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Narcissism: But what about me? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hey, before we get started, everyone, this is Chuck and
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how stuff Works
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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:41
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel is with
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Speaker 1: us again today. No guest producer, Noel. That's right. So
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Speaker 1: Did you ever get two dollar bills? His gifts from
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Speaker 1: know it was. It was weird. They're almost like works
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Speaker 1: of art, but novelty like X ray specs or something
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Speaker 1: do we have those? No? Okay with that, the the
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Speaker 1: inaugural one. Yeah, SYSK shorts okay, like six minute episodes
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Speaker 1: like the old days. Okay, we'll get back to that.
2:20
Speaker 1: I'll save us a lot of time every week if
2:22
Speaker 1: we do those or maybe yeah, we should just do
2:24
Speaker 1: those and not the deep dives that we've become known for.
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Speaker 1: Over the best in years and kiss our careers, goodbye,
2:32
Speaker 1: goodbye careers, Thank you for coming. So narcissism, Oh, let's
2:37
Speaker 1: let's get to it. Let's get serious. How do you
2:38
Speaker 1: feel about all this? Um? So anytime, Chuck, when you
2:42
Speaker 1: and I are researching one of these things separately, of course,
2:46
Speaker 1: But when we're researching these, I'm always going, like the
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Speaker 1: mental health ones, I'm always like, um, is this me?
2:52
Speaker 1: Is this describing me? And sometimes they do, you know?
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Speaker 1: And this one is is no exception. There are certainly
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Speaker 1: some parts to it, but as we'll see later, I
3:01
Speaker 1: fall toward more toward one end of the spectrum than another.
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Speaker 1: But either way, I would not say that I'm clinical
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Speaker 1: in any sense of the word. As a narcissist, I'm
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Speaker 1: pretty sure. So yeah, how about you. Did you sit
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Speaker 1: there and think about me while you're researching this too?
3:17
Speaker 1: It sounds like a narcissistic statement. Uh No, I didn't.
3:21
Speaker 1: I didn't think about myself. If that's what you were
3:23
Speaker 1: really asking, it was because I think I'm probably the
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Speaker 1: opposite of a narcissist. So you just walk around thinking
3:30
Speaker 1: like I'm just not good enough all the time. No, because,
3:33
Speaker 1: as we will learn, many narcissists at their core think
3:37
Speaker 1: that deep down. Well, yeah, that's actually supposed to be
3:40
Speaker 1: one of the defining traits of narcissism, which is kind
3:43
Speaker 1: of surprising for people who don't know about it, because
3:46
Speaker 1: when you think narcissists, you think just a complete conceited
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Speaker 1: jackass who's just totally self involved and couldn't care less
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Speaker 1: about you and your family and the fact that you've
3:56
Speaker 1: got like a whole being worn in the one sweater
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Speaker 1: you will. They don't care about that. They just want
4:02
Speaker 1: to push you around and take your pocket change. That's
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Speaker 1: a narcissist. And yeah, I have had a lot of
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Speaker 1: experience with narcissists in my life though, so I have
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Speaker 1: a a lot to say about it. Probably won't say
4:15
Speaker 1: much of it because of protecting the innocent. You could
4:18
Speaker 1: use like pseudonyms like um, like I know this narcissist,
4:22
Speaker 1: I've worked with him for a decade. His name is
4:24
Speaker 1: squash Park. That would work. I think that would protect people. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think my definition of narcissism after reading this especially too,
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Speaker 1: is uh, it's probably less clinical and more experiential for me,
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Speaker 1: which is basically just a general, singular point of view
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Speaker 1: that is only from that person's eyeballs, like an an
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Speaker 1: inability to like see anything from anyone else's point of
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Speaker 1: view other than their own, and not even recognizing that
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Speaker 1: that's happening. Well, I yeah, I think that's kind of
5:01
Speaker 1: part of it too, is is you're so sure you're
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Speaker 1: right and and just so confident in your own answers
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Speaker 1: and thoughts and beliefs that that it would be basically
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Speaker 1: impossible to see anyone else's perspective. So whatever the opposite,
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Speaker 1: I have a clinical problem with putting myself in other
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Speaker 1: places too much, to a debilitating degree. Probably, Yeah, am
5:24
Speaker 1: I putting that person out? Am? I? Oh my gosh?
5:26
Speaker 1: Did I get in that person's way? Did I do
5:29
Speaker 1: something to upset someone? I wonder if that compliment I
5:32
Speaker 1: gave the checkout clerk of the grocery store was nice enough?
5:37
Speaker 1: Is that what you do? No? Not really? All right.
5:41
Speaker 1: I think you're just fairly emotionally stable, and your personality
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Speaker 1: is pretty stable too. I don't think you have a
5:47
Speaker 1: lot to worry about either way. Well, maybe not that
5:49
Speaker 1: small realm of my life, but no, I mean personality
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Speaker 1: was you got a pretty pretty good solid personality, Chuck.
5:56
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, yeah, man. And and you know, one
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Speaker 1: of the things that stuck out to me when I
6:00
Speaker 1: was researching this is this is pretty much a persistent
6:03
Speaker 1: theme with psychology. Is psychology is the study of how
6:09
Speaker 1: you're failing to fit into society in a good way,
6:14
Speaker 1: you know, like that's the whole point of it, because
6:17
Speaker 1: we've assigned psychology this this um role of determining what's normal,
6:23
Speaker 1: who's normal, who's not, and then hopefully treating the people
6:27
Speaker 1: who aren't normal. But really that's that that definition of
6:30
Speaker 1: normalcy comes down to. We all live in society and
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Speaker 1: either you've you fit in pretty well or you don't
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Speaker 1: fit in, and there's you know, a spectrum in between.
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Speaker 1: And that's what psychology does, is look at all the
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Speaker 1: different ways people have trouble fitting in in a peaceful, quiet,
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Speaker 1: uh socially acceptable manner, and this is this is one
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Speaker 1: of them. This is one of the most prominent ones.
6:51
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons it is so prominent is
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Speaker 1: because narcissism um, the word itself, has almost lost entire
7:00
Speaker 1: early it's clinical meaning because it's been so thoroughly hijacked
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Speaker 1: by pop culture, which has been fostered, I have to say,
7:08
Speaker 1: by some psychologists in the field who who you know,
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Speaker 1: used pop culture to point to the idea that narcissism
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Speaker 1: is on the rise or whatever. So it's it's almost
7:17
Speaker 1: just completely lost its meaning. Um, And there's a lot
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Speaker 1: of questions about, you know, how meaningful is a diagnosis
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Speaker 1: of narcissism these days. Um, it seems like there is
7:27
Speaker 1: still some agreement that there is what you would consider
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Speaker 1: a personality disorder right called narcissistic personality disorder, and that
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Speaker 1: it's exceedingly rare. I saw something like two thousand people
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Speaker 1: in the United States probably have it. That's really rare,
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Speaker 1: but that there is possibly such a thing as a
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Speaker 1: trait that a person can have which you would call narcissism,
7:53
Speaker 1: which if you're saying all that person is so narcissistic,
7:56
Speaker 1: that's what you would be referring to, and you could
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Speaker 1: conceivably call at a subclinical level of narcissism. But that's
8:03
Speaker 1: increasingly coming into greater and greater question. Yeah, Like to me,
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Speaker 1: I think it fully exists on a spectrum, and we'll
8:10
Speaker 1: get to all this because other people feel like uh,
8:14
Speaker 1: scientists feel like it does as well. But um, that's
8:17
Speaker 1: for that's for later in the episode. Well, let's let's
8:20
Speaker 1: do something really radically weird, and let's actually start by
8:24
Speaker 1: defining narcissism. Actually, let's do something even weirder, chalk. Let's
8:30
Speaker 1: start with a nice little dollarp of mythology. Okay, you
8:34
Speaker 1: want to sure the story of Narcissus, which you're laughing at.
8:40
Speaker 1: It's like to too. So what do you say narcissist? Oh? Interesting,
8:46
Speaker 1: I have You're not the first person to say it
8:48
Speaker 1: like that, though, I have heard narcissus, and I think
8:50
Speaker 1: it's usually British people who say it like that. See,
8:54
Speaker 1: I might be getting it from the Indigo Girl song.
8:57
Speaker 1: Did that? I don't remember that one? Which one? Uh?
9:01
Speaker 1: Can you sing a little bit uh hammer and a nail?
