 Good afternoon Sam. Hi Charles, how are you? I'm fine, thanks, and yourself? I'm okay, more or less. Yeah, these are strange days. Strange day is busy, more busy than ever actually. So I'm in the organizing committee of well over 19 international conferences. We have to move all of them online. And I'm an editor in 50-something academic magazines, editor in chief. Wow. Of five academic journals. Wow. And you can imagine the influx. And everyone wants to write about psychology of COVID. These are the results. So I'm utterly snowed under. Well... Because it's a little bit foreign and so on. And that's why when I coordinate something I put aside everything. Absolutely, absolutely. It's quite a shambles if it doesn't happen. Absolutely. It has a ripple effect. It makes me even more grateful for giving some of your time. No, don't worry at all. I did want to. I do indeed want to talk to you. It's just that it created a trade reaction that's going to cost me a few hours of sleep. But don't worry about it. Thank you. You know, firstly before, and I've written so many questions down as a result of our talk last week. Are we on now? Are we being recorded? Yes, I'm using an application called Call Note and the reason that I do that is because it gives a very nice quality recording. So I'm looking at it now and it's definitely recording. All right. But when you send me the file kindly make sure that it's mp3 and not, for example, m4a because they have all kinds of... So I can process only mp3 and mp4. Got it. Yeah, fantastic. mp3 is by far the best. Fantastic. So Sam, I've got a million questions for you here. So let's start. The whole pandemic. So, you know... Sam, the... I hope I don't die in the middle. I'm in the bottom of the room. Absolutely, absolutely. Sam, okay, can we start off by... It's a question that I get asked a lot. The difference between having narcissistic traits and full-blown clinical narcissistic personality disorder? The first to have made such distinctions was one of the grandaddies of the field of personality disorders, Theodore Millen. And together with another chap called Davis, a student, they had offered a seminal work called Personality Disorders in Daily Life. It is there that Millen made a distinction between personality disorders, personality style, personality... personality and he suggested that we are all placed on a spectrum. Today, his approach is widely accepted in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Edition 5, published in 2013, the latest. Incorporates his thinking. It's dimensional. It describes spectra. And so we are all on a spectrum. And what Millen had suggested is that everyone to this or that extent is a narcissist. Some people are grandiose. Some people are obnoxious, like me for example. Some people are... But we all... Some people lack empathy. Some people are exploitative. Some people are envious. Some people have a combination of some of these traits and so on and so forth. And he suggested that some people have a personality, a narcissistic personality and that would simply mean they have the proclivities and predilections and inclinations to react in highly specific ways in certain circumstances. And they would tend to be a bit grandiose. They would tend to be insensitive to other people's needs, emotions, priorities and wishes. They would tend to be a bit self-centered and so on. That's the personality. And then there's a personality style. Personality style, narcissistic personality style is simply all this amplified. So these people would actively actually engage in narcissistic behaviors and actively translate their narcissistic traits into behaviors that are supposed to secure favorable outcomes from the human environment. And then there's the disorder. And the disorder is not only quantitatively different to the style. It's not the style amplified, but it's qualitatively different. It's a break. It's schematic. It's like a break from the style. Because the disorder is actually dysfunctional. It doesn't guarantee favorable outcomes. The person with a narcissistic style actually gets his way. He gets his way. He leverages institutions. He collaborates with other people to obtain goals. He has accomplishments. He's a pillar of society. But the personality style is actually a positive adaptation. It allows you to function better in society and with other people. The disorder, as the name implies, is dysfunctional. It guarantees negative outcomes. It is self-destructive. It alienates people. It repels them. It makes you a hate figure. So the disorder is all these, the traits and behaviors, taken to such an extreme and to the exclusion of all other traits and behaviors so that the outcomes are actually negative to the narcissistic self. Now the element, the last point I want to make is this issue of exclusion. The person with narcissistic personality or the person with narcissistic style which is one step above personality. These people have elements of narcissism which are pretty pronounced, discernible and immediately detectable. But they also have other traits and behaviors which are non-narcissistic. And they don't exclude these traits and behaviors. They let them express. So they are not all the time narcissistic. They are narcissistic in reaction to something or under certain circumstances or in certain contexts or when they want to achieve something. But they are not all the time narcissistic. So for example, if they are in some situations disempathic, they don't show empathy. In other situations, they would be empathic. If in some situations they in some situations they are exploitative, in others they would be actually collaborative. They would work well in teams. I think an example of this would be President Trump. Donald Trump is a grandiose narcissist but I kept saying he doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder. He has a narcissistic style so that other qualities in him which are non-narcissistic actually manifest. For example, his ability to work in teams or to leverage social institutions to his benefit or to in some rare cases display empathy and so on. So the person with a disorder cannot do this. His narcissism takes over. It's like a malignancy. That's why I call it malignancy of love. It colonizes. The narcissism colonizes every dimension of the personality and the diagnostic and statistical manual says that the narcissism in this case is all pervasive. It's like a cancerous cell that takes over and so nothing is exempt from life under this overgrowth. It's like the narcissist has been body snapped by his own disorder. Yes. What would you say the most important traits would be? Would there be a lack of emotional empathy and interpersonal exploitation? Well, it really depends on the type of narcissists. We have quite a proliferation of typologies and by now narcissism has been dissected into numerous subtypes. Yes. We come across usually one or two varieties of narcissists. We rarely come across the others. So we come across typically the grandiose narcissists and we come across the covert narcissists. It's rare to come across other types and within the covert and the grandiose narcissists there's another subdivision which I suggested at the time that is between somatic and cerebral. Now all these four are united in certain things but the covert is fundamentally substantially different to the overt to the classical. And if you want we can dedicate some time to the covert narcissists in a separate question if you want. Yes. Absolutely. There was a couple of other things that I wanted to ask you before we get this. I didn't answer your question. I just delineated the tip of it. That's true. So all of them are I think united by a lack of empathy. I think that's by far the most important feature and it's common also to psychopaths but not to borderline. To some extent histrionics but not really. So lack of empathy is characteristic of psychopaths and narcissists. Exploitativeness not necessary