 Welcome my friends to the depression 2 expression podcast Scott St. Marie here along with Dr. Sam Vaknin who is a professor of psychology in Russia holds two PhDs one in philosophy one in physics and is an expert in narcissism and narcissistic personality Disorder now. I'm so excited to share this episode with everyone Here's just a preview of what we spoke about because it got heavy it got deep and we touched a lot of topics But all that all of them really came back to Narcissism and how we're living today. We spoke about self-righteousness Glorifying victimhood self-help gurus and coaches God Identity politics and mental illness in the West. It's all in this episode and I appreciate your attention I appreciate your mindset of curiosity and willingness to learn Enjoy the episode my friends Sam. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it my pleasure So, you know Narcissism is is a word that's being used especially as of late with with social media And people love to throw that around if people are let's say self-loving but Is narcissism can we take this a step further and really talk about what narcissism truly is if someone is a Narcissist with a personality disorder. What does this look like and and what did this look like in your own experience? Well, that's Like 26 questions rolled into one. Let's try to somehow make Make order out of chaos imitating imitating God mind you so First of all, we must it's important to realize that everyone is a narcissist in the sense that everyone has something called healthy narcissism It's also called primary Primary narcissism This is the kind of narcissism that babies have This is the kind of narcissism that allows you as a child to venture out into the world and explore it because it takes some Grandiosity to assume that you as a baby can take on the world This is the kind of narcissism that underlies a well-regulated Internally regulated sense of self-worth and self-esteem and self-confidence. This is the kind of narcissism That allows you to ignore certain Challenges and certain threats and certain and and just venture out there and do your thing This is the kind of narcissism that that allows you to stand up to bullies and and Enemies etc. etc. So this is healthy narcissism. Everyone has it every single person on earth has it Then there is the pathological kind also known as secondary narcissism logical kind is when There's a confluence of circumstances The first and most important is trauma childhood abuse and trauma When the child is abused and traumatized it does something to the child's mind and That's something is reversible because the mind is the brain is neuroplastic. It can be reprogrammed and deprogrammed Via for example therapy or even via self-work or self-analysis So there is hope but still it does something to the mind and and Children then are forced having been subjected to trauma and abuse They are forced to to find a solution somehow to avoid the pain and the hurt of being traumatized and abused abused so one solution is to identify with the abuser and they become co-dependence another solution is To become the abuser to to abuse and then they become narcissists And another solution is to try to become the abuser and to fail and then they become borderlines. This is the etiology This is the these are the paths Psychodynamic Psychological development paths that lead to these pathologies. It's very important to emphasize that only a tiny percentage of the children Of children exposed to abuse and trauma develop these pathologies the vast majority Go on to be relatively healthy adults or be it with problems some problems with depression and anxiety and so It's also equally important to answer to to explain or to expound on the on the term abuse or on the on the concept of trauma Abuse is not only when you beat up your child is not only when you have incest with your child is not only when you Verbally and psychologically torment and taunt your child or you humiliate your child These are classic forms of abuse and actually they are the minority There are other forms of abuse which we tend to overlook or reframe or not treat as abuse or even condone For example, when you spoil your child Well, when you pamper your child when you idolize your child when you place your child on a pedestal or the pedestal on your child when you treat your child as an instrument of gratification as The tool which will help you you as a parent realize your fantasies and wishes When you parentify your child when you force your child to act as a parent to you All these are forms of abuse So the only thing that's common to all forms of abuse classic and the those that I've just mentioned The only thing that's common to all of them is that the child is not allowed to separate from the parent Child is not allowed to separate and to become an individual because the child is not allowed to develop boundaries and To set boundaries to insist to enforce them The parent insists to invade the child to assimilate the child to treat the child as an extension to merge and fuse with the child in a variety of ways socially acceptable ways like spoiling or pampering or idolizing and Socially unacceptable ways like incest, but there's absolutely no psychodynamic difference between incest and idolizing In both these cases The child becomes part of the parent is not allowed to separate from the parent in the second case of incest It's physically Bodily and in the case of pampering or spoiling or idolizing or using the child is instrument of gratification. It's psychologically But in both cases the child is not his or her own person No personality is allowed to develop So one of the solutions that children choose when they are exposed exposed to these Implicit or explicit messages. Don't leave me. You are part of me. You will never be your own person When they are faced with this kind of messaging One of the solutions is known as pathological narcissism What the child does in pathological narcissism? He invents an imaginary friend Imaginary friend called the false self and this imaginary friend is everything the child is not A child is helpless. This imaginary friend is omnipotent The child cannot predict the behavior of the parents as parents is unpredictable capricious arbitrary The false self is omniscient knows everything The child is is helpless Cannot cope with the abuse and the trauma is no effective means and tools of managing the abuse of trauma let alone eliminating it The false self is all powerful So if you put all these attributes together, you know perfection brilliance omnipotence omniscience If you put all these together you you get the attributes of God So the false false self is a God What happens to a child who is exposed to trauma and abuse? When and if he chooses the narcissistic solution is that the child develops a private religion? he invents a God and Then he worships this God and then he sacrifices to this God He makes a human sacrifice. He sacrifices himself because it's the only human he has access to So he makes a human sacrifice. It's a recreation of primitive proto-religions Absolutely, it's like exactly what you said you called it the collective unconscious You know, it is like we are re-create like the child recreates the history of the race the history of the species In his attitude in his attempts to cope So when the child grows up, there are essentially Two serious problems one The child when he becomes an adult. Yes, the child is in a post-traumatic state Narcissism is a post-traumatic condition Not in my view at least I'm trying to reconceive of it as a post-traumatic condition not a personality disorder Interesting. Okay. Okay. So so it's a post-traumatic condition and the second problem arrest the development The child never becomes another at least not mentally. He gets stuck at some stage of development Usually six years old. It's six to nine nine is a very very well-developed Mentally well-developed narcissists most narcissists are four to six years old And here's the problem and here's why we've keep failing in therapy when we are trying to treat narcissists We keep failing in therapy because we relate to narcissists. We try to negotiate with narcissists We try to talk reason we try to Rationalize we try we treat the narcissist that comes into the into the clinic into the office We treat the narcissist as an adult But the narcissist is not an adult It's a four-year-old It's a six-year-old and of course all the all adult therapies Fail with narcissists, right because they are not adults That's first thing the second thing We treat narcissism as an all-pervasive problem of the personality is a multi-dimensional Cancerous process which affects every dimension of personality in every dimension of functioning Consequently, we trot out we roll out systemic solutions. We try to cope with problems systemically It's a little like treating common cold as though it were cancer But Narcissism is a post-traumatic condition. We do know that trauma affects Does affect all dimensions of functionality including for example? interpersonal relationships and all diamond all cognitive dimensions and all emotional dimensions we know this But we equally know the trauma is totally reversible and That it can be cured and healed totally. Okay, so that can be I definitely want to unpack that but this is so extremely interesting When I think of narcissism, I never thought of a in the developmental stages now You have this child grown up. Let's say an abusive environment does social isolation and the lack of friendships really help develop that that narcissism because if you're developing this false self and Developing developing this imaginary and new religion. Are these children more isolated than the rest of them and not having this this these social Relationships to actually hinder that narcissistic development. Does that even play a role into how this develops? Language itself fails us. Let us analyze your question Do these children? You know self-isolate whatever They can't do anything They can't have friends. They can't isolate and for the very simple reason that the minute the false self is invented They cease to exist The narcissist is not a being not an entity not an existence. The narcissist is an absence It's a void it's deep space It's a whole of mirrors when we discuss if we discuss interpersonal relationships, we can we can dwell on my concept of whole of mirrors It's a reflection which reflects a reflection. It's a reflexive Recursive process. It's not a human being not a person in any sense by the way Not not not as far as empathy notice. I mean no dimension of personality We are acquainted with is operative in the narcissistic psychodynamic So how can how can one actually? Okay, so we can move to let's let's talk about treatment. How can you actually have a sense of self or or self-awareness and maybe in your experience, too, like I'm thinking okay, you're you're You're a narcissist and you're behaving in this certain way and someone calls you out for behaving Let's simply selfishly self-interested You're abusing this person both mentally and physically You can't actually in treatment or or