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Speaker 1: I think, yes, I don't know the narcis There's a
9:09
Speaker 1: line where they say I look a lot like Narcissus. Huh, yeah,
9:13
Speaker 1: that's probably where you got it. Then, I mean, I'm
9:16
Speaker 1: sure that's where I got it, and probably had never
9:17
Speaker 1: heard anyone say it before. Emily sailors Man, that's I
9:23
Speaker 1: don't know, all right, so Narcissus was in the in
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Speaker 1: the myth was a apparently he was a boy that
9:31
Speaker 1: was so beautiful and so good looking. And this is
9:34
Speaker 1: how these myths go. They're always kind of, you know,
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Speaker 1: little hokey, uh like, this is the child that is
9:40
Speaker 1: so good looking that they will just destroy their lives
9:44
Speaker 1: in the world with their good looks. And so a
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Speaker 1: prophet name Teresius. Does that? Does that sound right? Okay? Yeah,
9:56
Speaker 1: I have no issues with that, all right, said to
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Speaker 1: said to the parents, prince, you better make sure this
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Speaker 1: kid Narcissus never sees himself because it's gonna be big trouble.
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Speaker 1: And do you think he's bad? Now? Wait until so
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Speaker 1: the parents are like, all right, I got you. No
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Speaker 1: mirrors in the house, no uh, no shiny brass babbles,
10:18
Speaker 1: no stainless steel refrigerator, no windows, no nothing in our
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Speaker 1: house that's reflective because we gotta keep our son from
10:26
Speaker 1: seeing himself. Yeah. And so I guess they were pretty
10:30
Speaker 1: successful for a while for basically the kid's whole life.
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Speaker 1: And as Narcissus or narcissist men, you've got me going now. Um.
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Speaker 1: As he grew older, he was clearly aware of his looks,
10:43
Speaker 1: because he he would anybody who fell for him. He'd
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Speaker 1: be like, yeah, you're you're great, but you're not good
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Speaker 1: enough for me. I'm sorry. Um, takeoff, hoser, was his
10:53
Speaker 1: famous line. And so all the hosers would take off
10:57
Speaker 1: and cry and cry and cry, And so he knew
10:59
Speaker 1: he was good looking, but he still hadn't seen himself.
11:03
Speaker 1: And um, one of the hosers that he told to
11:05
Speaker 1: take off was a I think a wood nymph, right,
11:10
Speaker 1: wasn't she? Or she was some sort Yeah, she was
11:12
Speaker 1: a nymph named Echo, and Echo was just had it
11:17
Speaker 1: about as bad for narcissust as as a nymph could
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Speaker 1: possibly have it for a good looking boy. And she said,
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Speaker 1: I'm so sad. I'm just going to just lie here
11:27
Speaker 1: and cry. And she cried and cried and cried so
11:30
Speaker 1: much so that she became nothing more than her own voice,
11:33
Speaker 1: which you can still hear if you shout into the
11:35
Speaker 1: in the mountains, and that's where the echo comes from.
11:38
Speaker 1: So he went on along this path, kind of leaving
11:43
Speaker 1: a trail of of ladies in his wake, uh, helplessly
11:47
Speaker 1: heartbroken until finally, and he should have known this was
11:51
Speaker 1: coming because her name of this Goddess was Nemesis right,
11:56
Speaker 1: so you should have been steered clear there. But he
12:00
Speaker 1: only wrong to Nemesis and broke her heart. And she
12:03
Speaker 1: was like, well, you know what, my name is Nemesis
12:05
Speaker 1: for a reason, and uh, I'm gonna punish you, sir.
12:10
Speaker 1: Uh here, walk with me to this pool and look
12:13
Speaker 1: down upon yourself, or maybe you're a little bit thirsty.
12:16
Speaker 1: So he went down to get some water and he
12:18
Speaker 1: was like, hellay, look at that fella. And he was
12:23
Speaker 1: in love with himself. Yeah, he fell head over heels
12:25
Speaker 1: in love with himself. But there's a couple of problems
12:27
Speaker 1: with this. This this whole story would have gone totally different.
12:32
Speaker 1: Had Narcissis been like, I'm in love with myself, I'm
12:35
Speaker 1: going to take that self love and turn it into
12:38
Speaker 1: something really great and share that with the world. Right,
12:41
Speaker 1: it's going to be self confidence and productivity. I'm gonna
12:44
Speaker 1: fit into society just perfectly. But that's not what happened
12:48
Speaker 1: because it was a superficial love. He was in love
12:50
Speaker 1: with how he looked, right. The problem with that is
12:53
Speaker 1: is he could never have himself. It takes a mate,
12:57
Speaker 1: another person. It's another big thing in society too, Right,
13:01
Speaker 1: you gotta couple up right, Um. So he was doomed
13:05
Speaker 1: forever to have an unrequited love for himself, and so
13:09
Speaker 1: since the closest he could get was his reflection, he
13:11
Speaker 1: just stayed by that pool forever and ever and ever
13:15
Speaker 1: look at him and turned into a flower, the narcissist flower. Yeah,
13:19
Speaker 1: a John Queel flower. Yeah. They're very pretty. It's like
13:22
Speaker 1: a daffodil, a nice daffodil. Yeah. So that's the story
13:26
Speaker 1: of where it came from. And uh, well, now we
13:29
Speaker 1: should define it because you promise that so that that
13:34
Speaker 1: story is pretty old. I think it's Greek at least,
13:37
Speaker 1: if not maybe even older than that. UM. But in
13:40
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century the Victorians realized that this is a
13:44
Speaker 1: pretty good, pretty good allegory for a certain type of person.
13:49
Speaker 1: And these type of people today now we know. I
13:52
Speaker 1: guess the classical definition of a of a narcissist or
13:56
Speaker 1: a clinical clinical narcissist is basically somebody who's sense of
14:02
Speaker 1: self importance UM, and a sense of entitlement that arises
14:08
Speaker 1: from that sense of self importance is so great and
14:12
Speaker 1: so ridiculously over exaggerated and so in a lot of
14:15
Speaker 1: ways unfounded that UM it leads to a lot of
14:20
Speaker 1: harm in their life. They have a lot of trouble.
14:23
Speaker 1: They there. It's usually pretty easy for them to make
14:25
Speaker 1: new friendships, but they don't last very long. They have
14:29
Speaker 1: trouble accepting criticism. They may lash out, they may be aggressive,
14:33
Speaker 1: They're usually fairly extroverted. Again, this is the classical clinical
14:37
Speaker 1: criteria for um for a narcissist um. And they apparently,
14:45
Speaker 1: like you said before, are harboring at their base, a
14:50
Speaker 1: real lack of genuine self esteem or a real lack
14:55
Speaker 1: of genuine self love, and that that lack is so
15:00
Speaker 1: deep and so profound that it's reflected conversely on the
15:05
Speaker 1: outside as just utter and complete arrogance and disregard for
15:09
Speaker 1: other people's feelings. Yes, that is the classical definition or
15:15
Speaker 1: criteria for a narcissist. But as we'll learn, there's another.
15:20
Speaker 1: There's actually two sides to that same narcissism coin. Yes,
15:25
Speaker 1: so let's go back to some more of the history there.
15:28
Speaker 1: Like you said, the Victorians, they were all into this,
15:31
Speaker 1: you know, kind of burgeoning psychoanalysis labeling of things. And
15:38
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen nineties there was a sexologist name
15:43
Speaker 1: Havelock Ellis, and I really By the way, I hated
15:47
Speaker 1: all these little parenthetical uh in this article on how
15:51
Speaker 1: stuff works, it's these little parenthetical asides, little judgments that
15:56
Speaker 1: this all they wrote, like Havelock Ellis, that's his real aim,
16:00
Speaker 1: Like have Luck Ellis, that's a I mean, have a
16:03
Speaker 1: lack is an interesting name, but it's not like unbelievable
16:07
Speaker 1: in it. Can you believe this, folks? He sucked me.
16:09
Speaker 1: He's not normal, and it gets worse. I'll point out
16:12
Speaker 1: all three. Thank you, buddy, I'm glad I'm plodding for you.
