is, well what's the connection between Daniel Boone and Van Morrison? Okay, I have one for you. Years and years and years ago Van Morrison did an album, one of his more successful ones titled A Sense of Wonder, and as I was, you know, we were working on this book, and just in the last few days when I was rereading some portions of it to prepare for this program, I think what the book conveys is the sense of wonder that Daniel Boone had, and that other people have, John Finley, some of the other, Simon Kenton, some of the other people who were the first ones to cross over the mountains, cross through the mountains, and they would come to the Ohio Valley, they would come to what would later become Kentucky and Missouri, and they were seeing land, woodlands and hills and valleys and streams and rivers and game that, no, certainly no white man had seen before, this was the home of Indian tribes, so I'm not going to use the word, they discovered this territory, they did not discover it by any means, but it was a great sense of wonder that they had to see these things and to marvel at them, and I think that's something that is a theme in the book, that as the years go on and we extend our story, not just Daniel Boone, but what's happening on that western side of the Appalachian Mountains and with the Cherokee, with the Shawnee, with the Kickapoo and some of the other tribes, Delaware and some of the other tribes, there's a mutual sense of wonder in that the white settlers and explorers and hunters are seeing things for the first time, including these tribes and this culture, and the Indians, the indigenous people for the first time are seeing the white folks, you know, they're coming through the gap into over the mountains and to some extent their culture because the difference, they have the difference with the white people, the settlers, they're looking for land ownership, the Indians didn't have that same concept of land ownership, they were thinking more about survival because of what the land represented as far as hunting and what they did with the natural resources, which made sure the tribe could live another day. So you have eventually became a clash, but I think initially it was these two peoples who were connecting and countering each other for the first time and filled with wonder about where do they come from, what do they want, what do they do, what's their belief system, all these things. I hope that we conveyed that in the book because I think it's a very important part of the story and as that is sort of like kind of an umbrella, I think and Bob could speak to this, we have so many, to me, the big part of the story is so many interesting characters, whatever their background, white or red, explorer hunters, head men, tribal authority, medicine men, there's so many interesting and colorful characters that, you know, we could have easily, I think the book clocks in at about 400 pages, it could easily have been a 600 page book. Yeah, but then we would have had no readers, unfortunately. But I take your point about the historian Francis Jennings, who was one of my favorite historians, I'll make sure I get this quote right. Europeans did not conquer wilderness to what Tom said about just because in 1850 or actually probably earlier some French explorers discovered, quote marks, the Cumberland Gap elite. The indigenous people had been using the Cumberland Gap for millennia, the Cherokee to run north, they called it the warrior's path, that was part of the warrior's path. When the Cherokees ran north to raid Shawnee villages and when the Shawneys and the Delaware ran south to raid Cherokee and Choctaw, Chickasaw villages, they all used the Cumberland Gap. But Francis Jennings, Europeans did not conquer wilderness, they conquered Indians. They did not discover America, they invaded it. And to Tom's point about Boone being central to this narrative, I briefly mentioned Boone's grandfather, George Boone, when William Penn was trying to treat somewhat fairly with the mostly Delaware, sometimes Shawnee Indians, it was every other colony by the way had a militia to fight Indians. William Penn never stood up with militia. It was George Boone, Daniel Boone's grandfather who stood next to him, he was also a Quaker. When the first stirrings of Western started to ripple through the white, the Euro-American communities on the Atlantic seaboard, it was Squire Boone, Daniel's father who led a wagon train down through the Shenandoah Valley, which was just being populated and into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. And by the way, the 16-year-old Daniel at the time was already a pathfinder, a forester, a crack shot, and the best hunter. And so he was in charge of procuring gain for the wagon train. And then of course, Boone himself. I mean, you can't write about the Euro without writing about the French and Indian War, which secured the North American continent for the Brits. And you can't write about the French and Indian War without writing about General Edward Braddock's excursion into the deepest heart of Pennsylvania to drive the French from Fort Decay, which was later renamed Fort Pitt, when of course became Pittsburgh. And Braddock's expedition was, well, Braddock's folly, they called it, because his army was wiped out. And who was on that expedition? Daniel Boone was a 20-year-old teamster. He was nearly killed next to the 23-year-old militia colonel, George Washington. Can you imagine what the history of this country would be with that? If Daniel Boone and George Washington had both been killed on that expedition. And then there was Boone through the Cumberland Gap. Now, of course, he did not discover it. He wasn't even the first white man through it. But he was the one that led the party that axed their way through it and widened it for pack horses, not for Conestoga wagons. It was another 30 years before wagons could get through. But he widened it and he settled Kentucky, which leads to, I think, Tom, probably what is surprised too strong a word when I bring up the role that Boone played in the American Revolution on the Western Front is surprised. It surprised the hell out of me. I can tell you that. It certainly surprised me too, because, I mean, I did not know, I mean, a couple of things. One, we certainly had to refresh our memories when we first started incorporating Daniel Boone into this book. When did he live? What was his heyday, for example? But what was the span of his life? Was he alive before, after the American Revolution? There is the confusion with Davey Crocker who came after the American Revolution. And then, I think, so he was part of the American Revolution, but I think also what surprised us is how active the Western Front was. The Western Front here, during the American Revolution, is, I think, to most people, a non-starter. Everything always quiet on the Western Front during the American Revolution, because everything was happening in Virginia and Massachusetts and New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the most famous battles. And of course, the subject of our previous book, Valley Forge, took place in Pennsylvania. And so to discover that you had, you know, during the French Indian War, which was lost by the French, and they were pretty much kicked out of North America, and the British took over, their relationship with the Indians became more prominent. And so, when the American Revolution took place, you had, you know, British leaders like Sir Henry Hamilton, who was the Lieutenant Governor, and he was headquartered in Detroit. The hair buyer.  But Henry Hamilton and the British were basically saying to the Indians, fight with us, fight on our behalf, fight in a company with us.   