So, at the risk of monopolizing the conversation, which is habitual, I want to make two things clear.
First of all, a psychopathic narcissist, also known as malignant narcissist. First and foremost, narcissists. So everything I've said during this conversation applies to psychopathic narcissists. Everything I've said about narcissists applies to psychopathic narcissists as well.
The second thing is it's all about goal orientation.
But here is a major distinction between narcissists and psychopaths.
The narcissist's goal is himself. The goal of the narcissist is himself, self-aggrandizement, self-attraction, autoerotism, supply, etc. It's all about himself.
While the psychopath's goal essentially is you. He wants to own you. He wants to control you. He wants to dominate you. He wants to have power of you.
So the psychopath is capable of recognizing the externality and separateness of other people, unlike the narcissists. And the psychopath just wants to convert you into a possession.
While the narcissist doesn't see you at all. You don't exist at all. You're a figment in the narcissist's mind and imagination. And he interacts with you in ways that render him irresistible to himself so that he can ultimately end up having sex with himself.
So with that in mind, that brings me quite neatly round to the point about how narcissists and psychopaths, the difference in how they interact with a potential love interest and the style of love bombing, because unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to view it, I've consumed a lot of your content. It's been enormously helpful to me and I imagine many others.
So when I'm listening to what you have to say, I look at things with a far more jaundiced eye and I start to see things that, you know, romantic tropes, romantic comedies, the way people perceive love and, you know, this cult of twin flames and soulmates, love at first sight. I'm now questioning that quite frequently.
And I was reading the love letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald. And the way that they were speaking to one another, it made me feel, you know, is this real love? Or is this just some form of, you know, psychopathic or narcissistic love bombing?
For instance, just to give you a quick example, Zelda sends a letter to Scott at the start of their courtship where she says, you know, if you should die, I would have no purpose. Do you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered and I was delivered to you to be worn. I want you to wear me like a watch charm or a buttonhole bouquet to the world. And then when we're alone I want to help to know that you can't do anything without me.
Sounds like a good script for a horror movie.
Yeah.
There have been few serial killers, for example, Ed Gein, who used to kind of flay their victims, take out the skin and wear the skin. So this is very reminiscent of.
Yeah, I mean, now I'm seeing that as, oh, that's really creepy.
Whereas prior to all this knowledge about, you know, Cluster B personality disorders, I would have thought, oh, that's lovely, you know, they really love each other. What a poetic way to express oneself.
And now I'm thinking, should I run in the opposite direction?
Yeah, running in the opposite direction might be a good idea.
The thing is that the difference between healthy people and unhealthy people is that unhealthy people use sex and so-called love, it's not real love. They use them to force self-regulation.
In other words, they leverage the sex act, they leverage intimacy, they leverage romance, they leverage courting and flirting and sexual scripts, they leverage this whole thing in order to regulate something internally.
So the narcissist regulates his sense of self-worth. The psychopath reduces his anxiety.
Psychopaths, now we know, suffer from anxiety disorder. And the psychopathy is a kind of compensation.
So I don't need to be anxious because I'm an animal. I don't need to be anxious because I'm a bully. I don't be anxious because I'm a so-and-so.
And they use other people in sexual contexts and emotional contexts and contexts of intimacy, romance and relationships and so on. They use other people. They self-medicate with other people.
In the case of the psychopath, other people are anxiolytics. They are like the equivalent of anxiety medication.
And in the case of the narcissist, they are kind of drugs. They are narcissists on high when he consumes other people.
But it's a consumer act. It's consumerism.
Both psychopaths and narcissists consume other people.
Whereas in healthy relationships, the people involved remain separate. They have boundaries and they enrich a third entity, which is the relationship. The relationship is distinct from its participants.
In psychopathy, in narcissism, there's merger and fusion for different reasons.
The reasons are not the same, the etiology, the motivation is not the same, but the outcome is the same.
You cease to exist. You cease to exist. You cease to exist.
And that's why you have this phenomenal twin flames and soulmates.
Yeah, it's people who believe their twin flames or soulmates.
Is it likely that one of those people is psychopathic or narcissistic or it's just that they're gullible and they're brought into the cults?
No, no, beyond likely. Beyond likely.
Yeah. Beyond likely.
There's one or both are narcissists or psychopaths. Maybe covert narcissistic and overt narcissistic and overt narcissism.
But there's a lot of narcissism and psychopathy.