in a relationship tell that person you are doing this Why aren't you aware that you are doing harm to others or are you simply aware? And is that even a choice that you that narcissists are making? I Narcissist consists of a single a single Operational construct functioning construct called the false self which is divorced from the narcissist. It's a concoction It's a piece of fiction. It's like a movie It's a confabulation. It's a it's a construct. It's not real So there is the false self Very similar to God. I think you know when you say God Oh And there is the true self which is ossified and fossilized dysfunctional Cowering in the corner crying four-year-old baby So utterly irrelevant For our discussion as a this stage of life. You still don't have full-fledged empathy You don't have any interpersonal skills. You don't have even what we call object relations You don't perceive others as separate from you. So this four-year-old is not relevant to our conversation The narcissists therefore is a drug addict and he's focused on obtaining a drug called narcissistic supply Which essentially is attention attention could be positive Adulation admiration applause affirmation or negative being feared is equally gratifying being hated is equally gratifying So the narcissists is focused on obtaining narcissistic supply because he uses the supply To regulate his internal environment. This is the sacrifice He makes daily to the Moloch to the God to the idol of the false self And he is addicted to this because it also helps him to regulate his sense of self-worth. He's his internal environment, so This is the sole focus of the narcissist supply If harming people will get him supply he will harm people But there are many narcissists who are political activists and Erasists There are many narcissists who are public intellectuals and Propagate systems of thought and living correctly There are many narcissists who are Indian mystics and Indian gurus There are many narcissists who are altruists charitable and benefactors of humanity Actually, I would say that the majority of these people are rabid narcissists they just discovered that pushing a few verbal buttons and virtual signaling gets you places Allow allows you to obtain supply Recently in Canada by the way, there was a study published few I think a few weeks ago in British Columbia there was a study published Which had demonstrated conclusively that the majority of political activists including anti-racism activists and the majority of philanthropists and the majority of Public intellectuals including the most well-known public intellectuals who purport to tell you how to live life in a meaningful way And the majority of life coaches the majority of mystics and gurus etc etc are not only narcissists But psychopathic narcissists Wow to put it less or to put it less gently corn artist Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense I'd love for you to use your beautiful language to unpack that because I know I think it makes sense from the outside Like how could you be and no normal human being could could be in that position of power and Convincing the public and individuals of living a certain way and living as a way as the right way to live and the right things to do I think that makes sense to be somewhat narcissistic, but I guess there's different levels Consider the hubris and Hortiness it takes to claim that you have found the rules for meaningfully at life Consider after five thousand years of human philosophy human religion human studies human science consider how you bristic how insanely prideful and Horty you need to be to make such a claim Whether it's whether justified or not is an entirely different debate, but just to make the claim You know, right consider consider how? How superior you must feel the other day I saw a video words the most Slimy and smarmy self-styled Indian mystic Challenge the head of a major medical school in the United States telling him you don't know medicine. I know medicine I mean and then going on to say that the left breast of the woman Excrets different breasts a different milk than the right breast in breast in breastfeeding It's a different type of milk. Okay You know, it's The so you can ask why do people? Why do people listen to these guys? Right? Why do they dignify them and honor them? Because There is something called base-rate fallacy base rate fallacy is a recent discovery in psychology. We discovered Donna really and others we we discovered that People believe automatically and instantly and without cross-checking and verifying 95% of all claims made That's not nine point five not nine point five percent ninety five percent When people are exposed to the most inane bizarre outlandish insane sentences, they believe at ninety five out of a hundred of these sentences and They will not question these sentences. No, will they bother to cross-check or to verify? to to ascertain the veracity of these sentences So if a guy comes to you and tells you I Love you. I I am so empathic There is a whole new movement online of people who self-style empaths and Now they have a rank a hierarchy. There is a regular empath Then there is a super empath and now there is a Nova empath super Nova empath, you know, yeah So they there's infighting in turn is infighting between these self-styled narcissists The overwhelming vast majority of people who would go online and claim such virtue Are narcissists out for narcissistic supply? There's no such thing as an empath clinically. It's a nonsensical term idiotic term It is it aggrandizes It makes perfect sense. You know, if you just look at the classic American infomercial that's been the same for 50 years, you know, you have these claims You have these testimonials and people continue to buy and believe it But it's the same formula like nothing has changed the technology for all these products that are sold online And what people are selling is is new But the formula for getting people to buy is the same and I guess that can be attributed to people will believe any claim Or most claims any claim you you go online And you say I I I bring love I Will teach you empathy because I am a super Nova empath. I Have been a victim. I and people will not stop and ask themselves This guy keeps saying the word I every second sentence Is this not an indicator of narcissism? And by the way, it is it's called pronoun density. It's a major indicator of narcissism I have seen lectures by public intellectuals life coaches Indian swamis self-styled swamis from North London mind you Indian mystics and gurus some of whom just exited just were released from jail for murdering Other people and and I've seen these people and the pronoun density of these people. It's enormous Literally every fifth word is I me my myself mine a major prime indicator of narcissism People don't stop to us ask themselves someone who publishes a book and The front cover is a giant picture of his face giant photo of his face and the back cover and the back cover Is another giant photo of his face? Is this not an indicator that there is something narcissistic about this alleged Activist against narcissistic abuse. Hmm. I Coined the phrase narcissistic abuse in 1995 and I coined nine out of every terms and phrases used today To describe narcissism There is nothing I regret more in my life The then the fact that I have taken my work and made it popular and public in the in the 1990s Why is that I regret why is that because the whole because the whole thing has been hijacked by covert narcissists psychopaths and narcissists Pretending and masquerading as victims pretending and masquerading as empaths pretending and masquerading as life coaches Pretending and masquerading as self-styled experts every one in his dog is an expert on narcissistic abuse I personally know a test witness and know doctors and professors Who know who knew nothing about narcissism? Declare the next morning that they are experts on narcissism and opening their YouTube channels and garnering enormous following Wow, and I have and I have written messages from these people telling me that they never heard the term narcissism But there's a lot of money in it. So they're going to enter the field so I Guess if you're if you're educated, let's just think of someone else if you're educated in a subject a Life coach and you have this personal experience and you genuinely want to help others Would you not have that that pronoun density I because you're talking about your own experience and it might sound Less forceful if you're speaking from from your own experience rather than saying you should do this You should do that. You're speaking from your own experience When I say pronoun density, I'm not referring to autobiographical notes I'm referring to claims about superior knowledge privileged information Systems of thought Systems of meaningful life in viewing life with meaning I'm not referring to you know I grew up in this city and I did this I'm referring I have learned this and this and I'm telling you that this is the way you should behave This is what you should do. This is a system. I develop this is etc. Right and not of not of course not all life coaches and not all Not everyone is a narcissist inside but I would if I have to venture a gaze guess and this and I've been in this Racket for 25 years. I've seen them all coming and going they all Almost without exception first made contact with me. I Have written documents from the vast majority of them Describing their struggles and their thought processes and how they reach a conclusion that they are experts on narcissism because there's a lot of money in it And so on and so forth So I have I'm I would venture to say that about 80% of this population are Narcissist psychopaths and con artists 80 not 8 unbelievable or is it very believable now since the 90s Would you say these rates have gone up with technological use and and online profiles because we can start with we have the Narcissistic abuse of a child, but can you develop narcissism through through actions of your own and through technology that we see today? No, narcissism is a is a childhood Childhood reaction to trauma and abuse and therefore is but what can happen is that narcissists narcissists and psychopaths are like water They look for the nearest ravine the nearest stream bed the nearest bank They are there are people in search of narcissistic supply in case of narcissists or for sex money and power In case of psychopaths wherever they find it they will go Now social media and other online platforms are ideal vehicles Ideal distribution channels ideal transmission mechanisms to obtain these goals So this is they gravitate there They gravitated there. It's not that their exposure to online technology or platforms Rendered them narcissists. It's that we're narcissists to start with and they are making use of these platforms and technologies To gratify their need for narcissistic supply or honestly to make a lot of money Yeah, it's a cottage industry Victimhood is a cottage industry. It pays ask any black person in the United States. It's a cottage industry And I am not denigrating or undermining or