but I would say grandiosity not even grandiosity but severe cognitive deficits impaired reality testing. Now the reality testing can be impaired via grandiosity wrong perception of the self and the limitations of the self or the abilities of the self. That's one type of cognitive deficit but narcissists have many other types of cognitive deficits. So in some narcissists they would be emphasized in others other types of deficits but I would say misperception of reality one way or another. So narcissists in this sense exactly as Kernberg suggested in 1975 narcissists and borderlines in this sense are on the verge of psychosis. They are they are actually almost psychotic in the sense that they lose touch with reality very often, very frequently. Now imagine how dangerous it is when the narcissist becomes a leader of a nation or a CEO in a joint company and so I would say that this actually these two some narcissists are exploitative other narcissists are envious pathologically envious some narcissists and so maybe a third element that I would add that is common to all narcissists is the need for narcissistic supply. The narcissistic supply pays attention in all its forms both positive, adulation, admiration and negative, being feared for example. Attention in all its kind is narcissistic now narcissists needs narcissistic supply to regulate his internal environment. The narcissistic supply restores a sense of reality because other people tell him what is real and what is not about him and also caters to his grandiosity the reason I'm hesitating a bit is that because covert narcissists process narcissistic supply very differently to classical narcissists covert narcissists psychodynamically so different to classical narcissists that it's debatable in which sense are they narcissists at all and one of the main differences is in how they relate to grandiosity how they obtain the supply and what they do with the supply when they get it the narcissists uses narcissistic supply to regulate his internal environment the covert narcissists uses narcissistic supply to fight off her sense of inferiority the classic narcissists feels superior at all times and just uses supply to buttress to prove his superiority to substantiate it the covert narcissists feels inferior at all times and she uses supply to eliminate temporarily the sense of inferiority Sam the you know when we look at narcissistic abuse there's always abuse guaranteed when one is involved with a narcissist and specifically intimately why is this so why are we guaranteed to get abuse I think one of the major problems we have is that we are hell bent on using human vocabulary to describe people to describe carbon based entities which are arguably not entirely human or only partly human you see abuse most abuses are not narcissists and they are not psychopaths and don't even have mental health problems most abuses abuse in these cases has to do with a power play a power matrix it's about power it's the same like rape rape is not about sex it's about power and so but these are essentially normal healthy people and they just they need to assert control over their environment and to assert control they do it through abuse it's a dysfunctional way of asserting control and establishing certainty among healthy people a tiny minority of abuses are actually narcissists and psychopaths so let's be clear all narcissists and psychopaths are abusing but very few abusers are narcissists and psychopaths now narcissists and psychopaths abuse not for the same reason that the overwhelming vast majority of abusers abuse narcissists and psychopaths abuse is a form of internal regulation what I'm trying to say is that the abuse victim is irrelevant it's not an interaction it's an intra-action the narcissists especially needs to regulate his internal environment for example to support his grandiosity and so to accomplish this he needs to abuse someone because when he abuses someone for example he feels superior he feels omnipotent if he's omniscient if he abuses her by mocking her lack of knowledge ignorance so he feels it restores his grandiosity in other words the abuses instrumental in regulating the inner landscape of narcissists the abuse victim is incidental that is why it's so easy for narcissists to replace to substitute the abuse victim they discard the abuse victim I mean they pivot on a dime they discard one abuse victim and half an hour later they're with another and the intimate partners of narcissists they feel interchangeable they feel commodified they feel they feel that they could be replaced by anyone and they can they feel not special the narcissists takes away the partners feeling of specialness of being an individual because narcissists uses other people as commodities he consumes them and they are all the same to him they are all identical because he is actually interacting not with the outside but with the inside similarly the psychopath the psychopath abuses because he is goal oriented so psychopathic abuse has to do with accomplishing sex, money, power but these are these are internal goals that the psychopath needs money power and sex and so on to regulate his internal environment his form of narcissistic supply if you wish and people just happen to be there so if you need to steal money from an old lady you do and if you're stupid enough to give her money then so forth it's you said in one of your seminars that actually narcissists take a mental snapshot of their partners or the person they're interacting with and then sort of interjected and deal with that snapshot as opposed to the reality of the person yes that's very true snapshotting the thing is that at that moment there is a divergence of treatment a divergence of interrelatedness when the narcissist meets someone a person and he reaches the conclusion that that person could become a source of narcissistic supply even for example by way of becoming an intimate partner or by way of becoming a business partner or by way of becoming an adulator fan you know student whatever when the narcissist reaches the conclusion that someone can become a source of supply he takes a snapshot of that person he stores the snapshot in his mind it's like an avatar it's an introject he stores this photo in his mind and from that moment all the positive emotions that the narcissist possesses are invested in the snapshot not in the real person and the reason is very simple the snapshot will never abandon the narcissist snapshot will never hurt the narcissist the snapshot will never cheat on the narcissist betray the narcissist the snapshot will not cause the narcissist pain challenge the narcissist undermine the narcissist etc snapshot is safe so it is in the snapshot that the narcissist invests his positive emotions. And what's left? Negative emotions. And he reserves the negative emotions for the real person. So there is a kind of dichotomy, there's a split, there's a break. The minute the snapshot takes place, there are two streams of emotions. All negative emotions are externalized and in this sense the narcissist becomes a bit psychopathic. And all positive emotions are internalized, introjected and directed at the snapshot. This is why narcissists are always in a state of shock. Because real life people, real people in their lives deviate and diverge from the snapshot. The snapshot is permanent and stable, never changes. But real people in real life, they grow, they change, change their minds, I mean, things happen. And the narcissists cannot countenance the contrast between the static snapshot and the dynamic real life partner, for example. Sam, at what stage does narcissistic personality disorder first show up or become evident in somebody? When can one see it? We have a serious problem with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder because there are at least two phases in life, in early life, where narcissism of the disordered kind, the delusional, fantastic grandiose narcissism, is