And it could be yours once again. Now, by this point in the 1770s, this probably, first of all, was never going to happen anyway. And then as it turned out when the American Revolution ended, and the treaty was signed ending the American Revolution, there was no mention of any protection for the Indians or any consideration or any compensation or anything from the British for having enlisted them as allies. So on the Western frontier, you had these British led Indian armies that were attacking the forts. And we mentioned in the book at one point, there were as many as 10 forts, they were called stations then mostly at the time, 10 stations in Kentucky. And it wasn't too long before there was whittled down to three, because the others had either fallen or been abandoned, been conquered. And so that Daniel Boone was the most famous of the frontiersmen who were leading the American cause, so to speak, which really on the Western frontier, the American cause was survival. If the forts had fallen, we believe it would have opened up the door to George Washington being attacked from behind, having to fight a two front war. But the other, I think, less political, more practical consequence for people like Daniel Boone in his fort called Boonesboro and his comrades and their families is that there would have been no place left for them to go. There was no safe place for them. They would have died. They would have been taken hostage if they were lucky, but most of them would have been killed in a very horrible way. So that Daniel Boone played a prominent role in the American Revolution by really leading the frontier fight against the British and the British led Indian tribes. I remember feeling how lucky we were to be able to discover this, to include this in our book, because we really believed, and I think it's true from the feedback we've gotten, almost no one knows about Daniel Boone in the American Revolution. Turning back that Hamilton's Anglo-Canadian Indian army of Boonesboro, vastly outnumbered of Boonesboro, a week long siege, and Hamilton's army scattered back across Yohau River saving Washington's continental army for having to fight a two-front war, which Washington was not sure he could win a two-front war. That role that Boone played on the western frontier of the American Revolution did come as a surprise to me. What might come as also a surprise, maybe perhaps not a good one for people with delicate stomachs, is that one reviewer, it wasn't Peter Cousins who David Ferriero mentioned in his opening, I can't remember who it was, but he gave us a terrific review, but then asked kind of like a movie rating at the bottom. He said, blood and treasure is not for the faint of heart, and I cannot disagree with him. I mean it was that's the blood and blood and treasure. The treasure was the land. The blood was, well let's face it, the book opens with Daniel Boone's 16-year-old eldest son James. Having just been ambushed, his party was just ambushed by a combined Cherokee Delaware Shawnee war party, James is bleeding out in the shadow of Cumberland Mountain, gut shot, and the Indian who led the ambush was known as Big Jim to the Anglos and the Americans is standing over James Boone plucking his fingernails out, plucking his toenails out before he scalps him and bashes in his head, and the book years and years later ends with Daniel Boone's another son of Daniel Boone, Israel Boone, dying in his father's arms. An Indian's musket ball lodged in his heart and gouts of blood are spewing out of his mouth as he tries to tell his father goodbye, and in between there is a lot of what historian called a whirlwind of blood and carnage in our book, but that's just the way it was. The American people, or I should say the Euro-American people from Cotton Mather preaching from his pulpit, the famous preacher Cotton Mather, preaching from his pulpit in Boston about the the devilish red sons of Satan, to even as luminaries as Thomas Jefferson who once proposed exterminating the tribes between the Atlantic Ocean and Mississippi River, the Indians knew the Americans or the Anglo-Americans and then the Americans wanted their land and they were not about to give it up without a fight. So there was a grand tour of hideous torture and disembowelment and dismemberment and scalping and burning at the stakes, and but I do want to emphasize before I throw it back to Tom, the Butcher's bill for this era, the mid to late 18th century, it went both ways. For every white infant scalped or tied to a tree to use as target practice for for arrows or for every militiamen who was made to dance while his arms were lopped off, or for every continental army officer who was burned at the stake, there was a lot of burning at the stakes to the point where one witness remembers one Colonel, a friend of George Washington's as a matter of fact, he had been flayed, he had been burned, as he was being burned his brains boiled so that that they melted and whistled out of his not, a whistling came out of his nostrils reminiscent of a teacup, but for every Native American atrocity there was also a Euro-American atrocity that we had, there were there were militiamen who would fall on peaceful villages and just kill men, women and children, there was that Pennsylvania delegation that fell on a converted Delaware village, they had converted to the Moravian faith, they would not take up arms, and as they lined up to have their heads mashed in, men, women and children once again, they sang hymns and said prayers, there were the there what began on one of the many Indian wars, Lord Dunwar's war, what began this was when the Virginia militiamen lured some small troop of mingos into a trading post ostensibly to talk peace with them and then murdered them all including the wife of the mingle leader Logan and once again Tom mentioned that Henry Hamilton out in Detroit was paying for scalps, well the lead military officer in the North American continent Jeffrey Amherst was also paying for scalps and well if you could get a scalp doesn't matter where you get it from you could dig up an Indian graveyard in the middle of a tack on a village or you could cut open the wombs of pregnant Indian women rip out the fetuses and scalpa it was it was a it sounds to us I mean David mentioned in his opening I have spent some time in hell holes from Darfur to Afghanistan to to to Iraq to Sarajevo Belfast at least you get a beer at the end of the day at Belfast you couldn't anywhere else but I think if if I were surprised I guess Tom by the role Daniel Boone played in the western front of the American Revolution I was also fairly surprised by the carnage the utter carnage that permeated this period I don't know if you were or not but well I think we had prepared ourselves a little bit for this you know it's sort of a I harken back to when we were working on our book the heart of everything that is which came out in 2013 and and and Bob had mentioned it earlier red cloud is our main character and it basically is the last 10 to 15 years of the plains Indians before they were forced onto reservations and red clouds war in the mid-1860s and certainly it was present in that book so I think I mean I maybe it was a bit surprised that there had been no evolution of violence it had been bad a century earlier more than a century earlier it had been bad then it just it just continued as as the tribes retreated west and as the white settlers and explorers and hunters moved for intruded further west but something that I think is very important to to point out is that you know connected to this is that Daniel Boone many if not almost all of his contemporaries believed that they could commit these atrocities first of all because they in some cases they thought they were getting revenge for what was visited upon them but also because they didn't look at the Indians as humans they were subhumans and so you were you were skinning an animal for example you weren't skinning a human being however what's very important that I think we should point out is that Daniel Boone was not he was a man of his time yes but he was a man out of his time as far as his attitude towards Indians which was good because I think it would have been very difficult for us maybe impractical for us to spend you know all these pages with Daniel Boone and he's he's an insufferable person as far as his relationship with Native Americans you know quite the opposite he first of all as a child his family always lived always lived on the age of their frontier so he was interacting with Native Americans as a child as an adolescent as a teenager he came to admire them he liked those he was fascinated with the way they walk the way they carry themselves their language their jewelry their clothing their survival skills he learned a lot from them that he adapted into his own every day activity when he was her medicine the medicine that they cure ailments and wounds things like that so even their religion I mean he he he is somebody that came from a Quaker family and he said at one point that he had as much respect for the Great Spirit as he did for any Christian God and that's because he was somebody who admired people who were proud people who know how to survive took care of families I think one of the interesting things that that some of the characters find out is the idea that Indians love their families and how they treated their families and and that's is that's not something that subhumans do or why would they care about their families how how do you love if you're a subhuman or a savage and so I I think we we we got it right and we certainly made a great effort that somebody