Narcissist: Narcissus or Goldmund? (with Eliisa Baumann)

I think hope dies at last at the Lakers.

So, yeah, but now it's dead.

My hope.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Not problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No problem.

Um, could you maybe explain me a little bit like I had some picture of it but not a clear one what the state of mind looks like in a narcissist.

Then all these cognitive dissonance and between the internal self and external world like intensifies and it's getting harder and harder to manage the distortion of the own like reality and friction and like that must be unbearable or how does that internal process could be described.

Of course, pathological narcissism is a renouncing of reality, a rejection of reality. It's a very early stage of development.

So that there is not chance for the formation of anything that has to do with reality. Reality testing, for example. Object relations as well.

There's no possibility to interact with other people in any meaningful way. So there's no object relations. Everything is inwardly directed.

Freud called it narcissistic libido. Everything is inwardly directed, not other directed.

Narcissism, according to many authorities and many scholars, not the least of which is Otto Kernberg, is very, very reminiscent of psychosis, a psychotic disorder. It's one could say pseudo-psychosis.

In the sense that there is a serious confusion between internal and external.

The psychotic patient believes that internal objects, for example, voices or images, are not internal. They're actually external. This is known as hyper-reflexivity.

It's the same with the narcissist, only the other way around.

The narcissist believed that external objects are not external. They're actually internal.

What the narcissist does is internalizes reality, internalizes external objects and converts them into internal objects.

So from external to internal.

Because the narcissist converts everyone and everything, beliefs, ideas, collectives, institutions, individuals, intimate partners, children, family, colleagues, friends, you name it. Everything is converted immediately into an internal object which is then embedded in a kind of script or narrative.

As if everything was a giant theater production or film set, kind of film set in Hollywood.

So because the narcissist does this habitually and because the narcissist is able to manipulate the internal objects in a way which would appear to be reasonable, would appear to be meaningful, would appear to comply with the rules of reality.

In other words, the internal objects inside the narcissist, they talk to each other, they interact, they fight, they are silenced, they are activated, and everything looks a lot like reality would look to you. It feels the same way as well. It feels real.

So the narcissist is not able to tell the difference between fantasy or the mind space and reality. Not able because the dynamics are mirrored.

The dynamics of reality are totally mirrored and simulated within the mind space of the narcissist.

There is a total mimicry of reality within the narcissist's mind, and it allows the narcissist to regulate himself.

So for example, if the narcissist has separation insecurity, also known as abandonment anxiety, narcissist is afraid to be abandoned, so he would internalize the potentially abandoning external object, and then as an internal object, it will never abandon him.

So that's the way he regulates anxiety.

If the narcissist wishes to be perceived as an outstanding genius or a drop-dead gorgeous person or whatever, that's part of the grandiosity.

What the narcissist would do, he would internalize external objects. He would internalize people.

And then the internal objects would tell the narcissist that he is the one and only. That is amazing. That is, you know.

And so all the meaningful interactions are with internal objects never with external objects and there are no triggers in reality. Reality does not trigger the narcissist in any way, does not inform the narcissism.

So while I understand from the outside this would look like some kind of dystopia, something horrible, actually the narcissist experiences it exactly the way you experience reality, assuming you are not a narcissist, you experience reality.

So the experience of narcissism is indistinguishable from the experience of reality, which is why narcissists are able to function in society, even, you know, have accomplishments, outstanding accomplishments sometimes, and so on so forth, because the simulation is close enough to reality.

However, everything takes place inside, exactly like with a psychotic person. Everything takes place inside.

And when external reality deviates or diverges from the internal simulation or the internal theater play or whatever, when there is a conflict between external reality and internal reality, a conflict which gives rise to dissonance and to anxiety, then this forces the narcissist to revise the content of the internal object.

So for example, imagine the narcissist wants to have a shared fantasy with you, which is a narcissist's way of saying he wants to fall in love of you.

So he says, wow, she can provide me with my needs.

Narcissists have four needs. They have sex, supply, safety and services.

So it's okay. She can provide me with two out of these four.

So she's eligible. She can be my intimate partner.

He then immediately converts you into an internal object. He snapshots you.