actually very healthy and a very welcome phenomenon. That is in the formative years up until the age of four, more or less, even six, and during adolescence. Adolescents, for example, are technically narcissists. And it's a very good thing that they are, because their narcissism allows them to objectify the parent, rebel against the parent, defy the parent, psychopathically. And in this way, separate from the parent, define boundaries and become an individual. So the adolescence pathological narcissism, and it is, is actually very instrumental in rendering the adolescent separate individual and therefore is a healthy process. Exactly the same thing happens with the baby, with the child, with the toddler, in the formative years, zero to six. The child needs to become the center of the world. The child needs narcissistic supply. The child lacks empathy. The child is very self-centered and so on. And the reason for this is that the child needs to separate from the mother, needs to begin to put boundaries between itself and the mother, usually. And these boundaries cannot emerge unless the child becomes a narcissist. So this is why we never diagnose narcissistic personality disorder before age 18 or 21, depending on the country. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of teenage and after teenage, yeah. Yeah, not before 18. It's meaningless to diagnose it before 18 because then it is actually healthy. It should be encouraged. Yes. We touched last week on the aspect of choice of the narcissist and you said to me, narcissists know exactly what they're doing. So it's quite difficult for me to sort of imagine that where I'm doing something that's harmful to somebody else and I'm making that choice to do it and I know I'm doing it. So can you explain that sort of dynamic from the narcissistic perspective that they're making the choice and they know that it's not a good one but they continue to do it? Well, your very brief question contains numerous, very arguable aspects. First of all, you are using the word someone else. We're doing, the narcissist does something bad to someone else. Right. But this assumes that the narcissist perceives the separate existence of other people and he then perceives them as people. Neither of these two statements is correct. My first mistake, yes, I get it. Not a mistake. It's simply that you are human and the language breaks down when we try to cope with narcissism and psychopathy. Language itself breaks down and that's the reason I had to invent so many new terms and even then language breaks down because how can you talk about someone who has no internal world where there's only a void, where there's no empathy, where everything is a reflection? I mean, it's so alien, such an alien experience. And I've just made two YouTube videos about this comparing narcissists and psychopaths to aliens, it's a proper alien from other planets. And so narcissists do not recognize the separateness of other people because their own separateness has been sabotaged as children, undermined. They were not able to separate from their parents as children and individuate and therefore they are incapable of noticing or accepting the separateness of other people. Even more so, because they were not allowed to individuate, they were not allowed to become individuals and develop boundaries, they do not perceive other people as people. They perceive them as functions, they perceive them as extensions, they perceive them as snapshots, but never as people. So when they do something which is harmful in your terms, they are not doing it to anyone, there's nobody there. Exactly as there's nobody home inside the narcissists, there's nobody out there as well. The narcissist's existence is an existence of negation. It's not being. Even the German philosophers like Heidegger didn't go that far. The narcissist is a non-being, not a being, not an entity. He's a non-entity. There's nothing inside him and nobody outside him. So he cannot harm anyone by definition. Number two, you're assuming that narcissists divide their actions into harmful ones and potentially beneficial, benefactory ones. That's not true. Narcissists weigh their options and their actions with a single criteria. Does it engender and foster narcissistic supply or not? If it foster supply, do it. If it doesn't, don't do it. In this sense, narcissists are binary robots. Robots with an extremely simple programming, which essentially recognizes only two outcomes in the world, yes supply, no supply. And that's a narcissism. Now, if this has effect on other people, that's where the psychopathic element of narcissism comes in. If this is an effect on other people, too bad for them. They chose to be where they are. They chose to collaborate. They chose to acquiesce. They chose to accept. They chose to obey. They chose, I mean, but narcissists doesn't feel responsible for other people's choices. It's a little like asking a virus. Aren't you ashamed that you are killing 80 year olds in care homes, you know? Yeah, I get it. I get it. That leads me to the next question. Narcissists that I have known when I look back and I look into, look at photographs of the eyes, Sam, the eyes. There is a deadness in the eyes. There is an incongruence between the expression on the face and in the eyes. The eyes are empty. Does that make sense? I believe that you believe that. There's no research to support this. My eyes are very lively and people very often comment on how lively it is. So I don't think one can judge. I think people want to demonize in their desperate attempt to understand these norm entities. These non-human non-entities. People are clutching their straws and they try to translate their tropes, their ways of perceiving the world and try to somehow project them on narcissists. So I don't hold such questions in high regard. Let's put it gently. Sam, there was something else that you said recently again in one of your seminars about the stupidity of narcissistic behavior. That it looks like on the outside that it makes no sense what narcissists do. And you said that narcissists, I think it was one of your seminars at Richard Brennan, where you said that narcissists are actually the stupid. Could you maybe elaborate on that or the behavior rather, not intellectually, but the behavior? Well, if you're a divorce from reality, you're bound to make stupid choices. Narcissists are not only divorce from reality, they don't understand people. There's nothing in common with people. They don't have empathy, don't have emotions. So they are like autists. They're like autistic people. They don't read social cues properly, sexual cues, other cues. They can't manage properly in society. They can't achieve favorable outcomes. They can't motivate other people to. So there are failures in this sense, functional failures, because they don't have anything in common with the main agents of change and action, which are human beings. But above all, I think their grandiosity and other cognitive deficits fails them. For example, consider grandiosity. Grandiosity means that you know everything you're omniscient and that you're capable of everything, omnipotent. And so if you are like that, if you're God-like, no one, for example, can cheat you. No one can deceive you. No one can take anything that's yours. And that's of course utter nonsense because psychopaths eat narcissists for breakfast. Narcissists consequently, because of their grandiosity, are very gullible because they assume in advance that they can, that not all artists can do a number of them. They are the easiest prey. And so they are buffoonish very often. They also, their pomposity, their, you know, verbosity renders them buffoonish. So they are derided, they're mocked because they're obnoxious. They provoke all kinds of retaliatory measures by everyone around them. So they are, they're pitiful actually, they're pathetic. And yet they believe themselves to be superior. They believe themselves to