 All right, so Sam, we often hear people talk about narcissism. They'll say things like, oh my gosh, my ex was such a narcissist or, you know, my boss is a narcissistic maniac. And I guess in the world of psychology, when we talk about narcissism as a pathology as something that's gone wrong, it's very different to someone who has a narcissistic trait. So maybe let's start with that. Can you set the scene for our listeners? What is narcissism as a trait and what is narcissism as a disorder where it's gone deeper than that? Well, we don't use the word trait because narcissism is a complex of traits and behaviors, but we do use the phrase narcissistic style, which was coined by a scholar by the name of Lynn Sperry. So Lynn Sperry was the first to suggest that there is a distinction, should be a distinction between narcissistic style and the narcissistic disorder. Now, the disorder is merely a malignant form of the style where the style, for example, might be abrasive and a bit antisocial. The disorder would add to that a lack of empathy, where the style would be self-centered and a bit egotistical. The disorder would be exploitative and abusive. So it's simply a malignancy of exactly like cancer is a malignancy of the healthy cell. Now, the narcissistic style is becoming more and more common because it's a positive adaptation in our civilization. Self-promotion, the mid-generation, self-centeredness, social atomization, the collapse of institutions such as family and community, et cetera, et cetera, force us to become self-sufficient and self-contained and self-referential. So we, all of us, gradually are developing in narcissistic style as a way of coping with our reality, which is harrowing and dystopian. But the disorder itself involves a bewildering multiplicity of pathological processes, defense mechanisms, gun or eye, childhood traumas converted into other forms of trauma. I mean, it's a much more complex landscape than the style. It's simply a set of strategies, coping strategies, which had coalesced into something coherent and cohesive, while the disorder involves a massive disruption in almost every conceivable dimension of personality, identity and functioning. And what sort of percentages of men and women in the Western world suffer from NPD? Actually, we have good statistics in other places as well. For example, India, Egypt, China, Russia. So by now we know much more than we used to 20 or 25 years ago. Here's the thing. In the past, we used to believe that 75% of all people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are men and 25% of women. Today, the ratio is 50-50. And actually, there's a very worrisome phenomenon where women are becoming gradually more narcissistic than men. And we think the number of women is beginning to exceed the number of men. And we think, I mean, one of the one of the hypotheses why this is happening is a traumatized women, women who had been traumatized in intimate relationships, tend to develop narcissistic defenses, tend to become narcissistic. And so they tend to present with such a such a variety of intense narcissistic symptoms that they cross the threshold into narcissistic personality disorder. It's a different type of narcissistic personality disorder because it is situational. It's reactive. It's not something that had happened to them in early childhood. So we might as well call it late onset pathological narcissism. So we are beginning to see, therefore, a panoply, a zoo of narcissistic disorders. We see post-traumatic narcissism. Therefore, narcissism is a reaction to trauma, whether in early childhood or late in life. We see constitutional narcissism, which usually is allied or aligned with psychopathy. We see grandiosity, which is an integral feature of borderline personality disorder and all the anti-social personality disorder spectrum. Now understand, we're beginning to reconceive of narcissism in several ways. First, we are beginning to consider narcissism a form of post-traumatic reaction, a kind of post-traumatic disorder. Then we're beginning to reconceive of narcissism as an addiction, a type of addictive personality, because narcissists are addicted to narcissistic supply. They're addicted to input from the environment in order to regulate their internal landscape. And finally, we are beginning to realize that actually all these distinctions, all these differential diagnoses between psychopaths and narcissists and borderlines and histrionics, they're bullshit. Sorry for the rough language. No, no, we can talk. There are the nonsense. And so for example, the latest addition of the international classification of diseases, which is the world's DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual is used mainly in North America, and more precisely in the United States. The rest of the world is using another book. And that other book is titled, The International Classification of Diseases, ICD. The latest edition of the ICD, edition 11, had eliminated all these diagnoses, their gun, and they have a single diagnosis, personality disorder. Now, in the rest of the world, you are diagnosed with a personality disorder with narcissistic emphasis, personality disorder with psychopathic emphasis or overlay. So, it's very antiquated thinking to say, oh, he's not a narcissist is a psychopath or he's not, he's not a narcissist is a borderline. We're beginning to understand that all of these, especially narcissism and borderline are post traumatic artifacts. Yes, they're so much in common and so many crossovers and so much comorbidity. In other words, they are so common together in the same patient that all these distinctions are totally besides the point and wrong, simply wrong. How would you tell if you were in a relationship with someone and they started displaying personality concerns, particularly narcissistic concerns. What are the sorts of warning signs that some of our listeners might look for that would flag that there might be a narcissistic issue there specifically narcissistic. Well, the first red alert, by far the most most dominant, most important is a lack of empathy. Now, narcissists have what we call cold, cold empathy, cold empathy is cognitive empathy coupled with reflexive empathy. In other words, they are able to read you well, they're able to spot your vulnerabilities. And once they had spotted your vulnerabilities, they intrude, they invade you via the chinks in your armor. So they're very good at reading your weak spots, your frailties, your fears, your wishes, you and then leveraging this to take over you essentially to launch a hostile takeover. But they don't have the emotional correlate. In other words, they may, they may notice that you're said, but they will not feel said consequently, consequently. They will not even understand what it means to be said. They will not empathize therefore so a lack of empathy, a lack of empathy manifests on a first date or a second date or an initial relationship. A lack of empathy manifests in two ways. When the person is hyper intellectualizing. In other words, when everything goes through the mind but nothing goes through the heart. So when there's a lot of analyzing, a lot of analysis going on, when the narcissist analyzes you all the time, breaks you to pieces disassembles you, puts you together, synthesizes you and deconstructs you all the time. It's like you are lab rat, you know, like you're an experiment in psychology and the narcissist keeps keeps trying to put you together in his mind. So this is a very telling sign hyper analyzing you without concomitant emotional reactions, doing it as one would do to a laboratory mouse or rat. The second thing is, even when you are in need of support and so core and understanding, even when you show overt overt signs of being in distress, and so on so forth. The narcissist is extremely unlikely to react, or is likely to react with aggression, because you're weak and contemptible. So we call this inappropriate effect. The narcissist reacts wrongly. He loves, he loves at the funeral. He finds tragedy funny. And he finds your distress contemptible, because it means you're weak. Wrong reactions inappropriate effect. These are the two I think, and then you can observe the narcissist in action. Is he trying to take over you to control you to micromanage you to tell you what to do where to put the keys when to go to the toilet when what why have you been there for too long. He chooses the wine. He orders the dishes it doesn't bother to consult you. He, I mean, he takes over he micromanages your life from first moment. Another very telling sign is how does it treat people he perceives to be inferior to him. Like cab drivers, waiters, service providers, how does it treat