My name is Nancy Fulton and this is an interview with Sam Vaknen, author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. If I look up narcissistic personality disorder online, your book and articles and videos all come up on the first page and links to your work continue for screen after screen and your work is quoted and cited by almost everyone else who talks about the disorder. Can you describe how you came to be so well known in regard to narcissistic personality disorder? In 1995 when I erupted on the scene with my insights and observations and so on and so forth, I was literally the only one online. There was no other website. There were no other people talking about the topic. There was a scattering of books, ponderous academic tomes, which dealt mainly with the dynamics of narcissism but not with the impact narcissists have on others, nearest, dearest and not so nearest or dearest. So it was an isolated, obscure, much neglected niche in abnormal psychology and in 1995 when I embarked on the Herculian task of describing narcissism and then describing narcissism's effects, I had to invent neologisms, coin new terms and phrases or adopt old terms and phrases like false sale for true sale for narcissistic supply and then I invented terms like somatic narcissists, cerebral narcissists and so on and so forth. So I was the first and between 1995 and 2004 I had been the only one. By 2004 I was running communities with a membership in excess of 200 000 people. So the word spread and then money started pouring in. I made money by selling books and DVDs and what have you. People noticed that I'm making money especially academic vultures and suddenly there was a proliferation of self-styled and self-imputed experts and scholars and what have you. All of them writing and selling books, all of them counseling narcissistic abuse victims and all of them making a heck of a lot of money. So money. Money drove the explosion of the field. Money made narcissism a buzzword and money distorted the knowledge about narcissism and the priorities attached to its study and the implementation of the lessons that we call. So is your interest in narcissism related to your having been diagnosed as having had the disease? I started to study the disorder because I've been twice diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder in the span of a decade and because my life went downhill or south and I've hit rock bottom at least four or five times and finally it penetrated my thick skull that something might be wrong with me rather than the world and so I started to to study but it's been an uphill but battle because the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder entered the the profession's bible the diagnostic and statistical manual only in 1980 and prior to the mid 90s there was no knowledge understanding database nothing there was nothing no one knew anything about any of this so it was an uphill battle but slowly slowly I found like minded therapists numerous victims of narcissistic abuse and about a thousand narcissists they were all collaborated and they allowed me to gather a humongous database of of what it's all about based on this database I wrote books and so but it all started with my own quest with my as most things do with my own quest for self self comprehension and then perhaps self modification wow it's very impressive so you're very careful not to position narcissists as being heroes or larger than life and yet it is true that a lot of people who have narcissism are very effective sometimes a very good thing sometimes a very bad things so they can be some narcissists become cult leaders some become very successful politicians some become very successful surgeons some become very successful um actors actresses and directors and producers so can you explain why it is the case that narcissism seems to be associated with achievement for good or ill it is not it is not it is not it is what you have just said is true in narcissistic civilizations in narcissistic societies but if you are a narcissist in a collective society for instance if you are a narcissist in in in japan or if you were to be a narcissist in the in the arab world you would be mowed down you'd be cut down you will be the epitome of failure not of success collectivist societies do not tolerate narcissists they cut them down they reduce them to size and they prevent them from attaining any power directly or indirectly in collective societies we have another phenomenon which is collective narcissism the the collective itself professes superiority or the collective itself is vain and so on so forth so we have a phenomenon of collective narcissism but we do not have individual narcissism or effective individual narcissism in these societies you are an american so your point of view is american or by extension western indeed western society and more so american society and civilization if there is such a thing and culture these are highly narcissistic and in narcissistic environments narcissists rise to the top because narcissistic cultures and societies and collectives place a premium over narcissistic traits and behaviors they reward these traits and behaviors they encourage them they foster them the whole education system is geared toward producing narcissism because narcissism in these societies is an adaptation it really allows people to rise to the top to leverage their qualities in order to attain power or money or sex or accomplishments including intellectual accomplishments it's all predicated on being a good card-carrying narcissists but mind you western civilization is less than 20 of the world in the vast majority of the rest of the world africa huge parts of asia and so on so forth narcissism individual narcissism is an unheard phenomenon and definitely is not coupled with success that is very interesting i had not i'd never thought about that before would it be true to say that malignant narcissists are responsible for a lot of violence and crime in the world and also represent us a fairly large portion of the abusive husbands abusive boyfriend scam artists corrupt politicians and so forth if and if so why is that the case well so much about causing harm is about being ruthless and unscrupulous and relentless and and fearless psychopaths especially are fearless and being an adrenaline junkie and lacking risk aversion and so on so forth it's it's less about the personality disorder itself and more about its outcomes or its manifestations in both traits and modes of conduct or behavior so narcissists and psychopaths behave in ways which tend to maximize returns on unusual behavior and because their behavior is unusual they are very disruptive because they're very disruptive they tend to affect other people adversely 90% of narcissistic and psychopathic behaviors are self seeking self centered self maximizing and self optimizing they have absolutely nothing to do with other people consequently narcissists and psychopaths regard other people as bargaining chips extensions tools instruments cardboard cutouts they're as props or in the best case as machinery so narcissists and psychopaths don't do things to people they do things and people happen to be on the way so this is first important distinction that the narcissists malice or that narcissists are considered evil is absolutely wrong headed narcissists are not evil no more than viruses are evil or tornadoes or tigers narcissists are what they are they are a force of nature they are there simply there if you happen to be in the way if you're not careful enough not edified and educated enough not aware of the dangers and not not very self protective then you you stand to pay the price exactly as you would pay the price if you were to have unsafe sex or gamble in casinos or whatever working with narcissists collaborating with narcissists getting it into into an intimate relationship with the narcissists and so on so forth is a risky behavior it is your fault for ending up in these relationships not the narcissists the narcissists are simply there psychopaths psychopaths some psychopaths are malacious and they are evil and these are the sadistic psychopaths the psychopaths who derive pleasure from inflicting pain on other people the psychopaths whose sense of grandiosity and omnipotence is supported and buttressed by their ability to minimize humiliate or even torture other people but that's a very very very tiny minority even of psychopaths and it is an absolutely vanishing minority of narcissists however both narcissists and psychopaths seek to maximize returns they seek to maximize return on their investment of grandiose gestures they maximize returns on their attempts to convert fantasy to reality etc etc and so tend to abuse people only if they kind of constitute an obstacle so narcissists divide the world into two groups potential sources of supply those people who are able to provide them with attention, adulation, admiration people who would fear them even people who would hate them but people who would notice them all these people are considered sources of narcissistic supply and the narcissist would not harm them nor will he abuse them for as long as they continue to function properly as sources of supply however if they wish to revert to a more critical role if they wish to criticize to disagree to deviate from the narcissist's plan or agenda and so on if they stop being if they cease to be sources of supply then they become automatically enemies now this is called this defense mechanism is called splitting it is a primitive defense mechanism whereby you see the world in terms of with me or against me black and white good and evil the narcissist is like that if you are not a source of supply you are not and if you are not and insist on being then you're an obstacle and if you're an obstacle you're an enemy and if you're an enemy you should be obliterated hence the abuse scams are more more typical of psychopaths and indeed there is a huge confusion especially in the media especially in the mass media and in in Hollywood since we we will be discussing Hollywood in all in all popular portrayals of narcissists and psychopaths there is a huge confusion and a huge mixture of narcissistic and psychopathic traits for example scam artists criminals they are usually psychopaths not narcissists antisocial behavior and criminalized behavior are typically usually of psychopaths narcissists are usually social socially conformist they conform to society and its rules they play the game and they play by the rules because they want to rise to the top and they do rise to the top and they become pillars of the community and therefore narcissists are actually the underpinnings of the establishment itself they are the establishment they become top-level politicians they become chief executive officers they become the establishment they make the rules why should they break them psychopaths on the other hand are outcasts and outlaws they are antisocial they are criminalized they seek to impose their own rules on society they avoid religiously conventions morays rules of conduct and so on they are a law unto themselves they're usually long wolves they are merciless they are ruthless etc so these are two completely distinct type types of people they they lie on the