The clinical term is introjection. He interjects you. You become an internal object.

Okay? So now there's two. There's two of you. There's one of you outside and one of you inside.

The narcissist continues to interact with your version, with your representation in his mind, never with you.

But if you begin to contradict this internal version, you are too independent, you're too autonomous, you disagree with the narcissists, you criticize the narcissists, you have your own friends and family, you make decisions independently, you're agentic, you're autonomous.

All this contradicts, undermines the internal object.

What the narcissist would do then, he would not say, wait a minute, something is wrong with the way I see things. She is independent. She is an external object. She is separate. I was wrong.

Narcissists are never wrong.

So instead what the narcissists would do, he would revise, he would rewrite the internal object that represents you in his mind.

Initially, he would idealize you. He would say you're perfect. You can do no wrong. You're amazing.

But when you begin to contradict the internal object, conflict with it, he would revise it.

And he would say that you are evil, you're bad, you're stupid, you're ugly. So he would convert you into what is known as a persecutory object.

To cut a long story short, even when the narcissist is confronted with reality, he does not accept reality. All he does is he rewrites his internal space. He creates a new narrative, a new theatre play, a new movie. It's all internal. Nothing is happening outside.

Does the narcissist need to, I mean, in the love-bumping phase? He actually hears all those things like, oh, you are amazing, you are from the other person. Does he need to hear those things to be able to construct inside after? Or is it really all like imaginary? I mean, probably he has in the beginning of stages. I mean, the narcissist is idealized as well from the other person. Because he's everything, you're on. So, I mean, those things after he projects insights. Does he need to hear those things or can he just develop every kind of imaginary picture of that person?

The very fact that the narcissist idealizes a potential source of supply or a potential intimate partner or potential friend, as a matter of fact the narcissist idealizes, leads to the idealization of the self. This process is called co-idealization.

If the narcissist sees you and he says, wow, she could be my intimate partner, he idealizes you. At that minute, he idealizes himself because he now owns you. You're his property. It's like owning a flashy car or a very expensive house, you know?

So he doesn't need you to idealize him. Remember, you are totally irrelevant. A reality is totally irrelevant. No feedback you can provide is meaningful.

The supply that you should provide or expected to provide, the supply is merely an echo, a resonance of the internal supply, the self-supply.

When he idealizes you, he's not idealizing you, he's idealizing himself, actually. It's all about him. It's all self-referential, self-directed.

So the answer to your question, even if you don't tell the narcissist, you're amazing, you're this, you're there, if he decided or she decided that you are an eligible target, that you could serve, that you could provide the four S's or two or three, then regardless of what you say or don't say, the narcissist would idealize you because it leads to self-idealization and allows the shared fantasy to be started. The jump starts the shared fantasy.

I read somewhere, I don't know how accurate it is. I think you said that you read narcissism would belong to DID, dissociative identity disorder.

I'm not a profession in that field, but I mean if I could guess from what I've seen, like an interaction and what's happening with I think, one of my eyes. I would think are very plausible.

What were you thought behind the perspective, and do you still have that perspective? And does that concept of the interject play a role as the one part of the DID?

Yeah, first of all it's important to know that within the DID family, DID is a family of disorders. Dissociative identity disorder is very misleading. It should be dissociative identity disorders. There are many.

Within that family, I suggested that there is a specific type of dissociative identity disorder known as OSDD. And that type corresponds to borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

If you look at it, the narcissist has a true self and a false self. By definition, it's two people. By definition, it's two personalities, two selves.

The borderline, of course, switches and has multiple self-states. One of them is a psychopathic self-state when she's acting out and so on.

Today, and I would say in the past 20 years at least, this is pretty accepted. I suggested it 40 years ago, but today it's pretty accepted.

And even in foundational textbooks of dissociation, textbooks that deal with dissociation, you can find suggestions that BPD and NPD are forms of DID.

Now DID is not related to introjection and introjects. I will come to it in a minute if you allow me.

DID has to do with the fact that there is a failure of integration of functions.

Early on, early childhood, well, up to age six or five.

What we do is we take various functions, representations of ourselves, representations of other people, and we put all of these together and we make a big cake. That cake is the ego or the self, or whatever you want to call it, the core identity, whatever.