reading Blood and Treasure is going to get a really in-depth portrait from the indigenous point of view Daniel Boone's in the subtitle but so much of what we write about and so many of the anecdotes and so much of the information is from the indigenous point of view so you know some of these characters like a few we mentioned before like cornstalk and hanging maw and dragging canoe and blackfish uh and and the young Tecumseh and uh and and so we we want people to really feel like you are their quality they've just made a trip to the edge of the frontier in the 1760s and 1770s he was a he was a different man uh as Tom I think Tom put it best out of his time yet in his time uh you know for I mean Cotton Mather who I mentioned before probably would have excommunicated well even though Cotton Mather wasn't a Quaker he was the uh there was a word with the Quakers kicked the out time I can't remember it but uh this is associated I can't remember what the word was but the Quakers would have no truck with Daniel Boone's empathy for the Indians Great Spirit uh that's as Tom mentioned I think that's what really drew us to this man this Pathfinder as a guide the fact that he wasn't repellent he wasn't repugnant he really tried to understand the Indians point of view now at one point he was captured and he was adopted into the Shawnee tribe and he tried to convince them now this greats on our 21st century years but he tried to convince them listen the long knives are going to wipe you out unless you become more white that's a quote an unquote who is for to Daniel Boone's first biographer that sounds what do you mean more white that sounds so uh off color to us if not profane perhaps but it showed that boom the man of his time his heart was in the right place which made him a man out of his time and what I think that Tom Tom when we talked early on about Tom's like there's more to boon than most people know there's more to boon than the dignification of boon or the what we learn in history and I think there are two stories that kind of illustrate that one and one went down and boon family lore as old dental surprise dental would go on these long hunts uh long hunters their heyday was only a decade a decade and a half long but at the time they were as they were as mythical as the mythical johnny apple seed or pawbungan and they would disappear into the into the forest beyond the frontier for 12 16 maybe two years and they'd come out with their pack horses laden with deer skins and beaver furs beaver pelts and at one point boon was off on another indian war this one called the Cherokee war he was part of the North Carolina militia and on the way back after they had defeated Cherokee he asked his commanding officer do you mind if I hunt he was in eastern Tennessee and he didn't know the territory and so he hunted and all told he was gone for like 16 months now daniel moon was a fairly he was a lettered man as one biographer described not a literate man but a littered man he always carried a copy of uh swifts gulliver's travels wherever he went so anyway he was gone for 16 months and he could do his arithmetic and we got home when he got home back to uh the the yadkin valley in uh in north Carolina his wife rebecca was nursing a baby girl so daniel was like nine months i've been gone 16 you know and so they talked and rebecca said listen daniel i thought you were dead i'm a widow on the frontier i thought i was a widow on the frontier with two other children two young children and your brother netty who by the way netty was taken for daniel's twin they look so much alike your younger brother netty gave me comfort he gave me suker and one thing led to another and i'm sorry but i thought you were dead and so daniel confessed to his wife that he had had dalliances with indian maidens as he put it and finally he looked at his wife and he looked at the baby girl and he said netty huh so much the better it's all in the family and that's this was unheard of at the uh at the time among civilized white people so to speak and the other story i just want to tell real quick before i take it back to time when boon was leading that party that was hacking its way or laying the trail uh before through and after the cumberland gap a young irishman was part of the ax party and the only there were two women in the party one was a black slave the other was daniel's uh daughter susanna susie and susie was how shall we properly say we are talking at the national archives let's just say she was a fun loving woman and so this young irishman who was part of the ax party came up to daniel boon he had fallen in love with susie boon he asked for her hand in marriage now as politically as a father could daniel try to dissuade this young irishman william haze was his name trying to convince haze that perhaps susie was not a one-man kind of woman if you know what i mean and but haze would not be dissuaded he married susie boon and several weeks later haze reappears and he talks to daniel pulls daniel boon aside he said i i can't kind of get susie to quit her this is a quote her frolic in ways and daniel just looked at him and smiled and said you know did what did i what did i warn you about i mean trot father trot mother did you expect a pace and colt and the fact that we can humanize daniel boon in that kind of sense i think even makes him a better guy through blood and treasure that we probably could have expected right top i think so also that he had you mentioned this earlier in our talk he had such a long life uh you know if daniel boon had died which i mean the lifespan for for an american male probably in the mid 1700s and 1770s was could have been 45 years old if not less and he lived to be almost 86 uh that he had such a long life in that he covered so much territory literally covered so much territory but also so much time he experienced so many things i mean we even have him when we later in the book when we follow boon the rest of boon's life um you know he went on his last long hunt when he went is in his mid 70s along with his um one of his best friends simon kenton and a few others and according to several sources he made it as far west as the yellowstone river and and before he turned turned and came back and so what i think the tightrope we walked i hope we did it successfully is daniel boon was a legend he was a legend in his own time he's a larger than life figure uh he's he's the kind of person that tall stories were you know clung to uh but i think we we we did use the word humanize him i think we humanized him a great deal he was a family man he and his wife rebecca were married for 56 years they had a whole parcel of kids he loved his children uh they they he he had a you know as his family expanded his children there is in law his sons in law his daughter's in law so i think we're seeing daniel boon a legend but i think we're seeing daniel boon the family man and daniel boon the the explorer and daniel boon the some the person who in a lot of ways represented i go back to that sense of wonder that people were having in the 1770s when they were not discovering but they were experiencing a new land yeah uh uh do we have questions i i believe the youtube chat box if there's questions uh what kind of records did you oh you can read that tom can't you i want to what kind of records did you use to which probably oh damn excuse oh i'll be right i spilled coffee up tom take that question uh i'll take yes i will take that question uh one of the things that that we were very fortunate about is that daniel boon lived at a time well lived long enough that people in his later years were interested in finding out about the real daniel boon and so there were people that went to i guess the word is interview him they went to talk to him they encouraged him to reminisce about some of his adventures which he did and and not only did he have a long life but he had a sharp mind until his you know his last very very very last years so he had memories that he could convey uh we have to pay a special thanks to uh lineman draper lineman draper was uh came after boon so he never had a chance to sit down with boon himself but he uh interviewed members of boon's family his sons and daughters people who knew boon who was still alive when lineman draper came along he was going to dedicate himself and he did dedicate himself to collecting all this information and writing the massive authoritative biography of daniel boon and he claimed that he covered something like 50 000 miles on horseback all over to place to interview people and track down records and documents and letters and things like that and it's kind of poignant because uh the time finally