same spectrum they have many things in common for example they both lack empathy which we will be discussing later but they are distinct in how they interact with society and with other people whereas the narcissist seeks to leverage other people to further his grandiose and fantastic agenda the psychopath seeks to demolish and obliterate other people and feed off the skeletons and the ruins and the corpses left in its wake so that actually was very very interesting and i had never heard that distinction drawn between psychopaths and narcissists let's take two seconds talk about the difference between narcissists or people who have who are high on a set of narcissistic traits versus people who have narcissistic personality disorder versus people that are psychopaths because i think that there is a huge problem in lumping all of those people together because they don't they don't behave the same and they don't translate into the same outcomes so can you sort of address the difference between somebody who's high who's high on the traits and what those traits are and then discuss people who actually have the specific disorder and then talk about how psychopaths are a minority of that of that small fraction or a completely different species all together being a narcissist i will reverse the order and i will start by discussing the distinction between narcissists and psychopaths and then we will discuss the narcissistic spectrum so let's start with narcissists and psychopaths because i will segue into my previous response narcissists and psychopaths as i said are in the same spectrum because they both share very important psychodynamic traits for example they lack empathy but as opposed to narcissists psychopaths are unable or unwilling to control their impulses they have no impulse control they cannot delay gratification they are very childlike psychopaths actually they want it and they want it now and you know there's nothing that can allay their need to have everything right now they can control their impulses so they rage a lot and they rage in order to control people and manipulate them into submission narcissists rage when they are frustrated in their quest to attain the grandiose heights of their self-perception when they are confronted with reality which is drab and shabby and not up to their belief of how they should be when there is a contrast between reality and grandiose inflated self-image the narcissist rages and if you happen to be the one who introduces this contrast into the narcissist life the narcissist will rage at you but psychopaths rage is a control a tool of control and manipulation and and they rage because they cannot delay gratification and because they have very poor impulse control psychopaths like narcissists lack empathy but psychopaths as opposed to narcissists some psychopaths as opposed to narcissists are sadistic they take pleasure in inflicting pain or deceiving people it they even find it funny many psychopaths will burst out laughing after having inflicted a horrible damage or pain on someone narcissists don't have that narcissists don't derive pleasure from abusing people or scamming them or controlling them it's not a question of they derive the pleasure from the fact that their grandiose self-image is thus reasserted reaffirmed so if they control someone or if they abuse someone or if they manipulate someone it's not about the manipulation itself of the of the abuse itself they don't derive pleasure from the act of abusing they don't derive pleasure from inflicting pain they derive pleasure from the fact that this confirms to them that they are godlike it's a very subtle distinction but it's a very important one the psychopath has no grandiose self-image the psychopath doesn't care what you think about him the psychopath psychopath is not dependent on narcissistic supply the psychopath can and does live very well under the radar with no attention no admiration no adulation actually many psychopaths find any type of human contact to be overbearing and and you know repulsive while narcissists are addicted addicted to human contact they are dependent on other people because they need narcissistic supply and without narcissistic supply they crumble like the proverbial vampire so psychopaths are less able to form interpersonal relationships even you know even romantic relationships family relationships psychopaths are very bad at maintaining any type of prolonged contact with other humans not so narcissists narcissists work with other people to further their own goals they build teams and motivate them as we have seen in in cases in silicon valley in politics many narcissists have very stable families many narcissists work in a in the same company for four decades and then rise to the top as chief executive officer so narcissists are stable they have long-term goals they can delay gratification and they are not bad at all in working and interacting with other people as long as these people agree to have subservient position or furthering the narcissist's goals enhancing his grandiosity and providing him with supply not so psychopath psychopaths even the most well-meaning psychopaths are unable to work with other people both psychopaths and narcissists disregard society think that society is composed of very inferior people they regard themselves as the next stage in human evolution superior and so on so they are not amenable to being subjected to it to society's conventions to social cues and rules social treaties to mores and so on they are above all that but the psychopath carries this conviction and this disdain to the extreme psychopath is scheming calculated ruthless callous career criminal the biggest studies of psychopaths are conducted in prisons about the spectrum of narcissism the problem we have when we try to wrap our head around the concept of pathological narcissism we often have problems we people often tell me i can't believe such people exist and so on so forth and the reason this is happening is because deep inside we all have a small narcissist according to Freud and others healthy narcissism develops during the formative years childhood very early childhood up to the age of six healthy narcissism is the foundation upon which we later develop self-confidence self-esteem and a stable sense of self-worth sense of self-worth that is not dependent on input from the outside but derives from inner strength and from inner conviction as to who you are and what are your shortcomings and advantages limitations and abilities so this sense of self-worth predicated on healthy narcissism is with us with each and every one of us the healthier the narcissism the healthier the sense of self-worth the healthier mentally the person in question now what happens is when childhood is disrupted in ways which we can discuss later this healthy narcissism remains with us even when we grow up and then it takes over and it becomes pathological narcissism instead of allowing the person to develop and flower and flourish to become a full-fledged adult with the ability to have meaningful interpersonal relationships function in a variety of settings such as workplace and so on instead of this what happens is the child remains the adult remains stuck in childhood where all the delusions of childhood narcissism for example omnipotence I know everything omnipotence I am all powerful omniscience I know everything all these delusions of childhood which are very important the child should be delusional up to a certain point in order to venture into the world and be adventurous adventurous enough to take the war to take on the world but as the interaction between adult and world proceeds these sharp angles of narcissism are eroded so while you start your life as omnipotent an omnipotent being gradually you learn that there are limits to your power as you start your life as an omniscient being no knowing all and so on you gradually learn that there's a limit to your knowledge and narcissists do not learn this narcissists remain stuck at age six or age nine they remain stuck with a form of narcissism known as secondary narcissism as opposed to primary narcissism it is the narcissism of childhood writ large and so we have a whole spectrum on the healthier on the healthier pole we have people with healthy narcissism who outgrew the more delusional aspects and fantastic aspects and grandiose aspects of the narcissism and remained holding the core of self-confidence self-esteem and self-stable sense of self-worth that is the healthy pole and then we have a whole spectrum of degrees of less and less and less healthy narcissism so theodore millen one of the fathers of the modern study of personality disorders suggested that we should make a distinction between narcissistic disorders which is really an extreme and severe form of narcissism and narcissistic style and between narcissistic style and narcissistic personality is that we can have people who have a narcissistic style of behavior but they are not narcissists or we can have people who have a narcissistic personality but they are not for instance delusional they are not grandiose they have empathy and so on so forth they're a bit self-centered they are a bit egocentric they are a bit um you know they they overlook the needs and preferences and desires and wishes of others they are socially awkward perhaps and so on so he said that there is a whole continuum of narcissistic behaviors traits styles personalities between the healthy person and the really really deranged and depraved narcissist which is also known as malignant narcissists let's talk about the varieties of narcissists start with the most basic the classic versus the compensatory narcissists the classic narcissist is a narcissist who usually have been raised has been raised by parents who idolized him pampered doted upon him smothered him with love but also with expectations so this kind of narcissists grew up to believe that he is the extension of his parents the tool to realize for realizing their unfulfilled dreams that his role in life is to abide by their wishes and gratify them one way or the other so the love this kind of narcissists has received is conditional and he had become during his upbringing a tool an instrument of his parents his boundaries have been have not been he was not allowed to develop boundaries and he and if he did develop them they had been breached so this is the kind of narcissists that carries through life believing himself to be superior feeling very entitled to special treatment and special accomplishments without any commensurate investment or or effort and gets very pissed off when things don't happen his way even if he is a lazy bum so this is the classic narcissists this kind of narcissist is very grandiose very imposing overwinning very demanding very entitled rages very frequently is a brat he pouts you know he spoiled spoiled brat this is the classic narcissists as opposed to the classic narcissists we have a more prevalent type known as compensatory narcissists compensatory narcissists is a narcissist who is upbringing consisted of abuse in a variety of forms and this abuse forced the narcissists as a child to develop an alternative personality called the false self this false self served as a decoy it is the false self who