 See the world through other people's eyes. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world. Hi, it's Edwin Rutch from the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy, and today I'm here with Sam Backnain, and Sam is a diagnosed psychopathic narcissist and an expert on narcissism, and we're going to be talking about how we can build a culture of empathy. So, thank you very much, Sam, for joining me. Thank you for having me. Would you like to introduce yourself a bit more, talk a little bit more about yourself and your background? Well, I have different hats. I'm an economic advisor to governments, I'm editor-in-chief of global politicians and so on and so forth, but I think what's relevant to this program is the fact that, as you've said, I've been twice diagnosed with malignant narcissism, pathological narcissism, and that I've authored a series of books and e-books about personality disorders, the most notorious of which is malignant self-love, narcissism revisited. Okay, so what I'm really working on is through the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy is exactly what the title is of our organization, is how we can increase the level of empathy within society, and the narcissists and the psychopaths are kind of conditions that are known for a lack of empathy. And you've been exploring the topic of empathy, you've written about it and have a web page, and how would you, to start with, how do you personally define empathy? Well, there's a serious debate still ongoing, started 100 years ago, more than 100 years ago, and still ongoing strong, whether empathy is a learned thing, whether it can be inculcated, can be acquired, or whether it is innate, inborn. We know that infants and even infants, let alone children, display empathy in a variety of settings. So that would seem to indicate that people are born with empathy. On the other hand, we know that full-fledged empathy, which I will discuss in a minute, is an integral part of the process of socialization. In other words, it is acquired. So there seem to be arguments in favor of this version or that version. Empathy has two components. The first component is what I call called empathy. It is known in philosophy as intersubjectivity. In other words, the ability to identify moods, emotions, feelings, affects in other people. This component, the intersubjective component, is utterly called in the sense that it has no emotional complement. It's merely the process of identification, merely the process of labeling what we see, classifying it, a taxonomy. This is the first element. The problem with the intersubjective element or called empathy is that when we watch someone and we say, this guy is sad or this woman is happy, we cannot be sure at all that what we label as sadness as we perceive it and as we had experienced it introspectively is the same emotion that the other person is experiencing. So the problem with the intersubjective agreement is that we are using unclear, ambiguous, arguable terminology. We cannot agree on a common dictionary because we have no access to the mind, psyche, and soul of other people. We have access only to ourselves, known as introspection. So this renders the intersubjective element of empathy very and highly dubious. Then we have a second element, and that is the element of emotional arousal. When we have identified, when we have labeled, when we have recognized what's happening to someone else, we very often react emotionally. So if we realize that someone is sad or depressed, we become sad and depressed. If we realize that someone is happy, we may become happy or be happy for them for being happy and so on and so forth. So we have an emotional arousal. We have an emotional reaction component. The emotional reaction component is in all probability innate, in all probability learned, because we know for instance that infants smile at their mothers at children between the ages of four and six, display similar behaviors. They are sad when others around them are sad and they're happy when others around them are happy and so on. That's probably an innate thing. The introsubjective agreement, the aforementioned part, which is, as I said, depends on a common dictionary which cannot be verified, cannot be falsified, cannot be proven. That part is probably learned, probably acquired and is part of the socialization process. We learn to identify and label things and we do it almost automatically. Sam, can I just reflect what I'm hearing so far? You're saying that there's kind of two parts to empathy. There's kind of a cognitive part and then an emotional part. True. And then that there's also kind of, you've heard of debates of whether empathy is innate, that we're born with it or that we learn it, nature and nurture. And it could be a combination of both because I think that's really kind of a... My view is that it is a combination of both. The introsubjective agreement is learned and the emotional arousal aspect is innate. The introsubjective thing is problematic, as I've just said. We cannot be sure that the other person is said as we are said. It depends heavily on introspection. We attribute to other people what's happening inside ourselves and this is called projection in psychology. It is actually considered a pathological defense mechanism. So there is a pathological element in empathy. Some of these words are... What do you mean by pathological? What does that mean? I will explain. If