There is a wish to eliminate the partner by merging.
You know, when they say we are like one body, like one organism with two heads.
What are we talking about?
We are talking about eliminating the partner.
It's a death wish for the partner.
It's like, I don't like you when you are separate. I want to consume you. I want to digest you. I want to assimilate you. I want you to not exist anymore except within me.
So that's precisely what the narcissist does. He converts you into an internal object.
And that's exactly what the psychopath does.
When you put it like that, it's really not romantic whatsoever.
It's not.
It's a death cut.
Psychopathy and narcissism are extension of what used to be known in psychoanalytic literature as the thanatic drive, the death drive.
So in early psychoanalytic literature, they made a distinction between libido, which is the life force, and destrudo or mortido, or later it was called thanatos which is the death drive.
Psychopaths and narcissists regard other people either as objects to be consumed, that's the psychopath, or as non-existent. That's the narcissist.
So their world is solipsistic, is dead, they are dead inside, and they induce death. They bring death to the outside.
They want you to die. They don't want you to live. They don't want you to flourish. They don't want you to have any autonomy or agency or they don't want you to exist because when you exist, you defy the narcissist's internal object, which is idealized. And when you exist, you defy the psychopath's power.
In any case, your existence is an act of defiance, which needs to be put down. You need to be put down. You're like a rabid dog. You need to be put down. You're a danger to the internal stability of the psychopath and narcissist.
What would you say a few pointers when dating that people wouldn't often pick up on or you're not going to find necessarily, you know, on these internet, you know, BuzzFeed, one, two, three articles that would indicate to someone that you're potentially dealing with someone who's psychopathic?
I'm often asked this question. I think I authored the first article in the early 90s about how to identify, recognize a narcissist on the first date and this kind of thing.
I think, first of all, review the power matrix.
Is your potential partner trying to take over? Is it a hostile takeover? Is there a transfer of power from yourself to your partner on a constant basis? Does he take over decision making?
For example, the process of disempowerment is like a leaking battery. Are you losing your power? Do you feel it that you're losing your power? Do you become more dependent, for example, on your partner's judgment, on the way he sees reality? Do you subject your own opinions to his? Does he become the art stick and benchmark for everything and so.
So that's a crucial point.
Second point is alacrity, the speed. If your partner is moving too fast inordinately and in a deranged way, moving too fast, that's a very bad indication. I would be very careful with it.
The next thing is a discrepancy between how your partner treats you and all other people.
If he treats you nicely and demeans and humiliates other people, like waiters and cab drivers and I don't know, that's a bad sign. If on the other hand, it treats you abrasively, contemptuously and rudely, and is very, very nice to other people, including cab drivers and waitresses and whatever you. That's also a bad sign.
If there is an incongruence between the way he treats you, for better or for worse, and the way he treats other people, there's something seriously wrong.
All these are indicators to just walk away, cut it out, just break up and move on.
In terms of the charisma, though, that these people demonstrate is very alluring because, you know, on the dating scene at points you're often met with these, you know, bumbling idiots or, you know, people who are just kind of, you know, bog standard or, you know, they get things wrong.
And after a while, you start to believe, you know, I do want someone special. I do want someone different.
Even though ultimately, you know, everybody's going to get things wrong, we're all inherently flawed.
But, you know, you come across someone with 10 times the charisma of your standard date or possibly they look after themselves better. They've got a more interesting job.
That's a narcissistic approach to dating.
I'm sorry to see.
What you should be looking for is someone who cares for you, someone who gives you space to be yourself, someone who respects you.
Oh no, this isn't necessarily how I view dating. It's more what I've heard from, you know, women who are tired, often women, I will say men as well, often women who are very tired of the dating scene and they, you know, I just keep meeting the same man.
Because they're looking for someone special.
Yeah.
And they regard their potential relationships, intimate relationships as a kind of a movie.
Yeah, exactly.
This is Disney, Disney approach.
It's a Disney approach to dating.
Disney is one of the major engines of masses in modern civilization.
I'm not kidding, by the way.
I'm not kidding.
No, I believe you.
No, I believe you.
I'm certainly not kidding. 100%.
The subliminal messages in Disney movies are mostly narcissistic and in many cases psychopathic, but mostly narcissistic.
And so one of the main messages is you are so special, you're so amazing, you're so fascinating and incredible, that you deserve a prince because you're a princess and you're a goddess, and as a goddess, it is of a god, you know?