confronted his abusers the child's abusers is the false self who suffered the pain the so false self who deflected the pain the false self was everything the child could not be false self was all-knowing all-powerful Superman type you know so we say that the false self the construct of the false self in early childhood was meant to compensate for the child's inadequacies helplessness and impotence in the face of prolonged abuse this compensatory tendency remains with this kind of narcissists throughout his life deep inside the compensatory narcissist feels that he is worthless that he is a bad object that he is a failure that he is ugly that he is stupid and so on so forth to compensate for that he projects a false self that is overconfident grandiose fantastic inflated demanding and so on so this is the compensatory narcissist another very important distinction is between classic narcissists and covert narcissists and the difference between them is a bit like the difference between extrovert and introvert the covert narcissist is a narcissist who lacks self-confidence which sounds a bit like an eczema and contradiction in terms but it happens it's a narcissist who is shy with fragile who is avoidant who is a bit schizoid narcissists who would rather act through and through another person would rather remain behind the scenes a bit passive aggressive manipulative scheming and yet deep inside convinced of his own superiority of his own grandiosity of his own perfection and brilliance and so on so this narcissist is actually a full-fledged the covert narcissist is actually a full-fledged narcissist only he doesn't dare to speak his name this is the kind of narcissist that doesn't dare to pursue his fantasies and his dreams of everlasting dominion of money of sex of power of fame he doesn't dare to pursue these dreams and this inability to pursue his dreams and to realize his fantasies renders him very frustrated very aggressive and very very pernicious it's a very insidious type of narcissist but there is a sub variant of this of the covert narcissist known as inverted narcissist inverted narcissist is a covert narcissist in other words a narcissist who avoids the limelight who avoids exposure to other people who is shy with reticent who is is homework homebound but this kind of narcissist the inverted narcissist realizes her dreams and aspirations and grandiose wishes and fantasies through her partner through her spouse through her mate through her colleague through her children they will go out to the world they accomplish things and by being associated with them her grandiosity is supported so if she's the wife of the president of united states then she can feel grandiose enough because she's the first lady if she's the wife of a rich guy then she she feels that her fantasies have been fulfilled through him it is a kind of narcissist by proxy now inverted narcissist team up exclusively with narcissists a team up with narcissists because only narcissists can bring home narcissistic supply for the inverted narcissists to consume and so we call inverted narcissists core narcissists or codependent narcissists the last important distinction i think although there are many more but these are the critical ones the last important distinction is between cerebral and somatic narcissists narcissists use their personal traits qualities and skills in order to garner narcissistic supply so if i'm intelligent i will show off my intelligence i will show off my intellect i will brag about my achievements in class university i write a book and i will leverage these accomplishments to garner to get from you narcissistic supply and this kind of narcissists is called cerebral narcissists it's a narcissist who uses his mind his intellect his intelligence in order to obtain narcissistic supply from the environment attention adulation admiration and so on and then there is a second type the somatic narcissists that is a narcissist who is not very endowed in the upper compartment is not the most brilliant star in the bright star in the galaxy so he is not capable of writing amazing books or showing pyrotechnics of intelligence and intellect he doesn't have it doesn't have what he takes but he has a great body so this kind of narcissists is going to use his body as a tool to obtain narcissistic supply he is going to body build he's going to become a sex finned a sexual conqueror is going to to have numerous sexual conquests he is going to become a marathon runner he's going to use his body to obtain adulation admiration supply attention and so on this kind of narcissists we call somatic narcissists so as you see narcissism is a very very hyper complex phenomenon we can have totally opposite types within the same psychodynamic category for example we can have a shy narcissist with a very outgoing narcissist we can have a stupid narcissist the somatic narcissist usually as i said not well endowed intellectually as against the genius we can have someone who feels that he owns the world and he is far superior to anything the next stage in evolution as opposed to someone who believes themselves to be trash zero nothing inadequate and all of them put together all of them are in the same category they are all narcissists there are many ways and they all lead to narcissism narcissism adoptative mechanism it is a way of coping with the cruel hostile abusive world it's a way of coping with lack of unconditional love it's a way of coping with very very cold environments and each one of us comes to the world with his own toolkit so we use whatever toolkit we've been given to develop our narcissism in our own idiosyncratic and highly specific way they are of course common traits common to all narcissists but the manifestations vary very widely if you were to identify the key trait of narcissism would that be specifically a lack of empathy furthermore when you use the word empathy how is that strictly defined no one knows that's the long and the short of it we very often including in science and especially in the so-called social sciences which whether there are sciences or not is still open to very very serious debate but in social sciences we very often use words the definition of which eludes us even as we use them empathy is a very bad translation the german word i'm feeling or feeling the same and it means essentially feeling as another person does but then it immediately opens the question known in philosophy as intersubjectivity how can i verify that i feel what you feel i have no access to your mind ever by definition i have to rely on your reports verbal reports body language reports it's all a form of communication i have to rely on communication in order to compare my inner experiences with your inner experiences but that doesn't mean that we are talking about the same thing when you say pain and i say pain when you say love and i say love are we talking about the same thing there is no way on earth to determine this we therefore rely on conventions conventions that are open open to serious philosophical challenge but let's leave philosophy aside empathy in the operational sense is the ability to have an emotional reaction which ostensibly arises in the other person under similar circumstances in other words it's a kind of transference it's a kind of transfer of emotion from one person to another via visual or other input so you see someone stabbing his toe that's the visual input and it provokes in you evokes in you a kind of emotional response which you assume is identical to the emotional response in the person who just who had just stabbed his toe notice how many assumptions and hyper assumptions there are okay now very often is described as a monolithic quantity it is definitely not monolithic it has many many layers developed over life and i think it has at least three layers the first one is is what i call the uh reflexive instinctual layer reflexive instinctual layer is the kind of empathy that babies have when a baby sees his mother watches his mother the baby's face change facial expressions of the baby change to reflect the mother's mood your mother probably know that yes when you are said or when you're smiling the baby smiles when you're said the baby frowns it's babies react to to the mother's mood especially the mother by the way they react very strong and this this requires empathy the baby is required to decipher and decode your mood prior to reacting so this decoding is non-verbal it's not even intellectual because the baby's brain is insufficiently developed at this stage i'm talking about six months six months old it must be some kind of reflex or instinct yet it has hold the whole all the hallmarks of empathy and it continues well into adult life even as adults our facial expressions change when we witness pain laughter sadness or happiness exactly as though we were still babies so this is the first layer the second layer of empathy is emotional empathy emotional empathy develops after instinctual and reflexive empathy and probably as its foundation emotional empathy is simply the ability to feel to emote in response to some information regarding another person's predicament or situation or state of mind we react not only with our faces or with our body as babies do we now react with emotions we see someone in pain we wins we feel almost pain we see someone unhappy we may cry whip with them we see you know it's kind of sympathy not only empathy but there is an element of sympathy and there is definitely a recognizable identifiable emotional response in the viewer and this is emotional empathy and then the last layer is cognitive empathy cognitive empathy is the ability to observe a series of series of data and then arrange them or frame them so that they yield information about the other person so if I see someone stubbing his toe I see that his face is contorting I would put two and two together toe being stubbed face contorted and I would say he's in pain that is kind of cognitive empathy cognitive empathy has no emotional elements it is sort of an analytic software the ability to observe other people and make deductions based on our inner world as to their inner world ever since 1997 I've been saying that it is wrong to say that narcissistic psychopaths do not have empathy I do not think that is true and I came up with a suggested phrase I said that narcissists and psychopaths have called empathy as opposed to warm empathy warm empathy is what we what all healthy people have warm empathy is cognition emotion and instinct and reflex all mixed together all in perfect harmony all provoked unintentionally all automatic and this is healthy empathy called empathy as opposed to warm empathy doesn't have the emotional element it is only cognitive called empathy is the ability to read other people to analyze them to penetrate their mind to see what's happening inside their heads to understand their emotions including pain and fear and then to make note of all these things in a huge database and to leverage and use this new information to benefit from it narcissists use this information to obtain narcissistic supply to manipulate the other person so as to yield supply psychopaths use this information to obtain material favors sex money power so but both narcissists and psychopaths do empathize with other