This process is known as integration synthesis, and there's an integration failure with narcissists and borderlines, there's an integration failure.

So what happens is that all these functions, representations of other people, representations of the self, they remain disconnected, they are fragmented.

It's as if there was an explosive device that kind of blew everything up and you have everything all over the place, strewn and shards and big mess. It's a kaleidoscope.

And that's why we say that narcissists and borderlines have a disorganized personality. Lack of organization there.

And this is where the DID comes from.

Specific functions get attached to specific self-representations and to specific representations of other people.

And they form a conglomerate or an agglomerate, but there are other functions that do the same.

So you have like multiple self-states or ego states, and they're all competing, and we have what is called identity diffusion.

The result is identity disturbance or identity diffusion.

The glue, think of it as glue. There's no glue. There's no glue. There's no glue. There's no glue.

All the elements are there, exactly like in a healthy person, but they are not interconnected. They don't share much and so on.

So there's no glue holding them together.

Introject is a completely different issue. Introject is, introjects or interjection. It's one of the four processes, internalization, introjection, incorporation, identification. It's one of four processes.

And it is our way to create a representation of someone else, avatar, of someone else, within our mind, so that we can continue to interact with this person in the future.

So we introject people because we accept as a dance that people are not always physically present, that sometimes they leave the room.

And we need to have a continuous relationship with these people, even when they are physically gone. We need to have what is known as object constancy.

So to accomplish object constancy, we create this snapshot, this photograph or video of another person. And we keep it here.

And whenever that person is away, we interact with this image, at least in the sense that we maintain continuity, like we fully expect that person to reappear.

So this is interjection, and this is the introject.

Now, the introject is full-fledged. It means it has all the characteristics of the other person, all the biographical information, episodic information. It also has a voice, it speaks, so it's very active, it's proactive, and of course it has all the imagery of the other person.

So take your mother, for example, your mother is inside your head, the memories of with your mother, the relationship with your mother and so, but most importantly, your mother has a voice and she speaks whether you want to or you don't want to.

At times, she has things to tell you and she does tell you. She informs you, this is an introject with narcissists so everyone is introject, healthy people, normal people, everyone is introject, not pathological.

But in narcissism, the interjection is compulsive, in other words, and also exclusive. In other words, the narcissist immediately converts people into introjects. He cannot help it. He cannot help it.

And it is the only existence that he recognizes. He dispenses, he discards the external object. He continues to interact only with the introject.

So this is pathological. This is actually pretty common at age two, more or less 18 months to 36 months, pretty common, but we grow out of it. The narcissist never does.

He's stuck at that age. He's stuck at that age in many ways, by the way, not only interjection.

Emotional maturity, ability to tell external and internal boundaries, separation. You name it, the narcissist psychologically is about two to three years old. About two to three years old.

So this is, and this is one aspect of the fact that the narcissists cannot tell the difference between internal and external and has a preference for the internal.

It is only when we are two years old that we very, very hesitantly and with a lot of fear begin to explore the external world.

Until then, we're with mummy all the time, holding her leg, you know, never letting go.

Also psychologically we're with mummy. It used to be known as the symbiotic phase. We are one with mommy in many ways.

Gradually, we begin to realize that she's separate, she's external, but we don't fully accept it.

And then, age 18 months, two years old, we gradually walk three steps and then we run back to mummy. And then we walk five steps and we run back to mummy.

And this takes two years. This process known as separation individuation, takes two years.

Narcissists never do this. They never reach this stage. They're stuck in the symbiotic phase or whatever else you want to call it. They never exit, explore the world.

In many cases, because the mother would not allow it, she's insecure, she's overprotective, she is abusive, she is exploitative, she is depressive, she is selfish, she is dead.

This is known in psychology or psychoanalysis as a dead mother, dead metaphorically, yes? A mother who is absent, who is not there.

So she doesn't allow the child to separate safely. Child needs to know that mother is a secure base. Mother will not punish him if he explores the world. Mother will not be devastated if he lets go, you know.

And these kind of mothers give the wrong signals, and the child remains attached. Never lets go. Never letting go means never exploring reality. End of story. You remain embedded inside your mind.