them. He perceives people to be inferior. He berates them and dements them and attacks them and insults them and humiliates them and then he's very likely a narcissist because narcissists immediately establish hierarchies, hierarchies of power. Narcissists are engaged constantly in power plays. Another very telling sign is if he immediately tries to establish his superiority. So he scans you, and he finds the only area where he's superior. And then the rest of the evening, the rest of the date revolves around that area where he's superior. So if you're more athletic is not going to dwell on this. But if you know a lot less about biology, the rest of the date will revolve around biology, because that's where he can be superior. Focus, focus on superiority. And finally on another side, there are many, I mean, there are numerous. Another sign is an external locus of control. If the narcissist plays the victim, plays the victim, it tends to claim that all his defeats and failures and mishaps and wrong decisions were brought about because of other people's envy. In other words, he's not he's a misunderstood figure, or because society is wrongly wrongly constructed on wrong principles or always blaming someone else. An institution, another person is boss is ex-wife, you're naming. If he has alloplastic defenses, if he tends to blame other people constantly. Here's the thing. I think that you come across a narcissist on a date in the workplace in the presentation, never, never mind where you immediately feel ill at ease immediately. There's something wrong. Something is has gone awry. There's something creepy. It's like the parts of the narcissist don't fit together a badly assembled robot. It's like there's something there's a glitch in the software. It's like a badly run simulation of a human being. It's like an Android, but of the first generation, not yet fully ironed out, you know. You have this ill, you have this ill at ease feeling and something. And this is called the uncanny valley. The technical term for this, this feeling is the uncanny valley. Because there was a Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori. And in 1970, he suggested that when robots come to resemble human beings to the maximum, we're going to feel very uncomfortable around robots. So because they are so they would be so close to human beings that resemble human beings that would simulate human being so well, but there would still be something missing. The robotic essence, if you wish, the robotic essence, we're going to stop this because we are not robots. We're going to spot another species. We're going to have this problem with artificial intelligence as well. And so that's why compare narcissists to forms of artificial intelligence or aliens from another planet, who bodies natch human bodies. And then, you know, of course, they are not the human beings, but they are so deficient and defective human beings that they defy the definition itself they defy the word. We are not human in the full sense of the world, absolutely. And we are uncomfortable around pseudo humans, quasi humans, wannabe humans, imitation humans, simulation humans, we feel very uncomfortable. So why do women, why do women ignore this gut feeling this uncanny valley, because they're lonely. They're self deceiving. They want to believe. They want to hope. They, they, they crave and long for a relationship. They're going to look overlook anything and everything. That's, that's the truth. The truth is, had people listened to their gut instincts, all narcissists would be utterly isolated. No one would have any dealings with them. But people deny that their intuition, they bury it because their intuition tells them run for the hills now. So is there something charming and engaging about that projection that the narcissist gives off is does that play at all? Narcissists are not, are not charming or engaging, but not the narcissist has a very simple trick up his sleeve. The narcissist idealizes you. So the narcissist idealizes you and then projects to you. He's your idealized version. So the narcissist focuses on you like a laser beam. He, he, he acts as though you're the most interesting person in the world that he had ever come across. He makes you feel so elevated, elated and superior. He infects you with his own grandiosity. He idealizes you and then he lets you see, he lets you witness your own idealized version. So he actually makes you fall in love with yourself. It is not that you find the narcissist charming. It's that you find the charming that the narcissist finds you charming. That's what charms you. The narcissist finds you charming or pretends to find you charming and you find this irresistible. Because you want to be charming. You want to consider yourself irresistible. And this is the message the narcissist is sending you. There's no one like you. You're amazing. You're hyper intelligent. You're the most gorgeous person I've ever seen. Drop dead gorgeous. You are this, you're that, you know, and you want to hear that. It's addictive. It's an addictive message. You're actually when, when you fall in love with the narcissist, you fall in love with yourself. I compare the narcissist to a whole of mirrors. You enter the whole of mirrors. It's empty. Just mirrors. When you enter the whole of mirrors, you see yourself reflected a thousand million times. Who can resist this? No one can. Is that, is that what we commonly hear refer to as love bombing that phase when, as you said, the laser lighting you, you are absolutely overwhelmed with their affection and their adoration of you. Yes. That is a love, love bombing phase. And it's followed by the grooming phase. The love bombing phase is idealizing you and exposing you to your own idealization, which no one can resist. It becomes totally addicted. That's why this is the essence of trauma bonding trauma bonding has two pillars. One pillar is core idealization where the narcissist idealizes you and in return you return the favor. You idealize the narcissist. So there's core idealization. That's one pillar of trauma bonding. Because when you feel idealized, it is so addictive that you can't let go. You need the source of idealization next to you. You can't let go. And the second pillar of trauma bonding is what we call intermittent reinforcement. The narcissist conditions you gets you addicted very much like social media buddy. The narcissist gets you addicted to your own idealization. And then he withdraws it abruptly. He just goes back. And exactly like a drug pusher, you would chase him because you need the next fix. So this creates extreme bonding. It's known as trauma bonding. The trauma is the intermittent reinforcement. And so love bombing is this core idealization phase and it is followed by grooming grooming is simply a set of procedures strategies and instructions on how you should behave if you want me to continue to idealize you. So this is what you should do if you want me to continue to be in your life and to become the unwavering found of your idealization. And of course you're an addict by now. You do anything you will still you still money from your mother. You know, you, you will do anything to continue to to get the drug to get your fix. So I think in your book you you refer to an inverted narcissist as the victim of a narcissist. It's almost this impression of someone that's been pressed up against a narcissist and it's the the flip of that is that sort of that dynamic that you're describing there. No, it is a narcissist. It's a subspecies of covert narcissists. The inverted narcissist is a covert narcissist who obtains her narcissistic supply via another narcissist. So she is a parasite narcissistic. She creates a symbiosis. She creates a symbiosis with another narcissist. The inverted narcissist because she's a covert narcissist cannot is to is to lacks the confidence to go out on her own to strike out on her own and obtain supply. So what she does, she teams up with someone like me, you know, with a narcissist, a overt or grandiose narcissist. And then he obtains the supply and she busks in his glory. It reminds me that in the 19th century in Germany, 19th century Germany, if you were married to a doctor, if you're a woman and you were married to a medical doctor, you were called Frau doctor, Mrs. Doctor. So his glory, his academic accomplishments reflected on you as a woman. Even if you, you've never attended elementary school, you were still called Frau doctor. So it's the same with the inverted narcissist. Think about it as the sun and the moon. The moon doesn't have its own light, but it reflects the light of the sun. And the moon is the inverted narcissist. The sun is the covert narcissist. Sounds extremely