came with draper said okay i'm ready you know after years and years of doing this he said i'm ready and he sits down starts writing his biography and he gets to a certain point in the biography and he stops and he can't write anymore i mean this i guess what to use a contemporary phrase but this massive case of writer's block he had all his material i mean pages and pages and pages of material and he just couldn't do it year after year went by so uh you know what came of that was that draper was the uh the i believe the chief historian or director of the wisconsin historical society so he ended up giving up after a time he couldn't just wasn't going to do it and he presented all his papers and his archives and everything to the wisconsin historical society so that that's a great archive uh to for our daniel boone material many of it contemporaneous so that was very important for us to be able to be have access to that and it was not by far not the only thing is a many other sources that we use but i think journals diaries but you're right lineman draper was the man the ultimate authoritative aspect of the book i think is thanks to lineman draper yeah tom do you think we could have written this book with that lineman draper well i think yes but i don't think we'd be as proud of it as we are because we really do i i certainly think that that people can read this book and and feel confident that we did no stone was left unturned and to get accurate information and lineman draper was a big stone i see we have a did boone and crocket ever meet no not that we know nothing anyone knows a crocket was a bit younger than boone i would i forget how generational generations go but i'm not sure you know what he was he was the next generation after daniel boone and he was also tennessee and if you have ever been to the cumberland gap is that the very most northeastern part of tennessee where virginia the western part not west virginia the western part of virginia and then you go over the gap and you're in kentucky i i did the gap i followed daniel boone's trail from pennsylvania to the yakin valley in north carolina and through the gap and up into boones borough and what is now daniel boone national forest and uh so no crocket was a western tennessee man and and boone uh if you're looking at a map i'll use my hand boone is crockets down here and boone is up here so i better pull him back so no that's a long winded answer your question today over me uh related to daniel morgan yes indeed they were cousins uh and uh and daniel morgan is um you know it's just one of those funny things daniel morgan was a character in our previous book valley forge because he and his his man his frontiersman his sharpshooter's were part of some of the military actions that george washington and the continental army participated in they saved they saved washington's bacon at brandy one creek and holding off and uh and late and late in the american revolution daniel morgan is credited with leading the american forces or the bulk of the american forces in the battle of calpins which was a very important victory in the southern theater of the american revolution late the revolution uh but but uh so to re-encounter daniel morgan as a cousin of daniel boone and some of their adventures together in long haunts and military exploits i mean if i remember correctly i think daniel morgan was part of that the braddock feet and was badly wounded but recovered uh got through the jaw shot through the jaw and he was also uh when i mentioned before that boone's cousins on his welsh mother's side on his maternal side morgan was six four three i mean he was pretty era that was a giant of a man and he was known in the backwoods they call them ordinaries which were these rough and tumble taverns where everything from horse racing to cock fighting to uh to pistol shoot and also wrestling not wrestling wrestling and daniel morgan was allegedly there's no way to prove this he was allegedly an undefeated raster in his youth as he went from ordinary to ordinary which means went from tavern to tavern challenging any commerce to a wrestling match for drinks of course for that cheap corn liquor they served out there tom we have to get together sometime and drink some of that cheap corn liquor i'm not in any hurry i don't know what that would do i'm not daniel young daniel morgan that's for sure well listen tom i don't think we have any more questions so let me just finish up okay you know tom and i are both very aware that the four most important words in uh any public speakers vocabulary are and so in conclusion so and so in conclusion uh not long ago a visiting lecture actually he was a general this was before our relationship with china so deteriorated he was a general in the chinese people's army and he's surprised that an audience of american officers at the us army command and general uh staff college by just kind of happen happen stansley mentioning uh well of course the longest war in recorded history was the war for by the united states and the american officers were like what is this guy talking about i mean yes we've been in afghanistan i mean this was maybe six years ago so we would have been in afghanistan for 14 years and uh but that doesn't come close to europe's 30 years war much less it's violent 100 years ago and in the next breath the chinese officer mentioned he was talking about uh the united states is the euro american 300 year war against the north american continents indigenous people and the officers in attendance were from somewhere astounded some were dumbfounded none really took it well including a historian uh who taught at west point of time peter maslowski and i like peter maslowski's writing later maslowski came around to agree with the chinese general's uh statement and he said yes in fact we did fight a 300 year war against the amer against the native americans for their land and if you want to see how this maybe came out all you have to do is today in 2021 of the 330 million on americans 46 million of them can trace their lineage their ancestorship to americans who passed through the cumberland gap which daniel boone opened up and if you want to come really full circle to that whole thing then we'll go back to what i said in the beginning how our book opens with james boone being bleeding out and being tortured by the war party led by the the inter intertribal war party led by the shawnee indian big jim later in boone's life he's in his mid 50s he takes part in one more indian war they crossed the Ohio river the north carolina pennsylvania and virginia militia and they descend on this indian town shawnee town and as they're charging boone hears dogs banging off in the distance to his left he knows what that means there's probably indian warriors over there so he takes a flutune left he turns left and they start chasing they come to a meadow where he sees in fact a party of indian warriors fleeing as they're pounding after them on their horses one indian stops kneels shoulders his kentucky long rifle and blows out of the saddle of the militia man next to boone boone pulls up he rains up and he looks and it is in fact big jim the shawnee who had killed his son james low those years ago boone is stunned big jim and they recognize each other and big jim is frantically trying to reload and as he's reloading boone is standing there he draws his sword and he looks and he looks and what happens next i don't know tom should i tell him or should i tell him that they want to know what happens next they better read the damn book what do you think oh i always vote for they've got to better read the damn book actually i vote for buy the damn book and then read better oh goodness well this has been i thank you all tom we thank you all you got to you got anything to end with well i thought i would read the first 30 pages of the book did we promise to do that no we did yes i forgot yeah no but i want to thank everybody i want to thank the national archives uh it was an honor to have a chance to give a talk there uh when the heart of everything that is came out and it's an honor the only taint on it of course is we're not there in person and we hope that opportunity again but at least we have this this avenue to to talk to people and we're really grateful for it and i'm sorry for spilling my coffee i feel all wet here but i'm sorry for ducking out on you but i got back as fast as i could so that's it people thank you and good night thank you