I were to meet you and I were to watch you and say, Edwin, you must be sad. That would have meant that I attribute to you what I know as sadness because I cannot access your mind, soul or psyche. I cannot enter your brain. I cannot ascertain that what you feel as sadness is exactly what I feel as sadness. So I am projecting onto you my introspective experience of sadness. That's the only way. There's no objective lab exam, lab test, which can tell me that your happiness amounts to exactly what I would call happiness. We can't even agree on colors. I don't know if what you see as red is what I see as red. I know that there is a frequency of red, a light-wave frequency of red, but I don't know if you experience this frequency the same way that I experience this frequency. So we are locked inside our minds forever. We don't really communicate. Communication is utterly impossible. Wittgenstein, the famous philosopher, said that we all have private languages. And we pretend that we have a common language known as empathy, but it's fake. It's utterly fake. What we do is we project our own experiences and emotions onto each other, assuming implicitly that we all share the same pool of experiences and emotions. That is utterly unprobable proposition. Well, you had mentioned how the emotional and effective empathy, and as I understand it, that kind of happens through mirror neurons. So as we do an action or see an action, we have the same neurons firing in our body. So I'm actually looking at your picture here of you with your hand, your chin on your hand, and holding your glasses. And according to the mirror neurons, as I understand it, how that works, is when I see you having your hand, your chin on your hand, and when I do it myself, that the same neurons fire in myself. But this is an action. This is not an emotion. Empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes emotionally. Actions are actions. A robot can mimic me. That has nothing to do with empathy. Yeah, but there's feelings associated with that. With the position, the hand, the arm. Really? How do you know what I felt when this photograph was taken? Well, I know I'm doing it myself right now. The answer is that you do not. Anything else you say is pretension. You do not know what went through my head, how I was feeling at the time the photograph was taken. You can assume. You can presuppose or suppose. You can speculate. You cannot know. Moreover, even if you do speculate correctly, for instance, you say you were sad. Sam, I think you were sad when the photograph was taken. And I confirmed to you that I... And I want to confirm to you that I was sad. Until we don't know that what you define an experience of sadness is what I define an experience of sadness. My sadness is not necessarily your sadness. A non-probability is not. Yeah, well, it seems like the mirror... I mean, you're familiar with mirror neurons and kind of the research behind that, where it's kind of like that we kind of simulate the other person within ourselves through the mirroring of motor actions. Edwin, there is no objective way to prove that what I feel is what you feel. There is no way known to humanity right now, maybe in 2000 years. Right now, there is no way to prove that what I feel as sadness is what you feel as sadness. No amount of words and mimicry and gimmickry will change this fact. It's a fact. When you are happy and I am happy, there is no way to prove that my happiness is your happiness or vice versa. I label my emotion happiness having experienced introspection, looking inwards. I label my emotion happiness. You look inwards and label your emotion happiness, and we have no way on earth to know that what you experience as happiness is what I experience as happiness. Well, how about the studies about pain where they do these fMRI studies where they have one person... That's a very old hat. It's a debate that's been going on since the 17th century. It's known as dualism. Whether physical or physiological phenomena associated invariably with reports of emotions actually are these emotions. In other words, if people report pain and at the same time there is a certain fMRI phenomenon. And this fMRI phenomenon occurs all the time together with pain. Can we say that what we are seeing in the fMRI picture is the pain? Can we say that it causes the pain? Or is it caused by pain? Or is it completely... So we say in philosophy that correlation is not causation. We can correlate phenomena, but we have no idea what's happening. We cannot link them in a meaningful way. So whenever there is pain, yes, there are some biochemical and electrical and magnetic changes in the brain. So what? I don't know how these phenomena are connected to pain. I don't know if they cause the pain, or how they are linked to the pain at all. And I don't know if my pain, if the way I experience and feel pain, is the way you experience and feel pain, even if we have the same magnetic phenomenon in the brain. Yeah, you're talking about like 100% the sameness, right? You can have kind of a general... Well, it's like... You've heard the studies in Parma, Italy, where they had a specific neuron wired, electronic with electrodes or whatever, where when that neuron fired, it was a motor neuron, and when that neuron fired, it set off a sound that they could know, whatever that... Edwin, you're confusing two issues, and we are running in circles, I'm afraid. We're beginning to repeat ourselves. The first issue we are confusing is between physical phenomena, objective physical phenomena, which happen and are reported by people to cause certain feelings, emotions, and so on. There's no way of proving that these physical phenomena that happen together with the pain, for instance, or together with the happiness, or together with the hunger, or together with whatever, we have no way of proving that these physical phenomena cause these emotions, are caused by these emotions, or are anyhow linked to these emotions. We just know that they co-occur. That's all we know at this stage. There's nothing else we can say with certainty about any of this. The second confusion is that you are talking, when you are using the word pain, and I'm using the word pain, when you are using the word hunger, and I'm using the word hunger, when you're using the word happiness, and I'm using the word happiness, we have no way of proving that you and I are experiencing the same things, because I have no access to your mind and you have no access to my mind, and all minds are completely distinct. It's not the same thing. I don't think anyone would argue with it. I don't know how you feel hunger. I don't know what you hunger for, I don't know how you feel hunger, I don't know what's going on in your mind when you feel hunger, and you don't know anything about me. We are using the word hunger to describe an agreement regarding a certain emotion, but this agreement is non-verifiable, and not objective by any stretch of imagination. Yeah, well, my understanding with the mirror neurons is that there is, you can kind of test what's going on with the individual neurons in our brain, and you can see how they're firing and see kind of similarities. If the macaque monkey that they were using, whenever it raised its arm, or reached, actually it was kind of reaching for whatever it was reaching for, to hear different stories about what it was reaching for, it would fire a neuron, a motor neuron, and that when the monkey saw someone reaching for the peanut, or let's say it's the peanut, and when they reached for it themselves, that same neuron fired. So this shows kind of like a simulation that we have inside of ourselves, that the same neuron is firing, and that's kind of been extended to humans as well, as I understand. So I see that as kind of like, I mean, that's kind of like the main grounding, I think, of mirror neurons and how empathy works at kind of maybe the effective level. Next question. Okay, well then, well, let's see, the next thing would be is, you know, one thing I like to do is look at metaphor, like, you know, empathy is often described as standing in someone else's shoes and looking through someone else's eyes, and for me, empathy is like a cornucopia, in the sense that, you know, it creates kind of this richness of the experience, just like a cornucopia, you know, the horn of plenty that is a Norse legend. Now Zorin, do you have a metaphor for those two types of empathy that you talked about, you know, kind of the cognitive and the emotional effective? Well, cold empathy is like a library. It's like you're classifying, like labeling, classifying. The Dewey system, the Dewey method or the Dewey system of emotions. We watch them, we make certain assumptions, then we classify them, we label them, put them on a shelf. That's the cold element, the cold component. The emotional arousal part, there is a debate, there was a psychologist by the name of Carl Rogers. He thought that we react emotionally to what we see in other people. Because we have been taught to react that way. He believes, for instance, that we would not inflict pain on someone else because then we would feel guilty. So it's not that we empathize with that person. Carl Rogers says that, yes. He says that it's not that we empathize with this person, it's just that we want to avoid pain in ourselves. We want to avoid pain. The pain of feeling guilty and feeling blameworthy. That's why we don't hurt other people. Not because we empathize with them, not because we understand them, not because we... It's a selfish thing. That's one approach. I would say that emotional arousal is mirroring, indeed. Emotional arousal is mirror and the subjective part is the library. That's a great metaphor, really. I hadn't thought of that library part. So, from what I've been hearing about psychopathy, people who are psychopaths have the library way of seeing the world, but don't have the mirroring part. Does that resonate with what your experience is? That's absolutely true. There are narcissists and psychopaths, the two mental health disorders that are characterized by the absence of empathy. Actually, it's not true to say that narcissists and the current orthodoxy is that narcissists and psychopaths do not have empathy at all. In my view, that is completely wrong. I think both narcissists and psychopaths are actually hypersensitive, hyperintuitive, and they perceive other people very deeply and very thoroughly. And therefore, I think, they have what I call called empathy. They have the library function. They are able to watch a person and then catalogue that person, dissect and catalogue the person and classify the person's emotions and so on and so forth. They do have called empathy. What they don't have is the emotional complement. They are housed emotionally by someone else's plight, by someone else's predicament, by someone else's emotions, facial cues, body language. They lack the emotional arousal component. Yes, you're right. In my view, that's the way it is. That's your experience. As a person that's been diagnosed with psychopathy, you're kind of like living that experience. Yes. I've been diagnosed with a borderline condition psychopathic narcissism. I'm not a full-fledged psychopath, but yes, I do experience it this way. I see someone, I size that person up, I analyze the person's I'm mainly interested in the person's vulnerabilities, in the chinks, in the person's armor, in how to penetrate, in how to manipulate via intimate resonance with the person's emotions and so on. I'm more interested in the utilitarian side of getting to know the person intimately than in the person himself. I definitely do not have any trace of emotional arousal, emotional resonance, emotional recognition, let alone the sympathy that is implied in the term empathy. I have none of this. As far as I'm concerned, people are instruments of gratification, extensions of myself, tools or venues to obtain benefits and so on. I need to learn, user manual. I need to learn how to manipulate a given person to obtain the given utility that I believe that person can grant me. I garner utility by getting to know people. People are what is called the sources of narcissistic supply in the discipline of psychology. Narcissistic supply is the fuel. I'm a drug addict, a junkie, and I consume narcissistic supply which in narcissistic supply is actually attention. So I consume narcissistic supply from people in order to regulate my sense of self-worth and my grandiose fantasies. Now to extract narcissistic supply from people, to force them to pay attention to me in a positive or a negative way, I have to learn how to manipulate them. I have to learn what makes them tick. I do not think that this would be possible without a modicum of empathy. To recognize what makes people tick, one needs to know, one needs to empathize with these people, but in a cold way. As a librarian would with books or digital records, not in a hot, not in a warm, emotional way. Emotions have no utility for me. That's why I don't use them. There's a couple things here. What is the difference between narcissism and psychopathy? For me it's kind of experientially I'm kind of unclear about that. You're right to be unclear about that. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Committee which is right now writing the next version of the DSM also thinks the distinction is unclear. They are contemplating to abolish it. I would say that the psychopathy is an extreme form of narcissism where the narcissist lacks empathy to a certain degree, the psychopath lacks empathy completely. Where the narcissist is more restrained as far as antisocial activities and behaviors are concerned, the psychopath is utterly unconstrained and so on and so forth. So it's like an extreme form of narcissism. What I'm hearing here about the psychopathy is that you're wanting to delve into the experience of someone else and you're trying to extract something from them. What is it that you want to extract? What is it you want to gain through the psychopathy from the other? Depends. Narcissists want to extract something called narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is a pompous term for attention. Narcissists need attention because it is with this external attention that they regulate their sense of self-worth and support their grandiose fantasies. Psychopaths need material tangible benefits. Psychopaths usually want money or so they are more utilitarian in their behavior and they're not so concerned with attention, adulation, admiration. They're not really after that. The narcissist is more concerned with his... Narcissist is a bit hermetically enclosed in his universe. Narcissist has this image of himself as omnipotent, omniscient, perfect, brilliant and he needs people to tell him that, yes you are brilliant, yes you are perfect, yes you are omniscient and omnipotent and so on. So he needs to force people to tell him that to confirm to him, to affirm, to support to buttress his totally unrealistic self-image and so what he does he converts people, he coerces them into becoming sources of narcissistic supply and to do that he needs to understand people. If you don't understand people if I as a narcissist was utterly unable to understand people, I would not be able to convert anyone to my cause. I would not be able to make anyone tell me that I'm brilliant, great, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent. So it is this ability to know people and to convert them to my cause that I call, called empathy. I need that. If I were a total alien if I were so flawed that I could have been compared to an alien, you know, from outer space, I would not have been able to interact with people to the degree that I am. So I must have some modicum of empathy and same goes narcissists, a conman, a con artist, a scammer. If a scammer or a con artist is utterly unable to understand people then how can he defraud them? You need to understand people to pull a fast one on them over them. It kind of feels like there's a sense of control in there. It's like you want to go into the psyche, into the being of the other and kind of control kind of their emotions Yes. There is an element of body snatching, if you wish. Yes, of course. The narcissists and encyclopaths are control freaks. They are control freaks because their life depends on it. If a narcissist who is unable to garner a narcissistic supply crumbles, disintegrates because he can no longer support his self-image and, you know, he falls apart. So it's a life and death situation. I need to be able to control my sources of supply. But we are discussing empathy, not control and not narcissism. So the only way I can make people do what I want is by understanding them. If I do not understand people how can I make them do what I want? And the same with the psychopath. I gave you an example of a fraudster. Someone like Bernie Madoff. You know, if Bernie Madoff had no inkling of what it is to be human, if he was utterly devoid of empathy how was he able to call hundreds of people? He must have some resonance with humanity. He must have a modicum of empathy in order to be able to manipulate people to do his bidding. And this modicum of empathy is what I call called empathy. Because he has no emotions, evidently. So he did what he did. He's a totally unemotional person. So there's no emotional element. But there is definitely a cognitive element of empathy in the narcissist and in the psychopath. And that's where I think the diagnostic and statistical manual is mistaken. Yeah, so it's like they're like in the library and they're seeing everyone is just kind of a cold book to be organized and moved around. Yes, it's like a text. Everyone is like a text. But if you are deprived of reading skills you cannot read text. What the diagnostic and statistical manual says is that narcissists and psychopaths are illiterate. They cannot read text. I don't think so. I think narcissists and psychopaths can read these books. Can read people. But they don't care. Yeah. Well, what I'm looking at is how do we build the culture of empathy and that's why I'm so interested in psychopathy and narcissism. Because I always see in the articles and the books they talk about narcissism and psychopathy lack of empathy. So to really kind of understand what's going on with that and then to see how do we go about creating a culture of empathy. Is it? I mean you've talked about psychopaths being aliens. It kind of sounds like it's a hopeless cause. Are there ways that we can promote empathy within this community? Empathy with human empathy with psychopaths and narcissists. Psychopaths, yeah. How do we build a culture of empathy? With these people, with narcissists and psychopaths? Yeah. No, that's a hopeless case. That's a hopeless case because they are structurally defective. These people, narcissists and psychopaths are beyond redemption if you wish as far as empathy goes. You cannot generate in them emotional arousal because they're emotional apparatus, their equipment has been damaged beyond repair at a very, very early stage. So there's nothing you can do about it. What you can do is you can teach them you can modify their behaviors their antisocial behaviors to the extent that they don't cause damage or to limit damage limitation or something. Damage control but you cannot do much to alter them, to change them. They are beyond beyond developing empathy skills. Moreover, if you allow me one more sentence. Moreover, I think many scholars and public intellectuals such as Christopher Lash and Theodor Millen and others say that society at large, especially western society but not only western society at large, is becoming more and more narcissistic and psychopathic. And so the narcissists and the psychopaths have no incentive to change. Society is adopting itself to their to their values to their scale of lack of emotion and so on. Why change? I mean it pays to be a narcissist and a psychopath in modern western society. It's a winning, adaptive proposition. Yeah, so for example when businesses say the sole value of business is to make more money it's kind of like promoting psychopathic kind of values in way of being. Exactly. There are studies by fair and others who these people, these psychologists demonstrated that the business environment nowadays is utterly psychopathic. So yes and in the financial industry in business at large, in the army in foreign affairs and you name it. I mean the whole thing is becoming more all of human society, human culture is at least the western part but I think the east is fast closing the gap. I think the east is becoming more and more westernized. We have succeeded quote-unquote, we have succeeded to develop an utterly narcissistic and bordering on psychopathic realm of civilization. So psychopaths and narcissists are incentivized not only to continue with their misconduct and so on so forth but to develop it into an art form. Yeah because they have societal support in a sense. Yeah. Societal support and yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, you did mention that this happened at an early age and then it's kind of like, you know, it's been you know it's been developed in the psychopath and the narcissist from an early age but that kind of implies that there was a time society was supporting a culture of empathy that a lot of the psychopathy and the narcissism could be headed off at an early age by supporting empathy training perhaps and you know a cultural value of empathy, you know, from an early age. Yes. At least as far as narcissists are concerned that would be true. Psychopaths are a different story because there have been numerous studies demonstrating that psychopaths have seen the world through other people's eyes. Now empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.