By the way, we have five minutes left. If you wish to continue, I'm at your disposal, but we would need to click on the same link again.

Okay.

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Okay. So there's another five minutes. Let's continue to talk. And then we say temporary goodbye. You have to wait five minutes because the file is saving after we hang up. You have to wait five minutes because the file is saving.

Yeah.

After we hang up, you have to wait five minutes and then you click on the same link if you wish to continue. It's up to you.

Yeah. Oh, I love to.

Okay.

Like you said, there's no you with the BPD people, those are all separate identities, like with the narcissists to have the false self and the true self. And that's like confabulation, is that a bridge between the two? So they like communicate through that or they invent those?

No, the true self is dead for all practical psychodynamic purposes. What should it called a reaction, energy, the energy.

There is no energy. is it is deactivated okay it's hard of data yeah it's the act think of it as a someone pulled the plug out of the electricity socket no electricity battery ran out yeah so this is the true self.

So the true self is not dynamically active.

In other words, the true self doesn't demand anything, doesn't interact with anything, and doesn't contribute anything to the internal life of the narcissists. There's only the false self.

Confabulation has nothing to do with the false self and the true self. Confabulation has to do with dissociation.

Now, dissociation is a way to avoid reality that is unpleasant, threatening, unacceptable, socially or internally unacceptable, or reality that conflicts with other perceptions of reality.

So dissociation, sorry, when amnesia happens, so dissociation has three forms, three manifestations.

One of them is amnesia.

When you simply forget, the information from reality is forgotten.

There are others.

Depersonalization is when you feel as if you are not there. There is a reality, but you're not in it. You're not there.

And derealization, when you feel that you are there, but it's not real. It's not reality.

So these are three forms of dissociation.

Narcissists, exactly like borderlines, are dissociative because they had to forget abuse and trauma, and they had to forget their early childhood.

So they're highly dissociative.

And this creates memory gaps. Narcissists have memory gaps.

And to breach the memory gaps, they create stories, narratives. And these narratives are confabulation.

This is confabulation.

So a narcissist will, for example, wake up in the morning in bed, let's call it event number one, and then he would take a shower, he would shave, but while he's taking a shower and shaving, he's dissociative. So he doesn't remember taking a shower and shaving.

The next thing he remembers is sitting at the breakfast table and eating his omelet. And he sees that he is shaven, and he feels fresh because he wash his face and so.

So now he has to explain to himself, what the hell happened between event one and event two, waking up in bed and having breakfast? What has happened in between?

And then he says, probably I washed my face and took a shave, probably. It's reasonable, no? It's very likely, it must be true. It must be true. It's a fact. Of course I took a shower and shaved myself. Million percent, I remember it. I absolutely remember it.

This is the process.

And then the confabulation becomes memory.

And the narcissist defends the confabulation.

Sorry.

No, when presented with fact, audio or video, where the reality doesn't add up with the confabulation, they will reject the evidence.

If I show this narcissist that he woke up in bed and his wife shaved him, not he. And I have a video of that.

He would say, no, this video is fake, is from another day, is not here. And I have a video of that. He would say, no, this video is fake, is from another day, is not true.

I remember that I shaved myself. What are you talking about? I absolutely remember that. I even remember that I almost cut myself. I remember.

So this is the power of confabulation. It has the power of memory.

By the way, confabulation is not unique to narcissists. We have it in other mental health disorders.

For example, confabulation is an integral part of psychotic disorders in psychosis, especially schizophrenia. There is a lot of confabulation. Confabulation is common in Korsakoff syndrome, where alcohol damages the brain, and was even observed in Alzheimer's patients and other dementias.

So confabulation seems to be a normal human response when there are memory gaps that create extreme discomfort or even a sense of threat and menace.

Then you're trying to cover up for these memory gaps by inventing a story, and then you have the emotional incentive to believe that the story is true. And that way, soothe yourself or comfort yourselfcalm yourself down.

Because without memory, we don't have identity. If I take all your memories away, there's no you.

So it's a very, very threatening, very, it's a horrible feeling.

Yes, it's mortifying.

