 In what professions, in your experience, are we most, we touched on this already, but I just want to go back and, are we most likely to see a preponderance of narcissists, right? I'm thinking, I mean the exhibitionist professions, I'm thinking filmmaking, I'm thinking acting, I'm thinking, what about the corporate space? Yes, actually the corporate space is the only space where we have studies. We do not believe it or not have studies with regards to actors, the entertainment industry, show business, mass media, social media. We have studies with regards to the medical profession, and we have studies with regards to corporate settings. We don't have a single study about therapies, psychologists, psychiatrists. So we don't know how many, what percentage of psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists, right? That's really interesting. And even worse, to obtain a degree in psychology or psychiatry, you don't need to pass any mental health tests. You can be a raving lunatic, dangerous to yourself and to others, and end up treating people. You could be unboundary, for example, you could be a borderline. What is the Hannibal Lecter? It's real, it's factual. You could be Hannibal Lecter and treat people. So, and this is, of course, a guild approach, you know, it's a monopoly, and when there's a monopoly, a professional monopoly, and when there's a monopoly, standards are lowered or non-existent. Of course, someone who intends to become a therapist or a psychologist or a psychiatrist, before starting the first year, must be screened for a variety of mental health issues. Psychotic disorders, personality disorders, mood disorders, some of them are seriously dangerous, seriously dangerous. So today it's a Russian roulette. You attend therapy with someone, you have no idea how boundary it is, how violent it is, how aggressive it may be. Will he blackmail you? Will he rape you? You can't tell. Simply you can't tell. It's a Russian roulette. But in corporate settings, it seems that narcissists and psychopaths are overrepresented by 500% compared to the general population. So three to five percent, for example, of chief executive officers of Fortune 500 have been diagnosed with psychopathy and or malignant narcissists. But how would you get CEOs to take, I presume that's the hair test, right? How would you get the hair and baby? These are studies by hair and baby up to people. Yeah, you're right. They were administered the PCLR, the PCLR designed by Robert Hare. Attention, the analysis, what do you mean? Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Expensive study, the part of history. Okay, so we're saying three to five percent of CEOs and in the general population we're saying about one percent. Similarly, among surgeons, the only segment of the medical profession to have been studied, the preponderance of psychopathy is much higher than in the general population. There is even a famous, I think neurosurgeon or neuroscientist, Fallon, who has been diagnosed with psychopathy and outed himself, admitted that he's been diagnosed with psychopathy. So we have a case study. There's a very famous play, David Mammoth wrote. It was converted into a movie called Malice and he talks about the God complex with the surgeon, right? And the opportunity to play God life and death with somebody's at your hand at your fingertips. And that's part of the attraction. There is this and there is the fact that you have to cut someone. I mean, wow. I don't know if you can do it. Do you think corporate, do you think corporate culture rewards and incentivizes potentially psychopathic, sociopathic behavior? There's a school in psychology nowadays, in academic psychology, Kevin Dutton, McCoby, many others. They focus on what they call high functioning narcissists. These are narcissists who are beneficial to society. They're pro-social, they're communal. They're beneficial to society because they're daring, they're risk takers. And they lack empathy, which is good when you're, for example, a soldier or surgeon or a corporate executive who has to fire 5,000 people, whatever. Everything that seems to be wrong with narcissism in certain settings and environments is actually a positive adaptation. That's the idea. And so evolutionary psychology, schooling psychology, evolutionary psychology suggests that narcissism is not a mutation, a bad mutation. It's not just an accident, a bad accident, but on the very contrary, it's a positive adaptation that was carried forward through the generations because it has, it has had some value or benefit to survival, survival value. So, and indeed, narcissists, because they are so hell bent on obtaining narcissistic supply and garnering attention, so narcissists are creative. Hans Eiseng suggested the quality of psychoticism, which includes an element of creativity. He said that creative people actually are kind of psychotic. It's not exactly psychotic, but like a big psychotic. I might dispute that creative people tend to be highly empathetic by nature. I wouldn't generalize in this way. Unfortunately, I cannot kind of participate in this dialogue. I cannot be your interlocutor because I don't have data, anecdotal maybe, but I don't have data. Certainly. I have worked a little bit and I do find that the warmth and the empathetic nature of this. Listen, I'm an awarded author of short fiction in Hebrew, in Israel. Awarded, I won Israel's second most prestigious award of literature. And I don't have a hint of empathy, a trace of empathy. I'm clinically a psychopathic narcissists. So I wouldn't generalize. Definitely not based on anecdotes. That is what science is for. We gather data, we arrange, classify it, but we don't have science here. Okay, I accept it. It is a massive generalization. So we're saying that in the corporate space, we're saying 3-5% generally. That's the only place we have data because it hasn't been insurgents. And we know that we're saying the general