challenging the very true claims about racism About systemic bias about implicit bias about institutionally institutional racism. It's all very true in the case of racism, of course Similarly, it's all very true about narcissistic abuse. I invented the phrase. You're talking to the father the father of the field I feel very humbled Question of humble not humble, but it's a lot of field chronologically. I have I invented the phrase in 95 Everything else you've heard flying monkeys. I invented ghosting. I invented oovering. I invented narcissistic supply I borrowed from a 1937 obscure essay and made it for what it is for self. I borrowed from Winnicolle and Again made it what it is today somatic narcissists. I invented inverted narcissists Cerebral narcissists you name it. I invented I Invented the field. This is I made this playground but then police Narcissists psychopaths Invaded the field using the base rate policy Making claims of empathy and love and support and so core because these are the buttons to push And they were successful. They hijacked the playground And that's where you're saying the money is made not in selling narcissism But selling what narcissists are selling now, which is the self-love and coaching. Let's say and all of these things Yeah, they sell books. They sell DVDs. There's coaching sessions. They sell and they tell you what you want to hear Now people say so what this is what I want to hear. It makes me feel good Right. Well any any any psychology professor, which I'm one. Yeah, we'll tell you that The last thing you need to hear in therapy is what you want to hear That perpetuates perpetuates pathology The the the real the only real hope for healing and recovery Moving on in a meaningful way is to tell you to insist to tell you what you don't want to hear to break down Defenses such as denial and repression of course to do it in a reasoned way and a structured way in a cost in a controlled way but you need to be challenged to grow and The overwhelming vast majority of these people and all you need to do by the way is don't trust me go online Listen to these videos The overwhelming vast majority of these videos are a Formal like they're like a formula. And what's the formula? Yes, you are victim Yes, you fell victim to a horrible demonic person poor you It's not your fault you did nothing wrong You are an empath. So you are superior your grandiose. You're an empath He targeted you because you are such a treasure, you know Do not be a treasure. He would have never targeted the very fact that you were targeted truth Superior you are this is catering to the victims narcissism Right the victims grandiosity. This is aggrandizing the victim and aggrand and aggrandizing victim would victimhood as a way of life and a way to make money mind you and victimhood as an identity Here's the problem. It perpetuates victimhood as an integral strand and strain in the identity of the victim It doesn't allow the victim to move on not to move on to the next relationship. That's easy to move on From a stance and a self identity as a victim Right all these all these YouTube channels and YouTube videos They render a horrible disservice to the victims horrible That they will pay for for the rest of their lives Because they don't allow them to be anything but a victim because they glorify victimhood Because they aggrandize victimhood because they render victimhood an identity identity politics We're coming back to racism, right, you know so and And you know unscrupulous callous Ruthless psychopaths and narcissists. They see the potential in this and they flock in Hundreds thousands of them flocked into this and when I'm saying narcissism or narcissistic abuse, that's one arena There are many other arenas. I think Anti-racism is infested with narcissists and psychopaths Well that that I would love to unpack because if you had to separate the general population of Kind of what's going on now in the u.s. Maybe around the world. Would you say you have Narcissists on one side with this political ideology and this this self righteousness and then you have just victims in the other half and One is trying to convince the other that this is the right way to live and the victims just are kind of eating that up Is that what's kind of going on in in politics right now and what we're seeing in the states is it? I know that's very simplified obviously victim hoods is a reflection of power as asymmetry Wherever there is power as symmetry, there will be victims even if you take the most righteous God fearing Bible thumping people and you let them have power. They will abuse someone Power and abuse go together power and victimhood always go together end of story Now Should we tackle this power of symmetries? Absolutely. We should level the playing field. We should eliminate Institutional discrimination we should crack down on scum like the policeman who placed his knee on on Floyd's neck We should also crack down on scum like Floyd himself mind you who was a Low-life criminal career a career criminal so But Victim good is not an identity It is not a state of mind should not be let's put it this way an identity or a state of mind If it becomes an identity or a state of mind, it's pathological We actually have diagnostic Viteria for perennial perpetual victims professional victims for example, we have a diagnosis called dependent personality disorder Which includes strong elements of victimhood? We we we Realize in in clinical psychology that anything could become an Identity determined a determinant of identity and that victimhood has many Provides many advantages. In other words, we I'm trying my best to avoid Professional jargon or professional lingo, but I can't in this case victimhood is self efficacious In other words victim was victim would guess your results, right? It serves it serves the individual Yes, it gets you favor it as ascertain. It ensures favorable outcomes in your environment, so it's addictive Like anything that guarantees favorable outcomes. It becomes a habit habit habit habits combine familiarity with self-efficacy so victimhood is this and Here's the thing the overwhelming vast majority of people who are protesting in the streets Overturning sculptures, and I don't know what else monuments, and I know what else they're doing the overwhelming Now the overwhelming number of these people are well meaning or They're simply angry and they're not angry at George Floyd and they're not the angry George Floyd's death They couldn't give a damn about George Floyd or his death. They're angry. They're simply they have diffuse anger Because they lost their jobs. They lost the familiar world. They lost access to the neighborhood pub They are locked down. They're under restrictions. They hate the government. They hate Fauci. They hate the medical establishment They simply hate they angry. They're hateful. They're resentful and this was a perfect opportunity to afloat into vent And nothing wrong with it Nothing's wrong with it So the vast majority are regular folks regular people who are simply very very angry and they're very angry at power Structures, they're very angry at the elites. You see Bill Gates and you know, they're very angry at politicians They're very angry at the medical establishments who cannot the establishment who fails to provide solutions They're very angry at Akkadim. They're angry generally. They're angry. Yeah, all you have to do is go online and see how angry people are So this was a perfect opportunity here was the representative the emblem the reification of authority putting his neck on the reification of the victim Great great symbol. So everything erupted what I'm saying is something else What I'm saying is that narcissists and psychopaths hijack this legitimate Emotions expressions cognitions and behaviors hijack them They hijack them. They morph them. They shape shift them. They channel them and then they abuse them and exploit them That's all I'm saying. Hmm. There were legitimate grievances in Germany after the First World War Legitimate grievances not the least of which was the extortionary reparations by the West These were legitimate grievances and there were many movements. For example, the socialists in Germany They were, you know protesting in the streets and so on But then a psychopath came into the picture a narcissistic psychopath Adolf Hitler and He hijacked these legitimate grievances and he created the Nazi party and Auschwitz Similarly there were legitimate grievances in Sarist Russia There was hunger. There was a defeat in the war. There were sailors whose salaries were not paid I mean, there were legitimate grievances and there were legitimate protests and the initial revolution in Russia was made by the middle class and The first government Kerensky's government was a middle-class government and then Psychopaths and narcissists took over Lenin rabbit dog Lenin They crazed insane paranoid Stalin They took over they hijacked these legitimate grievances The in a much smaller scale we have this in the United States with Donald Trump They are legitimate grievances in the United States of the disenfranchised Disillusion disenchanted middle class or working class. These are legitimate grievances. No one took care of them No one riskilled them. No one prepared them for globalization No one took care of these people. They were discarded lots of like so much wet clinics, you know, these are legitimate grievances, but then Amigillo maniacal Malignant possibly psychopathic narcissists Donald Trump hijacked these grievances That's all I'm saying. I'm not challenging the grievances or even the expression of the grievances even by violent means. I Am very worried that all these movements are hijacked by Narcissists and psychopaths and these narcissists and psychopaths are adept at telling us what we want to hear love empathy greatness a restoration tradition God And so they push these buttons and like the brain dead people that most humanity had become We follow them and This goes also for the for example for for Millennials someone Millennials are so lost so Confused so disoriented so dislocated their economic prospects are so dim and horrible and so on so forth That there is a proliferation of coaches public intellectuals wannabe philosophers and so on that guide these lemmings to the cliff Provide them with 12 rules for life or Awaken the giants within them or Tell them that if they only put their minds to it, they can achieve anything. Of course paying pay $20 for my book or You know, these are narcissistic psychopathic con artists Who are taking? hijacking the legitimate anxiety angst and grievances of entire generations and This is the danger because this is a pattern that had repeated itself throughout history If you go back long long long time ago to ancient Greece, there was a Sibiadis, you know the The general the Athenian general He was among the first to do this Psychopaths and narcissists are lurking in the shadows and they know how to manipulate your mind expertly It's the survival. Let's take it's their narcissistic supply. It's money. It's power. It's sex. It's access So Would this mean wow, this is so