What interests me personally, I have ADHD and I think to be drawn, I don't know, to narcissistic people, or I don't know, find it fascinating something. Is there a correlation between that?

They have some similarities like impulsivity, affection control, things like that, because they like see those similarities in each other.

On the surface, observationally, phenomenologically, there are similarities between pathological narcissism and ADHD and also pathological narcissism and autism spectrum disorders.

There is, but these similarities in my personal opinion, are a bit superficial. They don't reflect identical internal dynamics. They reflect the fact that the repertory of possible human responses is limited.

So we react to different motivations and different processes in the same way because there is only a limited number of possible reactions, exactly like there's a limited way of possible facial expressions. You can smile, you can be angry, but that's it.

So I personally don't think that their shared dynamics between ADHD and autism and narcissism. I don't think so.

Although I have, those of you who are interested, I have on my website at least two videos, two very long videos, one hour plus each, dedicated to ADHD and narcissism. So if you go to the comorbidities playlist on my video channel and go through it you will find the videos which deal with ADHD and narcissism.

Just one small side question and like it's hard to diagnose NPD because issues on suffering is not or like they go in therapy for alcoholism or like you said those like comorbidities and then it gets there's also narcissism so I guess the diagnosis is not given that often.

But, yeah.

What, first of all, of course, narcissists have a resistance to being diagnosed because they don't consider themselves in need of help or problematic in any way or inferior or damaged or sick or they stigmatize mental illness. They regard mental illness as a form of weakness or deficiency. And so they are very loath, they're very against being diagnosed with any mental health issue.

Additionally, narcissists are very defiant and contumacious. They reject authority.

So they would try to devalue the clinician or the therapist. They would try to defy if there's a test. They would defy the rules of the test or the instructions of the test and so on so forth.

However, that is common in many other mental health issues.

So bipolar, for example, people with bipolar disorder in the manic phase, they also refuse to attend therapy. Schizoid, people with schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, especially, paranoid personality disorder, and many, many other mental illnesses. People are reluctant to be diagnosed.

So what we do, we have what is known as clinical population. The people who ended up in the clinic, ended up being diagnosed, whether they wanted to or did not want to, because of a court-mandated evaluation or because they hit rock bottom and they have no other choice or for whatever the reason. They ended up being, or in prison, they're the reason, they ended up being imprisoned. They're in prison. They ended up being diagnosed.

So then we have a clinical population. And we believe that the clinical population is a good representation of the general population.

In other words, that it is a representative sample, that it is statistically significant.

And so within the general population, within the clinical population, I'm sorry, extrapolating from the clinical population, we believe that anywhere between 1 and 3% of a population have narcissistic personality disorders. That includes all kinds of borderline personality disorder, which is highly comorbid with narcissism and so.

About 1 to 3%. Probably the correct figure is 2%.

And the reason people disagree with this number is that they confuse narcissistic style with narcissistic personality disorder, and they confuse dark personalities with narcissistic personality disorder.

Narcissistic style is pathological narcissism, light. It's like light coke, you know, it's light. These are the behaviors of narcissists, but not all the traits and very few of the pathological dynamics.

So this could be a person who is an a wholen or obnoxious or a jerk, unpleasant person, someone who wouldn't want to spend your time with in a pub or something, but otherwise is not mentally ill or is not mentally disordered, doesn't have pathological dynamics and doesn't have many of the traits of narcissists.

Dark personality is someone who has subclinical narcissism. In other words, narcissism that cannot be diagnosed as a disorder like narcissistic style.

Subclinical psychopathy, psychopathy that cannot be diagnosed as psychopathy, doesn't meet the benchmark, doesn't meet the minimal diagnostic criteria. And Machiavellianism, and in dark tetrad, sadism.

So dark personalities are not narcissists. They're not psychopaths.

And similarly, people with narcissistic style are not narcissists.

And we have self-styled experts with and without academic degrees spewing complete trash and nonsense, saying, for example, that one of six people has narcissism.

That is a powerful indication of extreme ignorance.

So the figure is much less, considerably less. That is the picture.

Do you have something on your heart?

Like, you want people to know writing about narcissism, or theories, that maybe goes forgotten or unknown or doesn't have the right amount of knowledge is not spread wide enough?