We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome to the next episode of The Therapy Show with myself, Jackie Jones and the wonderful Bob Cook. And we're going to be looking at narcissism but it's a really meaty subject this one. I get asked an awful lot about this online and I talk in quite a few groups, particularly one that I'm thinking around, with alienated parents kind of saying that their partner is narcissistic and asking me how they can improve it. So maybe I'll point them in the direction of this door where we can discuss all that. It's a good disadvantage around an awful lot. If it's not people talking about being gaslighted or gaslighting, narcissistic, you know, the disorder, I talk about narcissistic tendencies, which I think we all have, you know, to a certain extent. So over to you, Bob, where do you want to take this conversation? Well, of course, healthy narcissism is the basis of self-esteem. Yeah. So, you know, this podcast is more about narcissism as a disorder level or a trait level. You know, if you want to talk about negative narcissism, your toxic narcissism we could do. But this is what the podcast is going to be about. So let's take the definition of narcissism. Let's go back into sociology. So narcissists, you know, the gods gave him, if you like, internal beauty. And that was his destiny, internal beauty on one clause. And that is, if he ever looked at his own features, he would wither away and die. Now, of course, what he did was, he did look at his own features through a reflection and a pool.  And in this place, of course, you've got the flower called narcissist. Yeah. So that's the sort of, that's the sort of background of the definition of a narcissist or narcissism, if we're going to talk about in this podcast. So it comes from the Greek mythology, the term, and it's very much seen in the literature as somebody who is the center of their own universe. So in other words, they see themselves as extraordinarily special. They see themselves right at the center of their own universe. And they have a high sense of entitlement. Now, somebody with a narcissistic disorder, you don't usually see in therapy. No. Because they're too, anybody who's perfect, especially at that level, wouldn't come to therapy. Yeah. I always say, I work with people who have parents that display narcissistic tendencies and partners of somebody that displays that behavior. Yeah. So if I think of, you know, I have work of course, narcissistic people cost a spectrum from, if you're a mild narcissistic tendencies, all the way at the spectrum, probably to a disordered level. Now, the more disordered they are, the more unlikely they are to come to therapy, their own volition. Yeah. In fact, you would hardly ever see them. Yeah. I probably, I always think of two people, perhaps at least of the high narcissistic order, still not a disorder in the sense of being fixed, lacking spontaneity and rigid with an element of psychosis, but pretty high in that continuum of what I call a narcissist. Now, the first person came to therapy because he came with his then partner and really, I want to say his partner sent him to therapy, but he didn't come, he didn't seek me out of saying, I want an individual therapy. The other person I'm thinking about was in training, believe it enough to be a psychotherapist and had to by definition have some therapy. Yeah. So there's neither came of their own volition. That's interesting. Yeah. At the high end of narcissism, you will never see them. Yeah. So you're right. Usually you'll see people of narcissistic traits. And again, I'll just repeat it. The second narcissist I'm thinking about, high narcissists came because they they were in training to be a psychotherapist. That's interesting itself, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was meaning was interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's look at the features of somebody who's coming in with this frame of reference. Perhaps we don't say a disorder level because I don't think you'll see them. Perhaps with people who are quite high up the continuum, they've certainly got quite very intense traits. And let's go through a few of the features of EI. So I've got a list of them here. Let's start off with the first one, grandiose sense of self-importance. Yeah. So grandiosity means an inflated sense of your own worth. So that's when somebody talks about themselves in an exaggerated manner. You know, I have the most wonderful sense of humor. I've got an IQ of 183. In fact, I think the last reported sense of IQs was the second highest in the United Kingdom. Yeah. You know what? I'm not afraid of telling people about my level of intelligence. So they know how intelligent I am. So do you see the grandiosity there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They might work for a company, but say that the company couldn't run without them or the backbone of everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So there's a huge grandiosity and a self and inflation of the self. Yeah. So that's really important. So any sense of person who comes from a narcissistic sense will be grandiose to a certain extent about their self-worth, their level of specialness. Yeah. And usually often about their level of qualities like intelligence or beauty or we could list the different qualities. You just gave a good example. Somebody who came along and said, right, this business will collapse without me. I'm totally indispensable. Yeah. So there's a grandiosity in the way of looking at things. So why wouldn't any woman be attracted to me? You know, I always dating science. I can't believe them. I mean, if I went on a dating site, but lie me. I'd have them all wanting to fall over and swoon at my feet. Quite right. Quite right. But the interesting thing is if they were on a dating site and nobody swiped left or right or whichever way you swiped to get a match, they wouldn't take responsibility for that. It would be a rubbish dating site. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I remind me of somebody's narcissist tenders I was thinking about who had a series of dates and couldn't understand why they didn't want to meet them again. Yeah. And then when we were talking, we found out that the dates that he had, he talked about how marvellous he was for the whole of the two hours over the meal. You know, I'm a super athlete. I have been to the most out wonderful places in the world. You know what? I know many, many chefs who've got seven Michelin stars.  It is completely not even their, you know, awareness that the other person might feel completely discounted and no, and there's never been any question about how they are. Yeah. But they don't, they don't even, they do not even think about it like that. See, that's the thing. When I talk to people about narcissism, it's kind of like it's not that they're aware of it and they do it anyway. They're aware of discounting the other person and they still do it. It's kind of like they don't even get the fact that they are discounting the other person. It's not in their awareness at all. It's not their awareness. And it's a really important point to be aware of and the reason why that is and the reason why that is is because they are protecting themselves against their own real self and their own real self, if you ever got to it, would be feeling depressed, inadequate, devalued and extraordinarily sad. Now, they, it's really important to go nowhere near that. Yeah. So in many of the literature, they, you know, they'll talk about a real self and a false self. So they create this level of grandiose self so that they will not have to go anywhere near their perceived sense of inadequacy. Yeah. And then they kind of build a fortress around that false self so that nobody can penetrate it. Well, at least, at least to learn themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like I said, a lot of people I speak to, it's kind of like it's really difficult to get across to them that it's, it's just not in their awareness how the behavior impacts on the other person. It's not that they know they're doing it and they do it anyway. It's just not on the horizon at all. No, it's in transaction analysis terms. They're in, they're coming from the child eager state from a part of themselves, which is they're not really aware of. Yeah. This is another language. This is a coping system. Yeah. So do you want to talk a little bit maybe about how a narcissist is born, so to speak, where it comes from? Why are certain people narcissists and others aren't? Fine. But let's just go through the features first. Is that okay? No. I quite happily do that because it's important to look at. And before I talk about that briefly, narcissists are usually born from narcissists. But I can talk about them in a minute about that. The second one is they are preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. Absolutely. So they fantasize a lot about how successful they are, how powerful they are, how they can just have, like I've just said, all the desirable women in the world. People will find them, the person, a sense of beauty, absolutely overwhelming. And they spend a long time fantasizing about that. It's one of the dangerous things about these people that they actually do achieve an awful lot because of the belief around it. Oh, that's a very good point. Most people who've got narcissism at this level are usually extremely successful people, extremely powerful people, and they surround themselves with people who actually reinforce that narcissism. So the sense of grandiosity, the sense of perfectness and everything else kind of comes true to a certain extent because they are usually quite successful. Well, the really important thing is that they surround themselves with people who stroke and support their sense of narcissism, so they become more narcissistic. Because one of the things, when I was looking at this for research, not just for this podcast, but generally, is kind of cult leaders are usually falling to this bracket that do have people that worship the ground that they walk on, that do believe everything that they say, that do follow them, even into danger. That's how idealized sometimes these people can be. And they're usually highly charismatic. Yeah. Yeah. They have a sense of distorted reality in the sense of their own grandiosity. And they will surround them. I've said again, this is a really important point. They will surround themselves with people who idealize them, who support their grandiosity, so they become more grandiose. Yeah. These are not people who surround themselves with people who will disagree with them. They're not going to surround themselves with people who actually support, idealize them and believe their grandiosity. Yeah.  This happens early on. So it's not that somebody can suddenly become a narcissist. I think a person can actually create a sense of self, which is narcissistic. How long they can keep that up is another story. Yes, you're correct in the sense of will. A person has narcissistic injuries will have a distorted sense of reality. So you know, it's very hard for people to play that. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was meaning to keep up that pretence. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same with all these disorders. If you have somebody to play somebody being obsessive, for example, or if you ask somebody to play somebody being highly withdrawn, you might do it in a role play, but you wouldn't be able to do it for long. No. No. So it's the same with all these disorders, all these types of clients we're talking about. So I'll just repeat this for you. I have a great sense of fantasy about wealth, success, power, and this feeds them internally. Yeah. This feeds themselves internally because they have to have the internal strokes, if you like, or recognition internally to keep the grandiose self going. Going. The other thing they need, of course, is a supply of what in TA we call positive strokes. In other words, a supply of people who will idealize them. Yeah. Who will say they are wonderful. Tell them how special they are. And if that supply starts to do wither away, they will start getting in touch with their internal depression, their fragile sense of self and their internal hopelessness and go into what I'll call a deep depression where other people might call a narcissistic injury where there's a narcissistic collapse and they go to bed or they capacitate themselves or they're finally difficult to function. So they have to surround themselves with people which give them this type of recognition. Interesting. Especially if you think about therapy. Yeah. Because they will need, they will go on to how you work with these people, but they need the therapist to support the narcissistic frame of reference. Otherwise, they feel this cue sense of shame, humiliation, depression.  So yeah, that's one of the reasons I would have thought why they won't come to therapy. Yeah, they won't. They won't. They might come a couple of times, but as soon as you start to chink their armor, they're off. Yeah, chink their armor. What do you mean by that? When you start to do what? Well, in a therapeutic setting, if you're not, you know, buying into the game, if you're not idealizing them and believing every word that they're saying, they will see that as something wrong with me, I would imagine and go back again. You won't see them. So the treatment, which I'm not going to probably never get, not going to get into this podcast, but the treatment is to do exactly what we're talking about here, which we'll get on to later. You need to idealize them, but I'll explain how you do that through an actual term, which cohort who specializes in narcissism called and that is empathic attunement. I'll probably talk about that another time. In the TA world, empathic transactions. But let's go on to another feature of somebody who comes to our room, our clinical practice with this framework. And that's a need for specialness. They, above all, have to be special. Yeah. And they have to be special to the therapist as well. They have to have people who will admire them. They have to surround people who will admire them and be loyal to them, tell them how wonderful they are, and continue many, many times in different ways, reinforcing this sense of specialness. Yeah. And I would imagine as well, you know, even in the therapy room that you couldn't compare them to another client, or not that you would compare clients, but do you know what I mean? That if I said, you know, I've worked with clients like you before, for example, that wouldn't sit well with them because that would mean that they aren't unique and special. Unless you're correct, unless you're talking about a different type of narcissist. So there's different types of narcissists as a closet narcissist. Yeah. And that's a business narcissist, which I'll also talk about in a minute. So in general, you're correct with a caveat. Yes. And generally correct, I remember somebody who's highly narcissistic who I asked them, I don't think I felt was thinking very well at this particular time. Or I just didn't occur to me. I've seen them for only three sessions. But I asked them to wait outside while I was finishing off work. Not good. With another client. And when they came in, they spent the first 15 minutes at least raging at me about how they have felt humiliated, how they felt in the pecking order discounted. How could I do this to them?  And I learned from that. I mean, I knew this anyway, but I really learned from this to exactly what you've just said there, to make sure you don't leave them in waiting rooms or you see them. So if they're coming at two o'clock, you meet them at the door or you ask them straight up. Yeah. Because if you don't, and we do things like I did, or even what you just suggested, they will go into a real, what I'm going to call narcissistic rage. Yeah. But I feel like I need to say it says something about the relationship that you had with them that they came in. In the first place. Yeah. Yeah. That they didn't just leave in utter distaste. Well, I'll tell you again, it's into the treatment of narcissists, but you have to get into their frame of reference in the service of attunement. Now, if you can get into their frame of reference in the service of attunement to coming alongside them, they'll calm down really quickly. No. The problem for therapists is if they go into some sort of battle or go into some sort of parent process or some counter-transferential place where the actual client doesn't feel met, then they're into losing wicket. Yeah. So it's, I haven't seen a narcissistic person in the therapy room, but I would imagine it's exhausting and really quite difficult to meet their needs at the level that they want them to be met at and still keep your sense of self in that transaction. Yeah. You need to start off from a position which is this, that it's impossible to do what you've just said. Yeah. You know, so therefore if you're starting from that position, that is impossible to meet their needs. You can't provide the needs. You're in a better frame of reference. Another way to look at it also is this injury we're talking about happened a long time ago and we need to get to that injury. So if you look at it that type of way and we think about the injured child and the client that's got to produce or defend by having a grandiose sense of self and needs to be admired and needs to be specialed or costs, then hopefully the therapist's