be, you know, the life of the party, the most amazing phenomenon, phenomenon around. And it is this discrepancy between what they really are and what they really are is they're clowns. They are pathetic, pitiful, broken clowns. And everyone sees through them, they're highly transparent and they're highly manipulable. All you have to do to manipulate a narcissist is flatter them. And the more unrealistic the flattery, the further you will get. Yes, yes. And so they are, they're childlike. They're absolutely childlike. And they're gullible and they're naive and they're stupid and they are everything, you know. And they are so incapable of discerning how vulnerable they are. Sam, something else you said that I found really, really interesting and I never thought of before. And that is that identity involves memory. And what you were saying again in one of your seminars that narcissists have no emotional connection to their memories and therefore will forget things very quickly like studying, cramming for an exam and forgetting it a couple of weeks later. I find that very, very interesting, Sam. Could you elaborate on that? The two problems with memory, the narcissists. First of all, there's no emotional correlate. We know from memory studies that memories are actually shemmahs. They are amalgams, they're amalgams of cognitions, thoughts, emotions and circumstances. So information about the environment where the memory had happened, the context of the memory. In the absence of any of these three elements, if you're missing the thoughts, if you're missing the emotions or if you're missing the actual data where the memory happened, no memory forms. And this is precisely why, for example, when we over drink and we're in an alcoholic blackout, no memory is a form. No memory is a form because the alcohol prevents the formation of contextual memory. So you don't remember where you are, what you're doing and so on. Emotions are there, cognitions are there but not the contents. And Alzheimer, in Alzheimer, emotions are frequently there, context is there but no cognition, no thinking. So also memories don't form. Whenever any of the three, and in the case of the narcissists, usually all three are missing. All three, I want you to understand how bad this is. Wow. Narcissist is totally discontinuous. It's like the narcissist is reinvented every minute of the day, totally out of whole clover. And so the narcissist doesn't have cognitions because he is dissociative. Narcissists suffer from dissociation. Memory lapses, memory gaps, lost time and they don't remember what they have thought. Honestly, they're not lying. They simply don't remember. So there's a lack of cognition then there's no emotions, no access to emotions goes without saying. And very often they forget the context because they are so focused on obtaining supply that they don't pay attention to their environment. A narcissist could go through a whole vacation in the most gorgeous, Greek island and all he would remember is how a beautiful girl smiled at him. But he would not remember the beaches or the sound of it, you know. So context, contextual data is missing. And consequently, narcissists are utterly incapable of forming long-term memories. Even worse, I would say, than dementia. And so what narcissists do instead, they confabulate. They speculate as what would I have remembered had I been capable of remembering? What would have made sense? What would have been probable? What would have been plausible? And so they confabulate. They breach these gaps. They cover up for the time lapses and they pretend to remember and then they get emotionally invested or invested at least in what they're saying. They confabulation and it becomes reality for them. So they are unable to distinguish their confabulations from reality because anyhow, the reality testing is screwed up. And so they end up living in a twilight zone not quite certain what they had invented and what really happened. And you can't imagine how destabilizing this feeling is. But Sam, that must be terrifying. I mean, you forget one's entire life. I mean, I've had blackouts and I couldn't remember anything and that scared me. But I mean, this is that you forget a narcissists forgets his entire life. If you had alcoholic blackouts and you know the experience, this is the permanent state of the narcissists. That's the permanent state of the narcissists. Now you know that in an alcoholic blackout, you maintain full executive functions. You can make decisions, you talk, you walk, you drive a car. You, I mean, that's why people from the outside can't tell that you're having a blackout. And it's the same with the narcissists. He walks, he talks, but he's in a state of blackout. But his state is permanent. Now what do you do after you wake up from a blackout? You say to yourself, what on earth has happened? What has happened? The last thing I remember is this. So probably this is what had happened. You speculate. Well, you caught a freak. Oh, you caught a freak. You caught others, yeah. And this is narcissistic supply. Now you understand what is narcissistic supply. Narcissism supply is a desperate attempt to cover for the blackout by asking people, please tell me about myself. Because I don't remember anything. Am I really a genius? I think I am. I have this vague recollection that I am, but I'm not quite sure. Maybe I invented it a minute ago. I don't know if it's a memory or if it's a piece of fiction that I've just conjured up. So the confabulation, sorry, Sam, is a panic response. It's a panic response. Yes, I think that narcissism could be conceived as an anxiety disorder or a depressing disorder involving a constant panic attack, like being in a constant state of panic attack. And of course, narcissists don't experience this. They don't feel it. But they should behave this way. You should see a narcissist, for example, if his grandiosity is challenged. He's not reacting like you have insulted him. He's reacting like he's about to die. Sam, are there particular qualities or traits that narcissists look for in their intimate partners? Are there definitions or grades of supply? Yeah, supply like everything else. Like drugs, exactly like drugs. There's high quality drugs, diluted drugs, mixed drugs, the tainted drugs and so on. So there's high quality supply, low quality supply, fake supply, narcissists sometimes discerns when people are faking the supply and so on and so forth. Now, high quality supply reflects the high quality of the source. So if someone in the street would tell me I'm a genius, it's not the same if Nam Chomsky calls me up and tells me I'm a genius. It's the same sentence, you're a genius. But of course, Chomsky has priorities. His supply is high quality, high grade. So internet partner is someone who is idealized, and that's precisely the reason, by the way, that the narcissist idealizes his partner. He idealizes his partner because he needs to convert her into a high quality source. So the narcissist constructs an ideal image of his partner, which has very little to do with his real life partner, by the way. And this ideal image is perfect. It's a reflection of the narcissist's own false self. She's perfect, she's brilliant, she's amazing, she's unique, she's special, she's this, she's that. She's super sexy, she's that. And then by idealizing her, he had converted her into a high source, high level source, high quality source, and everything that emanates from her, all the supply that comes from her, is a high quality supply. Now how can the narcissist succeed? How does he succeed to idealize? It's very easy. I gave you the key earlier. The narcissist idealizes the snapshots, not the real person. All the narcissist's interactions are with the snapshots. He idealizes the snapshots, he interacts with the snapshots, he obtains object constancy by keeping the snapshot constant. He doesn't have abandonment anxiety because snapshots don't tend to abandon their own last time