16:16
Speaker 1: Then well, what bugs you bugs me? Most likely? You
16:19
Speaker 1: know what's what's great is is that's absolutely true. Like
16:22
Speaker 1: when I'm researching I I can That's why I knew
16:25
Speaker 1: you were thinking of me when when researching narcissism, because
16:30
Speaker 1: I was thinking of myself too. Uh. So have Alack
16:33
Speaker 1: Ellis said that if you masturbate a lot, then you're
16:38
Speaker 1: sort of a narcissist or narcissist like yeah, and you're
16:42
Speaker 1: making the saints cry that's right. Uh. And then others
16:47
Speaker 1: came along he said, yeah, this is this is a thing.
16:50
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen hundreds, like a nineteen eleven there
16:52
Speaker 1: was another analyst name Otto Rank, who said a no
16:56
Speaker 1: snarky comment about that name, um put out a paper
17:00
Speaker 1: that he's he really kind of dug into narcissism and
17:04
Speaker 1: went beyond the just sexual nature of Havelock Ellis and said,
17:10
Speaker 1: this is just a more generalized definition of someone who
17:14
Speaker 1: is sort of self obsessed, right right, So he kind of, yeah,
17:18
Speaker 1: he took it into a bit of a condition, a
17:21
Speaker 1: personality type. You could say, I think it's yeah, Um,
17:27
Speaker 1: we should do I don't know Havelock Ellis had anything
17:29
Speaker 1: to do with it, but you know, so like Graham
17:31
Speaker 1: crackers were invented to prevent people from masturbating so much,
17:35
Speaker 1: how does that work? It was just totally made up,
17:38
Speaker 1: but it was this part of um, like that whole
17:40
Speaker 1: Road to Wellville kind of thing to you you ever see
17:42
Speaker 1: that movie with Anthony Hopkins. I know the movie. I
17:44
Speaker 1: never saw it. Same here, I never saw it either.
17:47
Speaker 1: We should watch it together, all right, But um, we
17:49
Speaker 1: should also do a whole podcast on that whole that
17:52
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century like nutrition for like life improvement. Okay,
17:59
Speaker 1: we're gonna do that episod. So after Havelock Ellison Auto Rank,
18:04
Speaker 1: there was get this guy's name, Sigmund Freud. He comes
18:10
Speaker 1: along after Rank, Uh, and I don't think that was
18:13
Speaker 1: the first time. I feel like I've seen their names
18:15
Speaker 1: together before in plenty of other ways. Um, at the
18:19
Speaker 1: very least they were contemporaries. Because three years after Rank said,
18:22
Speaker 1: you know what, I think this narcissism thing goes beyond
18:24
Speaker 1: people who engage in self abuse a little too often. Um,
18:29
Speaker 1: Freud came along and he hit the nail on the head,
18:33
Speaker 1: as I think, I think Freud's gonna be like a
18:36
Speaker 1: religious icon in three or five or thousand years. I
18:40
Speaker 1: really think so. I think this guy really got a
18:42
Speaker 1: lot of stuff right in a lot of ways that
18:44
Speaker 1: he he stopped getting credit for. And I think the
18:47
Speaker 1: reason why is this chuck. He he has pigeonholed into
18:51
Speaker 1: the compartment of psychology, where I think he was a psychoanalyst.
18:56
Speaker 1: He was a psychologist, but I think more than anything,
19:00
Speaker 1: he was one of the great thinkers who's ever lived.
19:04
Speaker 1: And I think the idea that you're approaching everything at
19:08
Speaker 1: him or everything he's ever said, from the idea that
19:11
Speaker 1: this is a psychologist saying this, rather than this is
19:13
Speaker 1: a great thinker who can think or talk about anything
19:17
Speaker 1: has said it kind of makes you makes people miss
19:20
Speaker 1: the mark a little bit on him. If he had
19:22
Speaker 1: been noted more for his philosophy, then yeah, his psychology.
19:27
Speaker 1: The Yeah, I think, I think you'd have a lot
19:29
Speaker 1: more credibility in the world. Well, he came along and
19:32
Speaker 1: in terms of narcissism said, you know what, I think,
19:34
Speaker 1: not only is it psycho sexual in nature, but I
19:38
Speaker 1: think everybody goes through this phase at some point. But
19:42
Speaker 1: you are only a true narcissist if you don't progress
19:45
Speaker 1: past that phase. Basically yep. And that's kind of still today.
19:48
Speaker 1: So that was what nineteen fourteen when he came up
19:51
Speaker 1: with that theory. That's basically still pretty well established, so
19:55
Speaker 1: much so that it's it's not even attributed to Freud anymore.
19:58
Speaker 1: It's just like, yeah, that's human nature. You as you age,
20:02
Speaker 1: you enter into a period of self love that that
20:05
Speaker 1: you would basically call a narcissistic phase, and then as
20:08
Speaker 1: you get a little older and mellow out, you start
20:11
Speaker 1: to turn your love towards other people in the world
20:14
Speaker 1: in general, and that's part of a natural personality development. Yeah,
20:19
Speaker 1: but it's still It took a psychoanalyst name Robert Velte
20:24
Speaker 1: who finally said, this is an actual um, an actual
20:29
Speaker 1: personality type, right, that we should study. And then William
20:36
Speaker 1: Wilhelm excuse me, vill Helm Reich parenthetical three Austrians in
20:41
Speaker 1: a row with the next exclamation point. Uh. So he
20:44
Speaker 1: came along and said that, well, first of all, narcissists
20:48
Speaker 1: are almost always men um and the thinking on that
20:53
Speaker 1: is not true anymore, although I still think usually men
20:58
Speaker 1: are thought up to be narcissist. Yeah, it's typically considered
21:01
Speaker 1: a male dominated condition, right yeah. Uh and he basically
21:06
Speaker 1: he he kind of put in words that link between
21:09
Speaker 1: masculinity and this narcissistic aggression that kind of can come
21:15
Speaker 1: along with being a narcissist, right, he said, it's dude.
21:19
Speaker 1: That was his big contribution. So then the along came
21:23
Speaker 1: a woman, a German psychoanalyst named Karen Horney. Go ahead, parenthetical.
21:29
Speaker 1: Finally a woman and yes that's her real name too, Okay,
21:33
Speaker 1: thank you, chuck um. And in nine Karen Horney should
21:37
Speaker 1: we say the parenthetical every time we say her name? No, No,
21:41
Speaker 1: it's probably a bad idea. So Karen Horney came along
21:44
Speaker 1: in nine and she's like, all right, everybody shut up,
21:47
Speaker 1: I've got this figured out. This article misses it. So
21:51
Speaker 1: she had she had this idea that, um, people have insecurities,
21:56
Speaker 1: and there are different personality types that deal with their
21:59
Speaker 1: their in the ccurities and with the expansive personality type,
22:04
Speaker 1: there were three sub types that dealt with their insecurities,
22:07
Speaker 1: and one of those was the narcissist. So narcissism was
22:12
Speaker 1: one way that some people deal with their insecurities, according
22:15
Speaker 1: to her, So she um, she kind of I guess
22:19
Speaker 1: her big contribution to it was too to point out
22:23
Speaker 1: that narcissism is a defense mechanism. That that was, which
22:27
Speaker 1: is a pretty significant breakthrough actually when you know, it
22:30
Speaker 1: went from it's people who masturbate too much to actually
22:33
Speaker 1: it's mostly guys and no, it's it's just a development stage,
22:36
Speaker 1: to wait a minute, wait a minute, this is a
22:38
Speaker 1: this is a this is how some people reflexively deal
22:43
Speaker 1: with the fact that they don't feel like they measure
22:46
Speaker 1: up deep down inside, which is kind of mind blowing
22:50
Speaker 1: thing to do, especially if you're not aware of it.