Or what is like personally important for you, for people to know in this kind of...

I think it's very important to realize that narcissism is a disguise.

It's not an accident that the word personality is based on the Greek word, persona, which means mask. We put on a mask.

So personality disorder is a mask disorder. It's the disorder of a mask. So personality disorder is a mask disorder. It's the disorder of a mask.

And so narcissism is shape-shifting. It's chimeral. It can acquire many, many forms.

And many of these forms are very surprising and are not considered to be narcissism, but they are.

For example, we have a variant of narcissism known as prosocial or communal narcissism.

That is a narcissist who is very grandiose about his or her morality, ethics, prosocial activities, communal activities, altruism, charity.

So it's a narcissist who is very proud of and arrogant because he is a good person. His goodness makes him in his mind very special, very unique, very superior to other people. He morally superior, is more altruistic than you, is more charitable than you, is more.

So we have examples like, for example, Mother Teresa, you know, these are actually narcissists.

And that's one example of how narcissists can shape-shift and not be identified.

We have many gurus, self-help coaches, and so on so forth, and they're actually narcissists.

Another disguise, empaths. Empaths. This is a self-aggrandizing title. I am unique, I'm special. I have amazing empathy. I'm super kind. So it is about self-enhancement, self-aggrandizement, it's a narcissistic act.

The overwhelming vast majority of so-called empaths are actually covert narcissists. It's a form of narcissism.

And I gave you only two examples, but narcissism can wear many disguises.

For example, a mother who is overprotective and constantly worries about the child and so she constantly brings the child to hospitals and this is known as Munchausen syndrome or Munchausen by proxy and so on. There is a strong component of narcissism there because the mother wants attention. She wants the attention of the medical stuff. And she wants to be glorified and glamorized that she's a great mother, how much she's suffering, how much she's sacrificing for her child.

It's again an example of narcissism.

So it's very dangerous to take anything at face value.

Ask yourself all the time, is there a narcissist hiding behind it?

And very often you will be surprised. The answer is yes, there is.

So this is a message I would like to, and I think the second message I would like to convey, maybe another two with your permission.

Victimhood.

Victimhood has become an organizing principle of society. Victimhood gives life meaning, makes sense of your own personal history, gives you direction and purpose, and of course, gives you special rights. Victimhood pays, sometimes pays money.

So victimhood became this chic fashion. Everyone and his dog is a victim and we are running out of abusers. There's so many victims, you know.

So because we are running out of abusers, victims invent abusers and invent abuse, so-called victims, professional victims, lifelong victims, victims whose victimhood is their identity. Victims who feel only good when they're victims. Victims who leverage the victim to obtain attention, to obtain adulation, to obtain pity, and to obtain concessions from other people.

We have this tremendous abuse of the concept of victim, especially online. These are the real abusers because they deny real victims, sympathy and access and empathy and so. They are hogging the limelight. They are blocking real victims from having access and so.

And I think it helps to, like me, I didn't have the concept of what is narcissistic abuse. I didn't know. I thought that the Oregon people are narcissists. And then, I mean, the internet helped me to, I Google some behavior and then I came across narcissism.

And then, I mean, I think it's a good start to know that narcissism exists and narcissistic abuse and how the cycle goes and everything.

Yeah, and community, I think, talking with other people who experience the same to validate one's own perception, not one perception, but one's own reality, which...

Yeah, but if all this is founded on lies and misinformation, then none of it is helpful. All of it is pathologized.

Yeah.

If it's founded on real information, on vetted information, yeah, then it's very helpful and very, but it's founded on nonsense and lies and narcissists and demons and the quantity of nonsense and disinformation online is mind-boggling and you cannot build anything healthy on this foundation not even community

What would be like a side of of getting information from sources?

What would be another helpful thing for victims to do?

The claims cannot do anything, but what we should do is we should educate clinicians, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, court evaluators, social workers, and the community.

We should open a massive educational effort so that people have alternatives.

Today, if you're a victim, you approach your therapist. She never heard of narcissistic abuse. Or if she did, she's fed by the internet or she has no idea what is narcissism. Or, you know, same with your psychologist or psychiatrists or your professor in the university.