toxic. I guess I want to go back to this phase that you were describing. So initially you're, you're, you're love bombed, you're put in the laser of the last of the narcissist. You feel amazing. And then you're groomed as you said, can you walk our listeners through what happens beyond that point. And beyond the nature of this. Yes, beyond that point, we have something called shared fantasy. It's pretty shocking and amazing that not a single one of the self-styled experts on narcissism online even mentioned shared fantasy because it is by far the main mechanism of relationships with the narcissist. Anyone who had bothered to lead the academic, read the academic literature should have been acquainted with it. And it shows me that these so-called experts online don't have a clue about narcissism and have read nothing about it. It's, you talk about toxic environment, YouTube is a toxic environment. Absolutely. Because there are many essentially con artists with and without academic degrees. Okay, don't get me started. Okay, let's, let's revert to your question. The next phase is known as shared fantasy. It was first described in 1989. Not by me, by, by Sander, as a NDR, who was a scholar of cluster B in narcissism. So the shared fantasy is an extremely complex, extremely complex relationship. And this is also the source of the trauma of narcissistic abuse. Because the shared fantasy acts or operates on multiple layers and dimensions and processes. I mean, it's, it would take like a whole book to describe a typical run of the mill pedestrian shared fantasy, let alone a shared fantasy between two really unique people. Let's say a very intelligent narcissist and a very accomplished woman that would create a shared fantasy, which is kaleidoscopic and even more difficult to describe. I think a typical shared fantasy. The narcissist is trying to convert his intimate partner and I'm going to use stereotypically I'm going to use a man and a woman. But gender is utterly interchangeable. Gender pronouns are totally interchangeable. So in a typical shared fantasy, the narcissist is trying to convert his intimate partner into. A bed object, what we call a persecutory object. In other words, he's trying to convert her into an enemy in his mind. The first stage is called snapshotting. The narcissist takes a snapshot of his intimate partner. He internalizes the snapshot. And then he photoshop sit. The process of photoshopping is idealization. So he idealizes the snapshot. The snapshot is what we call introject in clinical terms. He then proceeds to interact with the snapshot, not with the real person, ever, never with a real person, only with a snapshot. But inevitably, the real person begins to diverge from the snapshot, because she is real. She learns things, she grows, she evolves, she moves away, she gets a new job, she meets new people, she diverges from the snapshot. The snapshot is static. That pieces off the narcissist. And that renders her an enemy, because she is challenging the internal equilibrium of the narcissist precariously balanced on all these introjects remaining static. It's a condition for the narcissist sanity that these introjects or snapshots will never ever change. They do with other issues, abandonment, anxiety, object inconsistency, and so on. So the intimate partner inevitably threatens the narcissist in her peace, harmony, and equilibrium. So she becomes an enemy. The first stage in shared fantasy is converting your intimate, the intimate partner into a bed object, threatening object. And the narcissist proceeds with the first type of narcissistic abuse, because there are two types of narcissistic abuse. When I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse in 1995, I thought there was only one kind, and I was wrong. There are two types of narcissistic abuse. In this phase, in this initial phase of the shared fantasy, there is a special type of narcissistic abuse. She is intended to test the partner to see if she is loyal, if she will walk away when she is abused, if she is resilient, if she is strong, and if her love is true. So the narcissist abuses egregiously his intimate partner to test her to see if she is a keeper, if she will stay. The second reason is to transform her into a bed object, because of course such abuse creates bad blood and a lot of hostility in the partner, which affirms the narcissist's view that she is a per-secretary object. And the third reason is because the narcissist is about to transition to the next phase in the shared fantasy and convert his intimate partner into a mother figure, a maternal figure. To do that, he must first ascertain, he must make sure that she will not abandon him, that she will not betray him. So to do that, he abuses her. The abuse is a pre-qualification test. Are you going to love me unconditionally? Never mind what I do to you. If the answer is yes, you can be my mother. The answer is no. If you cheat on me, if you betray me, if you abandon me, you cannot be my mother. So this is a job interview. Then the third phase within the shared fantasy is the maternal phase, where the narcissist converts his intimate partner into a mother figure, the mother he never had, and reenacts with her all the conflicts he used to have with his mother, the early childhood conflicts, hoping for a different resolution. Of course at this stage, because she's a mother figure, it's incestuous to have sex, so most of these relationships devolve into sexlessness. The woman at this stage has two options. She can acquiesce, she can accept, accept, she can play along, and then she will remain an eternal mother figure in the narcissist's life, and the relationship can continue for 40 years, unhindered and unobstructed. The second option for the woman is to say, wait a minute, what's going on here? I have a list of demands. I insist on commitment, I insist on investment, I want to build a home, I want to have a family. And this is called the bargaining phase. When the woman enters the bargaining phase, she no longer qualifies as a mother, she had failed as a maternal figure. And the narcissist wants nothing further to do with her. He wants her gun. And now there's, depending on the narcissist, there's a series of strategies to push her away. The narcissist eliminates all the intimacy, loses interest, becomes absent and indifferent. Some narcissists push the woman to cheat. And of course, when she cheats, they have the pretext to end the relationship, but they push her actively. They introduce her to men, they get her drunk and send her away. I mean, you can't imagine. I mean, it's an active strategy to get her to cheat. So some narcissists do that. Some narcissists become abusive and that's the second type of narcissistic abuse, but that's extreme abuse. Some narcissists insist on kinky sex, which they know full well the woman would reject. For example, they insist on three sons or group sex. So there is the variety of strategies in the bargaining phase to push the woman away and get rid of this unwanted relationship. And then there's a brief interlude and the narcissist moves on to love bombing the next target. And sometimes that love bomb can go back to the original target. Can it cycle back on itself? It depends. If the narcissist had experienced something called narcissistic modification. Again, it's pretty amazing that none of the other experts online. So-called experts. So-called experts mentioned modification. This modification has been described in 1957. And it's a foundational process in narcissism. I mean, I'm pretty amazed at the low level of low quality of the so-called information online. And so if the woman succeeds to modify the narcissist, he's never going to come back to her again. He's never going to hover her. Hoovering is a word I coined in 1997 to describe the process of kind of re-obtaining, re-engaging, re-acquiring the original supply. That was a word you coined as well. I hadn't realized it was- Most of the words that you know I coined between 95 and 97. Flying monkeys, hoovering, narcissistic fleas, somatic narcissists, cerebral narcissists, narcissistic abuse. You name it, I coined it. I also borrowed words from psychoanalysis like narcissistic supply, false self, and I redefined them. And so they're used today the way I imbued them with new content or meaning. So the overwhelming majority of the language in use today I coined between 95 and 97 because there was no language. There's simply no language. I wanted to communicate insights and this new understanding, new comprehension, but I didn't have the language. So I had to coin new words, new phrases, 10 a day. I mean, doesn't a day. Yeah. I mean, every day. Well, they've stuck around. Yeah. It's common