unbelievably Interesting, so and my world's kind of flipped upside down here Would a couldn't we just call these people extremely well great salesman first of all I wonder if there's a study out there with people that are really good at sales who also have this This narcissistic quality But what's what's the solution here Sam? So is it the public becoming more educated and more skeptical and actually knowing the Signs of of what is going on politically and in the streets and how the world is fueled by narcissism and and this this imbalance of power What's the solution here? What can we do because it seems like this has always been the case with with leaders How can you lead a country and not have this narcissistic quality? Well as usual there are three questions here You're an expert of this Okay, so so what is what's the solution what what's the solution? No starts with salesmanship salesmanship There's nothing wrong with salesmanship. There's nothing wrong even with manipulative salesmanship There's nothing wrong with marketing advertising which are overtly manipulative and And based on insights from psychology So there's nothing wrong with any of this Education to a large extent is manipulative because it includes strong elements of socialization and acculturation in other words Education shapes us to be useful citizens. It's education is not open-ended Education is restrictive. It constricts our worlds our world it narrows it to legitimate choices and illegitimate choices Right, so even education is a manipulative process There's nothing wrong with this with any of this Where it begins to be wrong is? if you are irresponsibly Affecting people's lives and minds just to sell If I sell your smartphone at worst, I have taken from you 1,000 Canadian dollars. You will overcome trust me But if I screw up with your mind with your priorities with the way you see the world Etc. Etc. If I Put you in a straight jacket of rules if I pretend to have access to knowledge and information which is arcane or occult or Godly or privileged or and thereby acquiring authority over you and able to affect and channel your behavior in ways which are beneficial to me That's an entirely different story Entirely different story and no the vast majority of leaders are not not narcissistic. We didn't find we don't have such a finding The vast majority of leaders are not narcissistic. Actually, there are quite a few findings which say that Narcissistic leaders are not efficient in the long run We have something called high functioning narcissists and narcissists and psychopaths are highly efficient in business So they are over represented in certain professions. They're over represented in medicine in show business in business proper about three to five percent of chief executive officers of fortune 500 have been formally diagnosed with psychopathy the psychopaths So in some areas but not in politics ironically in politics actually The modest self-refacing stable leader who is concerned with the public good is much more successful in the long term Then the narcissistic leader who may end up with one term or whatever. So Also, we should remove this myth from the table narcissistic leaders are Narcissists first They happen to be leaders because that's the way they had found to obtain narcissistic supply You must understand narcissists would do anything if being a racist would guarantee supply. He would become a racist So narcissists were probably over represented in the cook looks fun, you know, right? If being an anti-racist will garner him supply, he would become a rabid anti-racist vocal vociferous anti-racist if I don't know if Working for the public good will guarantee narcissistic supply. He will work for the public good. He will do it He will be charitable. He will be a trueistic ostentatiously. So mind you, but he will be So whatever it takes whatever works Narcissists of no allegiances, no affiliations, no real interests. They are not invested in anything nothing really interests them Even a narcissist who is a historian is a historian because that's where he's getting his supply from If tomorrow for some oblivious Unpredictable reason cleaning the streets Sanitary work would become the thing and would guarantee him supply He would go and do sanitary work and give up his professorship of history at a prestigious university that's how fickle volatile and Core less without core Narcissists are their reflections. They're shimmering. They're not real so Narcissistic leaders happen to be leaders They first and foremost are narcissists That's an important thing to to understand what can be what can be done? Well, I think the first thing that needs to be done is to get rid of the question what can be done There is this American assumption American mind you assumption that can do assumption that every problem has a solution That everything is in principle could be subject to a recipe that rules Can structure and yield outcomes that self if efficacy depends in some way on a doctrine and a discipline These are all American ideas and They are all wrong first of all most problems do not have a solution most overwhelming vast majority of problems in every field of human endeavor do not have a solution You don't believe me look outside your window. There's a pandemic. Do you have a solution? You don't Mm-hmm majority of human problems do not have a solution end of story Number two, there are no rules for a meaningful life. There are no rules for life There is no meaning. There is no nothing You just go on living end of story and You know what we are not all equal and the Overwhelming vast majority of a population will end up doing basically nothing with their lives With the exception perhaps of spreading the seed if they're lucky because 61% of all men end up childless And 40% of women end up childless the fact The first thing we need to do is to accept life as it is Not as we imagine it to be which is a pathological defense mechanism called fantasy And not as we can shape it for the very simple reason we cannot shape it There is no giant inside you because you're not a giant The majority of people you will meet and probably you as well are zeros Your intellectual capacity is limited. You will leave no mark in the world You will pass As ephemeral and meaningless as a dust dust on accept it surrender Don't fight back. It's a futile waste of resources and it leads to pathologies like narcissism And all the coaches and mortars and psychology, I mean they tell you the exact opposite the law of attraction Just put your mind to it and the universe will gratify you mind you the universe itself will great Gratify you. Yeah, it will gear gear itself They change the courses of the planets just to gratify a scot Or so, you know, yeah, the universe is uh indifferent. Isn't it the secret The secret the 12 rules the 16 rules the two rules. I mean the hell what the hell You are born Out of out of two nobody nobody's who no one remembers And who left no mark on this earth You're born out of these two and you are doomed to the same fate In the meantime have fun Try to make the most of what you have because you have very little And no you can't be rich and you can't be powerful and you can't be famous and you can't make your mark And you can't have any lasting achievements statistically these sentences are correct 99.999999999 percent of the time. Yes. Every generation, there are 100 people, 1000 people, 10,000 people who have an impact of some kind. Of these, 9,999 are forgotten within the generation, within one generation. And one remains in memory. How many do you know? How many personalities affected your life directly? Three. If I'm generous, three. Trust me. Maybe three. If you are really, really into learning and into studying and into exposed to the world, then three people affected your life. Three personalities affected your life. But if you are the typical human being, the eat-to-sheet machine, then I'm sorry. That's what you are. You are a unit for processing food and producing utterly, utterly worthless product. And if you're very lucky, because again I repeat, the statistics are against you, you will produce children who will be exactly like you because social mobility is a myth. Myth. It's a lie told by the rich to the poor to keep them at bay, to keep social unrest at a minimum. There's no such thing as social mobility. The American dream is made up to start from the bottom and rise. There is no such thing as social mobility. 70 years of studies. Or if you want to go back to Emil Dukheim, 100 years of study, have proven it beyond any debate. If you are born to a poor family, you will die poor and your children will be poor. And your children's children will be poor. End of story. If your parents had high school education, that's what you will have in the vast majority of cases. Or if you go to college, you will not make use of this education because he didn't have the tools given to you when you were a child. We never move beyond our station. The 19th century with the various classes, the class society, the caste system in India, they reflect reality far better than the egalitarian bullshit of our day. And all the social arrangements that reflect this myth, this collective fantasy, mind you, grandiose fantasy, that everyone is equal to everyone. It's malignant egalitarianism. It's a sick fantasy because it's not founded on reality. Whenever fantasy fails the reality testing, it's pathological. So this gave rise to institutions which are highly dysfunctional, including democracy. It's not working because it's not true. None of it is true. The West is the first experiment in human history to live in a dream scape. All other experiments, there have been numerous experiments in human history with governing systems, governance systems, with organizing principles, with hermeneutic principles, with philosophical systems. I mean, we have been experimenting for at least 5,000, 6,000 years with a variety of, you know, the West, liberal democracy is the first experiment ever to consist entirely of a dream scape, to divorce reality entirely. And look where it got us. Look where it got us, because we know in psychology, in clinical psychology, that when fantasy takes over, when fantasy life takes over, this is the extreme apex of pathology. This is when we get really, really worried about the patient. Consider, consider, for example, psychosis. Psychotic disorder, psychotic disorders, Paganuia schizophrenia, is considered the, by far, most extreme form of mental illness. I would say the second one is bipolar disorder. These are the two that really, really terrify us as clinical psychologists, because we know our limitations. So what is common to, what is psychosis? What is the underlying principle of psychosis? Removal from reality. Oh, sorry. Answer your question. Is it a removal from reality and the false self? Yes, in a way, in a way, yes, but how do, how does a psychotic remove himself from reality? He confuses internal objects with external objects. He has a voice in his head, so he believes the voice is coming from the wall. He has a vision, so he suddenly sees it in front of him, like you would