I mean, so we need to create a credible, vetted, viable alternative to the corrupted online space.

And we don't have it.

I agree. We don't have it. I blame academia. I blame my colleagues for refusing to open YouTube channels. Absolutely refusing. I blame them for it.

I think they are leaving the field open to charlatans and con artists.

Because they refuse to get their hands dirty. They refuse to get involved, you know?

So all kinds of, you know, swindlers and scammers take the place.

There's no alternative, exactly like there's no alternative in the space of masculinity.

When you end up with Andrew Tate, because there's no other voice that analyzes masculinity and proposes alternatives to young boys.

So young boys today have one alternative. No choice, one alternative, and that's Andrew Tate, end of story.

Same with narcissism. When people come online, they essentially have one alternative. And it's the wrong alternative.

AndI blame people like Keith Campbell and so on, that they don't have a YouTube channel. Because if people had the choice between Keith Campbell and some other YouTube channel, you know, I want to believe that some people would have chosen Keith Campbell.

And then I know they're in safe hands because there's nothing about narcissism that Keith Campbell doesn't know.

But he's not on YouTube. Why? Why is he not on YouTube?

That's not okay, in my view. It's part of his civil responsibility as an intellectual.

We have abrogated our responsibility as intellectuals because we don't want to get our hands dirty with a YouTube swamp, you know. And that I blame academia, of course.

What helps you like in everyday life? Or what are the little islands for a narcissistic person to feel content? Or do they feel content anyhow? Or is it just when they have enough supply?

It would help to think of a narcissist as a drug addict.

So all of existence is constricted. It becomes very narrow and it is occupied and preoccupied exclusively with obtaining and securing narcissistic supply.

Exactly like the junkie cannot think much about philosophy or politics or he's focused on getting the next fix and the next dose, you know.

So this is narcissist. He's addicted to narcissistic supply. It's a drug. It helps him to regulate his internal environment.

When narcissistic supply is absent or deficient, there is collapse. Collapse is a horrible state of mind.

When the narcissist's grandiosity is challenged, when there is negative supply, that is also very bad, narcissistic injury, narcissistic mortification.

So everything revolves around supply.

One common mistake online by the aforementioned self-styled experts is that they confuse narcissists and psychopaths.

So first of all, it's not true that all psychopaths are narcissists. It's another nonsense propagated by self-styled experts.

The psychopath is goal-oriented. The psychopath really wants money. The psychopath really wants power. He really wants sex, the psychopath.

Actually, important to the psychopath is to accomplish these things, the process of accomplishment.

So the psychopath needs to prove to himself that he is self-efficacious, that he is supreme in his ability to secure outcomes.

Okay, so, but he is invested in the outcomes. He needs sex to prove to himself that he is irresistible. He needs money to prove to himself that he is super rich.

Psychopaths are goal-oriented.

Narcissists care only about supply.

So narcissists don't care about money. They do not care about power. They do not care about anything.

A narcissist would make a lot of money because making money will guarantee attention, will guarantee supply. And narcissists would become President of the United States because by becoming president of the United States, he gets a lot of attention.

A narcissist would purchase Twitter or X because by purchasing a social media platform, he gets a lot of attention every day.

It's about attention exclusively. Everything else is an instrument to obtain attention. Just that.

So when you ask what is a state of mind, when he gets attention, he feels all good, when he doesn't get attention, it feels bad.

It's a binary state, like a not very complex machine. Or I'm good, I'm bad. Good, bad. That's all.

And this is again, ifyou think about it.

It's like a baby. Because a baby feels that way.

I'm good because my diaper is dry and I got food. My mother breastfed me. So now I'm good because my diaper is dry and I got food. My mother breastfed me. So now I'm good.

But then my diaper is wet or I did not eat and I feel bad.

But good, bad.

This binary state is very infantile, very infantile state.

It's a complicated subject I feel like I've been pulled into this universe of narcissism and there is no way to leave it ever again. Black hole, yes, really. I mean, I'm fascinated.

And I think I manage or manage my own experiences through that to understanding and to theoretical.

So I don't have, because the emotional component is horrific.

So it's like soothing to know why and to understand. I think that helps a lot as well. Knowledge about.