practice. I mean, that's the lingua franca. That's the language of narcissism. And also in, even in academic publications. So. Oh yeah. So we're up to hoovering. So hoovering. The Nazis is when I coined the phrase in the word in 97, I thought that Nazis always Hoover. And when you go back to the articles that I wrote them, which are available online still available online in the way back machine and so on. You will see that I was wrong there. I was wrong very often, by the way, between 95 97, don't misunderstand. So I said that Nazis always Hoover. That's not true. Nazis is Hoover. Sorry. Sorry, Sam, just as a quick asterisk for listeners who may not be familiar with the concept of hoovering. Do you mind just doing a quick little side step to that and then hoovering is simply when the narcissist recycles old intimate partners previous intimate partners exes and previous sources of supply. narcissistic supply. So he recycles them it comes back to them. He can come back to another week, four months, sometimes 20 years. They are in his address book forever. That's it. And he recycles. And of course, because he has a snapshot. When he recycles them. He's astounded that they're not the same that they're changed, because he's actually recycling the snapshot, not the real person. And so he might, he might revert or return to an old source of supply and old intimate partner and discover that she's a great mother. And this would shock him no end. Because in his snapshot. She's 30 years old. And just waiting for him frozen in time, waiting for him to return. You know, she didn't get married, she didn't have children, she doesn't have grandchildren. And all this is very shocking to the Nazis time stands still in the Nazis is mine. He, he inhabits his is very solipsistic. He lives in exclusively in an internal universe. And he liked the psychotic. He confuses external objects with internal objects. And the first to make this observation was not some back name. It was Otto Kernberg, who is probably the father of the field. He suggested the borderlines and narcissists are actually psychotic or near psychotic, and he was very right about this. They all confuse the external with internal. And so, but not all narcissists Hoover. That was my mistake. When the narcissist is mortified, he never hoovers. Now what is modification, modification is when the narcissist grandiosity is efficaciously challenged, efficiently challenged in public in front of meaningful or significant others. And it involves shame and humiliation. So there are several components, ingredients necessary ingredients in modification must be public. It must challenge grandiosity successfully shutter demolish the grandiosity. It must be done in front of other people witnesses who mean something to the narcissist witnesses were meaningful significant to the narcissist. It must involve shame and humiliation, which are unbearable. If you put all these four elements together you have modification and the narcissist will never ever come back to you, because modification is life-threatening. It disables all the narcissist defenses, and then he is actually he becomes a borderline. He is exposed to the external environment, and he becomes enormously dysregulated to the point of suicidal ideation. Never take the risk that you will do it to him again. You're gone. You deleted. I want to ask you to dive into the mind of a narcissist for a moment because I feel like we haven't really we haven't really gone down that path. So what what goes on in the mind of a narcissist and how do they see the world and I guess that'll put a lot of our previous conversation in context as well. They don't see the world. They don't see the world at all. They have extremely impaired reality testing. They have severe cognitive deficits. They have no access to positive emotions. They don't have the rudimentary tools or instruments to see the world. Because if you want to understand the social environment, for example, you can't do that if you don't understand emotions and you don't have empathy. If you want to to gauge to gauge what's going on if you want to predict extrapolate hypothesize what might happen. You need to take into account elements which are not accessible to the narcissist. For example, these cognitions are very distorted very sick because they are filtered through his grandiosity and fantasy grandiosity is a fantasy defense. But narcissism isn't a fantasy defense rate large. Of course, fantasy by definition is the opposite of reality. It's divorce from reality. So he doesn't see the world. What the narcissist has is a playground or a space, which is occupied essentially by two, two very important things. One is fantasy. So it's a fantasy space, a fantastic space. And within the fantastic space, there are narratives and the narratives unfold very much like a serious on Netflix. So the narcissist experiences his life as a movie is an unfolding movie. This is one thing. The second thing in the narcissist mind is introjects or internal objects. There is an enormous amount, enormous number of internal objects, much more, much bigger number than in a healthy person's mind. Why? Because the narcissist converts everyone and everything into an internal objects. Why? Because the narcissist needs to be in control and he can control only internal objects. He can never control external objects. And he has abandoned anxiety. He doesn't want to be abandoned exactly like the borderline. So he creates this space, which is occupied by fantasies, which are narratives. The narratives organize internal objects in ways that are meaningful to the narcissist and in ways that do not threaten him with abandonment, for example. So we call this situation object constancy. The narcissist creates internal object constancy. In other words, he can't trust you not to abandon him, not to betray him, not to cheat on him, not to deceive him. It's a bit paranoid. So what he does instead, he internalizes you, he converts you into an internal object into an internal object. And then he embeds you in a story, in a piece of fiction, which is his fantasy, and then you're safe. Then you're safe because then he controls you 100%. Consequently, narcissists have precious little contact with reality. The problem is exacerbated even further by the fact that narcissists exactly like borderlines experience what we call dissociation. Dissociation has three elements. Amnesia. Narcissists simply forget. I have a database of well over 2000 narcissists, which I had accumulated since 1996. And I have a subsection of my questionnaire. If you, if you're diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, you provide me with a letter from your diagnostician, a testing that you had been diagnosed. And then you're eligible to join my database. I administered to you a test of 680 questions. And you answer all these questions. One module in the test is about dissociation. And so what I discovered to my utter shock is that narcissists dissociate away, forget very close to 90% of their lives. That's 90, not 19. Very close. Some of them much more. It's crazy. So this is amnesia. Another thing they have is depersonalization. It's when they feel that it's when they feel like they suddenly are taken over by another personality, or that they're not, they're not, they're acting, but it's not there for acting someone else is acting. And it's a bit like demon possession if you wish. And the third element is derealization. When very frequently narcissists feel that reality is not real. That it's a bit hallucinatory. It's kind of, you know, but these are more rare depersonalization and derealization are much more common with borderlines, much more common. Amnesia is very common with narcissists. And it's dissociation. Now the narcissists react to dissociation in two ways. They confabulate. They try to construct reasonable hypotheses as to what may have happened, because they don't remember what had happened. They say, well, I don't remember what had happened, but likely this is what had happened. And then they believe in it. Then it becomes reality. So they confabulate. They bridge over the memory gaps, which invented stories, and then they believe these stories. This is mechanism number one. And the second mechanism is what we call self states or sub personalities or pseudo identities. Narcissists borderlines. They have, they don't have a unitary self, they don't have a unitary personality. The unitary self did not constellate it did not integrate. So there's no core. And of course if you have no memory, you have no identity, so they don't have an identity as well. There's nobody there. It's an absence. It's an emptiness. What they have instead, they have fragments of the