22:52
Speaker 1: Like it's not like something happens to you when you're
22:55
Speaker 1: a kid and you go, you know what, when I
22:57
Speaker 1: grow up, I'm gonna remember all this. But the way
23:00
Speaker 1: I'm going to deal with it is to be totally
23:04
Speaker 1: arrogant and pretend like I think that I'm the greatest
23:07
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened. You just watch now. I'm gonna
23:10
Speaker 1: wait twelve fifteen years and let the clock start taking now. Yeah,
23:14
Speaker 1: So that was late nineteen thirties, and then um, the
23:17
Speaker 1: next big breakthrough came in nineteen sixty with Annie Reich,
23:20
Speaker 1: who was Phil Helms wife, has just pointed out parenthetically,
23:24
Speaker 1: actually that one's sort of legit, although he could have
23:27
Speaker 1: just used comments. Sure, you know, all these parentheses are
23:32
Speaker 1: driving nuts. But this was a big breakthrough because she says,
23:36
Speaker 1: you know what, not only are people UM very vulnerable
23:39
Speaker 1: who are narcissists, but I think it comes that vulnerability
23:42
Speaker 1: might come from traumatic experience that they suffered when they
23:46
Speaker 1: were younger. Yeah, and the original source that's still like
23:49
Speaker 1: kind of a thought about things, not necessarily a trauma,
23:52
Speaker 1: but a lot of UM psychologists point to parents as
23:58
Speaker 1: as potentially the source for it, which we'll talk more
24:01
Speaker 1: about later. Yeah. And she also had the idea that
24:04
Speaker 1: UM narcissist there is no sort of middle ground. They
24:07
Speaker 1: can't suffer ambiguity. And it's basically I'm either totally successful
24:12
Speaker 1: or I'm a big failure, right, which means that they
24:15
Speaker 1: can't they can't handle criticism, which is a huge hallmark
24:19
Speaker 1: of the narcissistic personality disorder. Right. So there's another guy
24:23
Speaker 1: who didn't make it in this article but made a
24:25
Speaker 1: huge contribution. Actually two of them. One was Henry Murray,
24:29
Speaker 1: and back in he noticed that there was something that
24:32
Speaker 1: he termed a covert narcissist. Where most most people, when
24:36
Speaker 1: you think of a narcissist, you think overt narcissists, like
24:39
Speaker 1: people who are just completely, obviously publicly in love with themselves.
24:44
Speaker 1: But Henry Murray said, no, there's another type I've noticed.
24:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him covert narcissists. And and they share
24:49
Speaker 1: in common with overt narcissists this um conceit and arrogance,
24:55
Speaker 1: and they value their own needs other other over other
24:58
Speaker 1: people's needs. So at their core they are narcissistic, but
25:02
Speaker 1: the way that their narcissism plays out publicly is basically
25:07
Speaker 1: the opposite of a of an overt narcissist. Rather than
25:11
Speaker 1: being brash and self assured and confident and cocky, they're
25:14
Speaker 1: actually quiet. They're introverted. All of their psychodrama plays out
25:20
Speaker 1: inside and they become anxious, they're very vulnerable, they get
25:24
Speaker 1: very defensive and then back and then later on in
25:27
Speaker 1: the nineties again named Paul Wink reclassified covert and over
25:31
Speaker 1: into grandiosity, exhibitionism, and then vulnerability sensitivity. And the vulnerability
25:38
Speaker 1: sensitivity type of narcissists is basically, um, they're entitled, they
25:43
Speaker 1: feel entitled, but they're also like very bitter, right, Yeah,
25:49
Speaker 1: it's a lot of anxiety, bitterness, Uh, defensive, Um, like
25:54
Speaker 1: you said before, introverted. And then one of the keys
25:57
Speaker 1: here I think is delusions of persecution and which can
26:01
Speaker 1: also be tied into paranoia. So everyone's out to get me,
26:05
Speaker 1: They're coming after me. Why is it always me? That
26:08
Speaker 1: kind of thinking? So it's like constant, complete absorption in
26:14
Speaker 1: the self. But rather than absorption in thinking about how
26:18
Speaker 1: awesome you are, you're thinking about how everything like the
26:22
Speaker 1: world's against you. But it's ultimately the two things that
26:25
Speaker 1: they should that the type share in common is that
26:28
Speaker 1: it all boils down to them. It's always about them
26:30
Speaker 1: one way or another. Yeah, for sure. Um, And that
26:34
Speaker 1: that was like incredibly insightful I think when you sent
26:37
Speaker 1: that one over. Thank you, Thank you, buddy, I found that.
26:40
Speaker 1: I found that article you did. Yeah. Uh. And then finally,
26:46
Speaker 1: finally in nineteen sixty eight, well actually uh, in six one,
26:51
Speaker 1: a man named John Ne Maya finally coined the term
26:55
Speaker 1: narcissistic character disorder, and then finally in Night Heinz cohort
27:00
Speaker 1: Um described it as narcissistic personality disorder. And then it
27:05
Speaker 1: would be another twelve years before we finally make it
27:09
Speaker 1: into the d s M as an actual diagnosed diagnostic description. Right,
27:16
Speaker 1: I think that yeah edition the d s M three, Right, yeah, okay,
27:21
Speaker 1: and chuck at this man. We are like twenty seven
27:24
Speaker 1: minutes into this episode. We're about to take our first
27:27
Speaker 1: ad break. That's a new record. Yeah, so we'll we'll
27:30
Speaker 1: be right back. We're gonna talk about me while you
27:33
Speaker 1: guys listen to these ads. But you can think about
27:36
Speaker 1: me as s k okay man, So you said that
28:00
Speaker 1: it finally made it into the d s M in
28:04
Speaker 1: and it is a specified personality disorder one of I
28:08
Speaker 1: don't remember how many there are, but um in the
28:12
Speaker 1: d s M this last go round, which was two
28:15
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, I think for the d s M five. Um,
28:20
Speaker 1: do you remember how the Press that got when they
28:22
Speaker 1: when they were putting the d s M with the
28:24
Speaker 1: actual UM term for his Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
28:28
Speaker 1: Mental Disorders, the American Psychological Association's Bible basically right where
28:35
Speaker 1: every psychologist and psychiatrists in all the land has this thing,
28:39
Speaker 1: and they're going through this saying, oh, this person has this, this,
28:42
Speaker 1: and this, so they actually qualify for this, so I
28:45
Speaker 1: can build insurance for this and and prescribe medication for this,
28:49
Speaker 1: and it's all legit like they this is what the
28:51
Speaker 1: d s M does. It's the bible for psychologists. And
28:55
Speaker 1: one of the there's a huge struggle UM in about
28:58
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten two thousan and eleven between people
29:01
Speaker 1: who said, Dude, these personality disorders are too they're too strict.
29:08
Speaker 1: You you either have it or you don't. And people,
29:11
Speaker 1: especially in terms of personality, just don't exist like that.
29:14
Speaker 1: We exist on spectrums. There's different dimensions, and we've talked
29:18
Speaker 1: about it before, I think in the Personality Inventory episode.
29:21
Speaker 1: But the viewpoint that enjoys the widest appreciation these days
29:26
Speaker 1: in the psychology community is the Big five traits, the
29:30
Speaker 1: ocean or canoe traits like openness or um, openness to
29:35
Speaker 1: new experiences or extra version, these kind of things. And
29:39
Speaker 1: and when you take these different personality traits, you get
29:42
Speaker 1: a clearer picture of people. And you can also take
29:45
Speaker 1: those traits and basically apply them to dysfunction of personality,
29:51
Speaker 1: and you can say, well, you've got these dysfunctions and
29:53
Speaker 1: we need to work on this, rather than you've got
29:55
Speaker 1: these five dysfunctions, which means you automatically qualify for narcissistic
29:59
Speaker 1: personalities order. So narcissistic personality disorder and narcissism almost didn't
30:04
Speaker 1: make it into the d s M five. But the
30:06
Speaker 1: people who were struggling for the big five traits to
30:09
Speaker 1: take over lost the battle, and and it stayed the same,
30:13
Speaker 1: just the way it's been since night. And we'll we'll
30:16
Speaker 1: talk about it more later. But there's a lot of
30:18
Speaker 1: um questions about whether it's legitimate. But the criteria, if
30:22
Speaker 1: you'll allow me, chuck, like the d s M S
30:25
Speaker 1: criteria for narcissistic personality disorder are these You would have
30:31
Speaker 1: to have a grandiose sense of self importance. It's pretty straightforward.
30:36
Speaker 1: You're preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty,
30:40
Speaker 1: or ideal love. What else you got that? Yes? Uh.
30:44
Speaker 1: Number three believes that he or she is special and
30:47
Speaker 1: unique and can only be understood by or should associate
30:50
Speaker 1: with other special people. Yeah right Um. This kind of
30:55
Speaker 1: like narcissists spurring all the hosers right right. Um. You
30:59
Speaker 1: require excessive admiration, right um, which means that you, uh,
31:04
Speaker 1: you want compliments, You fish for compliments, and flattery really
31:08
Speaker 1: gets you places with a narcissist too. Yeah, you have
31:12
Speaker 1: a high sense of entitlement. Um, you're interpersonally exploitive. This
31:16
Speaker 1: is a big one. Number seven. You lack empathy either
31:20
Speaker 1: you're not able to or you uh or you're not
31:23
Speaker 1: willing to write. Um. And then you're often envious of
31:27
Speaker 1: others or you think that other people are envious of you. Again,
31:30
Speaker 1: this all kind of reverts back to you thinking about
31:33
Speaker 1: how it's always about you, and that other people are
31:35
Speaker 1: walking around thinking about you at any given point in time. Uh.