I checked. And so snapshotting is a super critical function in narcissism. And this is the mistake of the narcissistic intimate partners and why their heart broken and devastated. At some point they discover that it's not been about them at all. They haven't been there. They've been an excuse, a kind of a trigger. And it becomes clear to them that the narcissists have been interacting with some idealized image, idealized figure that has nothing or little to do with them. And then it makes it completely, it makes it very easy for him to discard them and replace them within minutes because he has never been interacting with them. Sam, another question. Hello? Sam, you still there? Yeah, another question before we get onto the different types of narcissists is the formation or the lack of formation of empathy in the narcissists in the formative years. Could you explain how that happens or how that doesn't happen? I'm talking about emotional empathy. Well, I wish I had the answer. We know that there are three types of empathy and they build on each other. They build upon each other. There's reflexive empathy. That's the kind when baby smiles at mother because mother smiles at baby. That's reflexive, like a reflection. And then there is cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is I see someone crying as a child. I see someone crying and I note the fact that she's crying. But nothing happens, I just note the fact. And then there's emotional empathy. Gradually, the child builds a theory of the world and a theory of mind. And incorporates himself or herself into this theory. A process called introspection. In other words, the child constructs a sense by contradistinction to the world. And then there is interaction with the self and the ability to manipulate the self. And for example, to take the self and put it in someone else's shoes. And these are the foundations of empathy. Narcissists have reflexive empathy that comes with biology. They have, they develop cognitive empathy. And so the combination of reflexive and cognitive is what I call, what I dubbed called empathy. This is a never graduate to the third phase. They never develop emotional empathy. The reason I think they don't develop emotional empathy is because the narcissist is terrified of his emotions. Within the narcissist, there is a reservoir of enormous pain and hurt. Of not being seen, of being negated, of being manipulated, manipulated, of being abused, of being viscid, being invaded. That is a huge pains. Especially if they're inflicted on the child by a God-like, unconditionally loved figure, like a mother. And so there's this huge pain inside. Now, I think we discussed this last time. I'm not sure, but it's not possible to tap into only one sort of emotion. You can't tell yourself, I'm gonna ignore my negative emotions. I'm gonna tap only into my positive emotions. If you tap into your emotions, everything comes up. Everything comes up. Love is bittersweet. We all know this. So if you allow yourself to love, then all the pain and the hurt will surface as well. And the narcissist will be overwhelmed and die, commit suicide or something. So Nazis are so terrified of their emotions, they bottle them up. They relegate them like the Environmental Protection Agency. They relegate this toxic waste into underground reservoirs. They seal them with lead, and they make sure they never, ever have access to these emotions anymore. Unfortunately, in this process of sealing off the toxic emotions, they are forced also to seal off all emotions. It's not that the Nazis don't have emotions. Nazis is actually overwhelmed by their emotions. Their emotions are much stronger than other people's. It's just they don't have access to their emotions as opposed to the borderline. The borderline failed to do this. Failed to isolate her emotions. So they keep overwhelming her. And the result, 10% of borderlines commit suicide. So the narcissist succeeds where the borderline failed. He had isolated and buried his emotions irrevocably. But consequently, of course, he is unable to develop emotional empathy. So it comes with the territory. That's the price of Nazis' pace. Lack of empathy, lack of love, lack of positive emotions, lack of positivity in life generally. That's why narcissism can be easily conceived as a depressive state. Depresive disorder. And general feeling of hostility, aggression, defiance, and so on, which pushed the narcissists throughout life to the psychopathic poem. I think that psychopathy, I mean, many narcissists end up being psychopaths. I mean, there are psychopaths who are born as psychopaths. Psychopathy is largely a brain disorder. And so there are psychopaths who are born as psychopaths. But I think narcissists expose repeatedly to the slings and arrows of fate to borrow from someone else, ultimately end up being psychopaths, antisocial and so on, because it's simply too much. And the lack of emotional empathy also hampers the reality test. So they keep blundering. They keep, they're like blind people in a dark space with no candle. Like a wrecking ball in a way. Well, yes. And as conscious, as self-aware as a wrecking ball. Sam, another thing that I've wondered about often is the narcissists will often, especially as they get older, they will have a whole trail of wrecked marriages or, you know, love affairs and partners, et cetera. What effect does that have on the narcissists to sort of accumulate the damage and carnage, if you like, until they're psychopaths? It becomes a psychopath. These slings and arrows of fate. The wasteland that his life had become. The post-apocalyptic dystopian landscape that his life inevitably becomes. There's not a single narcissist who doesn't end up this way, even if he's, I don't know, president of the United States. When he looks around or when he looks inside himself, it's this utterly desert-like wasteland with not a hint of life left. And because he's incapable of experiencing emotions or he has no access to his emotions, emotions are the main tools we use to process loss. That's the main tool. If you lack emotions or access to emotions, you are unable to process loss. So the narcissist's life ends up being a huge container of losses, cumulative losses. And the dominant feeling, the dominant emotional you are. You say, I'm lacking words even. It's to this, because it's not an emotion. It's a presence. It's like a demonic presence, if you wish. So at the end of the narcissist's life, there is this presence, which is as tangible as anything. Presence of loss. It's like everything coalesced and combined into this giant loss. Reminds me of a neutron star or a black hole, you know? Everything imploded and crumbled into this single point of loss. But it is so powerful that it sucks the narcissist and every light, every shred of life, every shred of hope. It's a hopeless, in the most profound sense, hopeless existence. Sure. Sam, okay, so now if we can have a look at the COVID versus either Ovid or what you say, grandiose, the cerebral versus the somatic. We could look at the characteristics and. Yeah, well, there's a lot of misinformation about covert narcissists propagated by numerous self-styled experts and so on and so forth. Clearly, never bothered to read the literature. Covert narcissism was first defined in 1989 by two scholars, Akhtar and Cooper. And they have created by now, classic table, which describes the differences between what they called at the time arrogant or overt narcissists. Today we call it classic narcissists. And what they called at the time, the shy or covert narcissists. Another name for this today would be the fragile or vulnerable narcissists. And so this table is still the authority and the only authority. And if you want, I can simply read it to you. It's a bit long, but I think it's worth every minute. Absolutely. Because that would be the first, there would be among the few, among the few YouTube videos to provide accurate information about covert