population is 1% or less. About 1%. Okay, so what I wanted to ask you about is strategies in dealing with narcissists, right? Actually, before I do that, can I ask you what the difference is between a psychopath and a sociopath? A sociopath is not a clinical term. Although it is used in academic literature here and there. It's not a clinical term, not a rigorous. By the way, psychopath is not a clinical term. You will not find the word psychopath in the diagnostic and statistical manual. And not because they haven't considered it. Successive committees over 40 years, 4-0, have considered the inclusion of psychopathy in the DSM and have rejected it because they reached a conclusion it's not a rigorous clinical entity. So psychopathy and sociopathy are hype. Media hype and to some extent academic hype. And again, there's a lot of money in this. Robert Hare became a multi-millionaire by licensing the PCLR, especially to corporations. So he has an incentive. He's no longer an unbiased scientist. He has an incentive to propagate and perpetuate the diagnosis of psychopathy. So in the APD, the antisocial personality disorder, is that the umbrella term for them? Yes, antisocial personality disorder in its most extreme end of the spectrum is allegedly psychotic. But you could have antisocial personality disorder in people who are not psychopaths. And there is work by Martha Staudt, for example, the sociopath next door. And she describes a run-of-the-mill pedestrian psychopaths who are not serial killers and they are not just your neighbor. Now, sociopath is someone who, well, the distinction is sociopath is someone who is socially and culturally rebellious, who is defined again, consummations, rejects authority, refuses to fit in, refuses to conform. It used to be called in the 19th century social character disorder, social character illness or sickness. So sociopath is a lot more relational. It's not the individual, but the individual's interactions are somehow abnormal, dysfunctional, to other people. I would say that a sociopath is defined by the impact that he has on other people, rather than by anything innate. A psychopath, on the other hand, is supposedly a clinical entity in the sense that even if a psychopath were to be totally isolated on a sail or an island, he would still be a psychopath. He would still be, for example, defined. He would define nature. He would still be consummations. He would speak on God. He would still be reckless. He would do crazy things and endanger his life and the life of others, if there are others. But even if he were totally isolated, he could immediately tell he's a psychopath. If you were to isolate a sociopath, sociopathy would vanish in the absence of other people. The context is a contextual problem, contextual disorder, where a psychopath doesn't depend on context. Narcissism, for example, is a contextual disorder. When you isolate the narcissist from potential sources of narcissistic supply and from potential partners in the shared fantasy, by the way, a key feature of narcissism, which we haven't mentioned. So if you isolate the narcissist from other people who are relevant, significant participants, collaborators in principle, he sees us to be a narcissist. For example, when you place narcissists in prison, they are no longer narcissistic. They are no longer narcissists. They don't behave as narcissists. They develop empathy. They have positive impact on other people and so on and so forth. Why? Because if you are a narcissist in prison, it affects your longevity or health, usually both. So the narcissist is a major incentive in prison to stop being a narcissist. And suddenly he's not. I know because I did time and I've been able to observe myself and many other narcissists. Prisons are flooded with narcissists and psychopaths, flooded. And yet in all my time there, I have never come once across an expression or manifestation of narcissism. Not once. I haven't come across this empathy. I haven't come across criminal or antisocial acts. I haven't, not once. It's pretty amazing. In prison. In prison, because in prison, the sanction, the price, the cost of being a narcissist is unacceptable. So you stop being a narcissist. In other words, it's a contextual relational disorder. That's why you don't think these are clinical entities really. I think the only clinical entity across the B is both of them. Yeah. It also means that it's not immutable. It's not generic. And it's pathological in that it's diseased, but a disease can be cured. No, I'm sorry that if I give, it's my fault if I give the wrong impression. What happens in prison is behavior modification. Okay. The disease or the disorder doesn't go away. Okay. It's just that the narcissist is able to modify his behavior to the point that he is no longer diagnosable as a narcissist. We call this subclinical narcissism. If you've heard of the dark triad, I assume it is. Yeah. In dark triad, again, self-styled experts online misrepresent the dark triad. Dark triad is not narcissism or psychopathy. Dark triad is subclinical narcissism. Subclinical psychopathy and Machiavellianism. So in dark triad, there's someone who cannot be diagnosed as a narcissist, although we know that he has narcissistic traits and behaviors and so on, but he cannot be diagnosed. Similarly, he cannot be diagnosed with psychopathy, but he's manipulative. He's Machiavellian. Narcissists, when they enter prison, become subclinical narcissists. It's a fascinating transition. It means that most, if not all the behaviors of the narcissist, which are abrasive, antisocial, hurtful, harmful, all these behaviors can definitely be suppressed, modified, eliminated even if the prison term is 10 years. They're eliminated, I think. And it's adaptive to the environment. Yes. Would it return then when the prisoner is released, would it organically just naturally return when they go back into society? Yes. That's what I'm saying. The disease is there. The disorder is there. It's just, it is repressed to the point that it is no longer diagnosable. We have a similar situation with some therapies. For example, we have dialectical behavior therapy. Dialectical behavior therapy is therapy of choice for borderline personality. And it's amazing. It teaches the borderline to regulate their emotions, to control their impulses, to stabilize them, move with them. It's stunning. It's the most successful therapy there is, by the way, statistically speaking. 