31:39
Speaker 1: And then finally, uh, well you're arrogant and you're kind
31:43
Speaker 1: of a jerk, right and there you go. You put
31:47
Speaker 1: it together, and that's the that's the narcissist. And I
31:50
Speaker 1: think maybe five of nine qualify for a definitive narcissistic
31:56
Speaker 1: personality disorder UM diagnosis. Yeah, and the and what makes
32:02
Speaker 1: a person a narcissist is sort of a conundrum at
32:05
Speaker 1: this point. It's one of those things where and this
32:10
Speaker 1: article kind of points it out in a good way
32:12
Speaker 1: where nature and nurture are so mixed up, um, that
32:15
Speaker 1: we don't really know what where what can make someone
32:19
Speaker 1: a narcissist? Um. Certainly, probably or almost assuredly, it's a
32:24
Speaker 1: little bit of both, um, probably, like most things. But um,
32:28
Speaker 1: you could have parents that are and especially nowadays, I
32:31
Speaker 1: know with parenting is is like your child is the
32:36
Speaker 1: the unique snowflake, and you're the most special person on
32:39
Speaker 1: the planet, and you were the most perfect little angel.
32:43
Speaker 1: Kind of feeding a child that as they grow up, um,
32:47
Speaker 1: which is a more recent parenting technique. Yes, get this man.
32:51
Speaker 1: I read an article called how the self esteem Craze
32:54
Speaker 1: took over America. Yeah, um, I posted it, you know
32:57
Speaker 1: on my website are you serious Clark dot com? Um
33:00
Speaker 1: that I do reading lists, which is just like cool
33:02
Speaker 1: articles that I've read and it's on there. But they
33:06
Speaker 1: they traced us back to one book that came out
33:11
Speaker 1: called The Lovables in the Kingdom of Self Esteem a
33:15
Speaker 1: children's book, and they they said that like this was
33:19
Speaker 1: the sources thing took off and ended up in like
33:21
Speaker 1: basically classroom curriculum, and it raised this whole generation to
33:25
Speaker 1: have um more self esteem than any other generation has
33:30
Speaker 1: been raised on before. Yeah, not to knock self esteem though,
33:35
Speaker 1: I think I think though there is a general thought
33:38
Speaker 1: among some people that it has crossed the line between
33:41
Speaker 1: self esteem and entitlement. Yeah, there you go, so, I mean,
33:47
Speaker 1: and that is a huge debate because a lot of
33:49
Speaker 1: people on the other side say, actually, you're just being
33:52
Speaker 1: a crotchety old person who's aging and losing touch with
33:55
Speaker 1: what you know the world is doing these days. Um, yeah,
33:59
Speaker 1: I think that's that's just fascinating me. But we'll talk
34:02
Speaker 1: more about that later. But the parents are widely implicated
34:06
Speaker 1: right as as possibly the source of this. Yeah. Like
34:10
Speaker 1: Gene Twinge, she's one of the champions of um of narcissism.
34:15
Speaker 1: She co wrote a book with another researcher from the
34:18
Speaker 1: University of Georgia named W. Keith Campbell, and it was
34:22
Speaker 1: called The Narcissism Epidemic, which became more than just a
34:25
Speaker 1: book title. It was basically a term that made the
34:28
Speaker 1: rounds from two thousand and eight to even today. You
34:31
Speaker 1: can find it. Uh. It seems to have hit the
34:33
Speaker 1: high water mark back around two thousand and ten, eleven, twelve,
34:37
Speaker 1: maybe UM, but they they created this avalanche of discussion
34:41
Speaker 1: and press and talk and gene twine. One of the
34:44
Speaker 1: one of her hallmarks is to find support for her
34:48
Speaker 1: theory outside of the lab and more in pop culture.
34:52
Speaker 1: So one of the ways that she's she suggested that
34:55
Speaker 1: her theory is right, that narcissism is indeed on the
34:58
Speaker 1: rise among millennials, is that UM children are given much
35:03
Speaker 1: less common names than they were before. Yeah. I thought
35:06
Speaker 1: that was interesting. Um, that whole thing where you name
35:09
Speaker 1: your kid, uh apple Martini, and you're you're the only
35:15
Speaker 1: one in the world named Apple Martini. There's an Appletini
35:19
Speaker 1: in my class, but I'm Apple Martini, right. Uh, that
35:23
Speaker 1: is what a special, um, special little child. You are right,
35:26
Speaker 1: there shall be no other Apple Martini. Yeah. I think
35:29
Speaker 1: the stat they came up with was that in UM,
35:32
Speaker 1: the eighteen eightiest of boys received one of the ten
35:36
Speaker 1: most common names. Today fewer than ten percent too. Yeah,
35:39
Speaker 1: I mean I thought that was a little hanky to say. Well,
35:43
Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties, everyone was named Jack and John
35:46
Speaker 1: and William. Right. It's just completely it's just that's anecdotal evidence.
35:52
Speaker 1: It's basically that's trivia. That's not science. That's a trivia,
35:56
Speaker 1: is what it is. And that's part of the problem
35:59
Speaker 1: with all the so the idea that you can label
36:02
Speaker 1: an entire generation as narcissist by saying narcissism is on
36:06
Speaker 1: the rise, and then that in turn explains selfies and
36:11
Speaker 1: Facebook to the older people that it's actually a deficiency
36:14
Speaker 1: that these kids have. It's not me getting older, it's
36:16
Speaker 1: the kids. And now it's being proven by science. That's
36:20
Speaker 1: created this whole huge national conversation that's definitely taken narcissism
36:25
Speaker 1: very very far out of um, out of the research realm,
36:30
Speaker 1: and into just complete armchair pop psychology. Well here's some
36:34
Speaker 1: more pop psychology for you from me, because I see, well,
36:40
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not gonna make any judgment on
36:42
Speaker 1: today's millennials and how narcissistic they are, but I think
36:46
Speaker 1: that's that's fair. But I have seen narcissism, rampant narcissism
36:51
Speaker 1: in our parents generation. Oh yeah, yeah, the whole um
36:56
Speaker 1: what what general what was that generation. M I guess
37:00
Speaker 1: baby Boomers. Yeah, that's right, the Baby Boomers. They were
37:03
Speaker 1: just special in every single way, shape or form. Remember, Yeah,
37:06
Speaker 1: but that's the thing, like, uh I have I have
37:09
Speaker 1: seen it firsthand, um with with that generation where but
37:14
Speaker 1: it's it's not like, oh I'm into selfies and stuff
37:17
Speaker 1: like that, like it manifests itself in a completely different way.
37:21
Speaker 1: Or I'll uh, I'll get on the phone with my
37:24
Speaker 1: kid and talk for forty five minutes about myself without
37:28
Speaker 1: once ever asking how they're doing. You know, So so
37:32
Speaker 1: we should say here, yeah, this is the we're doing
37:35
Speaker 1: the same thing to that older generation though that they're
37:38
Speaker 1: doing to younger generations too, right you know. So maybe
37:43
Speaker 1: the point is narcissism isn't on the rise or on
37:46
Speaker 1: the decline at all. It's just always been there for
37:49
Speaker 1: a certain amount of people. Well there is a yes, Yes,
37:53
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence that that is absolutely true, Chuck. Like,
37:57
Speaker 1: for example, there's there was a really large study like
38:00
Speaker 1: thirty seven thousands something people, which were apparently a pretty
38:05
Speaker 1: good representation of American adults. Right, so it's a it's
38:10
Speaker 1: a good study population, and they asked them to self
38:14
Speaker 1: report the instances of narcissism that they've had throughout their life.
38:19
Speaker 1: And they basically scored whether these people had experienced any
38:25
Speaker 1: basically bouts of narcissistic personality disorder or some sort of
38:29
Speaker 1: clinical narcissism, right, And they found that the younger you were,
38:34
Speaker 1: the more prone you were to have reported being narcissistic.