narcissists. Absolutely. So they distinguish six domains. Self-concept, interpersonal relationships, social adaptation, ethics, standards and ideas, love and sexuality and cognitive style. And what they had done, in 1989, mind you, they made a list of these six domains in the covert narcissists versus the overt narcissists. I'm simply gonna read it to you. Nothing can compete with the accuracy and clarity of this table. And I'm just repeating again that the vast majority of videos online contradict this table. And these videos are utterly wrong. Generally, there's a phenomenon that everyone in this dog becomes an expert after having read three wrong articles. Yes? Yes. And it's a malignant, what I call malignant egalitarianism. Everyone is an expert today because everyone has a smartphone and can click the right or the wrong buttons. Of course, there's a problem of telling a part what is reliable information, quality information from trash. It's a problem of discoverability. But I have yet, well, I have come across two videos which describe covert narcissists improperly. All the others, and we're talking about hundreds and thousands, are not accurate. They're wrong, actually. Disaster is wrong sometimes. And I have had a personal experience with this. I, in 25 years ago, I created the diagnostic category inverted narcissists. I invented it. I came up with it, it's mine. And I was the first to describe inverted narcissists in a very, very lengthy paper, almost a hundred pages long. And so to this very day, I'm getting numerous messages from people who are telling me that I have no idea what is inverted narcissism, that I'm very wrong about inverted narcissism, that I should see that link or that link to learn about inverted narcissism, not to make such mistakes in the future, and so on and so forth. And I invented the diagnosis. They are writing to the person who invented the diagnosis to tell him that he has no idea what the diagnosis is. This situation there is really bad and I'm warning against it. There's the ratio of trash, the ratio of noise to signal is 99 to one and I'm being exceedingly optimistic. I will read the table and it's the only authoritative source. It's not mine, so I'm not touting my own. It's Akhtar and Cooper, 1989. Self-concept. The arrogant or overt narcissists has grandiose thinking, preoccupation with fantasies of outstanding success, undue sense of uniqueness, feelings of entitlement, seeming self-sufficiency. In contrast, the covert narcissist has an inferiority complex. Morose self-doubt, marked propensity toward feeling ashamed, fragility, relentless search for glory and power, marked sensitivity to criticism and realistic setbacks. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, the overt narcissist has numerous but shallow relationships, intense need for tribute from others, scorn for others, often masked by pseudo-humility, I called it false modesty in my work, lack of empathy, inability to genuinely participate in group activities, valuing of children over spouse in family life. The covert narcissist has an inability to genuinely depend on others and trust them, chronic envy of others, talent of other people's talents, possessions and capacity for deep object relations, deep love, and lack of regard for generational boundaries. So that's the kind of person who would insult all people and disrespect them. This regard for other people's time, refusal to respond silent treatment, discommunication, social adaptation. The overt narcissist is socially charming, often successful, presents consistent hard work done mainly to seek admiration, pseudo-sublimation, intense ambition, preoccupation with appearances. The covert narcissist has nagging aimlessness, shallow vocational commitment, dilettant attitude, multiple but superficial interests, chronic boredom, aesthetic taste, often ill-informed and imitative. As far as ethics, standards and ideas, ideas, I'm sorry, the overt narcissist has caricatured modesty, pretended contempt for money in real life, idiosyncratically and unevenly moral, apparent enthusiasm for socio-political affairs. That's the classic narcissist. The covert narcissist is ready to shift her values to gain favor, pathological line, materialistic lifestyle, delinquent tendencies, inordinate ethnic and moral relativism, irreverence towards authority, and in this sense, the covert narcissist is actually psychopathic, but not the overt narcissist. It's an example of such a mistake online because online people say that the classic narcissist is psychopathic, but the covert narcissist is not. It's the covert narcissist that is psychopathic. Love and sexuality, I'm continuing to read from the table. Love and sexuality, the overt narcissist, marital instability, cold and greedy seductiveness, extra marital affairs and promiscuity, uninhibited sexual life, the covert narcissist, inability to remain in love, impaired capacity for viewing the romantic partner as a separate individual with his or her own interests, rights and values, inability to genuinely comprehend the incest taboo, occasional sexual perversions, paraphernalia, cognitive style, the classic narcissist, impressively knowledgeable, decisive and opinionated, often strikingly articulate, egocentric perception of reality, love of language, fondness of shortcuts to acquisition of knowledge. The covert narcissist, knowledge often limited to trivia, headline intelligence, forgetful of details, especially names, impaired in the capacity for learning new skills, tendency to change meanings of reality when faced with a threat to self-esteem, language and speaking, used for regulating his or her self-esteem. This and only this is the authoritative description of overt and covert narcissist. Anything that contradicts, anything that stands in contradiction to this is wrong, end of story. Never mind who says it, including people with PhDs, therapies, psychologists and so on. Degrees don't guarantee knowledge. Many degrees come with ignorance, academic degrees. So be careful, go to the source. It's available online, not such a big deal. Akhtar, A-K-H-T-A-R, and Cooper, 1989 covert narcissist. Sam, would you, yeah, I mean, that's a sort of a five-eyed discussion on its own, all of that. But the one thing I wanted to ask you, it's very interesting. Would you say that covert narcissists are more dangerous because they're hidden? Can't see it. Covert narcissists are what our confluence, a combination of passive-aggressive and psychopathic. So, yes, I would say that covert narcissists are far more dangerous because you don't see them coming. And when they do come, they act as psychopaths. So we today are reconceptualizing borderline personality disorder. We are reconceptualizing it as psychopathy. Today, the bleeding-edge literature discusses borderline personality disorder as secondary psychopathy in women. Women's secondary psychopathy. Similarly, covert narcissism, I think, can be easily conceptualized or reconceptualized as the confluence of narcissism, frustrated narcissism, collapsed narcissism, with psychopathy, secondary psychopathy, not primary, secondary psychopathy, and passive-aggressive, negativistic personality disorder. And yes, it's a bad combination, far worse than the overt one. The overt or classical narcissists is easily detectable. He cannot hide his grandiosities, his preposities, his preposities. He is ridiculous, he's buffoonish. You can immediately tell. Look, for example, at Donald Trump. He doesn't take a genius or a diagnostician to realize something's wrong with this guy. His need for praise, his hypervigilance against insults. He sees insults everywhere. Something's wrong with this guy. Something's wrong with his cognitive processing, and it's so clear. However, look at Barack Obama. Barack Obama, who is as narcissistic, if not much more, than Donald Trump, under the radar, socially sublimates his narcissism, converts it into socially acceptable modes of behavior, but equally