And this is why narcissism is so much spoken about. Why it's so, because narcissism is an organizing principle.

Narcissism can explain to you not only the specific behavior of specific individuals, but narcissism can explain to your politics. It can explain to your social trends. It can explain to your social media.

Narcissism has a huge explanatory power. It's hermeneutic. It makes sense of the world. It gives the world some kind of meaning. It teaches you what makes other people tick. What makes the world tick?

So it is an overarching principle of human conduct and human organization.

That's why today politicians accuse each other of being narcissists.

And when you want to understand an actor in Hollywood, we say how he's a narcissist.

When you try to understand sexual assault, you say this is narcissistic behavior.

When you try to understand sexual assault, you say, this is narcissistic behavior.

Whatever you're trying to, when you look at social media, it encourages narcissism.

Wherever you look, if you use the concepts of narcissism, the world becomes much more understandable, much more comprehensible.

So it's useful and helpful to import or to leverage or to use narcissism, not only in interpersonal or intimate relationships, but in everything. In absolutely everything. It's like a key word for everything.

So it should be taught in school in the curriculum really for kids, not like this, but in an understandable breaking down way, just the basics.

So children would understand already, or would be able to differentiate different behaviors of human things.

There was an article in Scientific American in July 2016, a cover article, cover page. And he said, parents teach your children to be narcissists.

Narcissism is positive adaptation. It's helpful to be a narcissist or to imitate a narcissist or so because you become president of the United States. You become a rich guy. You become, you know, it pays. It's a positive survival strategy.

And many, many academics now are beginning to glorify narcissism. They say, narcissism is good. It's the next step in evolution. It's high functioning. We need narcissists. We need psychopaths. They're good for society. They're good for the species.

So it's becoming a good thing, not a bad thing.

Like the imitation of narcissism or narcissism?

Narcism.

Narcism.

It's a good thing in the current civilization and current society. It's a good thing. Not a bad thing. Something you should have. Or you should develop at least, you should definitely be a narcissist because it pays. It's a positive adaptation, not maladaptation.

Yeah, but I mean, how narcissism starts, I mean, then they would have to raise their children very differently and very badly.

Well, they do. They do, actually.

There are two pathways to narcissism, as I mentioned.

You can be abusive in the classical sense, physically and so.

But you could also idealize the child, idolize the child, pedestalize the child, and so on.

And whenever you remove the child from reality, whenever you don't allow the child to interact with reality and peers in a meaningful way, to have friction with reality. And whenever you prevent a child from creating boundaries and separating, these are all abusive behaviors that lead to narcissism.

So we have pathways, adversity-based pathways, pathways of classical abuse, but we also have these pathways.

And so today I think parenting is essentially the second pathway, where the child can do no wrong, the child is overprotected, the child is idealized and idolized, the child is, you know, a god-like figure and so. That also leads to narcissism, of course.

And scary thought that there could be a parenting book, How to Raise a Narcissist.

Yeah.

But I think it's too late. I personally think it's too late. I think we have crossed the Rubicon and I think we are heading towards a narcissistic psychopathic civilization.

Where narcissists and psychopaths rise to the top already, that's not a prediction happening, they rise to the top politically, but not only in science and everywhere.

The rates of plagiarism in academia have exploded. All anti-social behaviors in all settings are exploding. Interpersonal relationships, intimate relationships, friendships, church, academia, politics, show business, you name it. Entertainment, media, the media, everywhere. We have an explosion of antisocial behavior.

And a lot of it is being normalized, with one exception maybe sexual assault and sexual abuse. A lot of other behaviors, many other beings are being totally normalized.

And now we have artificial intelligence, which is going to contribute to antisocial behavior, because it is in itself antisocial and narcissistic. The technology itself is antisocial and narcissistic.

So it's just beginning.

We need to say goodbye because we have two minutes.

Yes.

Thank you very much. It was an honor and a pleasure. I can't still believe that I'm talking to you.

No, my question. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'm not right about it in my blog. And I wish you a good end of the year.

Thank you. And you too. And I have been here. I'll send you the links to the video files. Thank you very much. Okay take care there. Bye-bye.

You too. Bye-bye.