self. And these fragments have characteristics, specific characteristics and these fragments are used deployed in a variety of circumstances. So for example with the borderline feels threatened with abandonment or rejection or humiliation when she's stressed. She's likely to become a secondary psychopath. A secondary psychopath is a psychopath who experiences empathy and emotions. The borderline becomes secondary psychopath. She, she trots out, she takes out the secondary psychopathic self state. And this self state protects her because she's feeling stressed and humiliated and abandoned and terrified and so on. She becomes a psychopath and now she's okay. It's the same with the narcissists. You could easily say that the narcissist grandiosity is an overwhelming self state. Now, this sounds a lot like multiple personality. And indeed I suggest, indeed I suggest that narcissism and narcissistic disorders because borderline is a narcissistic disorder that narcissistic disorders are actually dissociative post traumatic states. In other words, they are very, very close to multiple personality. And in some respects they're indistinguishable. Of course the narcissist by definition has at least two personalities, the false self and the true self by definition that's the definition of narcissism. So at least two. And anyone who has spent any time with a borderline, especially in an intimate relationship. Anyone will tell you how the world borderline suddenly switches and becomes an entirely different person. Utterly different is nothing to do with the original. Anyone will tell you this, who has ever spent more than four days with the borderline. So something is happening there. The self states take over, then they recede. The only difference between borderline borderline is a narcissist and people with dissociative identity disorder, people with multiple personality disorder. The only difference is that in multiple personality disorder which today is called dissociative identity disorder. There is this kind of disorder. There is a host personality. There's a there is a core. There is someone personality that moderates the other personalities. This host personality makes decisions can be can be communicated with and is the core of the person. In many ways, narcissists and borderlines are clinically in much worse shape than people with multiple personality disorder. Because they do not have a host personality. They do not have a core personality. No one is moderating. No one is in control. It's utter, discombobulated, unmitigated chaos, which is precisely what Kanberger described. He called it the inner emptiness and Seinfeld called it the empty schizoid core. So in your videos, you talk about how if you are in a intimate relationship with a narcissist, with someone who is, you know, effectively an empty shell, there's not much you can do to help them. Can you talk about that scenario a little bit like what would you do if you realize, oh my gosh, you know, I think I'm in a relationship with a narcissist or I might be related, you know, parents or, you know, brothers, sisters, or maybe even your, your, your boss at work, like what do you do in those dynamics and what can be done. You can't help them because there's not them. You can't help someone who is main attribute is absence. Narcissism is not about presence or existence. It's about absence. Narcissists are the, and borderlines to some extent, but narcissists more, more. Narcissists are the only entities of absence that we know. They are entities of absence. Yes, it's mind boggling. They can't help them because there's nobody there to help. There's nobody there to help, which is not the case with borderlines, but with narcissists, nobody there. It's extreme state. It's a little like schizoids. Schizoids also have a big problem with this. Schizoids and narcissists are states of absence, entities of absence. You can't help them. You can help on yourself. You can help yourself by adjusting your expectations, by reframing the situation and by reconceiving of the narcissists is just something else. So first of all, adjust your expectations. Expect nothing. Easy. Expect nothing. Then reframe the situation. Don't tell yourself, for example, I'm his intimate partner because narcissists are incapable of intimacy or partnerships. So it's a meaningless phrase. Tell yourself, I'm having a great time with him. Reframing, you know, for example, reframe the relationship because language affects your consciousness and consciousness creates moods and emotions in you. If you misperceive the situation, if you mislabel the circumstances, if you develop expectations, you can end up being very depressed and very frustrated, perhaps angry and aggressive. What for? The narcissist is a delight to be with sometimes. Take it if that's what you want. But don't expect anything much more than this. Don't expect depth and profundity and connection and intimacy and love and empathy and don't. And if all these are prerequisites, if all these are sinequanones, conditions without which you cannot survive, then walk away. You're never ever going to get this from the narcissist. At best, if the narcissist is hyper intelligent and a bit psychopathic, he's going to provide you with a simulation. But it's built on sound. The first test, the simulation crumbles. So you don't want to build your entire life constructed on the foundation of quicksand, you know. And then the last piece of advice is reconceive of the narcissist. The narcissist is like the latest smartphone. It's like iPhone 12. It has numerous apps. It's great fun. You can download things. You can do numerous things with him. He's adventurous. He's usually a risk taker and a novelty seeker is a delightful partner for some things, etc, etc. If this is what you want, if this is what you, if you're in a phase in your life, for example, that you want to experiment a bit, you want to be adventurous, you want to take risks. You seek novelty and you want a partner who is essentially a child. The narcissist is two years old in most cases. Well, then, you know, if you, for example, if you are maternal, you're very strong maternal instincts and you want to mother someone. Well, the narcissist is a perfect fit for you. There's no, there's no hard and hard and true rule. There's no kind of heuristics or rule of thumb to say, you know, it depends. The answer is, it depends. It depends. Some women end up being very happy with narcissists because the narcissist is the eternal child, the poor, the eternal adolescent, and they want to be the eternal mother. They don't, they're not really concerned about being intimate partners. They're not even concerned with sex. They're willing to render themselves as sexual or to cater to the sexual needs to outsource the sexual needs. So there are as many arrangements as there are couples. And that is true for the narcissist as well. But if you're a typical person, typical person, our biological equipment, hormonal equipment or our psychological predispositions and proclivities and so on. We need, we need, like food, like air, we need intimacy, we need love, we need support, we need many, and this can never ever, ever be provided by the narcissist. And anyone who believes otherwise is what I call a malignant optimist. If you earlier in our conversation, you described that path in a little bit more detail where you decide, okay, well, I can't find the strength to leave or I don't have the resolve or for whatever reason you decide to stick it out in a relationship with the narcissist and you can't successfully reframe yourself as you've described. Do we have any idea from the literature or from your experience on what that actually does to someone in terms of long term health outcomes for them or what that does to their own mental space being in close contact with the narcissist for a long period of time. If you're not, if you don't do any of the three things I mentioned adjust your expectations, reframe the relationship and reconceive of the narcissist. If you don't do any of these three, you will immediately embark on or get involved in the process of traumatization. You will start being traumatized. And the trauma will accumulate. And that's a condition known as, that's a condition known as complex trauma. So complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Traumas are daily. Traumas are hourly. The narcissist traumatizes you in myriad ways. And someone is honking endlessly outside. It's one of the noisiest cities imaginable. You're in Skopje. Right now I'm in Skopje. I returned from Russia and United Kingdom and Hungary where I used to have clinics and so on. I returned to be here because my wife is here. So I wanted to be with her