narcissistic, messianicals. So, luckily, both individuals didn't leverage the narcissism, and they took the narcissism and they channeled it in socially acceptable ways via social institutions. But if you have someone like Adolf Hitler, that's always the case. So, covert narcissism is a very, very dangerous thing. Luckily, as opposed to what most online videos say and so on, covert narcissists rarely conspire and manipulate. I mean, they are rarely busy promoting some agenda. They are too shy and broken and vulnerable and fragile. They feel inferior. They are too perfectionist. So, many, many things are holding them back. They're in the background. They're in the background and they rarely act. However, when they do act, they act as psychopaths do. They are manipulative, they are impulsive, they are defiant. They are disempathic and so on. And they are passive aggressive. Most of the time, what they do is they undermine you, they sabotage you, they block you, they obstruct you. And they constantly feel that they are discriminated against, that they are subject to injustice, that they are being mistreated, that their talents are not recognized. And so they constantly stew and simmer and sieve in resentment and fury and suppressed fury and rage. And so on. And I would say that in terms of collectives, we have reached a condition in the world which is similar to the 1930s where the vast majority of collectives in the world, nation states and so, felt essentially like covert narcissists. The Germans in the 1930s gave rise to Nazism and Adolf Hitler precisely because they were in a covert Nazi state of mind. And today, Trumpism or the phenomenon of Trump is founded on the covert narcissism of large swathes of the American population. These are people who think they deserve better. They got the short end of the stick. But if you were to investigate, why do you think you deserve better? What are your merits? What are your talents? What are your skills? What's your education? What do you think you deserve better? Well, the fact is they don't deserve better. So when you divorce from reality, the test is are you divorced from reality? If you are really a genius and you're being mistreated or if you are really educated and you don't get a job, that's a justified grievance. It's a justified grievance. The grievances embedded in the American constitution are justified. These were realistic grievances. But if your grievances are founded on an impaired reality testing on a wrong self-perception because you don't perceive reality, you have a cognitive deficiency, that's sickness, that's a pathology. And yes, collectives can be pathologized this way, absolutely. And then they give rise to inverted narcissism because the relationship between the base of Donald Trump, the voters of Donald Trump and Donald Trump is exactly like the relationship between an inverted narcissist and a classic narcissist. Because what the inverted narcissist does, she uses the glory, she busks in the glory, the reflected glory of her classic narcissism. These bikers and blue collar workers and uneducated masses and so on, all over the United States, they bask in the glory of Donald Trump. It's like his light reflects on them. And I'm mentioning Donald Trump as an example, but you have the same in the Philippines and the same in Brazil and the same in Hungary and the same everywhere. There's a rise of class, class of overt grandiose narcissists, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Duterte, Bolsonaro, I mean, you name it, Netanyahu. I mean, you have a class of narcissists and psychopaths who took over the world, literally. Why? Because the underlying populace is a covert narcissist. And their only way to obtain narcissistic supply is via the fuel, via the leader. We have reverted to the fuel, coincide all over the world. That's fascinating. Absolutely. Sam, would you say that the covert narcissist, that there is a splitting between self-hater and grandiosity? Is there sort of a shift between those two all the time and inside? The covert narcissist has a very negative surface. That's the difference between the main difference between the covert narcissist and the overt narcissist. The covert narcissist has a very negative surface, a self-image that is essentially depressing. I'm no good, I'm a zero, I'm a failure, I can get nowhere, I can learn nothing. I cannot study, I cannot attain degrees, I cannot find a job, I cannot date a girl, I cannot so. In a dialogue, constant, in a ticker tape, inside the covert narcissist, is I cannot do, I cannot be, I cannot accomplish. The inner dialogue of the overt narcissist is exactly the opposite. I can do anything I want. I can accomplish anything if I set my mind to it. Coaches like Tony Robbins and Jordan, and people like Jordan Peterson, they are catering to this internal narcissistic dialogue. If you, there's a giant inside you, they tell you, you just need to wake it up, you know? If you just put your mind to it, there's nothing you cannot do, the law of attraction, the secrets, you know? These are all super narcissistic messages. But they cater only to overt or classic narcissists. The covert narcissists would reject such messages. For example, covert narcissists feels very, very ill at ease, very bad when she receives narcissistic supply directly. If you were to go to a covert narcissist and tell her, you know what, you're extremely talented, she would be very, very disconfident. She would try to avoid you from that moment on. But if you go to a classic narcissist and you tell her, you're very, very talented, you become her favorite, her favorite, you know? You may even end up having one late stay. It's all it takes. So the differences are critical. The difference between covert and overt narcissists are so fundamental and foundational and profound that it's debatable whether the word narcissism fits here. I would use a word that Milan used, which I find much more appropriate. He called these types compensatory types. These are types who try to compensate for what Abler called an innate inferiority complex. And the way they're doing this is by creating grandiose fantasies which they are trying to realize via third parties. I mentioned, I think last time we spoke, foul doctor. In Germany in the 90th century, if you were a woman with zero education but you were married to a doctor, everyone in the city called you foul doctor. That's a perfect example of covert or inverted narcissism because by herself, she would have never attempted to become a doctor. She would not have trusted herself to complete a degree and so on. But by getting married to a real doctor, by reflection she became a doctor. And that satisfies her grandiose fantasy. So the covert narcissists landscape, inner landscape, is a landscape of doubt, a landscape of shame, a landscape of shyness, a landscape of avoidance. It's a landscape of recalcitrance and withdrawal from the world. While the classic narcissists is impelled and compelled to approach the world in order to extracts from the world by force if necessary, narcissistic supply. And Sam, the cerebral versus semantic? When the narcissist tries to obtain supply, the first question is of course, what are the assets that are at my disposal which I can leverage to obtain supply? So if you're an idiot with muscles, you will use your muscles. If you are intellectually endowed, then you would use your intellect. And so there are two types of narcissists, the brawn and the brain. They are those narcissists who use sex, bodybuilding, appearance, looks, attire. They cultivate, they nurture their external appearance and they use it to obtain supply. And because the only thing you can obtain with external appearance is sex, there's no other thing you can really obtain with it in today's environment at least. That's their supply, sex. So they use their external appearance to obtain casual sex partners, the monopethic. Then this is the supply. And they are the