The hidden messages are that you, the only way to affirm and confirm your princess status, your uniqueness, your amazingness is by finding a partner who is equally amazing and unique.
And this is utterly narcissistic. It also happens to be wrong.
Don't you feel it's more endemic now though with the culture of TikTok and you know, influencing and how people, the way people behave and view themselves?
You know, I feel that this princess attitude in particular is a lot more common. Now I'm seeing a lot of people saying, well, this is what I deserve.
I don't want to date a man who's making less than 100k a year. I don't want to date a man who hasn't got his own business.
You know, these standards whereby I would say even a decade ago, these standards didn't exist.
You were, as you say, looking for people who would be kind to you, would care for you, would open the door for you, even, you know, simple things that do amount to a lot.
Yes, because dating today is not about the other person, it's about you. It's about self-aggrandizing. It's about augmenting your wealth or augmenting your power or augmenting your image and your status.
The other person is a consumable. The other person is a commodity. The other person is a gadget or a device intended to uphold your view of yourself as a perfect entity.
Isn't that worrying? Sorry.
Isn't that very worrying though for the future and how people are going to start to interact to one another.
42% of adults nowadays in industrial societies are single for life, lifelong single.
Is that worrying?
Well, it depends.
I think the West is disappearing.
I don't think. I mean, it's a fact. The West is disappearing.
The number of live births is under the replacement rate. So all industrialized countries are losing population. That includes China, doesn't it? They're losing population.
Ultimately, we're going to vanish. And our Western civilization is going to replace by other civilization, obviously. It's a normal process.
Narcissism is the way civilizations vanish. Narcissism is a disease that ruins, destroy civilization, and that narcissism was at its height at the end of the Roman Empire for example.
So narcissism is the harbinger the sign of a malaise that destroys the social fabric to the point that an entire civilization vanishes. It's like a funk, it's like some kind of blight or something that kills civilizations.
We are dying because of narcissism. I mean, narcissism is an indicator that we are dying.
Is there any scope for this to be reversed or retracted or that there will be some kind of, you know, realization that we need to modify our ways and modify how we live and how we live most of our lives online?
I know I'm saying this as we speak on an online platform, but again, I feel it's almost got to a point where people are losing the ability to interact normally.
Listen, I'm an old Moroccan, middle eastern, patriarchal, um, bully, so I'm not sure I'm woke enough to answer this.
I want the non-woke answer.
There's a simple fact. Children, having children means choosing life.
And people are not having children what they're having instead is iPhones and Netflix and a lot of cats. There's a proliferation of cats.
People have given up on reality and if above there, over and above there, they've given up on other people.
People consider the cost of associating with other people as far higher than the reward of associating with other people.
So they've chosen atomization, they've chosen singlehood, they've chosen isolation. And 42%, that's not a joke, half of all adults have chosen this.
And ultimately I think all of us will end up this way.
So we are embedded in a death cult.
How do you know that you are in a death cult?
When material possessions become far more important than human life, when money, profit, business, commerce, commodities, products, services, economy, the growth of the economy, they become much more important in human life.
You're in a death cult because you elevate and you worship inanimate objects, which is a great definition of death.
So we are embedded in Western civilization has become a death cult. And we are in a downward spiral of a death cult.
I don't see this as a negative thing at all. I think it's high time that we exit left stage.
It's high time. If you look back, 500 years, let's see, the last 500 years, we haven't been beneficial, not to the planet, not to other people, colonialism, not to each other. We failed. It's a failed experiment. We have simply failed.
We have created artificial environments such as cities. We tried to survive in them. We failed in that too. Pollution. It's a bloody mess.
I think we fail mostly.
Sorry?
I think we fail mostly in the fact that we give our time, most of our time, to make money and our youth to make money. And by the time we reach a point in our lives where we can spend that money, we don't have any time left.
It's almost like a catch. It's a game. It's not a game that you will always lose the game.
Yeah, you will lose the game every time.
You're choosing death. That's the choice of death. When you choose money over life, that's death. You choose death.
So because reality is intolerable and unbearable, we evade, avoid and escape reality, into the internet, into social media, into the metaverse, into making money, workaholism, and we do everything in our power to avoid each other and to avoid life.
Good.
Time to call it quits, I think. Let's let other civilizations and alternatives emerge.
Luckily for humanity, there are alternatives to Western civilization. Many of them are egregiously horrible, but some of them are very interesting. For example, I think in Africa there are quite a few civilizational alternatives which could be much more conducive to choosing life over death.