see a show on television. The psychotic externalizes his internal objects. He projects them in a process called hyperreflection. His personality is so fragmented and so disintegrated, so disintegrative, that the elements of his personality acquire their own life, acquire life and become independent autonomous entities, which interact with the psychotic as though they were outside him, while actually all of them are inside him. This confusion between external and internal, inside and outside, real and imagined, mind and matter. This is psychosis, but I have just described the West. All the principles of the West, I have just described the governance principles, the political principles, the philosophical principles. What are all these messages if you only put your mind to it? This is magical thinking. This is sick. It's a sick message. It means that if you think it will happen. It means that if you just put that your mind has an effect on the world. This is a great way to visualize psychosis. Yes, I'm thinking, what's the alternative here as far as, let's say, governance? Is the West not the most free country as it claims to be in the world? I thought it was more free than ancient Egypt, where we had slaves, thousands of slaves build things in absolute power. Is the distribution better now and freedom in the West? Have we achieved something over the years? Or are we still at square one? Freedom is not an end. It's a means. Freedom to do what? Freedom of expression, freedom to make money, to do what you want. And what the test is, what outcomes does it guarantee this freedom? You would hope none. None. I just quoted to you statistics. There's no such thing as social mobility. The poor remain poor. So it doesn't get you money. About 87% of global wealth is concentrated in the hands of 10,000 people. 100 people in the United States have more money than all the blacks, all the Hispanics and 15 million whites. 100 people. That's one zero zero. So it doesn't get you money. It doesn't get you political power, because political power, it's a, the West is a plutocracy or plutodemocracy, you know, it's a, the rich rule. So it doesn't get you power. So forget power, forget money. It gets you sex. Well, yes, but slaves had sex. What does it get you this freedom? The, the, of course, the rich and the elites and the intellectuals at the service of the rich, because every caste, every elite has its subservient intellectuals who legitimize the ideology and doctrine of the elite and who help, who collude with the elite to suppress any right thinking and any unrest among the masses. That's not me. That's Jose Otegega's it. So they're in the West to keep the masses at bay, to keep them quiet, to keep them pacified. The West made freedom the end. Not what freedom can get you, but freedom. And of course, this is exactly the philosophical debate with China. In China, freedom is not the end. Outcomes are the end. Now you can say, listen, I prefer to be free with zero efficacy. I prefer to be free. For me, what matters is freedom. And I don't care if freedom means that I will, I'm born poor and will die poor, that I have zero political leverage, that my opinions don't matter as long as I can express them to other people whose opinions don't matter. And that I'm going to marry into my caste or into my class to a boring dreary wife and have two boring dreary children who will also be poor and have no political leverage and study totally irrelevant information in totally irrelevant institutions who will take my money for that. Student loans, student loans went up 610% in the past 15 years. 610%. Students in the United States now owe $1.86 trillion. So even when they give you education, they make sure that you remain a slave. Are you not a slave? Are you bloody kidding me? Can you pay the rent in San Francisco? So your geographical mobility is limited. Can you buy a home without paying mortgage for 40 years? Can you do anything? Can you study at a university without paying student loans for an average of 32 years? Is this not slavery by any other name? It's not slavery, but it's less suffering, I would say, than slaves thousands of years ago. So yes, we can both have sex, but is maybe the end, an end to extreme suffering and pain. Who makes sense? No one told you that. I just made it up. The vast majority, the vast majority of slaves, there were of course outliers. There were cruel masters who tortured and tormented and sexually abused slaves and so on. But that has not been the case that with the vast majority of slaves in the United States, vast majority of slaves in ancient Greece, vast majority of slaves in Rome, in Egypt and elsewhere. Slavery is a restriction mainly, mainly of political freedom, ability to exert and exercise power. Mainly. All the rest is the same. Working to pay off your mortgage and student loan for the rest of your life is not slavery. Are you kidding me? Try not to pay. See where you end up. See if you are not as abused as any slave in the plantation. Try, do me a favor, personal favor. Try to not pay your next credit rate, your next mortgage payment or your next student loan rate. See where you end up and after the experience of spending a month in a county jail or a prison, you tell me if it's not as abusive as what most slaves had experienced in plantations. So what is the, is there a country? Is there a society in the past or present that has this freedom and this way of life for the general public? Is someone doing this right? Is there an example that is being set for the rest of the world? Who can we follow? Scott, these are Western questions. You are totally indoctrinated and, and, and poisoned by, by the system within which you grew. Why do you need to follow anyone? Why do you assume that there's a right solution? Why do you assume there's a problem in it? Why do you think if there's a problem, there's a solution? These are all Western assumptions. I'm telling you, accept that you're a zero born to zeros will end your life as a zero. You may have zeros as children who will end their lives as zeros. You will achieve nothing or value. You will not make your mark because you have no mark. There's no giant inside you. You can contribute nothing. At most you're consuming resources. Some people will say wasting resources. That's it. That's the human condition. And I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with that. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with that. That I think that is the, that is the reality and, and getting rid of that, that state of fantasy, as you said. So in your, in clinical practice, let's say you're dealing with someone who's dealing with depression. Is this the reality that is helpful with, with clients? Depression, depression is a direct result of fantasy. Depression is when there is a gap between fantasy and reality. When there is no gap, depression is impossible. If I were to accept my zeroness, my nothingness, and by the way, this is not me. This is existentialism. This is Dostoevsky. This is Kierkegaard to some extent, although Kierkegaard introduced God into the equation. This is Nietzsche, of course. If I were to accept my nothingness, my profound essential nothingness, I would never be depressed. Why would I be depressed? Anything that happens to me would be a great surprise, a wonderful surprise. A good glass of wine, an invitation to, to a podcast, everything would be a wonderful surprise because I deserve nothing. And I will accomplish nothing because I am a nothing. And now this insight, this insight is the basic, the foundational insight of 80% of humanity. This is the insight at the basis of Islam. This is the insight at the basis of Indian mysticism. This is the insight at the basis of most Eastern religions. You must understand that the West is exceptional, American exceptionalism, yes? The West is exceptional, and aberration, a deviation, a sickness, a pathology that is dying and disappearing, luckily for us. The overwhelming majority of people in the world don't live like in the West. They don't think that every problem has a solution. They don't even think there's a problem. They don't have this illusion of freedom for to do what to do nothing. They realize that Western people are slaves, slaves of a plutocratic elite. They realize how brainwashed Westerners are. I know because I lived in Africa for four years. I worked in Asia for three years, South Korea. I know these regions. I grew up in the Middle East. Among Arabs. I'm a Jew, essentially a Middle Eastern tribe. We don't think like the Westerners. You are sick people. You are sick mothers. You just don't realize it. You are so inside the pathology that you think the pathology is health. This is the state of health. You don't realize that what you call health is the most extreme psychotic fantastic sickness and narcissists and psychopaths. Narcissists and psychopaths realize this. So they are taking advantage of you, of your gallability, of your base rate fallacy, of your strivings, of your inspirations, of your grandiosity, of your narcissism. They take advantage of this. You are sheeple. You are retouch. And narcissists and psychopaths are taking advantage of this. Pretending to be gurus or cult leaders or Indian mystics or other mystics or public intellectuals or life coaches. When it comes to mental illness and how the West treats mental illness, and especially psychosis as well, there's different countries that treat psychosis and see psychosis and also almost a spiritual way. What the West likes to do is over-medicate, as you know, with antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. There's a huge problem with benzos in the US and even in Canada. Is this part of the problem that you see as well as us trying to seek a solution for every type of mental state and pathologize normal human emotion? How do you see mental, I guess the one question is, how do you see mental illness being treated in the US versus the other countries that you live in? First of all, you're very right. The underlying philosophy that every problem has a solution and that essentially everything can become and is a problem. Because there are two pernicious processes at work. Everything is problematized. Everything becomes a problem. Everything is cast as a problem. And then, if it's a problem, you need to seek the solution. And then there are solution providers who make a lot of money. So we take conditions that are not problematic in themselves. We problematize them. We convert them into problems. And that gives rise to cottage industries or huge industries, like the pharmaceutical industry, that cater to these totally invented problems. Now I can prove to you that people are inventing problems where they are none. In 1950, the first 1950 to 1954, the first edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual was published, edition one. It was a comprehensive list of all the mental health conditions then known to humanity. It had 100 pages. In 2013, the fifth edition, not the 500 edition, the fifth edition of the same book was published. We are talking 63 years later. This time, the manual contained 1000 pages. Show me any other