50% of people treated with DBT lose the borderline personality disorder diagnosis in one year and never regain it. There's no chemical intervention here, there's no prescription, there's nothing at all. There's individual therapy and group therapy. That's all. And 50% lose the diagnosis and never regain it. It has a 50% success rate. Just to give you an indication, that's five times the success rate of CBT, which is the hallowed, sacred preserver therapy. So it's amazing. It's an amazing therapy. By the way, developed by a patient, developed by someone who has had borderline personality disorder. She started to develop it in a mental asylum. Amazing story. Now she's a psychologist, but she started as a patient. So, when you administer DBT, the person can no longer be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder because she has learned behavioral techniques. She has learned to manipulate herself, to modify her behaviors, to control them somehow, to channel them, to sublimate them, to render them socially acceptable and so on. But it doesn't mean she's not a borderline anymore, actually. The critical core dynamics, psychodynamics, they're there. They're absolutely there. And so, when we're trying to explain to clients or patients, if you go to DBT, you're no longer at this, this, this and this. But everything else will remain. For example, you'll continue to feel empty. There's a problem of emptiness in borderline. Not only in borderline, in narcissism as well. It's known as the schizoid empty core. You'll continue to feel empty inside. And this cannot be tackled in any way, shape or form. Same with the narcissist. The narcissist continues to feel grandiose. He continues to hold everyone in contempt. He continues to feel superior. He continues to feel discriminated against and victimized. All this continues. Only you can't save this in prison. If you hold someone in contempt and you make him in the showers later, it's going to end badly. If somebody, I want to ask you from a gender perspective, right? First, I want to ask you about if a young woman is embarking upon a relationship with a man, and she thinks everything is going great, she's found this, she's loved this guy, it's fantastic. But there's something she feels is not right. How could that young woman, or any woman, what's the checklist for her to try and figure out is this guy potentially a narcissistic abuser? What would your perspective be? And then I want to ask you from the male perspective. In 1970, there was a Japanese, of course, Japanese roboticist, and he came up with a concept of uncanny valley. Masahiro Mori, what's his name? He suggested that as robots become more and more human-like, as they become androids, we are going to develop an extreme feeling of unease in their presence. Not because they don't resemble humans, but because they have become indistinguishable from humans. And yet, something in us, gut feeling, intuition, instinct, call it what you want, something in us is going to signal to us, this is not a full-fledged, fully-baked human. Something is off-key. Some note is wrong in this symphony. And he called it the uncanny valley. When you come across a narcissist or a psychopath, regardless of the setting, you are likely to have an uncanny valley reaction. You're likely to react to the narcissist and psychopath as if they were not fully human, not fully composed, not fully fledged, not fully put together or put together wrongly. Or there's an off-key or something. And it's going to know it. It's an intuitive thing. We know, for example, that when two people meet, they exchange a gigantic amount of information via smell. They exchange about 100 items via smell alone, including the composition of the immune system. Many of the genetic properties and so on and so forth are exchanged within a split microsecond on a first encounter of less than two meters distance. So a lot of information is being exchanged, body language, of course, micro expressions, facial expressions. The way I come here, I mean, a lot is exchanged. Some argue that the vast majority of information is exchanged non-verbally on a first encounter. That's why first impressions. So what you're saying, Sam, for a young woman or an early woman is really trust your innate instincts, your intuition as the number one reference point. 100%. But this is the first line of defense. This is the Maginot line. And then start to observe. Is he breaching the boundaries? Does he treat you as an extension of himself? Does he make decisions for you on the first date? He orders drinks without consulting you. Or he chooses a restaurant. Or he decides what you're going to do during the evening. I'm going to watch a movie now. So that's a breach of boundaries and ignoring your autonomy, agency and independence. Second thing, and by far the most critical, how does it treat others? Because with you it's an act. Narcissists interact with potential intimate partners in a sequence that is Kabuki sequence. It's rigid, it's dictated and it's never changing, immutable. So the first thing they do is they love bomb. Love bombing starts subtly the way he looks at you. So with you it's an act. You can't trust the information that you gather by being with the Narcissists on the first date. Instead, monitor and observe how the Narcissist relates to other people. So the waiter's at the table. The waiter, the cab driver. Because there he won't bother to act. But