people in the sense that they know what it means to be another human being they can put themselves in someone else's shoes and then once they put themselves once I as a narcissist put myself in your shoes once I understand what it means to be you once I will find out once I find out find out your weak points your vulnerabilities the chinks in your armor what makes you tick your thoughts your hopes your preferences your wishes your dreams once I have all this enormous database about you I will then use it to force you to give me narcissistic supply I will use it to manipulate you and if I'm a psychopath I will use it to take your money or you know obtain some other benefit from it so do you think it's the case that a narcissist does that most of the time unconsciously or consciously in other words it's kind of it's interesting to me that a narcissist wants narcissistic supply which which means some object which gives him a certain set of emotions whether it's a feeling of success a feeling of warmth food whatever sex whatever the gig is he wants that very badly and he has this cold empathy which probably he's had since childhood and which he probably doesn't realize for many years is not necessarily the same kind of transfer of emotion actual emotional input do you think that he to a significant degree the narcissist unconsciously is using cold empathy to get what he wants from other people because he doesn't get the same kind of feedback the rest of us do from doesn't there's no way for him to get warm empathy which is a tremendous value to a lot of people right if I'm a normal if I get a lot of pleasure from my from my children's satisfaction and happiness or I get a lot of pleasure from my husband's satisfaction and happiness like having them be happy makes me happy I get that feedback so they don't have to do things for me you know I'm saying because seeing them happy actually does make me happy because I get that sort of contact high but that's I think that's genetic do you know what I'm saying or it's somehow rather that's built into me that that response and I wonder if not get having that response kind of ultimately forces narcissists to become fairly manipulative because they have to kind of get people to do what they what they want them to do and they don't respond the way other people do right no one no one knows whether empathy is acquired or learned or whether empathy is in bread or whether empathy is you know it's still it's still very very unclear there are studies that indicate that you can learn empathy even late in life and there are studies that indicate exactly the opposite that's if you hadn't acquired empathy till age six it's a lost cause so no one knows the answer to this one however it is true that narcissism is an adaptive adaptive reaction to the environment people say why do narcissists find it so difficult to get rid of their narcissism why don't they want to heal why don't they want to be better why don't want to be different well they don't want to heal if healing is the word they don't want to be better they want to be different because narcissism works it's an adaptive reaction it works narcissism works for them and it had been it has been working for them since age six or four or three or six months in an environment the narcissist grows in narcissism is actually pathological narcissism is actually a healthy reaction it is the environment that is pathological it is the environment that is sick the child reacts to a sick dysfunctional pathological environment by developing a sick dysfunctional pathological mechanism of coping with this environment but the mechanism works it's adaptive it yields results it guarantees the child's survival and growth it allows the child to derive outcomes and benefits from his environment so the child learns gradually that narcissism is not such a bad thing and of course when you are 40 years old or 50 years old it's too late for you to learn new tricks you know most narcissists are one one trick dogs or ponies they throughout their lives they found out that narcissism is sufficiently productive sufficiently constructive and sufficiently yielding for them not to bother to begin to adopt new coping mechanisms and strategies so the answer to your question is that narcissists are emotionally invested in their narcissism perhaps it's the only thing they're emotionally invested in narcissism is about the constant maintenance of an alternative reality pathological narcissism is the first documented case of virtual reality and alien intelligence long before anyone was talking about virtual reality in it formation technology and long before anyone raised the thought of aliens there were narcissists and they felt like aliens on this earth and they were they lived in a kind of virtual reality the narcissism is the constant investment constant maintenance huge effort and attempt energy consuming energy depleting gigantic work to maintain an alternative reality and in this alternative reality the narcissist is everything that he is not in real reality and this is what we call the false self it's another version of the narcissist an avatar another representation in a kind of multiplayer game where the narcissist is everything perfect brilliant and so on now it's very easy to get emotionally attached to being perfect and brilliant and strong and powerful and sexy and irresistible it's very very easy to get attached to such a self-image emotionally attached it's very very difficult to get you to divorce this self-image in favor of what in favor of a shabby reality drab routine life and so on so it is an escape escape valve coping mechanism a workable strategy an adaptive manifestation you name it narcissism works for the narcissist narcissism demands only one thing to obtain narcissistic supply it's an addiction it's an addictive behavior it demands narcissistic supply now unfortunately for the narcissist narcissistic supply has to come from other people it cannot come from television sets or from refrigerators has to come from other people it forces the narcissist to exit his virtual reality to exit this alternate universe to enter re-enter our world to interact with other people in a way that will force them to acknowledge that the alternative reality is reality and that their own reality should be denied in other words it's a cult narcissists create cults and they are all cult leaders sometimes there is only one member in the cult of the narcissist his wife long-suffering wife sometimes five members his wife and his three children sometimes 50 members his co-workers and employees sometimes it's a whole nation like in Nazi Germany but whatever it is and however numerous the membership of the cult the narcissist has to create an environment which I call the pathological narcissistic space where a group of people will share with him his delusion will agree with him that his alternative reality is not of confabulation is not fake is not a storyline is not a narrative but is real will keep telling him yes you are brilliant yes you are perfect yes you are mr wonderful you know no you are not mistaken no you're not delusional no you're not crazy it's all true and we call this phenomenon when dozens of people or other people participate in your own delusion and support it we call it shared psychosis narcissism is about creating mass delusions when other people tell you keep telling you that you're okay you're not crazy you are really perfect and brilliant you're really good like they are giving you narcissistic supply the currency the coin of the cult the coin of this alternate reality is narcissistic supply to be a member of the cult of the narcissist you have to pay the narcissist with narcissistic supply now the narcissist is not interested in you is interested in your narcissistic supply so there is no question of interpersonal relationship intimacy awareness of the other accommodation collaboration compassion empathy all these things are incidental to narcissistic supply if they exist at all usually they don't none of these things yields or brings about narcissistic supply none of them so why waste energy on them the narcissist has a very very strenuous strenuous mass energy economy he needs all his energy to maintain this edifice this house of cards of narcissistic delusion grandiose fantasy he needs all everything in his power day and night waking hours and sleep everything he needs to dedicate to maintaining this precarious balance this house of cards he doesn't have time or energy for anything else he doesn't have time or energy to love someone to care for someone to collaborate with someone to empathize with someone there's no time and no energy for that he is a junkie if you ever came across junkies they behave exactly the same so one of the things that you've talked about i'm conscious of the fact that um like we've been talking for an hour and i could listen for listen and talk for threes but i don't want to be happy to take your time you're not you're not Nancy you're not imposing on me all right thank you so it's okay so if um it sounds like a very laborious lifestyle in the sense that the narcissist spends a lot of time creating narcissistic supply in order to feel safe and secure and to some degree to create the environment that he grew up in or try to create some sort of safety for himself and he's always kind of tap dancing trying to appease the emotions when he's to the extent that he absolutely has to in order to get them to give what he needs to get from them but at some point i can see why this house of cards kind of falls down and when that happens and there is no narcissistic supply you've mentioned that there's kind of sometimes rarely very rare occasions a window when a narcissist can realize that they've got a problem that they need to actually seek help for so can you sort of talk about what happens when the not narcissistic supply economy collapses and narcissists like what happens to his personality during that time period well it's it's rather simple actually for the false self which is the narcissist facade the message that he's sending to the world the the spin the spin doctoring of the narcissist life and and identity the false self which is a concoction it's a scenario script it's a piece of it's a narrative it's a story it's a confabulation piece of fiction so the false self requires narcissistic it requires narcissistic supply it's a little like having a car you know you need to put fuel you need to put fuel in the car if you don't put fuel in the car you will still have the car but it won't take you places it won't be functional without fuel the false self stops being functional seizes to function and so when this false self seizes to function normally the narcissist is exposed to messages from the environment messages from reality which contravene is grandiose perception which contrasts with his fantasy about himself which undermine the narrative of his life and of who he is which challenge is totally fictitious and delusional identity and which render him less than able to cope with what I call the grandiosity gap grandiosity gap is the gap between reality and totally fantastic self image so that's exposed without an immune system it's actually a line of defense without an immune system the narcissist