field where the number of problems went up 10 times. So obviously, we are creating problems out of nothing. Out of nothing. Out of, you know, it's whole cloth. It's nothing. Well, where does narcissism fall in that in the DSM versus the DSM-5? When was that kind of created? When was that problem created? Or could you even say discovered? Were these, I guess, a mental illness isn't really a discovery when you just put a label on it and you put it in a book. Was narcissism, was there a time of discovery for it? Well, this is a more profound question. What? In 1954, 90% of all mental health conditions were unknown. Because that's what it means. If the book in 1954 had 100 pages, and then 60 years later, the book had 1000 pages, it means in 1954, we were not aware of 90% of mental health conditions. Simple. But of course, it's nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Narcissism made its first appearance in 1980, in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, that was enlarged in the text revision in 1987. And it took its final form in the text revision of the fourth edition in 2000. And then in the fifth edition, they kept the text, they kept the diagnostic criteria, the nine diagnostic criteria of the fourth edition. But they suggested an alternative, they call it the alternate model, alternate model of narcissism. They suggested an alternative diagnostic text for narcissism, which is much better, much improved, much more flexible, much more dimensional, captures the spectrum, not only specific, you know, because in daggers, in the edition four, there was a list, a bullet list with nine criteria. Also pretty idiotic, I'll come to it in a minute. But in the DSM five, it's a text. It's like a story. It's a narrative. So there's no bullet list. It's like, read the text, and then identify the narcissists. And I prefer this this approach much more. And also the information in this text is much, much improved, much better than the DSM four. The problem with the DSM four, one of the problems with the DSM four is that it was what we call polythetic. Let me try to explain the problem. Imagine that you are narcissists and I'm a narcissist, not too difficult to imagine, but still imagine both of us are narcissists. And we go to, we go to a clinician, we go to psychologists. Are you still there? Yeah. Okay. You go to a psychologist. I wouldn't, I wouldn't blame you if you were to walk away. So so we both go to a psychologist. Now remember, there are nine criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. And it's enough that you satisfy five. If you satisfy five out of the nine, you're diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Now imagine that both of us go to the psychologists to a diagnostician. And you, you satisfy conditions one through five, one, two, three, four, five. And I satisfy conditions five to nine, five, six, seven, eight, nine. We are both diagnosed with the same diagnosis. But we have almost nothing in common. Do you see that? I would see that as a problem. Yes, it's a problem. And problems do have solutions. It's a polyethic problem. So in under the DSM for there could be two people diagnosed with the same diagnosis, but which have nothing in common clinically. Because you were diagnosed with criteria one to five. And I'm diagnosed with criteria five to nine. So we share only criteria and five. But nothing else. Right. I'm radically different to you. Because my criteria are different. You're radically different to me. And still, we have the same diagnosis. So DSM for was very badly constructed. It's called the polyethic problem. DSM five is better. The text is improved. Well, the text now has so 1000 pages, saying that we've we've created these problems. Is it more just? Is it to do with semantics and people just helping to identify and put a label on something like is it supposed to be just a guide of diagnosis? Is there is there an issue with that? It's got to do with money. The DSM was created at the behest of the insurance companies, the medical insurance companies and later HMOs, health maintenance organizations and similar. They insisted to codify to codify mental health disorders so they can reimburse the doctors for the time. So the DSM is an insurance insurance guide. And of course, the more behaviors and traits you medicalize, the more behaviors and traits you pathologize, the more money you can claim from insurance companies. So the profession has a huge incentive to medicalize and pathologize day to day behaviors, which are common, probably totally healthy. Right. And that's where I see a massive, massive issue in in mental health and in the West. Sorry, sorry, go on. No, no, no, you're making a pertinent point. Go ahead. Well, that's a massive problem and something I'm totally against. I was put on antidepressants. And I got off this year, I was on them for 12 years. And in hindsight, if I look back, I say, you know, if I saw a different doctor, you could have a completely different outcome with someone might say, well, what's going on in your life? I know there's a lot going on this emotion of depression. Let's let it ride for a little longer. Here's some things to think about. Here's some things to do rather than rather than give a prescription. But in the West, people come in with a problem. And now I see this now, like you expect a solution right away, you expect to leave with something tangible something you can take something. Okay, I have a problem. This will make me feel better. This will make the problem go away. This is the magic bullet. The magic bullet. Right. So how does this work in in other countries? Is the DSM still is it that in India? And people are going in and and given antidepressants as much as the US? Well, unfortunately, yes. And the reason is laziness, human laziness and so on. It's much easier for psychiatrists to prescribe pills than to actually sit with you and talk to you and get his hands around your highly specific situation, idiosyncratic situations and then help you help you, not help the condition. Psychiatrists and psychologists treat conditions, no longer treat patients. The guy who gave you the pill gave the pill not to you, but to your depression. Was treating not you, but your depression. Exactly. And that's bad. The thing is, it's antidepressants are an excellent example of the grandiose narcissistic hubris of the profession. Because we know nothing about depression. I repeat, we know nothing about depression. And of story here, I summarize for you a whole semester. That's right. We, we do not know anything about the connection between brain biochemicals and depression. I again summarize for you a whole semester. Only 10 years ago, 12 years ago, did we discover that the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is heavily involved in the regulation of modulability. Only 12 years ago, we discovered that 90% that's 90% of serotonin is not actually produced in the brain. But in the intestines, we have been giving to people, to patients like you, for 40 years, that's four decades. We have been giving you pills, which regulated serotonin serotonin reabsorption, the way you process serotonin in your brain. We've been giving you these pills, not knowing that actually, the majority of serotonin is not in the brain. That's how advanced our knowledge was. And today, today, we are reconceiving of depression is possibly a gastro intestinal problem. I mean, and that is an exactly an example of what I'm saying. When there's a confluence of narcissism and psychopathy, when whole professions are taken over by narcissists and psychopaths, because listen, the pharmaceutical companies and the executives at the head of the pharmaceutical companies, they are unscrupulous. They know this, what I just told you, they knew it, they knew it all along. They knew we don't know anything. But they wanted your money. That's psychopathic behavior. It's utterly psychopathic behavior. Psychopaths are goal oriented. Goal focused. They want your money. They will kill your mother to get your money. They will kill you to get your money. They will kill anyone on the way in their way to get the money. They are so this is an example of institutionalized psychopathy and narcissism. Why narcissism? The grandiosity. We didn't know anything, but we pretended to know. We lied. We lied and we faked and we feigned knowledge that we did not have on the one hand. And on the other hand, we sold you, we gave you for 12 years, probably a totally useless product, knowing full well that it is probably useless. And that is psychopathic behavior. Why? Because we want to do money directly through the insurance company. Doesn't matter. Especially Zephyl. I think that's great and something that I'm so passionate about, especially if there's one thing I do know a lot about it is antidepressants and the history of depression and anxiety, and now gut health. So what was key is getting off of antidepressants was a few supplements, but also getting rid of dairy, gluten, refined sugar and caffeine and doing that rigorously. But this is something that's so interesting and so sad at the same time. So you almost want narcissists at this other level of Western medicine where where we educate people on gut health and away from antidepressants. That is the power and balance that I see. And what happens is when we try to educate the public, Google is really the worst way to do that now because to rank on Google, it's not about how great the work is, how great the study is, and no matter how true the study or information is, it's people who are trained in SEO who can rank on Google when people type type in how to deal with depression. Of course, it's the person who puts out the most content, the fastest with the most keywords gets ranked. So what you have is is pharmaceutical companies will rise to the top and people not with the latest and greatest studies. So we're skewing what information people are actually getting in getting in and needing at the time. That's always been the case, by the way, in academia, forget Google, in academia, the importance, the ranking of articles, academic articles, depends crucially on how many times they are cited by other academic articles. So you have mafias, you have mafia mob like structures, mob like networks, cause an Oscar of academics who cite each other all the time, multiply in order to game the algorithm which determines which academic article, which paper would appear first and second and third. It's well known. And it precedes, it preceded Google by like two decades. So there's a lack of, is fairness, even the right word, a lack of equal opportunity in the world? It's narcissism. So it goes back to narcissism. It's narcissism because when you rank things based on popularity, that's the quintessence of narcissism. Narcissism is about popularity. How many eyeballs you have? How do you monetize these eyeballs? How do you rank yourself? How many likes you get? How many, this is popularity contest, relative positioning. It's narcissism. It's only narcissism. So today, if I want to, to find the best conceivable article about a specific topic, I will go, there are no search