compassion might save the day. The question's just come up, Bob, and I'm not sure if you know the answer. Are narcissists usually only children? Is there any relation to being an only child and a narcissist? I'm not quite sure the question is, but I'll answer it the way I'm going to answer it and then you can say that's not the question. But anyway, I'll answer it as much as I can. They don't really have access to much adult in the clinical room. So usually what you're actually coming across is a younger sense of self, which is defending against the real self being actually met. So their adult usually goes out of the window in therapy. Is that what you meant? No. Well, tell me, say it again in a clear way that I can understand that. In a family unit, are there any statistics that only children are more likely to have narcissistic tendencies? Oh, you mean real children on psychological terms? Yes, actually in the family. Yes. So you're saying, real children, okay, you're saying to me, is there any statistics to show that real children have, say that again to me, still not quite clear? If only children, if mum and dad just have one child, statistically, are they more likely to have narcissistic tendencies than if they're one of five children, say, for example? Oh, that's okay. I can tell you why I think about that. I haven't read much research on this. I don't know the statistics, but I can tell you my thoughts, especially as I have an only child. So Jessica, as my daughter was 22, is an only child, okay? I think she's got histonic traits and not narcissistic traits, and I think there's a difference. Yes, yeah, yeah. So I think only children fall into a challenge often by the parents in that the parents may not allow the child to grow up. They may allow them to keep them young and not equip them with the social skills, if you like, to deal with relationships in later life. But that's the profile more of a histonic. And I think the Jessica has histonic traits, even though she was brought up by two psychotherapists. Interestingly, and we'll talk about this in another podcast particularly, the misdark notices of hysterics with narcissists. But I think Jessica is more in the world of the hysterical traits rather than the narcissistic traits. So I don't know the statistics. I don't know the research, but I understand the query. Yeah, because there's something about them not separating out appropriately. You said earlier on about narcissistic people often have narcissistic children. So is that you saying that that's potentially learned to behavior or the fact that they feed each other's narcissism? Well, you're right. I mean, I'm not sure it should be this podcast, but rather than the other one when we look at the diagnosis and treatment plan of narcissists. But we are going back to what is called the individuation separation phase, usually called the repostment stage in the French terminology, which is really one and a half to probably three and a half where the child starts to differentiate out and starts to separate. And if things go wrong in that time period, then different challenges will occur. Now, if you think about it this way that say you've got a narcissistic parent and they feel wounded when the actual child needs to separate normally, healthily, in an individuated way. And the person who's narcissistic feels wounded by that, they may deny the child the strokes and validation to grow up, but give them strokes and validation if they come back and stay infantilized and look after the mother. Yeah, yeah. So that's some of the problems you can get there. And from that, many things can happen. But if they're kept young and they aren't allowed to grow up, then you've got problems, haven't you? Yeah, which in my mind, I think that's the reason why I asked, as well as the way that the narcissist displays their behavior, that would make sense if they're not allowed to grow up. And being a parent of an only child, I've got three kids, but if I was, I would imagine that you want to keep them close. If this is your only child and your protégé and everything else, there's going to be a lot of that. The danger is, you may, like you've just said, you may not give them the strokes, the recognition, the validation they need to actually separate. To be independent, yeah. And you may unconsciously, out of your awareness, give them strokes for actually staying young. Yeah. The good person on all this is Margaret Mahler, who is probably one of the best psychoanalytical child development people I know who talked about this, co-hearts another person who talked about this. And when we get to the next podcast on diagnosed treatment and features of the narcissist, we can perhaps talk more in depth about that. But at the bottom level of narcissistic traits or disorders is what's called in the literature the empty core. In other words, I get sad when you say that, Bob. That really makes me feel sad.  Yeah. And that is why they defend the way they defend. Grandiosity, being special. And another feature they need is they require excessive admiration from everybody around them. Trying to fill that empty core. Correct. That's exactly it. Trying to fill that empty core. Yeah. Now, it's impossible because no one can do it. There is no amount of that. No. The injury was, the injury was in their history. Yeah. Not. Not. In fact, I think of it. I think of when my narcissistic class had talked about nothing, you know, whatever they did was not enough. That had to be so perfect. If they weren't perfect, they wouldn't get the validation. So by being perfect, and by being special, and by being a high achiever, they got some validity and strokes. But it was never enough. Because they couldn't be perfect enough. Yeah. And couldn't be special enough. Yeah. They could get it to a certain degree. So they would seek out. They had memories of, you know, their mother or their father coming and reading books to them and could tell them special stories. But it would always be linked to achievement, being perfect, being special, doing wondrous things. Yeah. Which they can't maintain. So it's kind of like, I see it is to get the juicy recognition and validation. But it's not long enough. It doesn't last long enough. They need it again and again and again because it's not enough. Yeah. No satisfaction. Yeah. Short lived. Yeah. Because there's no satisfaction. Because the parents want them to be even more perfect, even more special, even more unique. Yeah. And if they can't do those things, they fall into desolation, which is what is called the narcissistic injury. Like I said, it makes me sad. So is there anything else that you wanted to say to finish up on this episode? Yeah. I want to talk about interpersonally exploitative. In other words, narcissistic people look who will often appear cold, calculating and exploiting other people. Now, have I got five minutes left? You have. Okay. Or perhaps we have. Okay, let's start it here. Maybe we'll have to finish it in the next podcast. But there's a wonderful psychoanalyst. Well, really, she's, she's now a Gestalt Psychotherapist. I think she must be about 80. Eleanor Greenberg. And she's, she is a Gestalt Psychotherapist now. She lives in New York. And she's written extensively about narcissism and actually the borderline condition. And she has a monomic and easy way to remember the characteristics of a narcissistic personality. You know, if somebody walks through the door with those sorts of traits. And it's special God. God. So these are the features you're going to see. And it's an easy way of remembering it. So S is for splitting. Yep. So in other words, there's a split between the real self and the false self. They'll split. And so what you're going to experience isn't the real self. You're going to experience the false self. And you're going to experience this person who's coping mechanism is to actually be very, you know, she's, you know, very special, very, all the things we talked about. So that's one S splitting another S splitting or status. And explain what I mean by this. So narcissists need to be top of the pecking order. So if a narcissist goes into a room, and there's say 15 people in the room, they aren't thinking about things like, Oh, I wonder what if they look very kind or perhaps they're going to like me or not feel a bit anxious because they're in social company, they are going to look around the room. And they're going to think, well, who's number one round here? I am. Yeah. So they have to be one in the pecking order that only ever be two. If they're what we're going to call a closet narcissist, which Mike and the next podcast as well. And they allow the exhibition narcissist to take the alpha position. But basically, they clock everything, everything in social circumstances, in terms of a pecking order. So if they're in a training group, say you're 16 people, like you are in, and like, why wasn't my own training for four years, they would need to be number one or at least number two. And they don't think about in terms of levels intimacy, where they're going to get on with people. But they think about in terms of alpha male and being the top dog. You will see that in Love Island. Do you watch Love Island, Bob? Have you seen the program? I like the thing I'm looking at it from psychological points of view. My daughter disagrees with me. But anyway, you watch Love Island, you watch all those alpha males and how they rate themselves or may not rate themselves in pecking order. But somebody who's got narcissist traits will rate themselves in pecking orders. And that's how they operate in a social environment. So status is number one for them. So E special. Let's go down the line. E. Have we done P? What's the P? Oh, P is perfection. Perfection. Writing these down as you're doing them, Bob. Oh, right. Sorry. They have to be perfect. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There is a part, just let's go back to somebody else about S's. There's a, there is another S there that's often brought into the Sprite and then the Greenberg. And that's sensitivity. Now, people don't often think of sensitivity when they think of narcissists, but they are very, very, very intensely sensitive about slights of humiliation. So that person that I left inadvertently outside the waiting room felt they've been humiliated, shamed, and they were very sensitive to any slights of anybody passing them in the corridor. For example, if they're passing in the corridor and say, Oh, how are you? How are you then? Oh, I've seen you come to therapy or whatever it is. So they're very, very, very sensitive to the most acute sense of transactions. They're not sensitive to other people. They're not sensitive at all to other people. No. They're the complete opposite. But to themselves, they can't take any slights. So we can have splitting status and sensitivity up there. Yeah. Perfection. Yeah. Perfect. And we've talked a little bit about that, haven't we? Yeah. Yeah. Now that's really interesting. So therefore, there need to be a perfect client, which is a really interesting one. I was just going to say, how did you work that one out then in a therapy? I thought you were coming to therapy in the first place in a way, but also they expect the therapist to be perfect, which is also another story. But what they want is a lot of validation from the therapist for coming in the first place, for doing therapy perfectly, doing the homework well, and everything that goes with that. Now that's an important thing to remember for down the line. Yeah. The next is entitlement. They have a huge sense of entitlement. Yeah. Yeah. So I talked about that earlier. But what about envy? Envy goes with entitlement. Another E. So interestingly enough, they can get very envious of other people, especially a closet narcissist will get very envious of exubitious narcissists, even though they don't show it. But they'll also be envious of other people in this pecking order system that I'm talking about. Next one is C, is it? Yeah. Cold and calculating. So they're very cold and calculating people externally. It's interesting about sensitivities. They have no sense of sensitivity to other people because they lack empathy. Yeah. Yeah. They have no sense of empathy with other people. Now, Linda Greenberg talked about a story in her article about this. And she's one of a class whose narcissistic came in and ranted and raved, if I want to read those away, had a narcissistic ranting and raving session about just before they came up to the actual therapy room, they'd gone from a burger next door. And the waitress had given the client mustard on their beef burger instead of tomato. And the client fell humiliated, slighted, shamed and yelled and screamed and tried to get the waitress sat. Wow. And then came up to the therapy room and ranted and raved at the therapist about how they felt shamed, humiliated and could the therapist go round and sack, make sure that this waitress had been sacked. So how does, what does the therapist do? Now, what Greenberg said, and again we'll talk about it again, but what Greenberg said she did was she had de-centre from any thoughts about the feelings of the waitress and centre on the shame and humiliation that the narcissistic person must have felt in the service of getting alongside the child in the client and the earlier injury. Interesting. That's an interesting example, which we'll talk more about how you treat narcissists, how you work with them. Because, you know, to de-centre from the poor old waitress was enough, but you must keep away from that as a therapist and go to the feelings and the terms of reference from the shamed, humiliated client. Wow. This is a very long five minutes. Idealising transference. I'm sure, sorry, this is a long podcast. I'm enjoying it. I've got so much information from this. Yeah, idealising transference. So they need, so they need to idealise you. Now, that's an interesting example I've just talked about, isn't it? Yeah, so they need to see you as a super therapist who never gets anything wrong. No pressure, then. You know, you need to be as special as them or even more. So they can take a picture of you and take it to their bedroom or their lounge or wavities and frame it and look adoringly at you every night and say, you know, I'm in safe hands here. I'm with the best therapist in Manchester. And why? Because in terms of number one protection, they'll feel safe and secure that they're with the best. Yeah, not the best. Yeah, idealising transference. Eventually, of course, which is down the line from this podcast, they need, of course, to see that everybody's normal, including themselves, which has actually the real goal of psychotherapy, that all humans make mistakes, includes themselves, and that is normal. But that's down the line. What's next? Did I special? I think that's admiration. Just look at this, Lizzie. Yeah, we've had that admiration. They need to be acknowledged, admired, everything else that goes for that. L is for low self-esteem. The real self has incredible low self-esteem. And that's why they defend in such an incredible grandiose way so that you'll never, ever, ever, ever suspect that. Let alone work with it. So, and God stands for grandiose omnipotent defence. Oh, omnipotent, like that one. All powerful, like a God. Grandiose omnipotent defence. That's their defence. So, I quite like that. I've not heard it put like that before. It's the special God and what it all stands for. It's quite a good way of remembering things. Yeah. I had to think of how you would work with the narcissist. So, I apologize slightly going over time in your podcast, but I think it's a really important monomic. If anybody's really interested in the service out there working with narcissists, I suggest you look up Eleanor Greenberg for people who's listened to it about, you know, maybe, you know, narcissistic profiles. I hope you can find some compassion. Yeah. Because without compassion, I wouldn't work with them. No. And it is that scared child. It is when, you know, as soon as you said about that emptiness inside, that it that really triggers something in me, you know, yeah, we need to be empathic towards them, even if they're not empathic towards us. Yeah. So, let's move on to the second podcast next time we show. And I want to talk about how you work with these people, because this is just as important as being able to spot them. Yeah. So, we'll finish this one and then we'll come back looking at how we work with them. Yeah. How to work with a narcissistic person. I can't wait to learn, Bob. I haven't seen anybody, so I've got a lot to learn here. So, we'll be back very shortly. Well, in a week's time. Yeah. Speak soon. You've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


On business news, the Naira has slumped further and its change to the dollar is at 590 at the parallel market ahead of the Easter Festival period. Some British entrepreneurs say the dollar was bought and sold at 585 and 590 on Thursday even as Naira had earlier traded to the dollar at 588 Naira. At the importer and exporter forest window, the Naira fell by 0.20 percent to close at 417 Naira, 5 Kobo after reaching a high of 444 Naira. The central bank of Nigeria, however, maintained 460 Naira as its official rate on its website. And don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.