38:38
Speaker 1: And so a lot of people point to that and say, see,
38:41
Speaker 1: it's on the rise with the younger generation. The older
38:43
Speaker 1: generation wasn't like that, And the other people who are
38:46
Speaker 1: critics of that say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. When you
38:49
Speaker 1: get older, one of the hallmarks of getting older is
38:51
Speaker 1: completely forgetting all the stuff you went through to get
38:55
Speaker 1: to that point in your life. Yeah, or how you
38:57
Speaker 1: are currently, right, that's another way to put it, too. So, um,
39:01
Speaker 1: there's a there's a big problem with the idea of
39:03
Speaker 1: just having people self report whether they were narcissistic back
39:06
Speaker 1: in their lives. But people who do say, okay, even
39:09
Speaker 1: if that was legitimate, they're they're forgetting. People are forgetting
39:13
Speaker 1: that everybody goes through a narcissistic phase in their life.
39:16
Speaker 1: And then yes, if you if you go younger and
39:19
Speaker 1: you start asking people about it while they're in their
39:22
Speaker 1: narcissistic phase. They're going to be more likely to report
39:25
Speaker 1: it than people who have forgotten because their narcissistic phase
39:28
Speaker 1: was decades ago. Right, um or the notion, and we'll
39:32
Speaker 1: get into the treatment a little bit more with with
39:34
Speaker 1: seeing a psychologist or a therapist, but one of the
39:38
Speaker 1: hallmarks of a narcissist is to go to a therapist
39:40
Speaker 1: for a little while, maybe for depression or something else
39:43
Speaker 1: which can be co morbid, and they dig down and
39:46
Speaker 1: get to the root of it and they're like, actually,
39:48
Speaker 1: you're a narcissist, and that's where all this stuff is
39:50
Speaker 1: coming from. And that's when the narcissist goes, this is nuts.
39:54
Speaker 1: I'm out of here, Like I'm not going to continue
39:56
Speaker 1: my therapy. You don't know what you're talking about, right,
39:58
Speaker 1: which is a huge problem apparent if you are a
40:01
Speaker 1: narcissist and you do, you are one of the very
40:03
Speaker 1: very few that end up in therapy. Um, you're there
40:08
Speaker 1: for some other reason. You're not like, oh, I'm a narcissist,
40:11
Speaker 1: I need help. It's what's this weird anxiety I've got
40:15
Speaker 1: dealing with all the time? Or why am I depressed?
40:17
Speaker 1: Or you know why am I flying off the handle
40:19
Speaker 1: at work? And HR sent me here? You know? Um?
40:23
Speaker 1: And so they will get to therapy, but even the
40:26
Speaker 1: ones that do get there apparently tend to wash out
40:29
Speaker 1: pretty quickly because part and parcel with with therapy is
40:33
Speaker 1: accepting criticism or other perspectives that you you may have
40:38
Speaker 1: some things to work on. And once you start hitting
40:41
Speaker 1: that that segment of therapy, the narcissist is probably going
40:46
Speaker 1: to say, you're an idiot and I'm out of here.
40:49
Speaker 1: I can't be associating with you. You went to Yale,
40:51
Speaker 1: not Harvard, right, And and like you said, surprising, Uh,
40:55
Speaker 1: it's surprising if they're in there to begin with, because
40:58
Speaker 1: part of being a narcissist is, on one hand, or
41:01
Speaker 1: at least in one kind of narcissist, is I got
41:04
Speaker 1: no problems. Why do I need to go to a therapist?
41:06
Speaker 1: Everything is great. I don't give a grap what anyone
41:09
Speaker 1: thinks about me. It's all good, bro. Right, So there's
41:14
Speaker 1: just some inherent problems with treating narcissism. I read a
41:18
Speaker 1: really interesting article in the Harvard Business Review, and it
41:22
Speaker 1: was basically advice to mentors about how to mentor a narcissist,
41:27
Speaker 1: and it did a really good job of explaining like
41:29
Speaker 1: some of the problems that you will have at work
41:32
Speaker 1: being a narcissist. Like on the one hand, and apparently
41:35
Speaker 1: studies have found that narcissists tend to congregate or aggregate
41:40
Speaker 1: towards the top of the food chain or the bottom
41:42
Speaker 1: of the food chain in corporate organizations, which is interesting. Yeah,
41:47
Speaker 1: And I would guess that would mostly be whether it
41:50
Speaker 1: was covert or overt narcissists, I'm not sure, but um,
41:54
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, being a narcissist, your your
41:57
Speaker 1: your personality traits can be valued or prized at a company.
42:01
Speaker 1: You know, if you're in sales and you have limitless
42:04
Speaker 1: confidence and if you get if you don't make a
42:06
Speaker 1: sale is because that guy was an idiot, not because
42:09
Speaker 1: you know you didn't do a very good job. So
42:11
Speaker 1: you're just right onto the next guy to to sell
42:14
Speaker 1: to the next person. Like that's that's that's highly valuable. Right.
42:18
Speaker 1: But eventually somebody's going to criticize you a cowork or
42:22
Speaker 1: something like that. It's gonna hit you the wrong way.
42:24
Speaker 1: You're not gonna take it very well because you're gonna
42:26
Speaker 1: know that they're right, But your response to that kind
42:29
Speaker 1: of thing is not to go chew it over process
42:33
Speaker 1: whether you actually agree with it, whether they're right or not.
42:35
Speaker 1: And then if you decide that they are to to
42:39
Speaker 1: take that as advice and become a better person from it,
42:42
Speaker 1: that's not your m as as a person with narcissistic personality.
42:46
Speaker 1: This or you're gonna bite the other person's head off,
42:48
Speaker 1: you're gonna create a conflict at work that probably has
42:51
Speaker 1: to be smoothed over by multiple parties, or maybe you'll
42:54
Speaker 1: end up fired or demoted or who knows. So. Um,
42:58
Speaker 1: it can go both ways, and it usually goes both ways.
43:01
Speaker 1: Within a career or a job for a person with
43:04
Speaker 1: clinical narcissism. Yeah, like you, to put it mildly, you
43:08
Speaker 1: you're lacking an interpersonal skills fort sure. Uh So, as
43:13
Speaker 1: far as the science behind it, there's um like the
43:16
Speaker 1: hard science, there's not a ton, but they did. Uh
43:19
Speaker 1: this one study I thought was pretty interesting. Um is
43:23
Speaker 1: they looked at people in the old m R I
43:25
Speaker 1: machine in Berlin, and they at least people that they
43:30
Speaker 1: thought had narcissistic personality disorder, and they found that the
43:34
Speaker 1: cerebral cortex of these people were significantly thinner than normal. Uh,
43:40
Speaker 1: and that's where we foster empathy. So there definitely could
43:42
Speaker 1: be something to that. Uh. And then that other study
43:45
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting was um, and this is kind
43:48
Speaker 1: of along the lines of treatment, was they sat people
43:51
Speaker 1: down narcissist and showed them videos of what was the
43:56
Speaker 1: videos of of just things going wrong with people said, documentaries?
44:00
Speaker 1: Yea sad documentaries. So my brother's keepers what they watched?
44:04
Speaker 1: Oh really? Okay, oh man, what's that one documentary The
44:10
Speaker 1: saddest thing I've ever seen? Great Gardens, Thin Blue Line, Vernon, Florida. No,
44:16
Speaker 1: you're just naming documentaries now, Oh, I can't remember. It
44:22
Speaker 1: was the one about the It was the one about
44:25
Speaker 1: a murderer. It was just devastating. Remember, oh, Dear Zachary,
44:32
Speaker 1: God man, holy cow, that was. I could barely get
44:36
Speaker 1: through that thing. Yeah. Yeah, it was as bad as
44:40
Speaker 1: it gets because it was real. Yeah, so, which most
44:44
Speaker 1: documentaries are. So they showed Dear Zachary two people to narcissists,
44:50
Speaker 1: and they measure their heart rate and apparently the empathetic response,
44:54
Speaker 1: your heart rate will go up, and they were just flatlined,
44:56
Speaker 1: well not flatlined, because but they were they were just
45:00
Speaker 1: at their normal heart rate going and uh. Then they
45:03
Speaker 1: showed them, Uh, I don't know if it's the same one,
45:07
Speaker 1: but they showed them another documentary where they just coached
45:10
Speaker 1: them and said, hey, what if this were you put
45:13
Speaker 1: yourself in their shoes, and all of a sudden they
45:16
Speaker 1: they it changed and their heart rate increased. So the
45:19
Speaker 1: question was like, is it that easy? Is merely suggesting
45:23
Speaker 1: to a narcissist? Hey, why don't you think of it
45:26
Speaker 1: from another point of view? Like, so the question is
45:29
Speaker 1: are they unable or unwilling to do so? Well? I
45:32
Speaker 1: think that's the case with anyone who lacks empathy, Like
45:35
Speaker 1: even in their psychopath episode, we talked about the potential
45:39
Speaker 1: ability for psychopaths to empathize. They just have to be
45:43
Speaker 1: told you should empathize now, and then you know, like
45:48
Speaker 1: it's just not an automatic thing for people who lack empathy.