engines for academic papers. I will use such a dedicated search engine, but I know the results don't have to do with the quality of the paper, but with how many connections the author has, how many personal friends he has, and how many of them he got to cite his article in their article, reciprocally. It's all gained, but it's gained. It's gained because of two things, narcissism and psychopathy. It's gained because you want popularity. So this is a narcissistic behavior and it's gained because of money, which is a psychopathic behavior. It's what I'm trying to tell you all the time. Narcissists and psychopaths hijack every bloody thing. Academic publishing, they hijack Google, they hijack social media, they hijack your need to find meaning in your life. They hijack your freedom. They take over, but not in a coordinated way. They are like water. They seep in surreptitiously, scantily, and you know what? Very often, inadvertently, they just gravitate. They're like inert substances. They gravitate. There's money there. There's money there, so they gravitate there. There's popularity. There's there. So there's narcissistic supply. I can be admired with these groups. So I followed the career. I made a personal study. I didn't publish it, but I made a personal kind of personal study. I followed a career of 10 public intellectuals. And I saw how their output is absolutely determined by the amount of adulation and admiration they receive from specific population segments. So they start off trying to cater to the needs of a certain population. This population is not responsive, doesn't adulate them, doesn't admire them, is not interested in their work or in them. So they try another population, and that population is responsive. So suddenly, everything they write, everything they say, every interview they give, every lecture and every seminar are geared towards that other population, the second population. Their entire output changes dramatically. Very often, they contradict their earlier work. They make statements, they know the admiring population want to hear. They shapeshift, they morph because they don't exist. They're like smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors, it's a great definition of narcissism. So you're no longer spreading truth. You even believe it's exactly what you want other people to hear, to gain that narcissistic supply. Aha. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes. Listen, if I were to move to the United States, I would become anti-racist, a prominent anti-racist activist, because it works, gets me supplied. Next thing, climate change, for, against, whatever works. I would move, I don't know where, to a country where racism is the doctrine, is embedded. I don't know, apartheid South Africa. I would become a champion of racism. I mean, who cares? Yeah. Whatever gets me attention, adulation, admiration, support, you know? And I don't want to mention names, but I've been following, for example, the work of one of the most prominent public intellectuals, maybe the most prominent. I read his first book and I read his second book. So you can see the shift. So I was going to bring that up just as we come to a close. And I believe I know who you're talking about. You may have taken a few jabs throughout the podcast. I know who you're speaking of. And what issue do you see with this intellectual? No, I never kind of target specific individuals, because I think these intellectuals and other intellectuals, they are symptoms. They're symptoms, they're tips of an iceberg. They are representative. They are ratifying social trends and so on. So it's on their fault, if you wish. They are the growths, they are the tumors on a very sick body. So it's like accusing the tumor for the death of the body. The body is dying, decaying. So of course, when the body is dying and decaying, all kinds of vermin flourish. It's normal. How can you be a public intellectual? As you say, you follow these these 10 people that maybe gain popularity. Is it is it almost inevitable to to be more narcissistic or to to claim yourself as godly when you have millions and millions of people who now know that you exist and that you've helped millions of people around the world? Is that just not inevitable to see yourself and act differently? Yes, it is. It's called the quiet situation of narcissism. And I beg to differ with the world helps. You induce change in these people that they self delusionally believe help them. You drew them further away from reality and more into fantasy land. Fantasy is comforting. Fantasy is fuzzy and wonderful and warm. You feel great in fantasy. And these people are peddling fantasies, peddling delusions, peddling lies that you want to hear, telling you, aggrandizing you, making you feel good. They are drugs. These people, the gurus, the life coaches, the public intellectuals, the wannabe philosophers and the real fellow. They are, they are drugs. They are the exact equivalent of class one drugs. They get you addicted. And while you consume them, you feel wonderful. And so you want to consume them more. And of course, it makes them feel Godlike because you can do anything to you. They have captivated your mind in the worst conceivable sense. They are like body snatchers. It's really bad out there. Can a public intellectual be anything else? Well, with all modesty, yes, I am an example. I'm a minor, very minor public intellectual, but I'm still public intellectual. I mean, I have 30 million views on my website, on my YouTube channel. That's not a small amount. I would say that's very impressive and in due a result of that could result in, I guess, extreme narcissism. Isn't that a source of narcissistic supply for you? How do you kind of control that? How do you deal with that? No, no. And you notice, for example, in this conversation, I was true to myself. I did not tell you what you wanted to hear. Nor did I tell the listeners what they wanted to hear. On the contrary, I disparaged you. I insisted that you confront the truth and the reality, of course, as I see them. Yeah, I'm not good. I'm not good. I may be wrong. But it's my reality and it's my truth. And I will not budge or change an iota to gratify you, to satisfy you, to make you my follower, my fan, my adherent. Fuck that. I am wedded to reality and to the truth. That is the sacred obligation of a true public intellectual. Profits in the Bible were the first public intellectuals. And they got stoned and they got killed. They got executed. Jesus was a loss of them. Yes. This was, this is the obligation of people who have access to the public. To not to lead the public astray to the best of their ability. These people have an obligation to describe reality and the truth. Never mind how painful it is. Never mind how discordant. Never mind how disagreeable. And never mind how hated they become. And I'm very hated. I'm a global hate figure. I'm a global hate figure, because I will always tell you the truth. Even if it makes you depressed and you hate my guts and you want to kill me. And many do. I mean, at least verbally. Well, why the hate, specifically, is there certain content that you've put out or things you've written? Because I say the truth. If I, for example, the other day I was, I give a seminar to a packed auditorium. I give a seminar to a packed auditorium of self-styled victims. And I told them, what bothers you is that you're interchangeable. You mean nothing to the narcissist. You're replaceable. You're commoditized. You're like grains of rice. You're indistinguishable. The narcissist doesn't care at all about you. And don't aggrandize yourself that the narcissist has chosen you. He hasn't chosen you. You were sources of supply, so he used you and like wet clinics, he trashed you. They hated me. They started to scream, you are scum. I'm kidding you know. Wow. But but it is the truth. And I have a sacred obligation to say the truth. If some other public intellectual were on the stage, some other life coach, some other guru, they would have never said what I said. Never in a million years they would have said what I said. They would have said, I'll tell you what they would have said. They would have said poor victims, abuses are horrible. They're demons. They are, they should be, you know, they would have gone with the flow. They would have reflected, mirrored the audience to itself. They would have told people what they want to hear. That's a crime. That's a thought crime. That's an intellectual crime. These public intellectuals that I'm alluding to and referring to, they are traitors. They are traitors to their conscience. They are traitors to intellect. They are traitors to academia. They are traitors to knowledge and human progress. They have betrayed the people who follow them because they take them further away from the truth and from reality and deeper and deeper into the pathologized recesses of fallacious fantasies. Do you consider there to be just an objective reality or there's only the subjective reality of each individual? No, when I, when I use the word reality, I'm referring to mainly social realities and so on that are easily analyzable with statistical tools and so on so forth. There is a huge debate. I have a PhD in philosophy among my many others. There's a huge debate about reality as material, material reality. Right. And the contribution of subjective, the subjective component into material reality and it's a whole different story. I'm not referring to any of this. I'm referring to social reality. For example, the fact that if you're born poor, most likely you will die poor. Not only that, not only that, but in the last 20 years, most likely you will die poorer than your parents. That's fair. End of story. Why lie to the people? Why tell them, why tell them, yes, you can be rich. You cannot be rich. You cannot be rich. Actually you will end your life than your parents. Why? Because less than one in a million according to statistics ends up life with ten times the wealth of his parents. Can you be this one in a million? Of course you can. But this is not that the life coaches are saying. The coaches are not saying listen one in a million of you will succeed. They tell you all of you will succeed. Just follow what and follow my advice, follow the rules and then all of you will become rich. Yeah. Well, that's why and I notice the change within myself when I started first of all, the happiest people, the most content people aren't in the self-help book aisle, right? But I started reading those and I felt that I was getting actually less content and feeling worse reading self-help books and I read them for years as to look for the ultimate solution for depression, a new way to think about things and kind of when you stop you actually feel better when you remove yourself from other people's orders but expectations of what life should be like and what your life should be. The self-help industry is definitely one that could be called you know, sick and taking advantage of people. I agree with you on that. It's aptly named. It's self-help. It helps the author. Nice. It's so true. So I just want to not challenge you but ask you since you've