during the pandemic. I didn't want to leave her alone. Actually, do you mind if I ask you a question along those lines? So you mentioned earlier that, and you have on your other videos that you were diagnosed as someone with narcissistic personality disorder twice. And we didn't talk about this, but the variety that you sort of express is grandiose. So what does that mean for you in your life? And I guess how did that play out? Cause you're married and you know, you're a professional. Like how has that journey been? And how has being so vocal and open about your own personal situation affected your work? And I guess how you put yourself forward. I'm actually a hybrid and what we call comorbid narcissist. I was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. So what people misunderstand is that my work is not autobiographical at all. The vast majority of things I had written do not apply to me at all. There's a hybrid borderline and narcissists in a typical hybrid of borderline and narcissists. The borderline is always dominant. The narcissist is always recessive. The narcissist is a secondary diagnosis. Primary is always borderline. So my primary diagnosis is actually borderline. My secondary is grandiose narcissism. So it's not autobiographical and there's very little to learn if you are pure narcissists and diagnosis only with narcissistic personality. So there's very little to learn from my life. Because for example, borderlines have possess empathy and they possess positive emotions. So that's why I'm very reluctant usually to talk about myself because it could mislead people seriously. People misidentify me as the epitome of the narcissist because I was the first. Historically I was the first narcissist ever to admit that he's a narcissist online. I was the first outed narcissist. There was no one before me. Now there are others online who are outed narcissists and so on. But even these narcissists for example, they have been diagnosed usually also with psychopathy. So even they are not pure and a lot of what they are saying is sheer and mitigated nonsense. So, but a typical narcissist is actually capable of maintaining a long term very fruitful marriage is a narcissist maintains one island of stability in his life, and the rest is chaos. So a narcissist could have a career with the same company for 40 years and end up being the chief executive officer of the company, but at the same time, divorce five times, and have 19 children in and out of wedlock. The island of stability is the career and his personal life is chaotic or vice versa. The island of stability is the marriage, which last 20 3040 years, but in these 40 years, he had changed 19 jobs. He has an unstable career, very pathetic itinerant career. So there's always an island of stability is very important. This distinguishes the narcissist from the psychopath. Psychopath has no island of stability. Everything is chaotic. Same with the borderline. Everything is chaotic, not with the narcissist. This gives hope to spouses and so on of narcissists because there are many narcissists will maintain this island of stability and for example they're very faithful to never cheat because the island of stability is critical to them. Again, there's a lot of nonsense online meets and so on because you know narcissists always cheat. Absolutely untrue untrue. So that's why that's why I'm essentially evading your question because any answer may give you would be tainted, tainted by my dual dual dual diagnosis. I was also subjected to a documentary where supposedly I was diagnosed with psychopathy, but again, it's untrue misrepresentation is I didn't score high enough. The cut off rate for psychopathy in North America is 3030 on the PCLR which is one which is the dominant test for psychopathy. And the cut off rate in Europe is 19, including on the short form of the test, and I scored 18. So I'm a near European psychopath, but I'm very far from an American psychopath. I could never star in American Psycho, which breaks my heart. Well, that's probably a relief for everyone involved including your wife. It's a relief for the competitor actors. Yeah, we've made a great American Psycho. I'm so heartbroken. I only watched that movie recently and I loved it. I was like that one. So he, I mean, he's a narcissist as well, right? Right. All psychopaths have grandiosity. No, it's not narcissism, it's grandiosity and all borderlines of grandiosity. So grandiosity is called to all cluster base, actually. Right, right, right. Can I ask you one more question? Do we have time? Yeah, please go ahead. So you talked about grandiosity specifically in context of narcissism and in your writing, you talk about the introverted narcissist. Can you expand a little bit on the subtypes of narcissism and what people might see expressed? Today we distinguish between two major forms of narcissism and this distinction is enshrined in the diagnostic and statistical manual. So it's not widely accepted, it's mainstream. It was first suggested in 1989 by Akhtar, Akhtar and Cooper, the late Cooper, Cooper died last year. So these two scholars suggested that we're getting narcissism wrong and there's another type of narcissists. And the first type is what used to be called phallic narcissists, very suggestively, and became came to be known as overt or grandiose narcissists. It's the confident, ego-syntonic, go-getter, daring, do-in-your-face, defined, a little psychopathic antisocial narcissists. That's a classic type. But there's another type which is also known as covert or shy or vulnerable or fragile or whatever you. And that's a narcissist who is very different to the overt or grandiose type. It's a narcissist who is incapable of obtaining supply by him, narcissistic supply by himself, because he's very avoidant. He's socially phobic, he's shy. He's very fragile and any criticism and disagreement break him apart and so he withdraws. And he's very frustrated because he cannot obtain supply so he also becomes passive aggressive. That's the second type, covert narcissists. So the most recent cutting-edge studies, we are beginning to think that overt grandiose narcissists is actually another name for psychopaths. We're beginning to unify psychopaths and overt grandiose narcissists. We think they're one and the same. And the real narcissists are compensatory. These are the covert narcissists because they're compensating for any superiority complex. They feel inferior. They're compensating by feigning grandiosity or teaming up with grandiose people. So these are the two major distinctions and then there are many, many other subtypes. So for example, taxonomy that I had suggested between somatic and cerebral. A cerebral narcissist obtains narcissistic supply by leveraging his intelligence, his intellect, his intellectual accomplishments, etc. But he's usually sexless, celibate. He resents his body. He rejects his body and therefore he rejects his sexuality as well. The other type is a somatic narcissist who is less endowed up here. A less brain, more brain, more muscle. And so this kind of narcissist leverages his body to obtain narcissistic supply. And that includes, of course, bodybuilding, sexual conquests, any use of the body to obtain narcissistic supply. So these are two subtypes. They are not constant. The cerebral can become somatic when, for example, the cerebral is abandoned by a major source of narcissistic supply when a shared fantasy crumbles. The cerebral becomes somatic. It is to capture another victim, another prey, another intimate partner. He needs to have sex with her. So he then becomes somatic. So that's another distinction we have, another type of taxonomy that we have. Right. And there are many other taxonomies. There's one suggested by Westin, a scholar. John Westin, others. So by now we have a proliferation of about 10 or 15 types of suggested types of narcissists, but somatic cerebral. Over inverted, inverted grandiose and overt, overt, overt. These are the major distinction, major subtypes. Are they formed in the same way? Is it the same sort of trauma early on in life that could create those sorts of patterns or? Yeah, it's a good question. There's a debate about this. We all agree, all scholars agree that the etiology, the cause of all types of narcissism, with no exception, is early childhood trauma, but an abuse. But there are many types of trauma and abuse. Generally, early childhood abuse is when the child is not allowed to develop his or her own boundaries. The self is not allowed to consolidate and to integrate. And the child is not allowed to separate from the parent and to become an individual. That's the widest definition of abuse. Now, within this space of abuse, there are two types. One