45:52
Speaker 1: I think fake the empathy though, that's the difference, didn't it?
45:56
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I think they were able to rationalize
46:00
Speaker 1: why they would be able to rationalize the outcome of empathy, like, oh,
46:05
Speaker 1: that person wouldn't want that to happen to them. I
46:08
Speaker 1: should probably stop rooting on the bad thing, right, um this,
46:12
Speaker 1: I guess this is a little different than that, Like, oh, okay,
46:15
Speaker 1: I'll turn on my empathy now, yeah, you're right. Should
46:18
Speaker 1: we take a break? Yeah, all right, Well let's take
46:21
Speaker 1: a break and uh, well we'll talk a little bit
46:23
Speaker 1: more about narcissism after this, as what skuf you should know. Okay,
46:48
Speaker 1: we're back chucking. As you promised, we're gonna talk a
46:51
Speaker 1: little more about narcissism. Uh. There was this one, um
46:56
Speaker 1: thing I thought was fairly interesting in our own article
46:58
Speaker 1: where we talked about evolutionary psychology. They did a two
47:02
Speaker 1: thousand four study with modeling techniques computer modeling where they
47:06
Speaker 1: looked at facial whether or not couples look like each
47:09
Speaker 1: other when they hook up. So that conan O'Brien segment.
47:15
Speaker 1: What I don't remember two celebrities and putting together was
47:19
Speaker 1: rotten looking the kids, God, that was the best if
47:22
Speaker 1: they made it, or something like that. Um. So, what
47:27
Speaker 1: they did found was that they saw a correlation at
47:30
Speaker 1: least what they called a sort of mating assortative mating
47:34
Speaker 1: where basically you seek those who look like you, uh,
47:40
Speaker 1: which I thought was fairly interesting. And they thought that
47:41
Speaker 1: could tie in a little bit with narcissism like like
47:45
Speaker 1: like maybe it has a biological basis, Yeah, exactly, And
47:49
Speaker 1: that would actually tie into the idea that we hit
47:52
Speaker 1: our narcissistic peak during our like um reproductive years and
47:57
Speaker 1: then it wanes as we age an age out of reproductativeness. Right,
48:01
Speaker 1: so maybe it is kind of correlated to it. And
48:04
Speaker 1: then if you if your synapse is just fuse a
48:07
Speaker 1: little too much, you can become m narcissistic to a
48:10
Speaker 1: clinical degree. Who knows, no one, No one knows. That's
48:14
Speaker 1: the point. So that's that's the problem with this field
48:17
Speaker 1: of research is no one knows. But people are diagnosed
48:20
Speaker 1: with narcissistic personality disorder every day. Nobody can agree on
48:25
Speaker 1: the prevalence this. Our article says seven point seven percent
48:28
Speaker 1: of men in the US four point eight percent of women.
48:32
Speaker 1: That washes out to six point two percent average among
48:35
Speaker 1: the genders. I saw one percent. UM. I also saw
48:38
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand, which is way less than one percent
48:41
Speaker 1: in the US. UM. No one has any idea what
48:45
Speaker 1: the prevalence is and they're not sure why. There's a
48:47
Speaker 1: couple of proposals for why. One is that UM. The
48:52
Speaker 1: the narcissistic personality disorder criteria that we went over places
48:57
Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on that that over type of
49:01
Speaker 1: narcissist and undervalues the over there, the covert type. Right,
49:07
Speaker 1: And so it's possible that there are way more narcissists
49:10
Speaker 1: out there than than would be caught by the NPD
49:14
Speaker 1: criteria and the d S M right. Yeah, it's just
49:16
Speaker 1: so tough with personality disorders that to me clearly exists
49:21
Speaker 1: on a spectrum to kind of pin down anything, you know,
49:26
Speaker 1: like they have this, uh, they have the online test
49:29
Speaker 1: you can take. I took it myself because I was curious.
49:33
Speaker 1: I scored. I scored an eleven out of forty. Oh
49:38
Speaker 1: that's not very narcissistic. No, I was a little disappointed.
49:41
Speaker 1: I was hoping to be in the single digits. I
49:44
Speaker 1: did not take the test. Oh yeah, I imagine you
49:48
Speaker 1: were thinking about me when you took it, so I
49:50
Speaker 1: just left it at that. Do you think I was
49:53
Speaker 1: talking about you because I'm a narcissist now that you
49:56
Speaker 1: were thinking about me while you were taking the test. No,
49:59
Speaker 1: I didn't think about Yeah, I was answering for myself.
50:02
Speaker 1: And eleven out of forty I thought was I can't remember?
50:05
Speaker 1: I mean it broke it down. It showed averages and
50:08
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh, and then it showed you where
50:10
Speaker 1: you were more likely or where you're subtraits. Uh, like
50:16
Speaker 1: out of those eleven, like let's say seven of those
50:19
Speaker 1: out of the eleven was a specific subtrait. UM. So
50:22
Speaker 1: that was sort of helpful. But I just looked at it.
50:25
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, well, maybe I should work on
50:26
Speaker 1: that stuff. Right, get get down into the single digits. Yeah,
50:30
Speaker 1: you're gonna try to get your test score down. Check
50:33
Speaker 1: it out, man, keep me posted, will you? Personal growth? Um,
50:37
Speaker 1: there's a there's another inventory you can take. I'm trying
50:41
Speaker 1: to find the name of it. Um. Which is it
50:46
Speaker 1: kind of gets the covert type out in the open. Yeah,
50:51
Speaker 1: it's called the um Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale. Uh So
50:57
Speaker 1: there were forty questions on the mp D Personality Inventory.
51:03
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. Um, this one's like twenty three and you
51:06
Speaker 1: give it a score between one and five, whereas with
51:09
Speaker 1: the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, it's like a you choose between
51:15
Speaker 1: basically opposite pairs of statements, right, Yeah, I mean it
51:19
Speaker 1: was a quite opposite. Sometimes they're a little trickier, and
51:22
Speaker 1: there were some they repeated in different ways, or I'm like,
51:24
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing there, right, You can't can't
51:27
Speaker 1: use psychology on me. Yeah, but it was also, uh,
51:31
Speaker 1: when I see things like this, I think, if you're
51:33
Speaker 1: taking this and you know what it is, and you
51:37
Speaker 1: are a narcissist, you were probably not gonna be very
51:40
Speaker 1: honest either. That part of being the narcissist is like
51:44
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not going to admit that. Oh yeah,
51:46
Speaker 1: if it's a defense mechanism, you you wouldn't really be
51:49
Speaker 1: capable of it, you know. Yeah, I thought it was interesting.
51:51
Speaker 1: It would crumble your ego, that's right. Um. One of
51:54
Speaker 1: the reasons why all of this is up for debate
51:56
Speaker 1: still and why we're having so much fun with it
51:58
Speaker 1: this afternoon, is because there's been no definitive study that
52:04
Speaker 1: really looks at a true representative sample of say, teenagers
52:09
Speaker 1: in America to determine a baseline to compare today's teams
52:16
Speaker 1: up against. Right, there have been studies, so they're the
52:20
Speaker 1: college kids all around the US have been given for
52:23
Speaker 1: years and years and years now the narcissistic personality inventory,
52:27
Speaker 1: and they're usually psychology students. UM. So that's usually a
52:31
Speaker 1: select group from an already select group from the population,
52:35
Speaker 1: which is college students, so you're not really looking at
52:38
Speaker 1: it a representative sample of all teens in America at
52:43
Speaker 1: the time, but from that select group of select group,
52:47
Speaker 1: they've found that personality among some different colleges, personality narcissistic
52:54
Speaker 1: personality traits apparently has risen by about two questions from
52:58
Speaker 1: the late eighties till the mid two thousand's, And then
53:02
Speaker 1: other people are like, no, no, no, that's all wrong.