there's nothing to gain from them. So obviously he'll show his true self if you like. Moreover, underlings and subordinates and service providers provoke and trigger the Narcissist's grandiosity, his worst features. Narcissists are in this sense a bit sadistic. But this provokes his worst features. Similarly, pay attention to what happens in stressful situations when things don't go right somehow. Does he become paranoid? Does he become aggressive? Does he curse? Does he break things? Does he pay a lot of attention to them? His speech patterns are crucial. Narcissists are not really interested in other people. They want to talk about themselves. Or when they pretend to listen to you, they're planning their next performance. So he's likely suddenly to ask a question, the answer to which you've already provided. He was simply not listening. He's likely to talk about himself, his work, his accomplishments, his brilliant future and so on and so forth. I'm doing this to you in this interview, actually. My speech patterns are to some extent disrespectful. So it's an indicator of Narcissism. These are enough. How do you mean, Sam? Give me an example in this interview specifically. I'm leveraging you to say what I want to say. I know that. And that's typical in an interview. In an interview, up to a point. And beyond that point, it's disrespectful. Now I don't disrespect you because I think you're unintelligent. I actually think you're intelligent. So there you have my respect. But I disrespect you because you are a tool. You're an instrument. You have no separate external existence. Narcissism are not capable of perceiving the externality and separateness of other people because they've never been able to separate from the maternal figure and individuate. Narcissism is a failure in separation and individuation. So they are still symbiotically and meshed with a maternal figure in their mind and they relate to other people the same way. We are one now. And of course, because we are one now, you are not external. You're not separate from me. Because we are one now and because clearly I'm superior to you, then you are my tool, my instrument. What else from a female perspective? I think we know we understand what a young woman should be looking for. Is there anything else before we switch it to the male perspective? Yes, the alacrity of the process. He would want to marry you on a second date and plan on having three children with you on a third date. Okay. The speed. It's abnormal. It's unnatural. We want to move in with you by the end of the first date. Very common occurrence, by the way. Move in with you on the first date. Join bank accounts, whatever. The speed. The speed should alarm you seriously. The narcissist relates to potential intimate partners via a process known as shared fantasy. It was first described by Sander in 1989. The shared fantasy in the shared fantasy. The narcissist creates a script, the equivalent of a theater play or a movie. And then he casts you. It's casting central. He casts you in a role. And you're supposed to play this role within the fantasy. Now, within the fantasy, you idealize each other. The narcissist first idealizes you and because you will have become ideal, it idealizes him. He's in possession of an ideal object, you. Only an ideal person can possess an ideal object. So that makes him ideal. And this process is known as core idealization. And then the shared fantasy progresses into into its inevitable conclusion, which is devaluation, separation, devaluation, devaluation, separation, individuation. So the narcissist converts you into a maternal figure. By the way, even in same sex relationships, even when the narcissist is a woman. The narcissist converts the intimate partner into a maternal figure because the narcissist wants to reenact the early conflict with the biological original mother. And wants to separate from them and become an individual wants to grow up through the agency of the intimate partner. So the partner becomes a mother. And then the narcissist needs to push her away. And the only way he knows how to do this is to devalue her and then he separates from her and discards it. This process is autonomous, automatic and ineluctable. There's absolutely nothing you can do. If you're the best conceivable partner, most loving and caring and empathic and holding, you name it, you sacrifice yourself, you're codependent, you, you're a doormat. Nothing is going to help because the narcissist needs to devalue you and separate from you because you are his mother, you're his new mother. Of course, the narcissist gives you the same treatment. He becomes your mother. He provides you with unconditional love. He regresses you to a much earlier age. And that is why this whole relationship is a proper, our earlier conversation is addictive. The partner doesn't fall in love with the narcissist. The partner falls in love with herself through the narcissist gaze. The narcissist idealizes her and then he provides her with access to this idealization. And then she falls in love with her own idealized image. It's intoxicating. It's exactly what happens to a baby with his mother. The mother idealizes the baby and the baby gains access to his nascent self, to his emerging self, through the mother's gaze. Initially, the baby's self is idealized. And that's why all babies are narcissists, the narcissists, because the mother, the mother idealizes them and then they come to believe this. They come to create a self around this idealization. And that allows them to take on the world, to explore the world. This is the sequence. The mother idealizes the baby. The baby feels Godlike. The baby feels idealized. And now he can take on the world because he's God. It's a critical, healthy feature of early childhood. The mother's gaze is crucial in pushing the child away from her and into the world. It's as if the mother is saying, listen, baby, you are God. You're ideal. You don't need me. You don't need me anymore. You can take on the world. Go ahead. Take on the world. And the child begins to explore the world and then discovers that there are other people in the world and develops object relations, really to interact with other people. This is all very crucial. What the narcissist does, he takes himself and his partner, and he regresses both of them to age two prior to this stage of separation and individuation. And they become enmeshed. They become a single unit. They become independent and trauma-bonded. Is that the kind of phraseology we would use? They're creating their own trauma and bonding themselves together. Trauma-bonding is a controversial and misunderstood concept. The layman thing, the trauma-bonding is that you bond with the narcissist because he has the capacity to traumatize you and then the capacity to reconcile with you. Intermittent reinforcement. Black and hot and cold. So the narcissist loves you and then the narcissist hates you, but he has the capacity to love you. So you become addicted to this cycle. You say, he hates me now. He's aggressive. He's violent. I need to get his love back. I will get his love. Not that I need to get his love. I know that I will because intermittent reinforcement is the pattern of the relationship. So if I wait long enough, I'll get the love back. And there's no love like it. As I just said, this is the kind of love that a mother is for the baby. It's unconditional. It's oceanic. It's oceanic. It's all consuming, exactly. So it's worth waiting for. So this is the layman's interpretation of trauma bonding, but the truth is that it's, it's much deeper and seriously pernicious to know what the narcissist does. He triggers your, your other traumas. It triggers previous trauma. He pushes the buttons, the trauma buttons in you. And because he's the one to push the trauma buttons, he acquires omnipotence over you. Only he has a power. His finger is on the button. Only he has the power to remove it. And you want to remove it more than anything. Many, many victims are actually there. They remain there. Not necessarily because they expect the narcissist love or they can't live without it or they're addicted to it. But as a form of pain relief, it's, it's the only person who can take away the pain is my narcissist. Or if the other partner is also grandiose, the only person who can restore my grandiosity is my narcissistic partner. So it's a restorative function in many ways. And so. Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I think I think we have a good understanding right of trial of it. And I think we have a good understanding from a female perspective of what to look out for. I think the alacrity thing is very, very interesting as well. I hadn't considered that the speed at which the narcissist, the male narcissist will move this relationship process forward. This is something really for women to look out for, right, as well as the other things we touched on. So let's reverse this. And let's talk about men, young man, he's meets a girl. You know, he wants to find her amazing. What should he, should he be looking out for the same things? Or is there a subtle differences, subtle nuances here? It's a good question. The warning signs with the male narcissist is essentially about control. Right. Control, power, power plays a symmetry of power and so on. The warning signs with the famous. So before I, before I answer your question, well into, well into the 2000s, 75% of people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder were men. So today in the text of the DSM five text revision published one year ago, it still says that 50 to 75% are men. The truth in the field is that half of all people diagnosed with personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder. Nowadays, the women, women have caught up with men and women have caught up with men because women have become men. These are studies by Lisa Wade and many others, which have proven again, I think very conclusively that women have adopted the male stereotypical gender role and have become men in the gender sense, not in the genitalia sense or the biological sense or it become men in the formative. Gender is performed. So they perform as men exactly, but it's not only performed as men, they regard themselves as men. For example, this famous study conducted in 1980 and then again in 2020 and women were asked to describe themselves. In 1980, they chose eight out of nine adjectives which were typically stereotypically feminine, caring and pathic, you know, soft. Kind. In 2020, they chose eight out of nine adjectives which were typically stereotypically masculine. Strong. Tough. Ambitious. So it's not only performative. Their self perception has become utterly masculine. Why am I mentioning this? Consequently, a masculine disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, is now universal because everyone is a man. Even women are men. So they, they've acquired male mental health disorder. Additionally, the distinctions that used to exist in the 80s and distinctions I wrote about in the 90s. Between the manifestations of pathological narcissism in women and in men, these distinctions have all but evaporated. Male and female narcissists behave identically with one exception. And that exception is what is known as histrionic exception. So, male narcissists are controlling and antisocial. Controlling and antisocial. Female narcissists are controlling less antisocial than men and their histrionic. When I say histrionic, they place an emphasis on the way they look. Appearance rather than substance, for example. They minimize their intellectual and academic accomplishments. They act hyper-emotional. And even to some extent, slutty, the raunch culture. So they would emphasize hyper-emotionality, external appearance. Hypersexuality as well? Hypersexuality, definitely. There would be teasers. The chase, sexual chase, and so on. So they would introduce sex and looks into the equation. In a way which, in principle, should make you feel uncomfortable. Either because you feel hunted. Or because the superficiality and artificiality of this behavior is so evident and so pathetic that it's bloody embarrassing. So these are... So all the signs of the male plus histrionic behavior. But women narcissists would act identical to the men. When it comes to decision-making, alacrity and all these, they would act identical. They would just add to it ostentatious sexuality. Actually, we discovered in studies that women with histrionic personality disorder and women with narcissistic personality disorder do not like sex at all. And they rarely consummate. They are far stronger on chasing and teasing. But when it comes to sex itself, they try to avoid it or run away. Does that indicate of some kind of developmental or childhood trauma? No, manipulative instrument. It's Machiavellian. I agree that it's instinctual and possibly unconscious to some extent. But Machiavellian, to manipulate. Similarly, women with histrionic and narcissistic personality disorder misjudge the depth of relationships. They regard relationships as far more intimate than they are. And this is the element of alacrity in women. So the main narcissist would focus on planning. Let's buy an apartment, let's cohabit, let's have children, let's get married. It would focus on the logistics, the mechanics of the shared fantasy. The women would focus, the women narcissists, would be equally speedy, equally crazy-making. But they would focus on the emotional aspects, the intimate aspects, and they would misjudge. So in men, we have something called sexual over-perception. Men misjudge female behavior, almost all female behavior. And they think it's an invitation for sex. This is called sexual over-perception. In female narcissists and female histrionics, we have intimacy over-perception. Because they think that men is in love with them within a single meeting and so on, they want to get married and have nine children on the second date, but not for the same reasons as the male. The male wants to own the intimate partner. The female narcissist wants the intimacy to secure the intimacy because intimacy is translated in the mind of the female narcissist and intimacy is translated as power, narcissistic supply, accomplishment. He's addicted to me. He's my slave. He can't live without me. These are women phrases, these are female phrases. A man can say, you know, she never had sex like that. I'm the best, I'm the best in bed. But he would never say, for example, I don't know, she can't live without me. It's not a male expression. It's a female thing. But as you can see, these are nuances because ultimately it comes to the same. Both the man and the woman would press for an abnormal pace of relational development. For different reasons, but it comes to the same. Both of them would try to control it. Both of them would make decisions. Both of them would disrespect your boundaries. Both of them would ignore your agency and autonomy and try to repress it violently and aggressively if you show any signs. Both of them would use a shared fantasy, absolutely. The female narcissist would fantasize about the intimacy dimension of the relationship. We're going to have a family, we're going to be very happy, we're going to have children. The male narcissist would do the same, but he would fantasize on having a trophy wife or having children that he can then shape and mold in his own. The trophy wife is obviously a reflection of his own prowess as well because the more beautiful physically, the more admiration she's going to get from other males and show you bask if you're a narcissist in the glory of their, look what belongs to me, that's mine. So that's what I said, co-idealization. Co-idealization is if you are the owner, the proud owner of an ideal object, means you are ideal. If you're a drop dead, gorgeous, hyper-intelligent, super-rich woman, you own her, in the last mind, he owns her. If you're the owner of this device thing, object, then that makes you godlike, ideal. It's exactly like a status symbol. And the corresponding thing on the female side then is she kind of owns him because he can't live without her. Yes, he's a slave to her, he's a dictator, he's a drug. She's irresistible. Which means she has secured, in many ways, her own future and her children's future. If he's addicted to her, she's secured a resource provider for the rest of her natural life in some ways. Most modern women don't think that way anymore. Actually, they're trying to avoid long-term commitments and so on. Very few want children and many even refuse to cohabit or to get married. No, it's controlling an object, the same way you buy a car. If you buy a Porsche tomorrow or whatever, you're going to brag, you're going to throw it off. So, here she is, she owns a man. And here he is, he owns a woman. And he idealizes the external aspects of the woman and she would idealize the internal aspects of the man. His capacity for intimacy, his love. And he would idealize her looks. That's fascinating and I think we've given people some very good clues there. Okay, about what to look out for to avoid. Narcissus, can I ask you one more thing on the narcissism piece as it relates to behavior. Imagine you're in a corporate environment and you suspect that the people you're working for. The authority figures are your boss, your immediate boss, your team leader. There's a pathological narcissist and we've already established this is a perfectly possible chance that he or she is. What steps do you take? Are you talking about removing yourself from that situation from that environment? Or how would you deal with that narcissist? How would you deal with that person? The advice, because narcissists impose a shared fantasy in all types of relationships. Not only intimate, not only intimate, but in friendships, in the workplace, in church, in the army, you name it. Whenever the narcissist comes across someone who can serve as a source of supply or someone who can serve as an intimate partner of some kind, the narcissist imposes a shared fantasy. And in the shared fantasy, he is God and you are the worshipper. In the shared fantasy, he is in control and you are coerced in the shared fantasy. So the principles are identical in all the... So the advice is the same, no contact. No contact is a set of 27 strategies that I've designed in 1995. And it's still the best advice there is. The second best advice, if you cannot go no contact, you have children with a narcissist, you can't lose your job for some reason, you can't move away from... So if the second best advice, which is not something I came up with, I regret to say, but it's a great advice, is grey rock. To grey rock means to render yourself uninteresting to the narcissist. A bad source of narcissistic supply because you're stupid. Or you are incapable of curiosity. You're not a worthy adversary. Not a worthy object to be owned. Narcissists don't have adversaries, they're gods. What do you mean? What adversaries? They're not adversaries, they're gods. Some contemptible, inferior people may consider themselves to be the narcissist's adversary or enemy. Not just because they're deluded, but they realize the omnipotence, omniscience and perfection of the narcissist, they would have never considered themselves as enemies. Because to be an enemy, you need to be equal sometimes. So not as an enemy, but as an object to be owned. So if you are a rock... The problem here, Sam, is if you're in a corporate environment, and I have worked in a few... Don't attract attention to yourself. Minimize yourself. Robert Green talks about this in the 48 Laws of Power as well, about never upstaging the master. That's essentially what you're talking about. You're forced to stay. No, my first advice is to disconnect. Resign, literally. Because it can end really badly. It can end really badly and can affect your future career. Narcissists, if they are modified, narcissists can be narcissistically injured. It's when you challenge, undermine their grandiosity in some way. A self-perception or self-image. It can cause them discomfort by doing this. But they can also be modified. Modification, narcissism, modification is if you shame the narcissist inadvertently even in public. The narcissist is giving a presentation and you raise your hand and say, I'm sorry, but this slide is wrong. You've shamed him in public. That's modification. You have become his mortal enemy. It doesn't have enemies, but you've become something to be quashed and crushed. Destroyed forever and ever. Amen. Confined to the outer oblivion of deep space. It's going to pursue you for years. It's going to pursue you in all future careers. Narcissists are exceedingly vindictive when they're exposed to modification. This is known as the external solution of modification. It was first described by Libby. When a narcissist is ashamed or humiliated in public, in front of an audience that matters to him, he's going to ruin your life period. He's going to focus on this. This is going to be his laser focus. So it couldn't extremely badly. The danger is in any environment, whether it's an academic environment or in a work environment, if you want to engage and you want to ask questions and you're curious, you could put your foot on a grenade metaphorically with a narcissist very easily. Unfortunately, the incidence and prevalence of narcissism, pathological narcissism, is increasing. Studies by Twenge and Campbell, the newer generations, people under the age of 25, under the age of 30 by now, they're much more narcissistic, they're five times more narcissistic. Do you think social media is fueling narcissism? No, I think it's the opposite. Social media caters to narcissism. I think social media is a reaction to narcissistic needs. But I think the restructuring of society enhances or rewards narcissism. For example, people are now self-sufficient. Technology rendered them self-sufficient. Technology is also some kind of womb, matrix evolution, because technology is all encompassing, all engulfing, all pervasive, the Internet of everything. And technology provides instant solutions and in this sense, technology is omnipotent, it's omniscient. It's Godlike. So if you own technology, if you control technology, remember co-idealization. If you own technology, then you're as good as technology. And if technology is Godlike, then you're Godlike. That's why everyone in this dog nowadays is an expert about everything. People argue with medical doctors and with professors and with... Why? Because they have access to Wikipedia. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, right? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The classic phrase in English language, a little knowledge. It's a dangerous thing because it gives the purveyor of that knowledge a feeling of power. Yes, I think there is a phenomenon that I call malignant egalitarianism. Malignant egalitarians, we're all equal. We're all equal by virtue of possessing access to the same resources. But you can surf the Wikipedia. I can surf Wikipedia, we're equal. And so people would not hesitate to argue with me about diagnosis that I invented. They would tell me that I don't understand the diagnosis. And I'd better watch this and this. He knows better or she knows better. And there's a diagnosis that I invented. And so technology empowers people in the wrong sense and renders them more narcissistic, that's for sure. But I think technology was a reaction to the rising tide of nonsense. And we're going to see more and more and more and more narcissistic technologies because narcissism is a vicious cycle, vicious circle. It is self-generating, self-assembling and self-empowering. In short, the more narcissists there are, the more they structure society so as to reward narcissism. And the more narcissism is rewarding, the more narcissists there are. It's a feedback loop. Self-reinforcing feedback. In July 2016, new scientists came up with a cover story in July 2016. And the cover story said, parents teach your children to be narcissists. That's where we are. Well, I mean, yeah, I was going to ask you about that, this helicopter parenting stuff where children are not being exposed to any challenges. There was another thing I was reading this morning. I was actually watching, it was about council culture. Over 200 professors have been counseled in the United States in the last 20 years. A colleague of Jonathan Heights was talking about this phenomenon. And it's a greater number of professors that have been counseled all that were counseled during McCarthyism in the 1950s. What's your perspective on dark triad, council culture, what's happening in society? Do you think there's elements of narcissism there? The sociologist Bradley Kemble said that we have transitioned from the age of dignity to the age of victimhood. Victimhood has become not only an organizing principle and a hermeneutic principle that explains life, makes sense of life, but also an identity determinant and consequently part of identity politics. The problem with victimhood is this. If everyone is a victim, there's a problem to find who is victimized. When you are a victim, you are compelled to find a victimizer. Even if there's no victimizer, even if your victimhood is self-imputed, you would still work very hard to find a victimizer because the narrative would be incomplete and ridiculous. You're right, if you don't find a victimizer soon. So the studies in Israel in 2020, four studies in Israel in 2020, four studies in British Columbia and recent studies in China and elsewhere, they're beginning to demonstrate, I think convincingly, that victimhood movements are infiltrated by narcissists and psychopaths who then take over and leverage victimhood movements in two ways to obtain attention. It's a power grab. It's a power grab to penalize, to statistically use the power to penalize, to coerce not necessarily with a goal orientation, but to coerce as a performative action, as a demonstration, to coerce ostentatiously. It's like a deterrent, if you wish. So many, many victimhood movements have been taken over by narcissists and psychopaths. Online, we have the empaths movement. There's no such thing as empaths. It's clinical nonsense. These people are grandiose. Many of them are covert narcissists, I have no doubt. And yet they pose as these angelic, blemishless, faultless victims who have been passively victimized by narcissists through no fault or contribution of their own. It's a classic splitting defense. I'm all good. The narcissist is all bad. I'm an angel. He's a demon. And many of them go to that extent. They say that narcissists have been possessed by demons. Don't ask. So it's an example of a victimhood movement which started off by me, by the way, started off by me when I established support groups of victims of narcissistic abuse and then metastasized and mutated into a narcissism-controlled environment of ostentatious, declared competitive victimhood, thereby demonizing the alleged abuser. It is an example in narcissism, but you have the same example in race, the same example in now. When you have spotted the abuser, you need to demonstrate your power. It's part of the narcissistic, psychopathic matrix, rulebook. You need to demonstrate your power, deterrence in international affairs. And you did mention that the vindictiveness aspect of it as well, that there is a vindictive quality to the destruction of somebody's reputation and very often their career for the most minor, sometimes agree offense. Yes. It accomplishes several goals. You demonstrate your power, so you intimidate others. You punish vindictively and visibly and conspicuously. So you have restored your grandiosity. This is a grandiosity restoring mechanism. And you may even have converted people to the cause by doing this. So there's a missionary aspect to this. And this is true, for example, with me too, as well, because you're mentioning council culture. That's one aspect. But the me too movement, in my view, has mutated and metastasized. And today it's vindictive, narcissistic. I would say psychopathic movement. Absolutely. Which is hellbent on transforming or reversing the power matrix or power parallel parallel bum between men and women. So a chauvinistic movement that is the equivalent of the alleged patriarchy. People talk about elements of misundry. Misundry, yes. Part of it, yes. So that's another example. Race relations, the same. It's a bad situation because these movements start off. In the academy, they were meant to stay within the academy. Places for discussion. It's legitimate for an idea to exit the academy. All these movements, almost without a single exception, started off with good intentions. They represented real grievances. And I mean, women have been abused in corporate settings in the entertainment industry. No one is disputing this and so on. So they started off well. But then they've been hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths. And I see the psychopaths couldn't care less who is a victim and who is not. As long as they are their abusers. Now these movements are abusive. Victimhood movements and victimhood identity politics are absolutely abusive, or passive, psychopathic, antisocial and narcissistic. Period. That's not some balcony. These are the recent academic studies. It is telling that these studies are not much more well known. No, they're not. Can you point to one off the top of your head? Gaby in Israel, GABAY, and her colleagues, four studies, not one. Yeah. Gaby and her colleagues. There are others. I have a series of videos about victimhood movements on my channel. Yeah. And in the description, you have literature. Yeah. You can find more.