type is when bodily integrity and psychological integrity are invaded aggressively. So that would be physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse. This is invasion. And the second type is when the child is prevented from gaining access to reality. So when the child is idolized, pedestalized, when the child is spoiled, pampered, when the child is instrumentalized, becomes an instrument to realize the parent's unfulfilled fantasies and wishes. When the child is parentified, when the child is forced to act the role of a parent, when there is incestuous, when there is ambient incest, the child becomes the parent's spouse or substitute spouse. So all these are also forms of abuse. Depending on these etiologies, we get the different types of narcissism. Now there was a scholar by the name of Rothstein, Rothstein, with G. And he suggested that all children who are exposed to abuse go through phases. The first thing they want to do is because they are not allowed to become individuals and so on, it's very painful and very frustrating. The first thing they want to do is to get rid of the frustration and the pain and the negative emotions and so on and so forth. And because these children are a bit more advanced in age, between two and six, they are unable to split, they're unable to divide the emotions and to project the negative emotions onto someone. They're unable to do this anymore, the splitting mechanism is lost. So what they do, what they do instead, they try to numb the feelings, numb the emotions, and create an imaginary friend. And this imaginary friend within something called paracosm. It's an imaginary friend within an imaginary universe, fantastic universe. And this imaginary friend is everything the child is not. The child is helpless. This imaginary friend is omnipotent or powerful. The child cannot predict the behavior of adults. This imaginary friend is all-knowing, is omniscient, etc. So this imaginary friend is perfect. This imaginary friend is perfect, is brilliant, is never wrong, etc. So infallible. This imaginary friend is everything the child is not. And it serves as a decoy. It shields the child from abuse. The abuse is now decoyed, redirected at the imaginary friend. He bears the burden. He absorbs the pain and the hurt. This imaginary friend and the child is unmolested. So these are the two mechanisms. Basically emotional numbing and this. Emotional numbing is very common in PTSD for traumatic conditions. When the child fails, fails with the imaginary friend and fails with the emotional numbing, we have borderline. Then we have borderline. The child remains stuck in emotional dysregulation. The emotions overwhelm the child. He is drowning in the emotion. He has no skin. Everything hurts. Everything is huge pain and so on. This is dysregulation, lability and suicidal ideation is very common. 11% of borderlines commit suicide. But when the child progresses and succeeds, succeeds with emotional numbing and with the imaginary friend, we have a narcissist. That's more or less our current thinking on the topic. But I guess that friend that I've built was a childhood friend. It's the false self. It's God actually. That's why I compared narcissism to a private religion. I think the child discovers God but discovers it idiosyncratically. The child is alone and discovers a God-like figure, a divinity and creates a private religion. And exactly like in ancient primitive religions, this new God, this Moloch, demands human sacrifice. And the child sacrifices himself to this God. He sacrifices his true self. What is the true self? It's human sacrifice. So the child sacrifices his true self to this new God, the false self. And from that moment on, there's a religion. The child, the false self is divinity. The child is the worshipper. And there's been an act, a binding, bonding act of human sacrifice which sealed the covenant. Exactly like God and Abraham sealed the covenant. And from that moment on, it's a religion. And the narcissists are missionary. Exactly like in Christianity, narcissists are missionary. They're trying to convince you that they are really perfect and geniuses and great. They're trying to convert you to their religion. So they're very missionary. You see a lot of religious undertones and overtones in narcissism. That's why I believe that the future distributed religion is going to be narcissism. And narcissism would be the religion of the future. I mean, forget Christianity, forget all this. Narcissism is a religion of the future where everyone is both a God and a worshipper and the temple. And everyone is a self-sufficient, self-contained, solipsistic God. And so it's a very religious, it's a meta, mega religious transformation the age we're in. We're all converted into gods. We're all being transformed into gods, lesser gods, higher gods, but gods. And we're going to end up in the distributed network of gods. The prevalent metaphor of today is the network, of course. So a new religion would be a network religion. It would be a distributed religion by definition. Everyone is a node, a node in the religion. Everyone is a God in the religion. I mean, we are in a state of malignant egalitarianism. We're all equal, known as advantage over anyone. Your truth is as good as my truth. Your facts are as good as my facts, alternative facts. So we're all in a situation where I call it malignant egalitarianism. And of course, no one will accept any position less than God in this reality. You can be God. Who are you? You're equal to me. I'm equal to you. If you're God, I'm God also. That's the future. Whoa. Like how archetypal, first of all, as you describe the sacrifice of self. I just had all these connections go off in my mind as you walk through that. It's pretty somber to think that we're all ending up in a space where we're in this distributed religion of self. Why do you think that's happening? Because we lost the alternatives. We lost the alternatives. Religion in the past was a total solution. Religion provided you with social prescriptions, told you how to live your life, gave meaning to your life. Religion incorporated folklore and mythology and botany and zoology. Religion was science. Religion was today's science. Religion was a total solution. And in some societies and cultures to this very day it is a total solution. For example, in certain Muslim societies, among ultra-autodox Jews, everything you need to know is in the sacred writings. You don't need to go outside. It's a self-contained hermeneutic space. Everything is there. So, but then religion spawned institutions. It spawned monogamy and then family and then church and then state. When we undermine religion, when we destroy it really, I'm not religious by the way, let it be clear. I'm ferociously hateful of religion. I consider God to be an infantile projection and so on and so forth. I have a very, very dim view of religion, religious people and the nonsense that is known as God and so on. Let me be clear. What I'm saying is not religious propaganda, but it's a fact. When we dispense with religion, we left a void and that void was not only an issue of who is ruling the universe. It wasn't a void that was limited to the question, is there a supreme being? It was a total void because religion was total. We dispense not only with God as the primum movements, not only with God as the mover and shaker. We dispense with everything that came with religion. We dispense with morality and instead we have moral relativism. We dispense with intergender relationships, the very concept of gender roles. We dispense with family. We dispense with community. We dispense with charity. We dispense with villages. We dispense with through the baby, the bathtub and the bathroom. Nothing was left. We created a total void where there was a total solution. And now this condition is called anomy. It was first described by Emil Dukheim, the sociologist a hundred years ago. Dukheim, presciently and eerily, had described our civilization right now, the current facing civilization, to perfection. A hundred years ago. Amazing guy. Of course, he was Jewish. So, Emil Dukheim, well, that's my antisemitic strength. I can afford it, I'm a Jew. So, Emil Dukheim. So, small tangent, you were born in Israel, right? Yes, I was born in Israel. I'm of Moroccan descent, Turkish descent, but I was born in Israel. Born and grew up to my teens in Israel. Then I left Israel. So, this is called anomy. This condition of total emptiness is called anomy. Now there are two options. Nothingness and narcissism. These are the only two options. Narcissism is when you try to fill in the void that was left in the wake of religion and its spawned institutions. This rationality failed to