53:04
Speaker 1: First of all, you guys are you're comparing tests from
53:07
Speaker 1: different colleges and different eras. That's terrible. What we need
53:12
Speaker 1: is somebody to get together all of the teenagers in
53:15
Speaker 1: America were a huge representative sample of them. Say just
53:19
Speaker 1: give it out to all high schools in the United
53:22
Speaker 1: States to take on one day and start that. Do
53:26
Speaker 1: it now, and then start using that as your baseline
53:28
Speaker 1: for twenty thirty years out. Then we can actually say
53:31
Speaker 1: whether narcissism is increasing. Right, And the closest thing they've
53:35
Speaker 1: got is that thing that they've been giving to high
53:37
Speaker 1: school kids since the seventies. Um, it's great, it has
53:41
Speaker 1: like this has the best. Um, the more you know
53:44
Speaker 1: type name it's called monitoring the future. I love it.
53:50
Speaker 1: That sounds like such a great US government test for
53:54
Speaker 1: high school students, But it's from the National Institute on
53:58
Speaker 1: Drug Abuse and UM. Apparently it's an annual survey of
54:01
Speaker 1: fifty thousand high school students and it doesn't directly measure narcissism,
54:06
Speaker 1: but it measures parts of a personality personality dimensions related
54:11
Speaker 1: to it, right, like self esteem, egoism, individualism. And what
54:16
Speaker 1: they found is that, um, self esteem, well, actually all
54:23
Speaker 1: of those factors are basically exactly the same in two
54:26
Speaker 1: thousands six as they were in nineteen. Interesting, So apparently
54:32
Speaker 1: that would that would undermine the idea that narcissism is
54:35
Speaker 1: on the rise. But if somebody tells you narcissism is
54:38
Speaker 1: on the rise, next time they say that, you say,
54:41
Speaker 1: how do you know? Tell him, Josh, there you go,
54:44
Speaker 1: Uh well, yeah, I mean there are people that say,
54:46
Speaker 1: like it's an epidemic and other because of social media
54:50
Speaker 1: mainly and selfies and Instagram, and I just I don't know, man,
54:56
Speaker 1: I don't I think that's something when um, like I've
55:01
Speaker 1: seen people, uh, I've witnessed people taking selfies like like
55:08
Speaker 1: a dozen of them trying to get it just right,
55:10
Speaker 1: and making the face out and doing all that. Yeah,
55:13
Speaker 1: it's not pretty to see, it's not And I see that,
55:16
Speaker 1: and I think, is that narcissism or is that just um,
55:22
Speaker 1: I don't know. To me, it's it's it's a it's
55:25
Speaker 1: a personality trait that any and all of us have,
55:29
Speaker 1: and under the right circumstances, it can be brought out
55:32
Speaker 1: easier for some than others. But our society has changed
55:36
Speaker 1: enough so that it is far more socially acceptable and
55:38
Speaker 1: even socially encouraged through social media to do those kind
55:42
Speaker 1: of things. Right. Yeah, I don't think that that necessarily
55:47
Speaker 1: translates automatically to arise in narcissism. I think it's just
55:50
Speaker 1: a change in society. Like some people are, like those
55:53
Speaker 1: people have always been around, they're just more visible because
55:56
Speaker 1: they're doing it at the public pool now or in
55:59
Speaker 1: the bar, Whereas in the fifties they would have been
56:03
Speaker 1: laughed out of that bar or out of that pool
56:05
Speaker 1: had they done that, But they were still around. It
56:07
Speaker 1: just wasn't socially acceptable for them to do stuff like that. Yeah,
56:10
Speaker 1: And I guess I think I'm having a hard time
56:13
Speaker 1: but into words, but I think I think that that
56:15
Speaker 1: true narcissism is a lot deeper than that, and that
56:18
Speaker 1: can just be like, Hey, I think I'm really hot
56:22
Speaker 1: and I like to take pictures of myself, but but
56:25
Speaker 1: maybe I'm also very empathetic and have great interpersonal skills
56:30
Speaker 1: and I see other people's point of view a lot,
56:33
Speaker 1: but I'm super stuck up. Like I don't think just
56:36
Speaker 1: because you take a lot of selfies or you're obsessed
56:38
Speaker 1: with social media means you're narcissistic. I think it goes
56:41
Speaker 1: way Narcissism goes way deeper than that, and it's like
56:44
Speaker 1: a a tunnel vision where you are only seeing things
56:47
Speaker 1: from your own point of view. I mean that's part
56:50
Speaker 1: of it. And then I think the other part of
56:52
Speaker 1: it too is yeah, maybe millennials are UM do have
56:56
Speaker 1: over inflated self esteem, or maybe they're this wonderful generation
57:01
Speaker 1: that's actually really dedicated to changing the world for a
57:04
Speaker 1: positive view. The problem is um when you start to
57:08
Speaker 1: paint the whole generation with a single brush, and that's
57:12
Speaker 1: that's been done with narcissism, which I think really undermines
57:15
Speaker 1: the value of the term. So there's plenty more to
57:20
Speaker 1: talk about if you want to learn more about narcissism.
57:24
Speaker 1: You can just dive into the Internet and find out
57:27
Speaker 1: what your local um blogger thinks about it, because they
57:31
Speaker 1: guarantee you they've written about it. Uh. And since I
57:34
Speaker 1: said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna
57:38
Speaker 1: call this one uh sad horny bunnies. This all makes
57:43
Speaker 1: sense in a second. I have no idea what this one.
57:46
Speaker 1: During the recent flu show, Guys You explained that it
57:48
Speaker 1: was Iowa doc Richard Schope who first isolated the flu virus.
57:53
Speaker 1: That was likely the achievement that made him famous, but
57:55
Speaker 1: not the reason why my family knows of his work.
57:58
Speaker 1: We live in the Twin Cities. Shout out to the
58:01
Speaker 1: Twin Cities, where we've seen many rabbits with a horrifying disease.
58:06
Speaker 1: It causes them to grow what appeared to be horns,
58:09
Speaker 1: sometimes just one or two, occasionally half a dozen or more.
58:12
Speaker 1: And though the gross are often right where an animal
58:14
Speaker 1: would have horns, sometimes they sprout from near rabbit's mouth
58:17
Speaker 1: or eyes, making survival pretty challenging. A few years ago,
58:20
Speaker 1: when we investigated this creepy rabbit illness, we learned it
58:23
Speaker 1: was Richard Chope who first isolated and identified the virus
58:26
Speaker 1: that causes it, now called the Chope uh Papaloma virus SPV,
58:31
Speaker 1: is similar to some papaloma viruses and humans, which can
58:35
Speaker 1: lead to fund things like genital warts or cervical cancer.
58:37
Speaker 1: In fact, thanks to the work of Shope, other researchers,
58:40
Speaker 1: and these spooky looking rabbits, we have medical successes like
58:44
Speaker 1: the HPV vaccine. Uh. It is not critical to my
58:47
Speaker 1: life this information, but it certainly makes it more interesting.
58:50
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm always listening to stuff you should know.
58:52
Speaker 1: And that is from Jane uh Niemeyer in the Twin
58:55
Speaker 1: Cities Nice and did you look it up? It did.
58:59
Speaker 1: And if you want to see heartbreaking photos bunnies with
59:05
Speaker 1: horns coming out of their face, just look up show
59:09
Speaker 1: Papaloma virus rabbits. And it is so sad because there's
59:14
Speaker 1: nothing cute or a planet almost at a bunny rabbit
59:18
Speaker 1: and you see these things. He's like, man, what did
59:21
Speaker 1: you do to deserve that's the worst? Well, thanks a lot.
59:26
Speaker 1: What was the name of the author, Jane, Jane, Thanks
59:29
Speaker 1: a lot, Jane, appreciate that. Thanks for bringing us down.
59:33
Speaker 1: If you want to bring us down like Jane, did
59:35
Speaker 1: you could tweet to us at s y s K
59:36
Speaker 1: podcast through josh em Clark. You can hang out with
59:39
Speaker 1: this on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know
59:41
Speaker 1: or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us
59:44
Speaker 1: an email stuff podcast to how Stuff Works dot com
59:47
Speaker 1: and as always, joined us at our home on the web,
59:50
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
59:57
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff workstof
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Speaker 1: come