becomes very very vulnerable actually what happens then it becomes again the child that he used to be the years fall away from the narcissist like so much shaded skin and suddenly cowering in the corner mumbling crying his eyes off frightened sniveling is this little kid who had developed the false self in the first place as a defense mechanism as a mystic shield as a magical sword you know the magic is gone and here's the kid it's a child six years old nine at the most and he is terrified and he doesn't know what to do because nothing is working anymore to shield him from the errors of life from the pain and the hurt and the fear and the challenges and the abuse and so at that point narcissists look for help so they may seek therapy or they may be may really connect finally intimately with their loved ones the ones who love them yeah or they may seek meaningful relationships with parents or they they they cast around for someone they're drowning cast around for a straw for someone to hand them give them a hand and so it is then that the narcissist usually ends up in therapy but in therapy the narcissist doesn't seek usually doesn't seek to understand himself what brought him to this and how to avoid it next time the narcissist seeks not to heal or to change but the narcissist usually seeks in therapy to restore the false self he wants things to be as they used to be he comes to the therapist and he complains my wife left me can you bring her back to me or i i used to be so famous can you teach me a few tricks to be famous again he wants the therapist to collaborate with him to teach him tricks and gimmicks how to restore his grandiose false self to full functioning mode how to extract narcissistic supply yet again extremely few narcissists if any come to therapy and say i've realized that something is fundamentally and profoundly wrong with me can you help me i'm not aware of a single one myself included and you say that but if you think i think it's clear that you're self aware of the fact that you have a personality disorder and you're accommodating it as best you can i mean i i guess my point is if you really can't feel if you really can't feel instinctual sympathy and that can't be manufactured i don't really know if you can get the same buzz the rest of us do off of interpersonal relationships do you know what i'm saying it's like saying i don't i don't it's if the only sympathy that you can manufacture that you can present to the world is cold sympathy or manufactured behavior based upon cold sympathy because you don't feel real sympathy then and that's what the rest of us are doing using to be so effortless in our human interactions i don't really see the path to healing is not is not at your command does that make sense i'm not i'm not making excuses i'm trying to say it's like i don't i don't know if if it is an organic illness or if it's a kind of damage that's done early enough that it actually changes the shape of the brain or some aspect of the brain and you can't feel that other empathy that we feel that we use to get by from day to day and to get the buzz we get when other people are happy i don't know how easy that is to fix so maybe the only thing you can do is go back to what you had before or try to yeah i understand what you're saying indeed the the emphasis in most treatment modalities including the most modern treatment modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy or a motive cognitive behavioral therapy or you know the most schema schema therapy and you name it uh the vast majority of these treatment modalities um are very modest about the treatment the treatment goals and about the therapeutic alliance most of them seek to modify behaviors that most when when narcissists present in a therapeutic setting when they first encounter the therapist for the first time usually the goals would be to modify the narcissists socially unacceptable antisocial and abrasive behaviors i don't know of any serious therapists who would claim that he can cure narcissism or heal narcissism those who do are charlatans money grabbing money grabbing money hungry charlatans serious now serious therapies would admit that yes as you just said the core of narcissism the kernel of narcissism is beyond rich whether it is because of brain plasticity whether it's because of genetic component possibly no one knows but narcissism is an all pervasive these are the diagnostic and statistical manuals words not mine narcissism is an all pervasive personality disorder where no cell is left unaffected is not amenable to treatment to cure or to healing or to reversal in any meaningful way however it is very possible and is done thousands of times a year you know it's very possible to modify the behaviors of the narcissist so that his interactions with the environment are more palatable more acceptable more pleasant less abrasive less less fraught with friction and conflict narcissists have been behaviors of narcissists have been modified to the extent that people you know found them liveable with marriages have been restored you know into other relationships have been you know companies have been firms have been revived so narcissists doesn't have to go through life in a state of constant conflict and tribulation narcissistic behavior can be modified to the extent that it becomes socially recognizable and socially acceptable however it does not touch by a millimeter the core and kernel of narcissism you mentioned brain plasticity there is no doubt the day years of abuse and then decades of specific behaviors set behaviors modify brain neural pathways and and so on brain is very plastic and there is also no doubt in my mind although this has not been substantiated by any studies extended extensive studies there's also no doubt in my mind that pathological narcissism is a genetic propensity because we see many we see families in which five children have been subjected to exactly the same treatment and yet only one of them becomes a narcissist the others don't why why people why children including by the way twins and triplets where two two members of a twin or two twins or triplets have been subjected to identical abuse including the most horrific sexual abuse and so on and yet only one of them becomes a narcissist why I think it is a genetic propensity so genetic propensity plus brain plasticity could be a very powerful combination and in all probability irreversible but the goal of therapy should not be human engineering should not be reinventing the narcissist is a totally different human being that is very sinister the goal of therapy is is to render the narcissist more functional in his relationships in his environment to allow him to go through life in a manner that will not leave him will not wreck him will not ruin him will not render him a bitter old frustrated lonely wreck of a human being that's that's I think what therapy should be should be all about and not only in the case of narcissism one of the reasons I like your website better than I like most of the vast majority or let's say all the others is that because you do take a very psychodynamic approach and because you do spend a lot of time documenting sort of the interior thinking and the trigger mechanisms you have a better insight into I think the most people into what therapeutic methods might conceivably work so if somebody were a narcissist or thought they were a narcissist or you know was cowering in their home realizing that they've driven off every single person they ever really liked is there and with the understanding that they could have an entirely different ailment ranging from post traumatic stress disorder which might present some of the same symptoms or whatever how would you tell them to seek someone to treat them because getting the wrong therapist would be pretty toxic like what would you tell them to look for well first of all as an aside narcissism is precisely precisely a post traumatic syndrome narcissists have been traumatized as children one way or the other by being smothered and pampered and spoiled or by being abused in a classical way since so whichever way narcissists have been traumatized and narcissism is really a post traumatic reaction that's as an aside now unfortunately the so-called scholars professionals and experts today are 20 years behind the curve there is a shocking arrogance among these people they do not seek to learn many of them for instance as a matter of principle refuse to visit forums of narcissists or victims of narcissistic abuse because there's nothing to learn there you know the biggest studies of narcissists that I came across were comprised of 30 subjects three zero the vast majority of studies of narcissists were comprised of five four to five to six people based on these ridiculous non-representative samples the academic profession pretends to knowledge so retarded in their thinking so way behind the curve so way behind the curve even when compared to the 1970s to works to the works of Kohut in Kernberg or to the 1980s to the works of Masterson and so on there's been a regression not progress but regression it's interesting it's interesting you should mention that because my daughter studying psychology at um at a university of Santa Cruz and she studied with one of the last professors who studied under Jung and on his last day he was blind going deaf and had just found out he had a terminal illness he said some of you in this class have to study cognitive side the whole industry is moving toward drugs as a solution for the treatment of underlying personality disorders and they've left behind the entire the entire universe of other psychotherapeutic methods and it is the case that you can't treat every mental illness through drugs at this time and it's unlikely to be the case that you'll ever be able to use it as a sole method for treating mental illness and if none of you engage in the kind of work and he mentioned some of the people that you talked about he says if you don't kick up where they left off we're going to fall into another dark age and he seemed to think I fully agree with him I fully agree with him because I compare texts scholarly texts released today to scholarly texts released in the 70s and 80s to scholarly texts released in the 20s 20s and 30s of the last century and I see a constant regression regression no problems the state of knowledge about pathological narcissism today is far inferior to the state of knowledge about pathological narcissism in the 70s far inferior when we had wonderful practitioners like Karen Hornay Kohut later Kernberg and so millen what millen theodore millen operated in in the last two decades of the previous century you know it's getting worse and worse not better and better and and simultaneously there is a growing arrogance I just mentioned the fact that most therapists and scholars I interact with adamantly refuse to visit online forums where tens of thousands of people sometimes hundreds of thousands of people compare invaluable experiences with people diagnosed officially as narcissists I mean it's mind-boggling mind-boggling these arrogance reflects the fact in my view that the professions of therapy psychotherapy I mean psychological professions let's call including psychiatry or maybe especially psychiatry but also classical psychology abnormal psychology and so on so forth and even among therapies I think there's an overrepresentation of narcissists I think narcissists gravitate towards certain professions I think we're far more likely to find narcissists for instance in show business in uh in the media in the mass media among people who wield power like police or judiciary among the clergy and so on so forth we are also very likely to find an overrepresentation of malignant pathological narcissists among therapists psychiatrists and psychologists with emphasis on psychiatrists I think there is resistance in classical Freudian terms there is a kind of resistance in the profession well I would say for self scrutiny I think you're right and uh but I think what's interesting or what's probably most um there's a couple of things that are interesting to me about that the first one is that the traditional wisdom if you go on the vast majority if you vast majority of textbooks mass vast majority of works written about narcissist and narcissistic personality disorder the advice is avoid them and they are the advice is that they uh should be avoided at all costs and that they are evil which is a pretty like what else like you don't say that about autistic people and you don't say it about borderline people but if you're a narcissist or somebody decides you are too bad for you the other thing is they don't necessarily um given the number or the percentage of people who suffer from the ailment who are reportedly doing inflicting large quantities of abuse or damage on large quantities of people you think the need to treat narcissists would be higher not lower right in other words if you want to if you want to make the world a warm peaceful place then finding an effective treatment for narcissism would seem like a big step in the right direction and yet it's not like that's why i'm saying that i think there is a form of resistance among the among the therapeutic professions because of over-representation of narcissists i think they are they are avoiding self scrutiny they are avoiding looking at the mirror and uh this is a learned guest not a guest but a learned guest i i am collaborating with close to one thousand therapists and i have come across thousands of them and i regret to say that a sizable chunk of them struck me i i couldn't remote diagnose them of course nor am i qualified to diagnose but they struck me as narcissists i think it's very prevalent among these professions and uh it's a problem they can easily study borderline because most of them are not they can easily study even psychopaths because most of them are not they can study any other mental illness schizophrenia but suddenly when it comes to narcissism there is this blockage there is this resistance there is this inability to move forward listen narcissism has become a buzz word a household a household word a catchphrase at least since 2004 at least i have contributed my share to rendering it so but there were others of course between 2004 and now there there's a you know it's another lunch and yet you can't really see any concerted effort for example i'll give you an example there is a concerted effort to study the brains of psychopaths concerted effort in dozens of locations throughout the world using the latest functional magnetic resonance you know fmri using the latest genetic markers huge budgets investments and what have you to study psychopaths there is a huge investment in studying bipolar disorder there is an enormous investment in studying autism borderline personality disorder and so on the only field where i personally am not aware of any budgets any coordinated research effort done anywhere and believe me if there would have been if there was something like that i would have known about so the only only diagnosis which is totally ignored and neglected by the academic profession i mean is narcissistic personality disorder and yet and yet it is by far the most debated discussed and analyzed in you know in the mass media in show business in online it is by far what distanced what bothers people most if you were to to stop if you were to take a represent a random sample of a thousand people i am not convinced how many of them heard of schizoid personality disorder but i can bet you that 10 times more people heard about narcissism and yet there is a lot more going on in the study of schizoaffective disorders than in the study of narcissism why it cannot be a coincidence i think it's because the things may change quickly one never knows but i i think it has to do with the fact that the second that we're in a a fat state where the label's been applied that if you have narcissistic personality disorder you should you should want first you should be abandoned right everybody should just get away from you because you're dangerous and then the second thing is that um you are untreatable and will refuse treatment which is not always the case i mean it's difficult shall we say and then all and the the notion about brain plasticity and the fact that it may be in some sense genetic um or due to childhood abuse indicates that um well it's a sort of a notion of damaged goods which you know if somebody is autistic they kind of apply the same labels but they still try to make them as functional as possible people with their narcissistic personality disorder i wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't think that uh the the profession regards people with schizophrenia or people with borderline as more amenable to treatment than people with narcissism i wouldn't say that i just know schizophrenia is a serious disorder that's true but i but i but i but the thing is that they that as you said they've developed drugs to that um antipsychotics to treat it i've never heard anybody say you know if you know somebody that has narcissistic personality disorder or somebody you think has then you should you know this is the therapist you should see and this is the kind of treatments you should but this is exactly what i'm saying why don't you why not why don't you hear that i think because if you're a psychopath they would offer you drugs and specific therapists and so on if you're borderline they would give you drugs and so on i don't know i think it has to do with the fact that it's been identified in some sense as a moral illness it's a very strange thing actually i'm i i'm probably more hopeful than most people because i think that um i've seen things change that i never thought would change you know i've looked at well my my pet theory is that the profession is narcissistic and they are afraid to look look themselves in the mirror that's all i think you're i think you're correct but i think it also if somebody will choose to move forward on it i think simply because it is a very fertile field to study and and i suspect when that happens it'll be talking to you quite a bit so i think the one of so the next thing that i sort of wanted to talk about and thank you very much for giving me so much time um and um i since i work here in uh los angeles and i work with a lot of filmmakers and writers it's amazing to me how many stories i see about serial killers or crime kingpins or bad politicians um and i could list every stereotype that's associated with narcissistic personality disorder people are writing about it all the time and yet i find that very few people i don't think writers a lot of times realize that they're presenting a very inaccurate and unsatisfying um picture of people who hold those positions and i think it comes from the fact that they're making up out of whole cloth if a story is based on reality you're seeing the behavior of a real person and they're what they present is very interesting whereas um if you're manufacturing a character from whole cloth it's pure fantasy and it has no basis in reality so have you ever seen pictures of people with narcissistic personality disorder in the media that struck you as particularly accurate or inaccurate um that well i'd rather i'd rather not recommend specific flicks but i i will make a blanket statement i rarely if ever came across a total misrepresentation of narcissists in in films i'm a film buff i have a library of 23 000 films so and i make it a point to watch two films a day so i suspect that i would have come across uh misrepresentations inaccuracy glaring inaccuracies and so on i can't say that i've ever come across a total misrepresent misrepresentation of narcissists and so on but i think the problem is if there is a problem it's that when narcissists are described first of all they are not identified as narcissists so we have serial killers cult leaders corrupt politicians criminal kingpins the crime pins the kings um and so on and uh clergy abusive clergy i mean you name it and sometimes a detailed analysis of their psyche or psychology sacrificed in favor of a detailed analysis or description of their actions now this may be a plot device or a decision an intentional decision i'm not sufficiently well versed in script writing or in movie making to to uh give advice on that throne but the the movies that did attempt to go deeper did attempt the psychological profiling of the anti hero or protagonist um did a good surface job the problem was not so much that they got it wrong but that they got it shallow and then it raises the question of course whether viewers around the world would have liked to see something deeper and more profound and more and thereby perhaps a bit more accurate or whether shallow is the name of a game and actually that's what's selling the goods that's precisely what audiences all over the world are looking for in other words whether this is a commercial decision whereby the producer says you know don't go too deep it will turn off audiences and it's you know in our target markets people prefer it shallow or whether this is the result of ignorance and lack of acquaintance with the the deeper the profundities of the disorder and the plot twists that can be founded on these profundities in other words if you go deeper your your plot might become much more interesting being shallow forces you to sacrifice certain possibilities and certain potentials in the storyline being deeper open opens up whole universes of possible interactions possible plot engines and drivers possible developments so the deeper you go the more potentially the more complex and interesting your story can be however to go deeper one needs to to be very well acquainted with the intricacies of narcissism and psychopathy these are not as i said monolithic easy to recognize easy to assimilate disorders these are very very complex serious of interlocking and interacting mechanisms which sometimes yield contradictory behaviors in the same person and sometimes at the same time it's a it's a bit unnerving perhaps maybe some of the maybe one of the reasons that people remain on the surface script writers for instance remain on the surface is that they're going too deep might unsettle and unnerve the audience maybe people don't want to go into that abyss they don't want to dive or delve into these dark hidden corners and so i don't know i don't know what is the motivation of remaining on on the surface but i all i can say is this i haven't seen anything that is patently wrong i haven't