provide a total solution. Failed. And it failed for good reason, which Kurt Gordel, the logician, mathematician, I mean, he pointed out that rationality by definition can never be complete and can never be true. So, rationality failed as a total solution and it left an enormous void. And now people face two choices. The first solution is to say, okay, I will become my own source of meaning. I will eliminate the void inside myself by rendering myself the frame of reference that I will become my own total solution. I will establish internal institutions, internal objects. I will conduct internal dialogues. I will become self sufficient with the with the aid of technology. I will. So, that's it. I will not need anyone. And this is solution number one and it's known as narcissism. And solution number two is nothingness. Nothingness will have a lot more difficult because first described in the West first described essentially by Heidegger and then Sartre. Sartre called it called an element of nothingness authenticity. It simply means that you treat yourself like an onion. The onion has layers. You begin to remove the layers. You say, this belief that I have, is it really mine or did it come from my mother? Came from my mother? The hell with it. I'm discarding it. This behavior, this behavior that I have, is it mine or am I imitating someone? Oh, I'm imitating someone. If that I'm getting rid of this behavior. This, what appears to be trait of mine, is it really a trait? Or is it peer pressure? Wait a minute. If I remove all my friends in my imagination, will I still behave this way? No. Then forget this behavior. I'm never behaving this way again. And so you peel the onion. You peel the onion layer by layer by layer. You become authentic. What is left after you get rid of all the layers? The smell of the onion. The smell of the onion lingers. That's who you are. Not the layers. Well, this is your essence. This is who you really are. And yes, when you remove all the layers, you minimize yourself. No question. It's the opposite of narcissism. It's the antidote to narcissism, because in narcissism, you expand to become the universe. We call this process in psychosis hyperreflexivity. Psychotics do this. Psychotics believe that the world, they are the world. My internal voice, they think it's external because the psychotic says, I am the world. My internal voices are out there. They're in reality. They are reality. Narcissists do the same. They expand to become the universe. Nothingness, which is the principle I'm working on now is exactly the opposite. It's it's becoming the big bang. It's becoming the infinite infinitesimal point, the point that has no dimensions. And that point is you. After you had removed all the layers of society, socialization, your mother, your father, your teacher, your ex-wife, your future wife, your current wife, after you remove all these peers, media, influences of media, influences of social media, you remove and remove and it's a lot of work. You remove and remove and remove. And suddenly hers you. You're there. That's you. That's you take it a little bit. You take it. You henceforth will maintain an authentic life. Your core will be unbreakable and 1000% resilient. In there will be no influences from the outside ever. It doesn't mean you will not collaborate with people on the contrary, it will make you much more social, sociable and social, because you will not be afraid of contamination of undue influences manipulation. You will not be a conspiracy theorist, because you will know yourself. What is it all about. It's 2000 years. No, they self 2500 years. No, they self. No, they self, not vacuum the ancient Greeks. And this is the antidote to narcissism, but how many people can embark on such a project. I'm asking you, not many. Maybe a few saints. Maybe a few true gurus, the ones you don't see on YouTube. It's enlightenment. This is the essence of like it's not a good death. It's not a good day yet, because you go death is a Western distortion by corn artist of Eastern Eastern mysticism and so it's not a good death. It's actually the opposite. It's strengthening your ego. It's, it's defining clearly and unambiguously what your ego is. But what others tell you it is, but what it is really getting in touch with your essence, totally. And that is enlightenment, of course, because only disappear. Yeah, this might be silly question, but could a narcissist or someone who's already been damaged to the point of becoming a narcissist go through a process like that in theory. No, because they're already dead. The Nazis. Yeah, first of all, he's an absence, but the narcissist has no smell of the onion only layers. The narcissist is only the layers. There's no smell. Nothing will linger if you remove all the layers. It's sort of, I mean there's a lot of pop psychology which you know pushes I guess general psychology pushes empathy sympathy support for people with mental illness. And you know when we tease out narcissism as we have over the course of this conversation, you kind of get to the end and the answer is you accept or you leave. And that I mean it's not really that the ideal solution but I guess it's like I don't know what do you make of that. The Nazis will be the first to tell you take it or leave it my way or the highway. Listen to the narcissist is telling you the truth. There's nothing to be done. You know, there is this American American obsession American. I don't know what to call it grandiosity in a way. Every problem has a solution. And every risk should be avoided. That's the American way of thinking. Well, I was surprised for you. Many problems don't have solutions. And you cannot avoid all the risks. But I think America is delusional. Not every problem can be solved. Forget the self-help gurus and scammers and swindlers who masquerades as inter public intellectuals and so on. Not every problem has a solution. Narcissism has no solution. No cure. Some elements of narcissism can be tweaked and modified for example behaviors can be modified abrasive behaviors antisocial behaviors can be modified successfully. I came up with a new treatment modality called therapy where I essentially eliminate the false sense and grandiosity but these are elements of narcissism the rest remains. He's just not grandiose. He doesn't need supply anymore. But he's the same a whole as before. He likes empathy is exploitative is predatory and saying nothing change. If we destroy the soul of a child. And don't ask me what is a soul. I know it doesn't exist. Metaphor. If we destroy the soul of a child. It's such an early stage. There's no child. Nothing is left. If you kill the child when he's two years old. The body continues somehow to zombie. Somehow the body continues. And of course you can teach this old this young dog new tricks, how to speak, how to obtain a degree, how to be a world class intellectual. But who is there. There's nobody home. Now you can say but but who are you some back me. I mean, who is who is talking to me you can ask. If I'm not if I'm not here if I don't exist. Who is the one doing the talking. What entity controls his processes and so on to a very large extent these are automated processes. And that's why I keep comparing narcissists to artificial intelligence. We can definitely create computer procedures which will yield and give rise to coherent speech, meaningful speech. We have programs that write beautiful poetry poetry. We have programs that administer therapy psychotherapy. And they do it well. They pass the Turing test. In other words, an observer cannot tell if it's a human human input output or computer output. Computer becomes indistinguishable from a human. Of course we can. We do it daily. Of course we can. Why do you think people bond emotionally, get attached emotionally to the smartphones as fast smartphones are approximations of humans. Take the smartphone away from someone. See the reaction. It's a highly emotional reaction. And smartphones are 5% human. In the future we will have androids who will be 95% human. But anyone say an Android as a soul, except in Blade Runner. I don't think so. There's a lot in there. I'm conscious of time as well Sam. I think we're really exhausted topic and our viewers. I'm incredibly grateful and I'm sure our viewers and listeners are as well for your thoughts and insights. Thank you. To everyone out there who wants to learn more, Sam's got an incredible YouTube channel. He's got just a huge amount of information out there. Look him up. It's incredibly insightful. Thank you. Thank you Ron. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Just stay on please because I want to talk to you about logistics. Thank you. I'm going to stop recording. Yeah.