somatic narcissists. Soma in Greek, ancient Greek, means bulking. The cerebral narcissists are narcissists who are intellectually endowed to some extent or to a very large extent. And they use their intellect for precisely the same reason. They are intellectually pyrotechnic, fire-wise, intellectual fireworks. And that garner supply, for example, I'm giving you an interview, that's supply. So they're intellect, they display their intellect. They're exhibitionistic. Both types are exhibitionistic. They display their intellect, they bring into the table their brain, their mind, amazing mind, kaleidoscopic, colorful, stunning, synoptic mind. And this gets them supply. Now, one thing that people I think are very confused about, there is no type of constancy. Cerebral can become somatic and does become somatic. Whenever the cerebral loses a source of supply or when the cerebral is faced or controls a willing partner, it becomes somatic on a dime. No problem whatsoever. So if a guru or a top-level intellectual were to meet a very, very beautiful student who would offer him sex, trust me, he would become somatic, that's very safe. Somatic and cerebral are modes of obtaining supply and narcissists are not picky, not choosing, whatever works. But for the intellectual narcissists, for the intelligent narcissists, and so on, what works is usually the intellect. So while there's no type constancy, there's type dominance, recessive and dominant. So the intellectual, the cerebral narcissists would emphasize this. Now, usually cerebral narcissists don't look so good. I mean, they're not, you know. So it's difficult for them to obtain willing partners, willing sexual partners and so on. So they end up in most cases being celibate and they focus on their intellect because their intellect guarantees a stream of, a stream of narcissistic supply and the interrupted stream. So why waste the time on trying to obtain sex when failure is almost guaranteed? Similarly, the somatic narcissists doesn't bother to develop his intellectual faculties if he has any, because his muscles do the job pretty well. It's a default state. We all tend to gravitate towards what we do best. And what the intellectual does best is to talk, what the somatic does best is to display his body and then use it in sex. So they both end up doing almost exclusively this, but there is type fluidity. Narcissists, all narcissists are both if they can manage it. Would the cerebral be less view the body as an irritation because it's the brain that is focused on that it's an irritation? Yeah. Not only an irritation, but the source of negative narcissistic supply. The hindrance. It's not pleasant to be rejected by women all the time. You're a genius that you're unique and that you're this, but while a woman takes one look at you and goes the other way, and she usually goes the other way with the somatic narcissists, who is not 5% your intellect. And so the body becomes a source of frustration. And we have a hypothesis by Donald in 1939. Donald discovered that frustration is invariably converted to aggression. So narcissists, cerebral narcissists are very aggressive towards their bodies because their bodies are sources of frustration. They neglect their bodies. They punish their bodies. They tend to ignore their bodies. They're very neglected. Their health is failing and so on. And they don't exercise. They overeat because their bodies constantly frustrate them. Now with the somatic, Sam, if there is a lot less intelligence there, then that somatic narcissists can't be cerebral because there isn't the intelligence there to support it. So that would be sort of difficult to do that, whereas the cerebral can... How lucky we are that we have 8 billion people because even the somatic can find women who are much more stupid than he is and can be impressed by his infinite intelligence. Right. And Sam, the COVID female somatic narcissists, can you give us the characteristics of them and how they see their partners, how they work with their intimate partners? Well, the vast majority of COVID narcissists are women. Right. So it's a bit redundant to ask about COVID female narcissists. Females. Most COVID narcissists are women. And exactly as most borderlines are women. The male COVID narcissists is extremely rare because male are testosterone laden and they are usually extroverted. Extroverted, they go out there and they get things done. And they're hunted, you know? So vast majority of classic narcissists are male, about 75%, we think, are male. And vast majority of COVID narcissists, probably also 75%, no one made a study, but probably are female. And so the question is redundant. I mean, there's nothing to it because what I've just described regarding COVID narcissists is about female narcissists. And in terms of the, you said in another seminar that the COVID somatic narcissists in intercourse views the partner as almost a dead object. I think you said something like that. The narcissists, not the COVID narcissists. The COVID narcissists would tend to be, would tend to be largely asexual actually because the COVID narcissists has a deep set in priority complex. She also usually has body dysmorphic disorders. She misperceives her body as too fat, too ugly, too old to do something. So she would generally avoid sex. She would be either a teaser and in this case, she would have comorbid histrionic personality disorder. But even if she's histrionic, she would still avoid sex. She would be what used to be called Phrygian. She would engage in sex only when she is disinhibited. So many of these women would drink on purpose in order to engage in sex. They would abuse substances. They would drink alcohol or smoke, weed or something in order to engage in sex because otherwise they can't. To give them the freedom. They need to. Yes. To give them, to disinhibit them. Part of their inhibitions, part of the reason they don't have sex in a normal state is that their covert narcissism inhibits them. The feeling that they are imperfect, that they're inadequate, that they are repulsive, that they are inhibited, of course. And so they, to overcome this, they drink and smoke and then they are disinhibited. They have a grandiose view of themselves. There's something called alcohol myopia. It's, when you drink, you become grandiose. And you think you can do anything. You perceive your own attractiveness. And the attractiveness of people around you very roguely. It's known as beer gobbles. And so it changes things and allows the covert narcissists to have sex, but normally she would be sexless or asexual. It is the narcissist who regards sex as a form of competition. So it's the narcissist, for example, who would monitor how many times his partner climax or doesn't, and would monitor other performance parameters. Or even inquire openly, was they good? Was they good? Was it as good as last time? Was it as good as your last boyfriend? It's a scorecard. He keeps a scorecard of one big quiz show or something. So narcissists are competitive and ambitious and grandiose in sex as well. And they use the partner's body to masturbate with, on, and in. There's no real interrelatedness or interconnectedness. But the partner is perceived as an animated dildo if it's a woman or animated sex though with taste and smells or periphery. And so they must debate with the partner's body. It's very autoerotic. In other words, the eroticism, and this was observed, first observed by Freud, the eroticism of the narcissist, the libido, the sex drive, is directed at the self, not at others, because object relations, the ability to perceive others is interrupted in early childhood. And the narcissist's sex drive is never externalized. It's internalized. And so the narcissist needs the regards himself as the erotic object. It's very common for narcissists during the sexual act to actually look at themselves in the mirror. Or stop in the middle of the sex act. Stop and have a look at their own bodies. Like this.