studied philosophy of PhD in philosophy. So we talk about this constant culture of seeking solutions but is that not what philosophy has been doing since ancient Greece is the ultimate question of why the existence of us why are we here these are awesome questions that tickle the mind and I absolutely love is that not just a question to finally seek a solution or are there certain questions that are just not worth asking? No, philosophy is not about answers and definitely not about solutions. Philosophy is about formulating the right questions. That's what all the major philosophers have been doing since Plato and Socrates, of course, Socrates the Socratic method is about questions questioning. So philosophy is about this. What has happened in the starting in the 17th century philosophy started to be farcate or to actually fragment and you started to have a branches of philosophy which were concerned with solutions. So for example philosophy later became physics. But initially it was known as philosophy of nature and then when it became clear that philosophy of nature dealt with solutions not with questions. Philosophy as a discipline divorced to this very day most countries of the world there's no separate faculty of psychology in the university it's a branch of the faculty it's part of the department in the faculty of philosophy psychology used to be a part of philosophy but when psychology at the beginning of the 20th century started to or the end of the 19th century started to be interested in solutions it separated from philosophy any time any time philosophers started to be interested in solutions they seized to be philosophers they became physicists they became mathematicians they became psychologists they acquired a different identity philosophy deals with posing the right questions and posing the right questions so that maybe other branches of knowledge will attempt to find answers not solutions by the way answers why not solutions because the answers are always wrong the basic the fundamental the most profound assumptions of science is that it approximates reality it approximates truth science can never attain it it's what we call asymptotic it can never attain truth right all the answers in science all the answers in science all the theories in science all the everything we think we know we know one thing for sure it is not true the only thing we know for sure is that whatever we know today is not true and that is that is the essence of science is it is it fair have I judge you correctly to say that you're an atheist no atheism atheism is a form of religion it's anything that involves belief is a religion or an ideology which is a distortion of religion a secular religion so with your view on fantasy and the staying in reality with what it presents us do you believe in a higher power or in a god is being Jewish as well you have an affinity for that beautiful Old Testament I do my best to avoid terms that can never be defined never mind how much you try so I have no idea what you're talking about I don't know what is higher power as I have no idea what it means life energy or soul or you know so I try not to waste my time on terms that cannot be defined because I believe that in the absence of mutually agreed terminology no reasonable reasonable or rational discourse is possible you know what not discourse is possible not even mystical discourse I mean you need to agree on the language communication is critical if you don't want to devolve into solipsism if you don't want to cut yourself out of the world so I have no idea what is God I doubt very much if anyone does never mind how many people will protest and I have no idea what is a higher power so I therefore cannot relate to your question because it contains words which are meaningless do you follow the guidelines of Judaism is that fair to ask the guidelines of Judaism Judaism in which in which areas I guess the Sabbath why would I follow why would I follow anyone's guidelines the 10 commandments 10 commandments are reasonable distillation of civilized civilized coexistence they are useful in other words right but this is something that you don't take but you don't put a lot of thought into it's not really important since it's hard to define and there's not overwhelming evidence for what's out there you mean God? well I didn't put lately a lot of thought into the tooth fairy as well so no it's a nonsensical term not in the sense that it's nonsense it has no sense it's nonsensical it's an empty we call it in mathematics an empty set it's a combination of letters that convey nothing so in the mind of a narcissist since they're creating as you said like almost creating this false self in this God figure is it more likely for is there also religious affiliation that they live what do they believe in God or they just believe in themselves now I think it should differentiate between God as an objective entity which is meaningless because no one can define what is God so the whole question is meaningless and God is a piece of fiction that affects people's lives God has an existence of course God has affected people's lives and people's deaths throughout millennia people died for God people went to the cross for God people talk about God people like you and me for example so God has an existence as a very very riveting and stimulating and motivating piece of fiction so if you're asking whether the narcissist believes in this piece of fiction which is called God no because he has his own God and if he pretends to believe in God it's in order to manipulate people so he will say that he believes in God because it gives him access to parishioners that he can abuse or it makes him a holy man and then he can fuck many young girls or he you know so in that ways the narcissist will make use of God as he will make use of anti-racism as he will make use of weapons as he will make use of anti-weapons as he will make use of anything whatever works I mean if God works why not good for God I guess I'm still stuck if I could rewind of what we chatted about I'm still stuck on treatment for like I understand and I'm totally opposed to giving people pills and knowing that there's other solutions or other ways to think about depression anxiety and different types of mental illness when it comes to narcissism you said we'd look for a solution but there's no solution so when someone who meets those guidelines of the DSM-5 and they go into a session with a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist whatever it may be what happens in that session can you be quote-unquote cured of narcissistic personality disorder? No there's no cure and so on I came up with a new type of treatment that ameliorates some and eliminates other aspects of narcissism but narcissism cannot be cured because it's as I said it's the narcissist is stuck at a certain mental age and there is no way to reverse this there's no way to make him an adult and it's not only a child but a traumatized child so it's a very, very deficient and problematic and destroyed child it's a damaged damaged goods broken and so we can't put Humpty Dumpty back together what we can do with some treatment modalities we can modify behaviors with medication we can reduce symptoms like perhaps obsessive compulsive disorder or behaviors with my kind of treatment I dubbed it cold therapy I can eliminate the false self and grandiosity but this is not narcissism is a traumatized child and this child is stuck and will never grow there's no way to convert a child into an adult when the adult is 60 years old right we treat the child in these sessions that's the only way to have effective treatment yes cold therapy is a combination of techniques borrowed from trauma therapies and from child psychology the cold therapy doesn't include a single technique from adult psychology it's actually child psychology adapted for traumatized children and with that we have a lot of experience we're very successful actually we treat traumatized children children after sexual abuse or children who have survived a natural disaster or children in famine we're very successful at treating traumatized children so I borrowed these techniques put them together added a few 25 techniques that I invented and put all this package together and I'm treating narcissists children and taking away the edge of the trauma and I'm teaching them that grandiosity and the false self are no longer necessary the minute they are not necessary there's a principle called economy economy of the mind, mental economy when something is not necessary it dies automatically when I show these children that they can cope without grandiosity and false self grandiosity and false self die automatically but grandiosity and false self are only elements in narcissism narcissism is a state of being and so there is no way to take the narcissists and making something else it's not like sex change yeah that is unbelievably interesting and I think I could ask you probably another 100 questions and we could speak all day but I would love to have you on for a second podcast my life expectancy is limited I'm 59 years old so we may have to take this into account I hope I look as good as you do at age 59 Sam everyone please check out Sam's YouTube channel all the links are in the description below Maligan self love there was an updated version I saw on Amazon yeah the 10th edition was published but it was published in 2015 5 years ago and are there things that you would it's a few years old now are there things that you could add already years later I publish updates in the form of separate books so if you go to my Amazon store you will see all the all the recent books and I've just published a narcissism reader in collaboration with another psychologist amazing just type Sam back in and ignore the results yeah he's ranking on Google everyone all these academic readers to cite him that's why you're ranking everyone the links are in the description for Sam's Amazon store his YouTube channel anything else you want to tell the audience before we turn off here the mic is yours anything at all give it up your strength the proof of your strength and your resilience we hope for contentment the happiness is too much to ask contentment is if you stop fighting it is the fight that drives you to pathologies the fight pathologizes you everyone is encouraging you to fight everything everyone is encouraging you to change everyone tells you that if you don't change and you don't succeed don't fight it's only your fault give it up forget all this forget what you can do with life just live life just be end of story being is a huge accomplishment just existing is a huge accomplishment and stop catering to your grandiosity stop believing that you can have an impact or that there are solutions or even that there are problems there is so much to do in a typical day just get up and do it don't over think don't over analyze don't develop this delusion that you are in control that you can make a change that things can get better or worse or anything it's beyond you you are insignificant your life is meaningless it's all nothingness get on with it that's my message