seen glaring inaccuracies i haven't seen total misrepresentations but i would say that the the rule is shallow behavior driven description of people with pathological narcissism or psychopathy it's a pity because it's the tip of an iceberg and very often the iceberg is much more interesting than the tip but why this decision to remain on surface and not to delve or dive deeper that i don't know i think i think you you you're correct in that it is not the situation where they necessarily choose to they might want to know more but it's the question of not being able to find the information or also not knowing the the the depth of the the depth of information available to them or the impact how it could manifest itself in a better in a better screenplay or a better story it is a case we're entering a much more competitive media market many more people producing and so bringing something new to the classic to the bad priest or the or the criminal kingpin or the bad politician bringing something new to that may require them to go deeper just because that's what it's going to take in order to say something that hasn't been said for you know four million times before um i also had a question about um i think actors a lot of times will delve deeper into if when um in playing rain man the actor decided to live with somebody who had who was um an autistic savant for a period of time so he got to know what the behavior was so actors a lot of times i think will go deeper than the screenwriter will in finding the character and i guess you've already said you won't mention um portrayals that you think are particularly good but if you if if i said you know the Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lamb was he a psychopath or a narcissist or both would could you tell from his portrayal yeah mostly psychopath mostly psychopath very cool and if i said um Don Corleone from the young Don Corleone from the godfather that would be there is a subcategory known as psychopathic narcissist i i belong to that subcategory by the way i'm a psychopathic narcissist that means i've been diagnosed with both narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder so i'm a psychopathic narcissist this is a type of psychopath that also has manifest or very extensive narcissistic constructs dynamics traits and behaviors so for example very pronounced grandiosity um most psychopaths as i told you uh run-of-the-mill pedestrian psychopaths they are not overly concerned with narcissistic supply they don't have a particularly grandiose self-image they are not out there trying to support this precarious house of cards of fantastic brilliance and perfection and so on this is not what narcissists are about narcissists are about money fame power but as utilitarian things you mean psychopaths are about are about money and about power they're not about sorry sorry psychopaths are about money fame and so on but they are not about money and fame in order to support money and power sorry let's let's reiterate psychopaths are about money and power and so on but they are not about money and power in order to sustain some grandiose self-image money and power are not the means to an end they are the end with the narcissist money and power are the means to an end and the end is is grandiosity with the psychopath money and power are the end he wants money he wants power not because he thinks he's so grandiose but because he loves money and he loves power period but we have a compounded creature or character which is the psychopathic narcissist it's someone who has comorbid comorbidity he has both disorders at the same time and this type of person is both a psychopath in the classic sense and a narcissist in the classic sense so the young Don Corleone would strike me as a psychopathic narcissist someone who has both but not so honey by lecture honey by lecture heads strains of grandiosity but if you look deeper closer you see that his grandiosity is reality based he says I'm he realizes that he is brilliant he's really a genius it's not a figment of his imagination so the fantasy it really is he really is and so as you see there are gray areas between these two disorders because they're very close they're very they're their first cousins it's very interesting so if I work with at the moment about or run events I should say for about 8200 writers actors and producers so can I tell them that if they're interested in maybe having your comments on the script or maybe having your advice on a performance they could reach out to you through your website I mean I know you have consulting rates and so forth but is are you interested or willing to work on film or media advising is it can afford my face why not of course I I have I have clients I I provide consultancy consultations to clients but these are mostly victims of abuse or people who have who had a close brush or close call with narcissists and so on and are recovering from the traumatic experience so mostly it's not all then that's actually that's kind of an interesting that's kind of an interesting avenue of exploration for stories and screenplays as well and theatrical plays as well because there is a tremendous amount of post-traumatic shock that comes from almost being almost being killed by a serial killer yes close call I call this close call but you don't have to be killed by a serial killer it's any encounter with the narcissist leaves you usually with a strange aftertaste you know there was a robotics expert in in Japan in the 1970s his name was Masahiro Mogi Mori coined the phrase uncanny valley Mori said that as robots become more and more android more more anthropoid more more like humans and we as spectators and users and of robots and so on we would feel more and more uncomfortable he said that when robots will come to resemble people very very very much we would feel very very very uncomfortable and you could stop and ask yourself why is that ostensibly when when robots come to resemble people so much that you can't make you can't distinguish between robots and people you should feel very comfortable with these robots because they are like people you know and we have a lot of experience of being around people why is it that when robots become totally android totally men like human why should we feel so uncomfortable and he has a this long explanation of why we should feel uncomfortable and so I think people have this kind of reaction which is called the uncanny valley reaction I think people have this kind of reaction around narcissists and psychopaths when they meet narcissists and psychopaths when you look at the narcissist you see a human being when you look at the psychopath you see a human being you know he has skin eyes hair hands walks and talks breathes in and out perfect android and yet you feel very very uncomfortable something's wrong the parts don't fit the operating system is kinky something is not working as it should the simulation is perfect the imitation is amazing can't put your finger on anything that's out of the way anything that's awkward or anything that's not as it should be and yet the overall feeling is an ease your ill it is you're uncomfortable but that must but that must be attractive to some people because a lot of narcissists exactly I was about to say even in dating in settings of dating when women some women are actually attracted to these idiosyncrasies these eccentricities or deficiencies even in these settings women I've interviewed and I've interviewed thousands by now when I when push when I when I push them to the corner when I when I force them to confront the first date and to analyze it bit by bit stroke strike by strike moment by moment and word by word they admitted to having flashes of unease even flashes of fear so women who met narcissists dated a narcissist on a first date even if they happen to marry that narcissist later even if they happen to form a family with that narcissist have children with him when they are pushed back when they are taken back to the first date they describe on the in the first date things that did not fit some things that provoke in them unease fear discomfort they were taken aback by some comment a bizarre movement invasion of private space strange question and it passed it was like a flash in the pen you know it was momentary narcissists and psychopaths are like ill-feated robots they look perfect from the outside they look perfectly human but something's wrong in the software and the more you interact with them the more you have this insight that not all the parts the parts don't all fit well that there is some it's clunky it's something you know not working and this is called the uncanny valley more is uncanny valley reaction I absolutely believe that I've met a number of our narcissists face to face and people I think you can't ever tell because they're not professionally diagnosed but I've met a number of people that I had exactly that reaction to and I'm going to hell because I actually I'm very happily married I have three wonderful children I mean I met my husband when I was like 18 but when I see those people they are I think I'm they're interesting because they're humans that don't that have something else going on and it's you just don't ever see it you know you're just like wow I've never seen that before you know the robot exactly it's like this robot that I described this it looks human 110 percent human but you know damn well that it has a different software you know very well that other processes are taking place inside him to which you can never be privy you you can never gain privileged access to this they are so different narcissists and psychopaths are so different because they lack very crucial modules empathy is not a marginal fringe thing it's not an incidental unimportant thing empathy empathy is the foundation of our ability to interact with interpersonal relationship and it is the foundation the building the cornerstone of morality of social order of social functioning empathy is not a small thing but put that aside narcissists and psychopaths have no access to their own emotions yes imagine that's actually another thing that's actually extremely shocking to me is that having worked having brushed up against these people at various points in my life I mentioned that I did some work working with military folks and so forth having run up against these people one of the things that's most shocking to me is they can't answer the question are you happy and a lot of times they can't identify what will make them happy in advance they can't tell you in they can't say if x y and z happen in two months I will be happy it's like every day is a new day they have no access to their emotion and yes every day is a new day I have I have an essay that I've written it's called the discontinuous narcissist exactly there is no so there are no emotions no empathy and no personal continuity so in effect there's no identity these are not marginal things these are not things that are like having an arm amputated you know these are not these are such substantial deficiencies that they render narcissists and psychopaths in my humble opinion non-human I don't think I don't think that an animal which we all are without empathy without emotions and without personal continuity in other words identity can under any stretch of the word be called human well I think what's interesting is that so somebody who's got this this discontinuous and you've talked about the fact that there's a relationship between disassociative identity disorder and narcissism and I've seen this as well like so a narcissist is going through life x something happens triggers narcissistic problem narcissistic rage or some sort of issue and then subsequently you go look you'd say look back at this moment leading up to this they can't like their brain doesn't they they confabulate because they honest to God can't remember so they can't tell you they have no fucking idea what happened they can't tell you what happened if you and if you take them back to that string of string of conversations they go back into the narcissistic rage because they they can't remember and it's very disturbing to them as well they know that there's something that happened they know that they've stepped outside the lines and that they've exposed they it's like it's very upsetting to them I mean I I feel bad because it's very upsetting to them you know and it's like there's no way to soothe soothing a narcissist is like a really difficult activity so you don't really know what to do except wait for it to pass yeah it's like okay well I guess I'll just step away while this goes you know same reaction you would obtain the same reaction from people with dissociative identity disorder dissociative identity disorder is the modern term for multiple personality disorder we don't use the politically incorrect term multiple personality disorder so we use dissociative identity disorder so you would have the same reaction exactly if you push someone with a dissociative identity disorder to to describe what happened on this and this date or in this and this event they would go berserk on you they would go postal they would rage so narcissists have many many dissociative symptoms and if you stop to think of it about it for a minute for a minute it makes sense when you have two personalities false self and true self I think by definition you have multiple personality the false self is not something external it's not cosmetics it is the narcissist it's what we call it's what we call co extensive in other words it is all pervasive it is the identity of the narcissist it's not that the narcissist feels that he's acting the false self is not the outcome of acting it's not a manifestation of thespian skill the narcissist when he is in the mode of false self is the false self and then when the false self stops functioning when the narcissist hits its rock bottom then a totally new personality emerges totally new personality I have clients where the husband used to be called indifferent asexual and so on and so forth then he hit rock bottom and he suddenly became hyper sexual warm intimate clinging to pets suddenly he has pets I mean it's like a totally different person well I'm one of the things that um so I spent a lot I've worked I've worked with a lot of different people and one of the conversations I've had is because I feel this internally is I'm very aware that I've got multiple personalities at work I mean every so I've gone through I've had people in my family die and I've been in the hospital you know so I've gone through the the feeling of disassociation which is a rather cool feeling when it's actually happening because you'll be in a moment of crisis and then all of a sudden you're like you feel emotionally you somehow inside you take a step back and everything becomes clinical and slightly funny you know because your brain's just like oh fuck it I'm not gonna deal your emotions literally disengage because they're just like I can't think straight if this shit's going on so I felt that the sense of separation and I have and one part of my mind says well that's nice and the thank god that's over and the second part of my mind thinks man I'm going to pay for this later because it does come crashing back down and I think what happens with I wonder if with narcissists it's the case that they disassociated early and they they never did so like because of post-traumatic stress they did separate early and it separated so continuously and so often you just ended up with sort of these multiple personalities that are very separate from one another I mean we all know people who have moods and you we've known people when they go into this mood just leave them the fuck alone that's normal that's people that sort of theoretically have a normal psyche and I think if you're dealing with somebody that has got gone through the trauma required to produce or have the genetic background required to produce narcissistic personality disorder maybe it's the case that their personalities really are very separate and they're kind of sharing the same body and they get one they they they overlap they sort of fade in and fade out based on which is going to be more adaptive at a given time until nothing's adaptive and then they don't know what the hell to do in narcissistic 99.9% of life is spent with the false self the true self is you know such a rare occurrence that actually the true self feels alien not not the false the false self feels pretty natural it is the true self that surprises the narcissist unsettles him feels alien and many narcissists resent the emergence of their true self they they feel that they are you know feel it touchy and they feel weak and they feel vulnerable and so so you're saying the false self you're saying that the false self is is that false sorry is the true self that that three four five six seven year old boy or can it be related to that the true self is the child as it throws when the false self takes over it's age six seven eight nine ten when the false self takes over it it freezes it disables the the true self and then the true self um ossifies simply ossifies like a fossil it ossifies and and remains in hibernation cryogenically hibernated and then when it emerges it emerges frozen in time as it as it were at that time so does it not know so is it the case that your true self might really hate a particular kind of food or might really hate heights or whatever the false self hated pets it's a real case that i'm working with right now the false hated pets but i mean virulently viscerally hated pets hated and then the true self emerged the guy went through financial crisis the true self emerged and the true self loves pets and so the guy bought a kitten and it's playing with her sleeping with her sleeping with her absolutely these are two incompatible personalities that's what led me to speculate that narcissism may be a post traumatic dissociative reaction we know that uh in extreme trauma multiple personality develops usually as a reaction to extreme trauma and usually the various altars the various sub personalities are frozen in time so you have a personality age six personality age 12 personality age three so all it is has its own time is its own clock wow in multiple personality that is very it's the same with narcissism the false self is is alive but the the true self is frozen in time it has its own clock so that's usually opposed to the false so that's actually really interesting emerge to compensate for the shortcomings of the true self so the false self would define himself itself by opposition to the true self wow it really is dr jekyll and mr hide like it's like a manufactured dr jekyll and the false self could be no but i'm not saying i'm not saying it's good and evil i'm saying it it is the case that one i have twins you must understand so for and this actually did happen my daughter when she was seven years old i'm all you know it became clear that she was defining herself as i am that which is not my brother so if he likes if he likes vanilla ice cream i have to like chocolate if he likes math i have to like reading like it was like the personality was trying so hard to figure out what makes me different when i've got this other person who's always around and is always the same size exactly you know who am i who am i the false self says the false self is saying this true self is stupid and weak and vulnerable that's why it's it's being abused that's why it's so helpless that's why it cannot fight back i hate this true self it's i don't i never want to be this true self i want to be everything this true self is not i want to be strong i want to be all powerful i want to be all knowing i want to be ever present i want to be famous i want to be rich and so on but the negation is extensive so it's everything the true self is not so if the true self like pets the false self cannot like pets because then it would mean that it has something in common with the true self the false self can have nothing in common with the true self because everything it has in common with the true self is a chink in the armor wow that is very interesting so i should i've taken up now two hours of your time and i feel i feel i feel somewhat guilty about that but i'm very happy that i have so what i would like what i would like to ask is this given the fact that it's very hard to find a therapist that has a background in this and you do work with a number of therapists can people contact to you and say um i think i have narcissistic personality disorder or i something's going on with me and i think you might have i'd like to have your recommendation for a therapist to work with can you provide that or do you work with patients directly or how does that work i work with the with usually victims of abuse directly but not as a therapist which i'm not right and i never i never recommend therapists because things can go awry relationships can deteriorate and then i'll be blamed for it you know something i'm looking forward to so you usually only work so i don't know i just i'm going to go to hell and i realize i'm you know it identifies me as codependent which is totally unfair and i don't think it should be the case but i really think it should be i think narcissists deserve a therapist like just like one one in the world because i don't think we should get rid of you i think so too regrettably there aren't too many if any okay so narcissists are left to narcissists are actually in much worse position than victims of narcissists yes i agree have their own forums they have support they have understanding of society they have therapists working with them many of them are codependent to which is codependence they were well known category with well known treatment modalities developed over decades so victims are in much better shape than narcissists narcissists can't find succor and support anywhere advice anywhere they are demonized they are castigated they are avoided by even by professionals because they are really difficult patients and so on so they are you know left to fend but narcissists are used to it that's what they develop the phone service that's just horrible though right that's just absolutely horrible extension of early childhood abuse it's true though i mean that's what's sad it's like yeah well they're tough they can take it it's like well not really all right i had an amazing time um okay nancy thank you thank you for your time and everything i had a great time thank you very much i very much enjoyed it sir keep in touch thank you