I think also Asia can have some interesting alternatives.
Some parts of Asia, Africa, you know some places in South America as well outside of the, you know, well-worn track.
In human history is the story of the fight between life and death. And human beings are agents. They have to make a choice, not only between good and evil, as religion has it, but they have to make a choice between life and death.
Life is not an automatic choice, like all of us think.
Many of us choose death.
Many of us choose death.
That we biologically process food and, you know, with inevitable outcomes in the toilet that doesn't make us alive. That doesn't make us alive. That's not life.
What would you say makes us alive?
Life is about challenging yourself to change despite the fear that attends upon change and transformation. I think that's the best definition of life.
And change requires you to have access to reality. Otherwise you will die, you know, a good appraisal and grasp of reality.
So you need to be in touch, you need to be in contact.
Life is about contact. Life is about change. Life is about fighting off fear, other negative emotions. And above all, life is about enabling each other to grow and to become who we are, the process of becoming.
Today we don't do any of this when we are in relationships, they devolve into power plays and mind games and so on.
We don't.
That's why it's so sad.
Sorry?
Yeah.
That's why it's so sad because I feel the institution of marriage and relationships have become a power play. It's become a competition.
And ultimately, it's not loving or enjoyable, which begs the question, what is the point?
Yes.
And this is a good summary of the state of mind of Western civilization.
What's the point?
I think we have reached the point of saying there's no point.
And you mentioned cats earlier, lots and lots of cats. And are they not the least psychopathic animal to choose as a pet?
Not according to recent studies. According to recent studies, cats are absolutely psychopaths.
Actually, I have a video on my YouTube channel.
Is your cat a psychopath?
I really need to watch this. I'm pretty sure my cat is a psychopath, and I can't believe I've missed it, so I definitely have to check this one out.
Ask any mouse. Most mice would agree.
ButI feel that a lot of people choose cats because unlike dogs they don't give you that unconditional they're not all up in your business. They're not you know they don't give you that unconditional love where theyjump up on you the minute you're in the room.
You have to work for a cat's love.
They give you space.
Yeah, they give you space. They're not as demanding.
They're not as demanding. They give you space.
Modern dating for you.
Yeah, exactly. Perfect.
Modern relationships.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Cats, dogs, Netflix, these are all substitutes.
These are all substitutes.
We are living in ersatz world, a world of imitation and fakery. It's not a real world.
It's what Baudrillard called the Society of the Spectacle. It's all a theater. It's all a Truman show. It's an enormous matrix or theater production. None of it is real.
I think that's what we are feeling. All of us are feeling that none of it is real.
That's why you have these conspiracy theories and people are trying to desperately get to the reality of it. They don't trust reality.
This can't be reality. There must be a reality of it.
They don't trust reality. They say, this can't be reality. There must be something behind it. This can't be true.
And yet, it is true. The biggest conspiracy of all is that the reality we see, shockingly, is absolutely true.
It's not a reality that I think many people want to continue to live in in this manner.
I don't feel certainly in the UK there's any kind of future for the millennial generation that have just, you know, come into their thirties.
They've worked very hard to get to where they want to be a lot of them and we're reaching a point where our careers, our relationships, our way of living and it's not sustainable, it doesn't fill us with excitement or joy and we've reached a point where even earning, you know, the UK average wage of 34,000 isn't enough to keep a small barren households going for a month.
So to me it feels very much, especially after the pandemic, that our economy and our wages, they're not aligned. And our lives are just, as you say, you know, it's a Truman show. It's a spectacle.
A very depressing spectacle.
We live at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution. During the Industrial Revolution, the owners of factories earned hundreds of times more than the workers. So there was income inequality started with the Industrial RevolutionIt didn't exist before.
And so we live at this age where the elites are sacrificing the masses and ignoring them.
And so the masses opt out. It's a giant opt out. Western civilization is a giant opt out.
People opt out through drugs, for alcohol, through Netflix, through cats, they opt out. Simply opting.
Did you have children to pick up or something?
Indeed I do, but yes, I got distracted.
It's been fascinating as always, Doctor. And even though we went off topic there, I feel that was a very relevant sidetrack. So yeah, thank you so much for your time.
My pleasure. Anytime.
See you again, so I hope.
Yeah, see you again soon. And yeah, I'll have to check out the CAP video.
Thank you ever so much.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye.