Episode 46: Narcissism and Other Mental Disorders
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Transcript
[00:00:11] Blue: Hello everyone and welcome to the theory of anything podcast Your hosts today are myself Tracy pace and Bruce Nielsen. Hey, Tracy. Hello. How are you today?
[00:00:23] Red: I’m doing good
[00:00:25] Blue: Okay, so today we’ve decided to bring to the table an issue regarding narcissism and Universality so I’m gonna try to lead out here and The subject to begin with oh well personal experience That Kind of a slow realization through life experiences realizing that some people Friends and other close or family members of my life Come to realize though. Of course. I am no professional and there are no official diagnoses here, but Signs symptoms patterns or make it pretty obvious what I’ve been dealing with with some people and cases in my life. So It’s been kind of become kind of a near and dear Subject to me. It’s been really important for me to understand. I just like to I need to know I need to know, you know, what’s happening. What’s going on and see my world more clearly and And yeah, so
[00:01:34] Red: you’ve been like researching this because Impacting you personally it
[00:01:39] Blue: is impacting me personally. It’s impacting my immediate nuclear family personally and Maybe without saying too much. We’ll say Let’s say this person Bob Well, yeah, we’ll call them Bob and there’s just Been a long history of issues More this relationship. I’ve had with this person Bob I felt like I was running into these Walls where you would try to Figure out, you know, how may how how could I fix this relationship? How could we Move forward together better in a relationship and fix things to become Stronger but I started hitting this frustration because you know, you try the therapy and You know, if both people don’t seem to be willing to do therapy or the one party doesn’t feel like Therapy is necessary or therapy is needed at all It kind of hit this wall and start to think well, man, what’s wrong with me because all of these therapists are like Come together’s couple go through therapy And the answer is always Stay together. The answer is always work through it that these problems are always Solvable and I was realizing that that didn’t really seem to be the truth for me. So I Started exploring different topics and feel like I found a lot of elucidation and Answers.
[00:03:12] Red: Yeah.
[00:03:13] Blue: Yeah,
[00:03:14] Red: so tell us about what you found then this this is I think this is a very interesting subject I I don’t personally have a ton of experience with narcissism I did date a girl many years ago who I’m fairly certain is at least a mild case of Mildza strange word in this case, but Was narcissistic and it was very painful to Be in any sort of friendship or relationship with her.
[00:03:42] Blue: Yes
[00:03:42] Red: So I know what you’re talking about a little bit
[00:03:48] Blue: Well, um, maybe we should start first with kind of defining narcissism or Narcissistic personality disorder Just to see if so for anybody who’s listening just to get you on the same page of What we’re kind of looking at here and what we’re talking about. There’s a lot of issues around this I’d like to kind of go through point out discuss Maybe even eventually relate it to so narcissism itself and I again not a professional here just been researching a lot of stuff Belongs within What’s called the cluster B? Personality category Cluster B disorders, I guess well, it’s not the right word for it, but cluster B Personality traits but So narcissism itself and I got this definition of I believe out of the DSM which is like the American DSM There are two there America has one in Europe has their own but basically someone With narcissistic personality disorder, you’re gonna hear me refer to it as NPD a lot because that’s just a less of a mouthful to say but it’s basically defined as Comprising a pervasive pattern of grandiosity whether that’s in fantasy or behavior a constant need for admiration a lack of empathy Beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts as indicated in one of so it has to be in the presence of at least five of these following nine criteria according to the DSM so these are One has a grandiose sense of self -importance an example would be exaggerate achievements and talents Expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements Next would be is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success power brilliance beauty or ideal love
[00:05:52] Blue: Next would be believes that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by or should associate with Other special or high status people or institutions Next has a sense of entitlement such as they’re just have unreasonable expectations Of a specially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations to kind of expect that They’re interpersonally expletive Like they take advantage of others to achieve their own ends. They lack Empathy so that you know, they can be unwilling or actually I feel like unable to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others And we can we’ll go through some of how that might look because I struggled with that and I’ll go over why that was a hard thing for me to to see They can often be envious of others or believe that others are envious of them and they often show arrogant haughty behaviors or attitudes so that’s kind of in a nutshell some of the classic Criteria or sometimes that somebody who has NPD can display And
[00:07:15] Red: you said that it would be five of This is like nine points and it would be like they would diagnose it if you had five of them Yeah,
[00:07:23] Blue: basically to be diagnosed the idea is that you have to have Display or present at least five out of those nine criteria How
[00:07:35] Red: about the one of lack empathy though? Like is there such a thing as a narcissist that has empathy?
[00:07:41] Blue: That’s kind of debated if you Generally No, the answer is no But and so this is where the confusing component comes in It’s like especially in my case with with Bob because From what I understand of the way it is is a narcissist Basically lacks a sense of self so they don’t really understand empathy they Compartmentalize things they learn how to project there. Oh, you can almost think of them like they’re built with pieces of a broken mirror So they learn to reflect you they learn to reflect things around them They have a cognitive ability to understand empathy so they can act like they’re displaying it But in reality, they they aren’t and eventually at some point you kind of see that you kind of realize that you’re like This is kind of nuts. So they can act like they show it that they can cry They can show those emotions So that’s why I actually feel like this is one of the trickiest components to come to terms with to actually Radically accept about somebody when you see it for what it is. It’s it’s pretty disturbing. That’s been a disturbing experience for me Yeah, that one’s a so
[00:09:01] Red: so there’s kind of a direct tie between a narcissistic disorder and a lack of empathy that those kind of go hand in hand then
[00:09:11] Blue: absolutely those are in the cluster B personality Okay categories
[00:09:16] Red: Okay
[00:09:19] Blue: Maybe what we’re gonna talk. I think a little bit later about Maybe more personal experiences um We won’t talk about this much although um one particular relationship I believe we’re going to discuss my my belief again not officially diagnosed or verified is that um Uh, this person I would think might be sort of as more border borderline personality disorder Which is in that same cluster B category um And I’m going to go over a Venn diagram which kind of shows how somebody with Borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. There’s a general consensus on an overlap But they tried to demonstrate how they are indeed separate I’m going to kind of argue That they’re the same and that they’re shades of basically narcissism um So let me first say For somebody who has borderline personality disorder or B. P. D Generally speaking This person has um a pervasive pattern of instability in their interpersonal relationships Uh problems with their self -image and emotions um A lot of these people can be you know present histrionics or histrionically and um, they have a well marked impulsivity that begins by early adulthood and is present in This definition here says in a variety of contexts is indicated by five or more of the following traits so First we’ve got um, they’ve experienced a chronic feelings of emptiness um next would be They just have an emotional instability and reaction to day -to -day events such as intense episodic sadness uh irritability Any kind of anxiety that’s last for like a few hours Sometimes more rarely, but sometimes it can last for a few days um, they another thing they might exhibit is Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
[00:11:28] Blue: So abandonment is a huge issue in fear there. Um They might have identity disturbances with Markedly or persistently unstable self -image or a sense of self Another trait is impulsive behaviors in at least two areas that are potentially self -damaging such as They might just have a problem with spending just you write constantly shopping shopaholics always buying stuff they might have damaging self -damaging behaviors in the area of um sex substance abuse reckless driving binge eating There’s probably a few others. I don’t have here Next would be They might display um inappropriately intense anger and have difficulty controlling anger Like they might have frequent displays of temper constant anger Or even recurring physical fights They might experience patterns of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships that are characterized by extremes between um idealization so idealizing their Friend or partner or whatever and then devaluation um This particular phenomenon is called splitting One who is that someone that maybe all of us have known that has the recurrent suicidal behavior or gestures or threats uh threats to self or self -harming behaviors and then lastly um, they might be they might struggle with being transient or as stress related paranoid ideation issues or Have severe dissociative symptoms. So that’s kind of
[00:13:11] Red: what are paranoid ideation. What is paranoid ideation?
[00:13:15] Blue: Transient stress -related paranoia paranoia is characterized by the experience of feeling threatened, persecuted, conspired against It can loosely refer to beliefs of general suspicion regarding the motives or intentions of others So it sounds like it’s kind of yeah. Thank you. It’s a good clarification
[00:13:31] Red: Just something to bring up here Tracy and I have a Mutual friend from Tracy and I have been friends since like high school
[00:13:40] Blue: Yeah, and we have
[00:13:41] Red: a mutual friend who for the sake of this show. We will call steve who seems to fit a lot of What you just described?
[00:13:51] Blue: Yes a lot
[00:13:53] Red: including the the fact that he would become paranoid about people being out to get him or You know, I don’t think it was necessarily like Paranoid delusions like it wasn’t that severe
[00:14:06] Blue: Right,
[00:14:06] Red: but just had a tendency to read people as Being after him sometimes Things like that. So just it’s interesting. I’m just kind of thinking through as you were talking about this That this does seem to match a lot of the intense anger Yes, the
[00:14:23] Blue: inappropriately intense anger Yeah wanting to fight Um And having known this person Perhaps more closely for a longer period of time after you To stopped generally associating for the most part I you know, I was there to witness Lots of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships that were completely extremes that were just Just bad just bad um I Know of situations where this person kind of tends to recur Back to self -harming behaviors or at least Self -sabotaging behaviors that kind of do their own self -fulfilling prophecy kind of game They um Just say oh They’ll be like the kind of default back to well. I’m just worthless or I’m just hopeless. I’m just terrible um and even Do things like they will threaten They’ll they’ll have Suicide suicidal behavior at least threats to self -harm Uh Yeah,
[00:15:27] Red: it’s it seemed like steve would swing between I’m worthless and grandiose ideas about himself.
[00:15:34] Blue: Yes very plucky very charming super charismatic. Um Just Full of fun full of hope, you know One day amazing ideas very grandiose ideas larger than life ideas in a lot of ways very much Existed I feel like in so many ways and kind of a fantasy land had um Definitely and well, I should kind of get into this a little bit later, but there’s this um Kind of they kind of exist I felt like he also kind of existed in his head. He had his own idea of his own fantasy fantasize idealization Sorry idealization of himself and how he should be and how life should be and how it should present and Yeah, that didn’t happen Or when it was pointed out the reality that you get that Cognitive dissonance and everything else and it just goes badly
[00:16:30] Red: So just to give some specific examples though Steve renamed himself on his own after a superhero character and got everyone to call him by that name
[00:16:42] Blue: Yes
[00:16:43] Red: Just as an example. In fact, most people did not know that wasn’t his name
[00:16:48] Blue: Yeah, they didn’t know it was not his real last name.
[00:16:53] Red: Right. Yeah Very strongly identified with this superhero character imagined himself like that superhero character That he was fond of
[00:17:03] Blue: would you say it was safe to say that was kind of a fierce protective vigilante
[00:17:09] Red: Yes, do
[00:17:09] Blue: better not somebody who did evil things but was a hero
[00:17:13] Red: Yeah, or
[00:17:14] Blue: at least um a dark hero. It was a dark hero.
[00:17:17] Red: Yeah One of the early dark heroes interestingly so kind of latched on to that characterization. I guess He would consistently try to do things out of TV shows and comic books And sincerely think that that would make sense in real life. I don’t want to embarrass tracy, but for example At one point he had this idea that um, he was going to do this You know like at an assembly at school He he had like a group that he would sing with or something like that He was he had imagined that he could invite tracy to that and there was going to be this dance part to it And she was supposed to fall in love with him Because that’s the way things happened in tv show
[00:18:06] Blue: like grease or something
[00:18:08] Red: Right, right and very very very sincerely believed that that made sense And but that was like that’s just one example That’s that’s one that I think people would recognize immediately But he would he would pull things from tv shows all the time like that where he would expect that He could behave in certain ways that he had seen in a tv show And then he would get the outcomes that existed in this fictional work And was often surprised or even upset if someone pointed out to him that that wasn’t realistic
[00:18:39] Blue: Yeah, um,
[00:18:39] Red: and it never really so this steve had been my best friend since we were in elementary school I I met tracy in high school actually through steve if I recall
[00:18:48] Blue: through steve
[00:18:49] Red: But I had been best friends with uh steve I think since second grade.
[00:18:55] Blue: Yeah, it was since second grade And um, he was very difficult friend to be friends with uh, he’d have these kind of upswings and downswings And it wasn’t until I was in college and I was taking a psychology class that it finally struck me Oh my gosh Steve was mentally ill And that was why he was such a difficult friend And it totally changed the way I saw him they they would talk about different disorders and I would go Oh my gosh, that that’s steve You know and one of the ones that they mentioned was the fantasy prone personality where you would mix Fantasy elements and reality together Mm -hmm,
[00:19:33] Red: and I started to realize Yeah, that actually describes at least one personality aspect of steve quite well And they would talk about manic depressive now again, none of these are official diagnoses as far as I know He’s never been diagnosed. He’s never right. So you get diagnosed.
[00:19:47] Blue: Yes. We’ll be clear. We’re not saying this is official, but being relatively rational People with these experiences you can kind of piece together to get an understanding of what you’re likely dealing with But we’ll see that way
[00:20:00] Red: one of the things that steve did With all my life did to me and not just to me but to all his friends Is that he would He’d be completely depressed for a certain period of time and not want to be around anybody He’d be mad at everybody And then just out of the blue it would go away and he’d be your best friend And he would actually be a really good friend during the up periods Um where he’d help you out with stuff and and like like you said, he was he was fairly charismatic Um and Could actually be an appealing person to want to be around during the upswings.
[00:20:34] Blue: Yeah
[00:20:34] Red: later on it occurred to me He might have been manic depressive. I don’t know if he would have would have officially been manic depressive manic depressive depression is Rather severe maybe even more severe than what he
[00:20:46] Blue: there and there is I understand that there can be some co -morbidities with other um things like that I mean again not saying that’s necessarily what he had but Could be
[00:20:59] Red: Yeah, it’s a
[00:21:00] Blue: possibility and
[00:21:02] Red: During his manic phases. He tended to have these really super grandiose ideas of what he was going to accomplish um And and then he would just hate you Just out of the blue for no reason Or if there was a reason it didn’t make sense like I remember once he hated me for like a week And the reason turned out to be that he had a dream where I had done something bad to him in the dream And so he hated me because of what this dream version of myself had done to him in a dream
[00:21:35] Blue: Wow
[00:21:36] Red: um Another example of how he just really struggled to tell the difference between real life and fantasy um But sometimes there would be no reason at all at least none that he would give you he would just Thoroughly hate you maybe it was just for something you did a long time ago or years ago And then it would just go away and He could it he just flip Just wake up one morning and he’d be flipped one way or the other um Anyhow,
[00:22:03] Blue: I’ve seen that too. Yeah.
[00:22:04] Red: So yeah, but why don’t you continue? So I I can relate to um, what you’re saying here really so far fits Steve quite well and I I’ve wondered myself if he did in fact have a narcissistic personality disorder um Like we said, there there may be more than one diagnosis here and we’re not People who can diagnose but it did make me start to wonder. Okay. Well the wonder it was so hard Right to try to work things out with him, you know, it that And I’ve had that thought go through my mind many times And I kind of you know feel bad like if he does have an undiagnosed disorder, which I think is at least a possibility His life might be better I mean, I know he has kind of a rough life because of a lot of these problems for
[00:22:49] Blue: sure
[00:22:50] Red: And even as adults, I don’t talk with him much anymore, but like I’m connecting him on facebook and things like that
[00:22:56] Blue: You know, there’s no ill will between us We would go through fights and And we kind of end things on a bad note When I moved away and and yet I don’t think there’s any ill will between us at this point Especially now that I understand I don’t think he’s got a lot of control over himself, right?
[00:23:15] Red: He’s He’s not consciously choosing to treat people badly in a lot of cases. He just Has these really strong reactions that control him to some degree
[00:23:27] Blue: Yeah, and I’m gonna point this out to is it was kind of a theory that I somebody else I was listening to on youtube somebody named jc west I thought wow some of this just clicked. I’m like, oh this oh, okay These really I think are more related and I think the attempt I For me personally I feel like the attempts to make them distinctly separate npd and bpd kind of fails because I feel like we’ve fairly decently pointed to certain strong behaviors out of the borderline personality disorder list from the dsm here, right? But you can go back up into the npd list and If we’re applying these to steve um You could say lacks empathy By being unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others So when steve would go through some of these episodes of intense hating on you or disrespecting you or Just basically yelling. Hey, it’s all about me. I don’t care how you feel. You have to understand how I feel There’s to me that demonstrates a lack of empathy really it’s about Their fear and what they’re going through and they can’t they have they have no ability to hold space or room For you or consideration of your feelings. So I feel like there’s an element of that there That grandiose sense of self -important definitely preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success power brilliance especially as An artist and definitely idealized love. So I think that these things definitely crossover and create A just a new crossover of like different ways to look at narcissism and we’re going to go through There are people such as like dr. Romani diversola and others dr.
[00:25:24] Blue: Sam vaknin who’ve basically kind of demonstrate how these kind of married together and in fact, um, dr. Vaknin basically points at how they’re kind of really are to sides of the same coin basically
[00:25:41] Red: Okay, so this theory then is is that npd and vpd Are really separate Disorders they’re related in some way
[00:25:51] Blue: Right, so there are those who will say If I can explain this i’ll try there are those who will say, uh, I mean because you have your classic idea of a narcissist think like Wolf of all street like um, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character and wolf of all street. There’s your kind of classic grandiose overt Narcissist there who’s just kind of Bullheaded kind of a jerk. I mean definitely go get her right there are some positive qualities You could say they get things done make things happen Uh, but you know at the lack or at the expense of of others There’s just no embassies there. So they aren’t the person you would think of they’re not a cry baby, right? They’re not prone to feeling or being in touch with their emotions at all Yet you have a spectrum Of narcissists who do display these emotions who do cry who do pity plays who come on as the victim So that’s where it gets confusing. They’re like How am I dealing with a narcissist when I feel like they have shown me love or when I feel like They’re crying. They’re obviously hurt or they’re crying. Maybe they understand where I’m coming from I feel it’s actually much more What’s the word I want to say? It’s just it’s more it’s trickier. It’s more difficult. It’s more subversive and It’s almost harder when you’re dealing with somebody who isn’t obviously just being an outright jerk to you
[00:27:16] Red: right to Using steve as an example, I stayed friends with him for so many years because he did have that Positive side, right? It was a strong positive side So yeah, I I can completely understand what you’re saying there.
[00:27:32] Blue: Yeah
[00:27:32] Red: And it just is a side note I think a lot of these things so I read a book before I ever read any of david dutch’s books and it Changed my opinion somewhat on some of these topics, but I read a book called Evil jeans
[00:27:48] Blue: I’ve heard of it
[00:27:49] Red: by Barbara Oakley. It’s called evil jeans Why rome fell hitler rose enron failed and my sister stole my mother’s boyfriend Oh,
[00:27:59] Blue: that’s beautiful. Yeah, perfect.
[00:28:02] Red: So yeah, it’s it was an interesting book and um Obviously you can
[00:28:08] Blue: tell from the title
[00:28:09] Red: that she is trying to Blame certain personality disorders on genes now I should tell you when you read the book in full It’s a much more nuanced look than simply trying to blame the genes for it
[00:28:24] Blue: Right,
[00:28:24] Red: but I suspect a lot of people This is why we mentioned universality exploratory universality That’s going to give some people stomach ache right off the bat the the very idea of trying to blame the genes for a personality disorder But we can talk about that later I had read this book and I and she she does a fairly good job of going through various studies and what the science is on the subject and things like that Um, and it was kind of my introduction to a lot of this I mean my introduction was probably that I took a psychology class when I was in college and then years later I read this book, but I was actually surprised at Um the depth to which he had researched this and tried to pull these things together um, so and her um One of the things that she points out though Is that a lot of these traits are positives they can be quite bad for the people in the narcissist’s life Yeah,
[00:29:19] Blue: bad for relationships. Good for business
[00:29:23] Red: Yes, often very good Right, and she gives examples of famous Men who would fit a lot of these traits, but that we would think of in very positive ways She the ones that she kind of came back to a lot were George Washington Gondi And uh Winston Churchill
[00:29:44] Blue: Yep,
[00:29:45] Red: so those would be her positive examples and her negative examples would be like mau hitler, you know did Yes And like I said, this is actually a much more nuanced book than the title makes it sound But she points out that like Winston Churchill may not have been Capable of being Winston Churchill, but for the fact that he was a narcissist He he sincerely believed he was a superman and that Allowed him to Be a superman, right? I mean it’s he was actually able to accomplish things that nobody else could And that was a good thing, right? So it’s interesting and and that’s you know Everybody’s different and this is one of the things she kind of points out in the book Steve really did have a number of upsides. I think he’s a likable person for the most part, right? It’s just yeah,
[00:30:38] Blue: funny
[00:30:41] Red: Yeah, yeah um And and after time he’s a good friend, right? So, yeah, sorry for that aside go ahead.
[00:30:52] Blue: Oh, that’s great. I think that ties in beautifully because I do I don’t want to come out of this thing um Narcissists and BPD people are horrible evil people um They’re just hurting right and um, but they’re they are I don’t know and I think we’ll talk about this again later It does seem that it is some kind of a strategy that our genes and cultures have taken because There is some benefit To be had even though it’s hurtful Yeah, um, okay. Let’s see. All right, so There is if you if anybody feels like looking this up from a ven diagram from border borderline personality disorder a clinical guide um I failed to write down who wrote it, but if you look it up, you’d find it easy uh, they basically um overlap these traits and And try to point out where a borderline personality disorder person and a narcissist meet um And then I’m kind of kind of point out why I actually think it’s way muddier than this There really isn’t and maybe shouldn’t be a clear distinction This is opinion But for for reasons and facts, I think that we were trying to point out earlier with experiences with people We know um So as far as um, so over on the side of um borderline personality disorder These are people that generally kind of hate themselves, right? They have a self hate Which by the way, you could kind of save a narcissist too and we’ll get into that or try but four Main traits are listed as supposedly belonging just to bpd people.
[00:32:44] Blue: One is impulsivity Two is intolerance of aloneness Three is fear of abandonment And four is concern about or with acceptance and nurturance not being nurtured Okay, so we have that over there on the bpd side On the narcissistic personality disorder side They basically have um literally kind of have a lack of sense of self They need people one Person out there on youtube who I think is gaining popularity His name is hg tutor He has a system where he kind of breaks this down But he describes it as because he himself is a diagnosed narcissist um As people and needing people as fuel and relationships as it’s fuel to help them Feel good. I guess basically be happy. They need people as fuel It kind of drives why they do what they do So they have a need for people to validate and reflect back to them constantly who they are So on this side On the their side of the vent diagram is one. They have a grandiose self image Two they have a sense of superiority Three they need to be admired and four they have a concern about Status or task performance. They’re concerned with status and all that any questions on that so far
[00:34:12] Red: No, no, no, no, it sounds good
[00:34:14] Blue: Okay And then according to this diagram, they only put three characteristics that are overlapping that are shared By people with by not I keep wanting to say bipolar. Sorry borderline Uh disorders and narcissistic disorders One is they both have a sensitivity to criticism or rejection. So shared They both share ragefulness We probably all know somebody who’s Just just exhibited that I know I have we have and then third shared is entitlement so This person basically describes it as borderlines hate themselves But there’s an underlying feeling of entitlement That’s like a direct result of their victimized disposition. So they tend to have this victimized sense of self but both borderline and narcissistic People they both kind of have a a deep resentment for people From making them feel unseen Or like bad objects, which is a message they get And we’ll go over this a little bit later too, which they get from their super early developmental years So basically you can both you can think of them both as their victims of reality and they feel inherently entitled to some sort of compensation because of this issue um And I like what jc said basically And I think dr. Vaknin kind of suggests this too, but I’m kind of agreeing that maybe With the idea that borderlines um, are failed narcissists um For these reasons because I think we can actually lump they’re supposedly separate lists and kind of um Put a different nuance to what those definitions would be because it’s all it’s almost like it’s semantics and they really are Kind of maybe the same thing.
[00:36:09] Red: Okay
[00:36:10] Blue: so So for the list on the borderlines, they have one of the the first ones listed wasn’t was intolerance for aloneness um so people with So so that’s for the borderlines, but also if you think about it. So a person was Who’s a narcissist lacks a sense of self And so in reality, they too have a constant need for people and validation through other people Right, so they basically need need as this guy hg to fuel they need fuel from people and interactions with people Um through a whole host of ways whether those are lovers friends family you name it There’s all the different ways they get that So um, but basically these people need constant admiration constant validation to be reflected back to them to confront them to them how wonderful they are So on the narcissist side that was listed as a need to be admired um I kind of think those Are kind of semantics because if a borderline Has an intolerance for aloneness So does a narcissist because they also need people to be admired So they both in maybe slightly separate ways, but basically in the same way It’s a shared characteristic. They both cannot they can’t tolerate being alone Because a narcissist who is alone has nobody to reflect back to them and give them the fuel they need to To show them how wonderful they are to give them What they need they both have this need to be admired and they both really have an intolerance for aloneness So to me semantics, right? Okay
[00:37:49] Red: Your argument sure.
[00:37:50] Blue: Okay People can feel free to disagree because i’m sure they will and that’s okay
[00:37:56] Red: Well, and these these are just from what you’re saying. These are just early ideas from certain researchers. Yes. Yes Not widely accepted.
[00:38:03] Blue: Oh, exactly exactly, but It’s all about throwing out ideas and they get shot down or you hopefully kind of go. Hmm. Let’s think about that so next up for If we go back to the borderline side one of the things on their list was um fear of abandonment Now so that we all kind of know what that is, right? Everybody probably has that to some extent unless you’re a securely attached person um But if you look at it from the side of like, okay, so if you’ve ever known like a narcissist So let’s go back to our shared experience with steve as an example What happens when you walk away? from a narcissist In your experience, what would happen when you’d walk away from them and one of their Fits or rages or as a friend?
[00:38:49] Red: So, okay, so I can give so my experience with narcissists would be steve and um, let’s The girl that I was friends with slash Dated let’s let’s call her marcie marcie.
[00:39:03] Blue: Okay,
[00:39:03] Red: they would try to they would try to pull you back Basically, right? So so steve would show up after you would just decided. That’s it. I’m done And he’d just suddenly be your best friend And it would be very hard to turn him away because he’s being kind to you he’d go out of his way to be kind to you And with marcie Now, let me say marcie Is again, I’m not I’m not I’m not a psychiatrist So I I am in no way able to do a diagnosis But like I’d be surprised if steve couldn’t be diagnosed with at least narcissistic personality disorder
[00:39:40] Blue: But
[00:39:40] Red: I’m not sure marcie would right. I think marcie’s more of uh An edge case Yeah,
[00:39:46] Blue: and that’s a good point because in reality the other thing I wanted to point out point out none of us are immune to this everybody every single person has narcissistic traits and sometimes due to um Our environment or certain experiences or things that we’re going on if we’ve been Butting up against a lot of pain or adversity for a while Our empathy levels drop and that our narcissistic traits rise Whether it’s to protect us or but it’s usually temporary and we also side back down to the more empathetic natural person that we are So we all do have The ability to have a narcissistic trait come to the forefront sometimes, but it’s not consistent. It’s not Generally
[00:40:27] Red: So this is this is actually one of the things that I think is a little bit weird about mental illness we can Maybe talk a bit more about this. So the whole idea of an illness a lot of some lot some of the Fans of popper in dutch Like a guy named thomas saas. I don’t know if I pronounced that name or
[00:40:50] Blue: maybe that’s sass He
[00:40:52] Red: claims there’s no such thing as mental illness and most people Including popper by the way Thought that he was wrong, but like I know that like some Pretty well known dutchians like brett hall has really kind of Set a lot of positive things about thomas saas Um, and I think most of us feel like he did say a lot of good things. So it’s not like He was a quack or something right and he was good friends with popper And I think popper had a really positive opinion of him on most of his ideas Um, although I have got an interesting quote where popper basically tells him in a letter This idea that it’s not an illness is silly. Here’s the thing though mental illness is The word illness that’s an analogy. It’s an analogy to physical illness and thomas saas’s idea point was It’s not a great analogy that that Personality traits are unlike an illness in a great many ways So he was against that analogy And I think like with most analogies it kind of works and it kind of doesn’t right The fact that we were able to conceptualize Hey, there’s this thing that people can have with a mental disorder That’s kind of like an illness allowed us to conceptualize Feel for people who had a disorder to see it as a sickness or an illness And I think that there was value that came out of that But I think it’s not an entirely accurate I guess no analogies entirely accurate but almost by definition.
[00:42:24] Red: So I’m not saying too much here But I can understand where the thomas saas fans are coming from when they’ve got some concerns with that analogy I don’t personally I think it’s like it’s a close enough analogy that i’m fine with calling it that calling it mental illness But one of the things that mental illness really is Is it’s just completely regular traits that everybody has But to a degree that it’s becoming disabling in their life And basically that’s what makes it a disorder is that they’re not able to live what we consider to be a normal life right
[00:42:57] Blue: Right
[00:42:57] Red: and that this was thomas saas’s kind of main Concern is look people can choose how they want to live their life What what why do you get to determine what a normal what is or isn’t a normal life? It’s kind of at least somewhat fair point, right? And I think this is why it’s a little difficult to tease apart sometimes Most of us can see that the steves in our life Are very unhappy and and really wish they would be Go get help be more happy, right? Assuming that there is help because I know in some cases there isn’t And I think it’s a natural thing for us to feel and therefore we call it a disorder We we do that so the person says oh, I’ve got a problem. I need help They go get help right and I think in a lot of cases that works the person actually gets some help their life actually improves But it’s you know Ultimately a person has to decide for themselves. Is this for me or not? Do I decide that this is something I’m going to try to change about myself or not? And so I can I can kind of see both sides here But for our purposes, we’re going to use the term mental illness that is the common term today I don’t think it’s a terrible term even though I’ve now admitted It’s at least in some cases a little bit not the greatest analogy
[00:44:18] Blue: agreed um
[00:44:20] Red: Getting back to your question though, um, Marcy There was a quote in evil genes that reminded me of Marcy And here’s the quote Subclinical narcissists on the other hand are often happy people who take stress in stride Psychology today writer Carl Vogel writes mild narcissism Also seems to help people recover from accidents or other trauma It gives them an unrealistic sense of their own invulnerability And they believe that they will be able to handle whatever else else life throws at them As one researcher put it Being somewhat narcissistic is like driving a huge SUV You’re having a great time even while you hog the road suck up extra resources and put all other drivers at high risk
[00:45:04] Blue: Yeah,
[00:45:05] Red: that’s a great Description of Marcy, right? I don’t think I think she lives a decent life. I think she’s happy with her life I don’t think she’s seeking fuel in quite the same way that that you’re describing So she would probably be a subclinical narcissist someone who wouldn’t necessarily be diagnosed with a disorder because it’s not actually Causing damage to her life in the same way that seems to be having damage in his life to anyone who’s on the outside Who knows him or is close to him, right? You
[00:45:37] Blue: said that perfectly. Yeah Mm -hmm
[00:45:39] Red: on the other hand A lot of what you’re describing is still accurate for Marcy even though she may not actually have a disorder For example, she went she finally went too far and I ended my relationship with her. I just said that’s it I’m done even being friends with you were done and just to be clear I say we were dating but this was not boyfriend girlfriend dating. Um, I had another Female friend that I was fairly actively going out with and doing things with at the same time. They knew about each other I tried to get them to be friends. It was not Neither was an attempt to be a official relationship and yet despite that there’s just because you’re opposite genders There’s always thoughts in the back of the mind about possibilities of romance that sometimes screw things up And it was interesting because Marcy and what we’ll call the other girl we’re gonna call Nicole. Okay So it was interesting that there was a pretty strong contrast between the two that became more apparent to me over time Nicole being a regular empath empathetic sort of person When I ended my relationship with Marcy First of all, she never apologized for anything. She did she did some fairly hurtful things And she never really apologized for it But then she would just walk up to me on campus and she would Pretend like we were still friends Um, and she would start talking to me. She would sit down next to me She would try to act like nothing had happened Which by the way might have worked on me had it not been for the fact That I had gotten used to that from steve from years before
[00:47:25] Blue: Right
[00:47:27] Red: And I didn’t want to be mean so I would sit and talk with her. I was never In any way mean towards her, right? I would try to treat her very well But I had no desire to Be back in her orbit again because of how hurtful she could behave And she would it wasn’t enough for her To pretend like we were friends. I’m sure she knew we weren’t Anymore right and one of the ways you could tell that Marcy knew we weren’t friends anymore Was how she would utilize coming up to me on campus She might for example Come sit next to me and she might say she might then start to ask probing questions about how’s your social life Which clearly was really just she’s trying to find out Do you feel sad that you’re not friends with me anymore? And so I would just I’d just tell her what she wanted to hear I’d say oh, yeah, my social life is is terrible and she would go So is mine Because I have so many friends. I’m hanging out with now. I mean literally like junior high level stuff So you knew that there was this Altru ulterior motive to why she was seeking me out And it was actually at this point kind of humorous. It wasn’t hurtful anymore I had kind of decided this is where we’re at and I’m done But I am going to let her stop and talk with me and I’m not going to be mean to her But I will I will not open myself up to ever being in her orbit again She would then try to get me back into her orbit She would say oh, you’re taking a dance class.
[00:49:01] Red: I I hear you know, I’m a really good dancer I could get you to where you’re a really good dancer come over to my house and I’m going to teach you to dance I mean like it was very clearly. I’m trying to get you back. So I’ve got someone to fuel off of In any case, it was exactly what you’re talking about Tracy that a person who is narcissistic They’ve got some pretty good skills for trying to pull you back in They kind of know that that we empathetic types that if they act in certain ways That we then become forgiving often without them ever having to actually change Steve for example, he would just be a really really really good friend to you But he would never apologize for the way he treated you previously, right
[00:49:49] Blue: Is softly Sometimes I would say he would softly apologize for it
[00:49:55] Red: Yeah, I I guess I can think of cases where he would apologize But I can’t think of any cases where it was
[00:50:01] Blue: sincere That’s the trick right the sincerity
[00:50:04] Red: He would like he would he could take a tone of apology He could say, you know, I really I feel bad about what I did and then like he would go to some other friend He would say things that would leave no doubt that it was fake, right?
[00:50:18] Blue: Right
[00:50:18] Red: to this other friend Who would then of course tell me, you know, right?
[00:50:22] Blue: This is we
[00:50:23] Red: were all we were in the hall at high school. So this is your real friend, I guess
[00:50:26] Blue: Yeah, we’re a bunch of kids right
[00:50:31] Red: So and I really can’t think of any case where Steve was actually Empathetically, sorry, he could go through the motions. He was good at going through the motion He could put the act on but there was always some sort of sign that he was just doing that because that’s what he knew He needed to do to get what he wanted
[00:50:49] Blue: Yeah, and for me the way I remember the motions are there’s tons of apologizing You could feel the immense amount of hurt But it was more like I’m so hurt here Can you help me? Can you forgive me? Because I’m the one that’s so hurt. Yes. Yeah
[00:51:06] Red: Anyhow, that’s my answer to your question. Yes a person who’s narcissistic. They’re very hard to walk away from They have got good skills for trying to pull you back And really for me the marsy situation was the situation that made me realize I am making a mistake with my own personality I am allowing people like this to abuse me and I’m not going to allow it anymore
[00:51:32] Blue: so And then maybe going back to the idea of you know borderlines Having on their list this fear of abandonment We’ve noticed that was a narcissistic personality disorder. They they also have a fear of abandonment Because they have a fear of inadequacy, right? So if you’re feeling You’re not good enough or useful enough Which and that that need to be that way kind of comes from is like the source of their grandiosity Do you have a fear of being inadequate? Inadequate to who and an inadequate compared to what? So I really kind of feel like that They have a fear of also being abandoned by people because they need people to validate them and to stay in their orbit to Make them feel good about themselves and I and you say the word orbit There really is a particular behavior that a lot of narcissists and I don’t know maybe even borderlines do don’t quote me on that but where It’s called hoovering paste off the hoover the old hoover vacuums Yeah, they just find a way to emotionally to suck you back Into their orbit with the apologies with the future faking. Oh, we’re gonna do this. I promise life’s gonna get better we’re gonna go on that vacation we’re gonna Whatever it is It’s endless so, yeah um so By the way,
[00:52:58] Red: I’ve never heard the term future faking prior to
[00:53:01] Blue: future faking So then maybe my little borrowed theory here of these traits kind of blending together Basically, so you have a borderline personality disorder person. It’s got the fear of abandonment I just really feel like that’s a shared trait with a narcissist
[00:53:20] Red: I can see that Really argument they
[00:53:23] Blue: can’t be what they are and who they are without people. That’s why they try so Hard to keep pulling friends people family lovers back in So if we move on to the idea of um Borderlines so from their list Uh on this Venn diagram borderlines have a concern about acceptance and Nurturents and a deep sensitivity to rejection and every you know, we all have some Sensitivity to rejection nobody loves that just think of dating when we were teens That’s scary, right? Yeah being rejected but For the narcissistic personality side They have a need to be admired which kind of taps back up into what we were saying just a moment ago So if you are needing to be mired you are then by default concerned about being accepted by somebody, right? A narcissist isn’t perhaps so much concerned with the nurturing side of Things except in the way that it’s something that they actually just expect They expect to be nurtured by you It’s almost like when they have the chutzpah to keep coming back and Asking more for you more from you and more from you with their promises and and stuff like they just expect They’re going to get that what they need from you and they’re really good at getting it so I would kind of argue that perhaps again, maybe semantics a narcissist expects the nurturance and a borderline needs the nurturance and acceptance Um, I really kind of think so those are shades of the same thing I feel like we could safely take those traits and stick them into the shared middle I Narcissists have a sense of superiority That’s from their list, right?
[00:55:14] Blue: So a sense of superiority might really be just another way to express a sense of entitlement Which is already in the shared traits for narcissists and borderlines So I really feel like that’s just almost like hair splitting You really could just move a sense of superiority onto the shared traits list for both of them because they both feel entitled to their wants and their needs Which actually I feel implies a level of a sense of superiority They are going to get what they need no matter What it costs everybody else
[00:55:45] Red: right the reason why we feel entitled is because we feel we have some sort of superiority that makes us entitled to it. I can see that
[00:55:53] Blue: And then on the narcissists going back to their list of traits again, um, again, we’re going to touch Them having a need to be admired um, so a borderline personality person So unless maybe they have like a their comorbid with the a histrionic issues or traits Need to be mired might not be a particular word that they use but It could be said that they are instead they’re addicted what a borderline is addicted to is Your presence or someone’s presence too intimacy to being seen and then They need to be accepted for what is being seen and if you go to Basic dictionary the definition of the to admire is to regard with pleasure wonder and approval So intimacy and pleasure presence and wonder acceptance approval the kind of Things that all exist like peas in a pod those kind of shades of each other right exist within each other So again, semantics, I think it might be safe to say that both Narcissists and a borderline have these needs So I think it’s a shared characteristic. They both actually do need to be admired
[00:57:13] Red: Okay, I will buy that one too.
[00:57:15] Blue: Okay And uh this concern about status and task performance it’s on the list for the narcissists um You could say borderlines are generally concerned with status Or not. I’m sorry. They’re they’re not so much maybe concerned with status as they are concerned with status in terms of social groups and especially with um in a partnership so in this sense They’ll be constantly assessing and concerned with the status of their relationships And if they’re performing tasks adequately enough to be accepted and to not become abandoned so Constantly obsessed with that making sure that they’re doing everything right and because they fear that ultimate abandonment, right? So maybe in slightly different ways, but still very similar. I feel similar enough that Again shades of kind of the same thing That a narcissist and a borderline are in fact both concerned about status and task performance It’s just depends on kind of on the task right
[00:58:21] Red: Yeah
[00:58:22] Blue: and then Both borderline personality disorder and people with npd. They both rely on people for their sense of self and emotional regulation And if that’s the case that really makes them both codependent the codependent on others to to exist and to be and to not fall into What I feel feels like is a black hole inside of somebody honestly, um And from my experience, that’s what it feels like So of course if you’re loving and depending on someone else who’s of course So anybody that you love You when you love someone that person is autonomous, right? So the fear there right for any of us and all of us is that autonomous person that you love can leave right and so Just the mere Having this person in your life or loving them Creates a possibility of being left. So there’s always that terror and that fear And that leaves them feeling like a constant victim of circumstance When things don’t go right like I knew you would leave kind of You especially like a borderline you’ll get a lot of that Well, I knew you you’re gonna leave me or I’m not good enough for you and there’s a lot of that kind of thing going on I guess the similarity here is that early on in life both the narcissist and the borderline personality disorder persons Really they both experienced emotional invalidation at quite a young age And we’re gonna quickly we’re gonna tie this into kind of the attachment issues Maybe with genetic predisposition and then environment and what happens at a young age because it’s Incredibly critical So again, both of these types of people have they’ve experienced emotional invalidation and neglect and Maybe abandonment from their primary caregiver and
[01:00:32] Blue: those people around them family members around them So you could argue that they basically have kind of come from the same war zone if you will and they have very similar battle scars from the experience the pain, right? But what I Read from this person JC and what I’m gonna kind of propose here along with it because I I think I agree It’s what it kind of came down to was how so if they’re having the same general experience They’re a they’re getting the message from their primary care provider which is usually Mom not always but the infant always chooses They they’re the infant is the one that chooses their primary caregiver Right
[01:01:20] Red: Yeah
[01:01:20] Blue: And so they’re they’ve somehow gotten the message Not necessarily from them, but also others around that could be dad or Aunt uncle maybe even siblings, but they get the message that they’re a bad object in some shape or form so They’re They’re just in kind of in this space of pain, but what happens is, you know, if they’re both having this similar experience A narcissist Ultimately protects themselves from this particular message saying that you’re a bad Object you’re this bad unwanted thing What they tend to do is they protect themselves by Forming this message by creating a false self for themselves to create a caricature of a personality And a projection of perfection And that’s what becomes their reality And then it’s it’s a nightmare when that gets cracked or somebody sees through it. It’s a bad It’s bad for everybody For a borderline They walk around with a conscious realization of being a bad object. So where a narcissist Is generally in complete denial. There are those some rare ones that see it, but by and large It’s it’s just something they do not see about themselves. They don’t See themselves as a false person or a caricature in any way But a borderline I think where you see that emotional the angst part kind of come in more because you know, we’ve seen that especially in you know Steve’s case you’ll kind of see this say I feel like there was always this kind of pain around them because they were always displaying Pain or lots of heavy emotion
[01:03:06] Blue: So for a borderline when that pain is too much because they are somewhat conscious of Themselves that way of being that bad object that they were felt made to feel it that they were When that pain is too much and then they start to slip into things like dissociation Sorry dissociative states And derealization they slip into depersonalization they act out Or they tend to check out what drugs or alcohol and sometimes harmful activities so there’s entitlement Entitlement allows a borderline person to develop a fantasy world within their own mind kind of a secret grandiose self -image Or an idealized reality And they’re also aware of that but they tend to live in that fantasy world and when there’s cracks in that It basically they on some level they Tend to know I believe that they’re constantly at odds with true reality So they kind of know they’ve developed this fantasy world and they Try to stand there. I think we saw shades of this fantasy world with our friend Steve.
[01:04:14] Red: Yeah I think that was why he reimagined himself as a superhero character Right is this is who he really wanted to be and there was this Gap between the personality that he wanted to be and what he actually was Steve would not only he took on a superhero name, but he would actually practice poses that he could strike under the right circumstance to Create the feeling of being a hero in those circumstances I mean he put quite a bit of effort into this persona. He was building for himself So, yeah, I can I can see what you’re saying there. There was definitely uh He was dealing with the constant gap between his persona. He wanted to project and the reality
[01:04:59] Blue: I think that uh, we’ve managed to kind of pull in all the traits that were separated on this diagram and kind of show how really They should really be a soup in the middle with the rest of these characteristics and I think that’s why For this reason, I believe that’s kind of why you actually have shades of narcissistic people because You’ve just got different kinds of narcissists. They just are not all the same and That’s why you have narcissists that seem much more emotional The narcissist that was close to me displays tears displays emotion that ultimately end up back into Kind of a selfish Realization it’s it’s like a selfish tactic and it becomes about them and then everybody Is helping to fix them Yeah, and being hurt by it basically
[01:05:57] Red: Do you know I um I wasn’t going to mention this but I have a co -worker. I didn’t know him that well But he had some sort of Personality disorder that and he was very narcissistic and he was aware that he was he was one of the ones who knew That he had a problem He recently committed suicide
[01:06:19] Blue: Oh
[01:06:19] Red: And yeah, it was bad and so I didn’t know him so But I went to the funeral and got to see the reactions of his friends and family There were a lot of people who were very close to him and he clearly had Many great traits that endeared him to people But they would also talk about In a good way. This is a funeral, but they would talk about some of the struggles with his personality I think that’s a good example of where You’ve got someone who’s got a disorder like this and it’s clearly making their life worse And yet they’re really struggling to change And they’re trying they’re trying to change. They consciously are trying to make efforts to change
[01:07:01] Blue: And
[01:07:01] Red: yet it’s it’s just so hard. It’s exceptionally difficult. Yeah There’s a sadness that you just can’t help but feel towards people who have a disorder like this Even in the case of a subclinical case like marsy You wish you could help them live a better life and to some degree it’s none of your business They have to make their own decisions and it’s of people who are really close to them to kind of help them along But you can kind of see the self -destructive behavior that’s going on if that makes any sense
[01:07:32] Blue: Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense and it is really difficult because For myself, you know, when you eventually come to a certain point of realization Of who or what you might actually be dealing with and you look back through the patterns You see All the all those things happening and ultimately for me what I see is that super heart It feels like a super hurt toddler Yeah, that’s just Just I hate to say the word broken because Especially in terms of you know helping people or I think people should always be helpable and fixable. So maybe broken’s a bad word But you can see that pain that has never dissipated. I wouldn’t say it that way um But also an an unwillingness to reach back or an inability to reach back and heal that and that Oh having to walk away from that at one point to save yourself or to save um your family There’s a lot of people facing that and it’s I don’t wish it on anybody. I really don’t it’s terrible eventually feels like Knowing a black hole because that’s just what Ultimately feels like is there’s this black hole of a person who just so this is my experience Who you just this is what the hoovering the whole sucking thing is they’re just Sucking everything out of you to validate them to give them the feel they need to feel okay to feel alive While you’re completely losing yourself. You’re losing your boundaries as a person. You just It’s quite the cycle. Yeah, I’m gonna lose my place here if I let’s get myself back on track
[01:09:15] Blue: So basically kind of hypothesis I’m gonna put out there that jc was put out there and I think others have kind of touched on this Maybe some vacuum kind of feels this way. Don’t quote me on that. Sorry if you listen to this, sir um it’s basically though that um Because of this cluster of personality disorders and the way that it that just there’s really slight nuances Maybe to the how they achieve these wants or these needs are these these flaws I really feel like they all kind of need the same things in just slightly different ways. It’s like for me it’s kind of a soup and jc put it that basically a borderline is a failed narcissist may probably mostly from the From the idea that a borderline Somebody who has borderline tends to be aware of their flaws. They understand the reality isn’t real And that’s I think why you get the even more volatile Back and forth it’s they see it or as a narcissist tends to not see it They’ve much more successfully created a false self that they themselves believe
[01:10:17] Red: interesting so I would tend to have thought of borderlines as more severe borderline personality disorder as more severe as narcissistic personality disorder And certainly that’s the way it normally gets portrayed But that is interesting that in some sense the borderlines are being more realistic about themselves
[01:10:39] Blue: Under the square
[01:10:40] Red: of thinking anyhow
[01:10:41] Blue: kind of like there’s cracks in the wall So it seems more obvious and yeah I want to point out that researchers like a lot of the phd’s and stuff I was reading All tend to imply that somebody who has a narcissistic personality disorder is by and large unhelpable Not completely unhelpable, you know, there are camps out there and Who argue that it is solvable And it is in my opinion also it is solvable The the hard thing is though This is something that’s obviously going to take years Of actual hard coming to the table work You first of all, they have to be able to see it And then dislike it enough to go. Oh, yeah Okay, how do I fix this you have to become cognitive of it first and accept it before you could even Do all the years of hard work it takes to Change yourself basically there’s this There’s a attachment disturbances and adults and there’s uh, daniel brown wrote this lovely book. I’m still kind of Getting myself through but the the way that we attach When we’re young we we develop a different attachment styles so in this One particular camp of actually taking one of their classes because I feel like I need to work on my attachment style as an anxious preoccupied kind of person It’s basically kind of this idea of it’s these a lot of mentalizing and you the idea is you kind of start with creating New parents for yourself in your mind kind of like that you make a new experience out of it You kind of do a lot This is what I say
[01:12:22] Blue: it takes years because you’re going to do years of these kinds of mentalization type Tasks and works to kind of reconstruct yourself for yourself so that you can actually attain A different attachment style become a more secure person and move away from this Narcissistic person who’s so hurt or this borderline person that’s so hurt So possible yes Getting that person to that point that seems like the impossible part. That’s the really hard part.
[01:12:51] Red: Yeah Yeah, and yeah, and then I mean do any of us really want to spend years working on ourselves
[01:13:00] Blue: Right. I don’t even want to spend a week doing a task. I’m like, oh, that’s too much time.
[01:13:04] Red: Yeah I think you know, we’re asking it’s not it’s not just that it’s hard for them to recognize That they have a problem It’s that we’re asking we’re asking something very very very large of them
[01:13:16] Blue: very difficult
[01:13:17] Red: Yeah, I
[01:13:18] Blue: mean by and large, I think most of us None of us like to change that much. Maybe some more than others are interested in continual self -improvement, but The effort of of changing I mean, you know what they found a strategy that worked for them by and large They can get by with it Right, and so and we all do that right Maybe
[01:13:40] Red: it’s actually a house of cards, but as far as they can tell it’s a house, you know,
[01:13:44] Blue: yeah. Yeah They understand how to reconstruct it very quickly. So yeah, they make it work Let’s see So I yeah, I feel like they’re maybe kind of one in the same and just different shades and so There are different types and incarnations of Narcissism the reason I wanted to bring up the borderline is because I feel like borderline is part of those Shades and why you have different types of narcissists and We can talk about that here So you have your kind of grand or overt narcissists and You might want to think of Leonardo DiCaprio in the wolf of wall street some characters like that Uh, I hesitate to name a certain past presidential candidate, although there have been many Would fit
[01:14:37] Red: There’s one in particular that I’m thinking of Yes, uh, that is basically your stereotypical Narcissists, right?
[01:14:45] Blue: They’re just um, yeah, they’re just overt. They’re very self centered Super sensitive to being criticized getting any kind of negative feedback They
[01:14:55] Red: can’t for example, imagine that they actually lost an election not that I’m talking about anyone in particular. No, no, no, right That’s just a random example
[01:15:01] Blue: a random example very random They are super sensitive to you know, the opinions of others. They have this super inflated sense of entitlement all, you know, it just exudes from them and they As far as an attachment style, they tend to be kind of Dismissive and anxious if and we’ll get into the attachment styles here in a bit So maybe I won’t touch that too much yet But they also require the you know excessive self praise and boasting and they are completely in denial of any of their shortcomings Or weaknesses or failures. It’s just deflect deflect deflect. Nope. Nope. I’m not that person never did that You know I’m perfect And there’s always a reason and the reason is always somehow better than yours This is where I like I think a lot of gaslighting comes in because they’re literally Denying your reality when you come to them with something and Right.
[01:15:55] Red: Right. It’s maddening. Yes
[01:15:58] Blue: So we can agree on I think we all understand what You know your generalized over grandiose narcissists looks like which by the way are um really When it comes to like Hollywood I think these people are really over represented a lot of this like as um And I think this also ties into well narcissism in general because you’ll see like You see all the love stories, right the the chick flicks and kind of things where you’ve got this guy who is Just pointed on heavy I’m kind of getting ahead of myself here, but they’ll they’ll display traits like um, we call it love bombing right, so they’ll They’ll come on really heavy by giving their partner lots of attention. There’s lots of grandiose gestures of Crazy dates and gifts that go through this elaborate things just just make them feel like They are this person’s universe. Um, they completely lack They lack boundaries. They completely ignore yours Because it feels so good. You’re like, I don’t want any boundaries and then They tend to isolate that partner and move quickly to intimacy And I think Hollywood really represents that particular dynamic heavily I think it’s kind of a confusing message.
[01:17:22] Red: Yeah Yeah, and hollywood’s not the only place that’s overrepresented with narcissists I understand that that’s also true for like university professors politicians, you know, there are lawyers, um, there are Certain professions that are particularly appealing to a person with a narcissistic personality disorder.
[01:17:43] Blue: Yeah True So, um, another type. Let’s see back here to this Is the vulnerable kind of slash victim kind of slash covert narcissists And by the way, these are all terms anybody can google and if they’re confused or they’ll see what we’re getting after here I I feel like in my case with bob that I was dealing much more with this type and then another subtype which is called the cerebral Narcissist and then we’ll get to that in a second that but basically this type, um And there’s always exceptions, right? Nothing is ever the exact same You know thing but This type tends to be extremely sensitive Uh, and sometimes even passive and they might they might appear shy They might appear like they’re kind of a more of a loner type like It makes me think of batman who’d show up at a party and be in dark in the corner and be like, I hate parties That kind of it can be that kind of person They’re but they’re extremely manipulative they use One of their main arsenal tools is passive aggressive behavior to make themselves feel superior Um And they may even do things like put themselves down So that others will come back and praise them or coddle them This was pretty frequent occurrence. Um That’s when you get into the speeches of I’m worthless You’re right. You should leave me. Why are you still with me? And then What are you supposed to do with that? You kind of come back with that? No, oh, you know, I’m a fixer This is my problem, right? I’ve got a fix that I’ve got to make this okay.
[01:19:24] Blue: I have You know that you kind of a lot of people tend to respond this way, especially if you’ve got a certain attachment style and by the way Narcissists do tend to pick partners that do have my particular attachment style, so We’ll get into that in a bit or we’ll try um, but this uh for this victim me vulnerably the covert type of narcissist there, um They tend to express a negative view of themselves As if they avoid intimacy Um That that can be somewhat true. I think that’s also kind of in shades But like being deeply vulnerable in that sense. I would say yeah, I think that’s actually true So if intimacy equals deep Real vulnerability, so then yeah, that’s right on the money um They have an inability to deal with negative emotions They get extremely anxious. They can have patterns of aggression which that can take many different forms. Um You right that just is and that’s and like So aggression might be a form of This gaslighting right that’s actually kind of aggressive
[01:20:40] Red: Right
[01:20:40] Blue: just so they’re much more subtle forms and I feel like for me and I’ve actually heard it said that this particular style of Narcissist is generally the most damaging Overall Because it’s not so obvious what you’re dealing with In this type of narcissist. You just think maybe this person’s just a little bit sad Maybe they’ve got depression issues in which they might you know, probably they do But it’s just so much harder to suss out That you’re dealing with a narcissist, right
[01:21:14] Red: because they don’t have any of the they don’t have any of the overt signs of narcissism
[01:21:19] Blue: right, they’re not For lack of a bit, but not so I mean a lot of your grander narcissists. They can be the kinds that I’m just different stuff, but like, you know, you’d think of Physical abuse right or domestic abuse. That’s one obvious dead giveaway. Sorry that person’s definitely a narcissist, right? Um, but there’s just so many or more subtle ways to do it like they can be more emotionally abusive like in this So we’ll we’ll talk about the cerebral type. Um They So if you want to think of an idea in your head of how to relate that you might think of If the tv show house Yeah, that character, you know super smart smarter than everybody else, right?
[01:22:03] Red: um By the way the the co -worker who recently um committed suicide that he was this kind this kind. Yeah, okay Again, he was open about this. He had a great deal of awareness
[01:22:15] Blue: So, yeah, the cerebral kind of narcissists you might see them overrepresented in things fields like probably like medicine too But like your universities and stuff Yeah, um, and I worked at a university for Over 10 years engineering field. Yeah, and I worked with a lot of engineers in the university and There was a lot of this I didn’t realize it for what it was but now looking back. I’m like Aha, I wish I’d known then I might have been I might have left with a little bit more sanity But So like the definition of a cerebral narcissist might be somebody who indulges their mind for the sake of getting attention and grandiosity, right? these kinds of narcissists believe in Like gaining and increasing their intellectual abilities. They depend on the master Of command when they speak their intellectual languages, right? So they’re they’re usually very eloquent They’re very smart very yeah, they’ve just got the words like the the dictionary and Kind of like a mixture of the dictionary and poetry exists in the back of their head and they just Charm me with the smartness in the words and it’s so clever, right? Right um This does kind of tend to play into somewhat, you know, even sexuality that well as far as like styles like it’s kind of by and large thought that a cerebral narcissist Is truly kind of at their core much more asexual than maybe an average person That doesn’t mean that they don’t engage and maybe don’t like these things But like it would help might kind of play out in a partnership is At the beginning of a relationship, they will do this thing that we’ll talk about again But called basically kind of love bombings.
[01:23:57] Blue: They’ll present themselves more like Another type of narcissist, which is called a somatic narcissist And these are the ones that are like the beautiful playboys and playgirls, right? Right That seemed Extremely vapid and it’s all about the physical attraction very shallow. So but they’ll come off but this is a certain charm Yeah, and there’s a certain charm. So they kind of come on that way and then eventually in the relationship And this is what comes hurt hurtful for the partners eventually They’re available their sexual availability declines greatly and goes away and it becomes a source of control And it becomes hurtful to the partner who’s left wondering Well, don’t you still like me? kind of feeling so it’s just this cycle they Pardon, they have a high sense of self importance and grandiosity. They crave admiration and they crave acknowledgment They have a preoccupation with beauty love power success They might harbor fantasies about being influential famous and important And they’ll often tend to exaggerate their own skills and talents and accomplishments So Yeah There’s just so many different shades. I mean Pardon, I think that’s why it’s maybe so hard to suss out because they look so different Even though they’re narcissists, they can look so different in whatever environment or chosen skillset they have So And now We can touch on the somatic narcissists. I think we kind of did you kind
[01:25:29] Unknown: of
[01:25:29] Blue: get the idea of what that person’s like
[01:25:35] Red: I Paris Hilton would be a good example here.
[01:25:37] Blue: Yeah.
[01:25:38] Red: Yeah I don’t like does anybody doubt that she’s a narcissist, right? I mean, it’s
[01:25:44] Blue: Again, not we’re not diagnosing, but we’re just pretty darn sure.
[01:25:47] Red: Yeah,
[01:25:48] Blue: you could still change our minds But I’d like to see the evidence. How’s that?
[01:25:52] Red: Uh, well when it’s a famous person, there’s a certain amount of Safety and talking about them right because it’s like you’re not really going to affect their lives in any way shape or And most of us can tell that there’s something off with Paris Hilton in the way she acts, right?
[01:26:08] Blue: Right. Let’s just briefly talk about one of the last of different types of narcissism Which basically it’s more like if you are or have this kind of personality disorder Narcissism by default Is lumped is lumped in there. You are also a narcissist, right? So you’ve got your kind of malignant Narcissist your sociopathic narcissist and your psychopathic Narcissist so briefly a malignant narcissist would be like your grandiose narcissist, but It would include an antisocial Feature like paranoid traits. They would be egoscenton have egoscentonic aggression And what that means is they’re basically their behaviors align with their personal values and their personal self -image For a sociopathic Narcissist that include it includes those people that knowingly and unknowingly don’t acknowledge that things like We all tend to morally agree on that cheating is bad stealing and exploiting others for your own gain is bad, right? That’s generally not a morally correct idea, but people who are you know sociopathic that way Basically for them, that’s like it’s just like a non -issue it the the morality Discomfort line that people that might exist if I think for most people just isn’t there for them Yeah, this disorder does have a nickname on the internet. They’re called a narcopath a narcopath a narcopath And then
[01:27:40] Red: so for what I’ve read they still can explain What is morally right and what’s morally wrong? You just don’t follow it. Is that true or is that not what you’re talking about here? They literally um
[01:27:51] Blue: Well, and when they knowingly and unknowingly don’t acknowledge I think there’s a probably a mix for some it probably never occurs to them that it’s a bad thing and You’d probably be really hard pressed to explain to them why it might be a bad thing
[01:28:04] Red: interesting
[01:28:04] Blue: But some definitely know I know it’s not acceptable to steal this 50 grand from the bank, but so um
[01:28:12] Red: In in the book evil genes one of the I’ll have to like find this for a future podcast But one of the quotes that was the most chilling was a psychopath explaining Who was a serial killer explaining why he did what he did? and he said Yeah, I could tell that my victims were were Afraid and upset when I was Killing them Right, but I’ve been afraid before and it wasn’t unpleasant Right like literally was thinking like that, right? It’s There was like something completely missing
[01:28:48] Blue: Yeah, wow Chilling
[01:28:52] Red: Yeah, very chilly
[01:28:53] Blue: sense Yeah, I mean, obviously they’re experiencing life and reality in a completely different lens That’s the real different lens. That’s Very But yeah, no, that’s a great example So let’s um, I kind of want to talk about Get a little bit deeper and like where this maybe kind of comes from actually first Just because this is important to me. So sorry. Y ‘all have to listen to this I just kind of wanted to briefly go through Um things to think about like if you are or have been or might be involved with some kind of a narcissist What the stages and what these kind of things look like and some of the epiphanies you might have um About I don’t know about not hopefully not yourself. Maybe But about people in your life So basically you’ve got four stages You have a stage where when you’re dealing with the narcissist, there’s the lovely idealization stage. So think of that Super over the top romantic gesturing in movies like the romance movies and stuff, right? So you’ve got the Quick quick engagements quickly moving to intimacy discussing marriage super quickly elaborate dates gifts Just really kind of ignoring your borders But they make it feel so good that you don’t really want to have or hold to Personal borders you might normally have and this is called love bombing and it feels like a crazy sick drug honestly, yeah But at some point that honey moonish phase eventually Starts to change especially maybe after you have said, okay, let’s elope or whatever Then you go through this next stage just being devalued Where their behaviors start to change, right? So they your narcissist if you have one Might start attempting to change your behavior.
[01:30:42] Blue: Um, you might notice that are suddenly being more critical Of you insult you more This is when they start gaslighting you basically Which is the crazy making which makes you feel like your reality isn’t real They might be physically threatening or become physically threatening us when people get married and then later they find out. Uh, oh My spouse is an abuser They might have more They’re gonna definitely keep and maybe even further Violate any boundaries you might still have In some cases they might do this thing in this particular phase. It’s something called triangulation And this is when a narcissist might bring in a third party Into the relationship in order to remain in control of the one they’re already in with you So there’ll be limited or no communication between the two triangulated individuals except to the manipulator but it’s It’s almost like a safety net It’s almost like they kind of start to build their backdoor exit because when it starts to get too hot for them Oh, look, I’ve already kind of got somebody else on the hook over here Um, or something else on, you know, it could be that could manifest in different ways But they might start withholding sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy at this point too Well, um, then the next phase is basically where you’re kind of being rejected or discarded And so from them you might feel contempt and rage from them That they’re between the relationship or they might accuse you of betraying the relationship They will play the victim.
[01:32:08] Blue: They will invalidate your emotions Entirely in place all the blame back on you and then they’ll end the relationship either permanently or temporarily With attempts to continue this cycle of abuse and this is why I brought in that word hoovering Because by and large they will at some point in the future hoover you which is it’s a It’s coined from like I said the hoover vacuum It’s basically a calculating scheme that’s commonly used by narcissists to basically suck you back into their orbit and get you back into their life and Rents repeat you go back to step one They love bomb all over again and you’re like, oh, I was I was wrong. See they really do love me Look how wonderful they’re being and this just goes on and on and on Yeah, now Oh, where are you gonna say some I was and now I forgot what it was Keep going and all Yes, um, so basically is how this This all kind of goes back to at least I believe and it can be shown. I believe that two attachment styles and development so basically, um According to um, I think it’s jonathan bolby, but mr. Bolby When you’re an infant, okay, you just arriving here and Basically following the four phases. There’s four phases of attachment, right? So the first phase is called the pre attachment phase that phase lasts from birth to six weeks, right? That’s when baby is born is kind of getting oriented.
[01:33:43] Blue: They’re learning Probably like preferences like this because of this is where you know an infant really does choose their their caregiver I mean usually it is mom It might not be mom Maybe in this case if it was this early it could be grandma or it could be auntie. It could be dad and you know But this is where those things are starting to form. So this is the first phase of attachment The next phase is from generally about six weeks old to six to eight months old And that stage is called the attachment making phase. So this is when I guess you generally as an infant made your decision and you’re following the attachment to your preferred caregiver And then next stage after that it’s called the clear cut attachment phase So this is when I guess things become really obviously the word right clear cut this stage starts at about somewhere between Depending on the infant between about six to eight months and goes till about 18 months to two years again depending on the infant and after that this last stage Goes from about 18 months two months and then on till about adolescence right this kind of Where there’s so there’s still some room here, but it’s called the formation of reciprocal. I’m sorry reciprocal relationships so By the end of the second year or so Um on one of the these four main types of attached that you’re one of the four main attachment styles Is stably established by about the end of the second year Both as an internal working model for that child and basically as a resulting pattern of attachment behavior so you’ve got Your basic attachment styles. So we’ll go over these really quickly.
[01:35:26] Blue: So you have your secure person. This is what This I’m actually taking classes over time and I acknowledge this is going to take years and I’m okay with that To I want to reach this attachment style because this I feel like this is where it’s at so if you’re secure what to get a secured child basically The caregivers behaviors were things like such that they reacted quickly and positively to the child’s needs And they were responsive to the child’s needs I want to point out something here that It’s really the bar for how well a caregiver needs to respond and react positively to the needs of the the infant is remarkably low If you are able to meet that infant’s needs Adequately or or well it as little as 30 percent of the time You have a chance of being or raising a securely attached person So only 30 percent of the time
[01:36:28] Red: Right, that does seem right.
[01:36:30] Blue: It’s a pretty low bar And then so as a secure child that child’s behaviors if they are secure They might they’re going to display behaviors like they will be distressed when the caregiver leaves But they’ll also be happy when the caregiver returns and they will seek comfort from the caregiver when they’re scared or sad Your next style would be an insecure avoidant attachment style So what this might look like From the caregiver this child would have received more unresponsive or uncaring behaviors and even dismissive of their needs Right, so the child’s behavior then becomes they don’t show distress when the caregiver leaves They don’t acknowledge return of the caregiver like if the caregiver leaves and comes back they they’re like That’s great. I’m going to keep playing with my leg goes over here or whatever Or they don’t seek or make contact with the caregiver. They kind of kind of avoid them, right insecure avoidant Next is insecure ambivalent So in this case the caregiver has responded to the child inconsistently And so the child’s behaviors are kind of more confused, right? They do display distress when the caregiver leaves, but they’re also not largely comforted by the return of the caregiver They still experience that ambivalence the insecurity that stress And then the last one This one’s just so super hard, right?
[01:37:53] Blue: This is probably the worst of them all For the caregiver basically the kind of care that they were able to give that child is They were abusive or neglectful and they responded to the child and the child’s needs in frightening ways So this infant becomes insecure and just completely a disorganized person And you do see a fair a bit of narcissism rise from this particular attachment style can still exist in some of the others but For the child their behaviors would be like Basically they have no attaching behaviors. They often appear dazed or confused and very apprehensive In the presence of their caregiver, right? It’s obvious that they’re scared of that person There’s no security there whatsoever so yeah Trying to think of how I want to tie that back in so it’s just it’s in terms of you know It seems like there’s some genetic Um proponent here, but it’s uh or at least a predisposition, right? And then the environment basically kind of dictates you know, this this Really critical stage can kind of dictate what that attachment style will be and how that child’s going to continue to respond And when and they solidify into the person that they are So, you know, your narcissistic people and your borderline people are experiencing that same trauma of being told Ah bad object. You’re a bad object. You’re a bad thing You need too much for me Uh, you’re a bad person. I can’t deal with you And it’s just the it seems like the way that they kind of in my mind Respond to that trauma slightly different, but they’re kind of still in that same pool of of cluster B trades yeah so
[01:39:44] Blue: I should know I’m not going to read this part. Um So let me ask you this Bruce. Maybe we’ll end with this Okay So wanted to pose a few questions for you. Okay because Um, I have a concern about how things like say narcissism I pertain to explanatory universality So when David Deutsch talks about explanatory universe universality And you know, I know you’ve talked about this and that you agree with him, but Maybe why do you think there seems to be a genetic component? Why can’t we just rewrite whatever the default is in our genes using our minds? Right? That would be
[01:40:23] Red: lovely right
[01:40:23] Blue: And you know, if we go on the basis that we are universal explainers Why do some people seem to be doomed to be narcissists? I mean, why why can’t we just explain to them that what they’re doing And how they’re living their life is wrong and how their life will improve if they change And then change them to no longer be a narcissist. Why isn’t that something we can just do? Last how might this relate to something like agi So David Deutsch says that we should not have agi safety programs because that would be racist But what is the default mode for an agi is to be a psychopath? Because we didn’t program any empathy into them,
[01:41:05] Red: right So these are all really good questions and I suspect that our audience That a good portion of our audience has thought these questions before I think the discovery of the idea of Universal explainer is really kind of a big mind -popping thing where you go. Whoa First of all, it makes sense for a variety of reasons It ties into various theories and arguments in ways that make it very hard to get around On the other hand, we know of examples like this like, you know people in your life that Have a mental disorder or a personality disorder and it really just seems like there’s just no hope They cannot change and if they really are a universal explainer and they can overwrite the ideas in their mind with new ideas Why can’t they change right like it’s really bothersome and then I know some people also there was a guy who darkest pretel just recently wrote a Bug post disagreeing with David Deutsch over intelligence and universal explainer ship. This is this is related but different But he’s kind of asking the same question He’s he’s saying why do we have people with these vastly different IQs, right? IQs actually at least to some degree make predictions about success in life things like that G factor is this idea that if you’re good in one area of intelligence, you’re good at all of them You know, somehow some people really seem like they’re just more intelligent than others How do you reconcile that with universal explainer ship? And
[01:42:36] Red: I don’t think there’s a good easy obvious answer at this time I think that these are legitimate questions and problems that need to be addressed to do that What first of all is probably not entirely possible because I I don’t know all the answers myself But I do know some answers and I think I couldn’t enlighten that discussion And I’d probably be you know a separate podcast in another self So maybe we’ll do that as our next podcast is okay. We’ll talk about that in a bit more detail Let me just make a few points here though. First of all for those of us who Have talked with you know, you read David Deutsch’s books and it’s like life changing for some of us like it was for me And Then you go and you talk to other people it was life changing for I do think that I’m very pro David Deutsch and his theories as far as the four strands goes. I’m like 100 in But clearly I’m I’m open to criticizing some of the Some of the conclusions that have been drawn From those theories if that makes any sense I think one of the things I’ve noticed is that when people ask questions like this of people who Kind of buy into the idea of a universal explainer that they often get answers That are really just off -putting They might be told something like oh, well the whole field of psychology is wrong
[01:44:03] Blue: Right or or the
[01:44:05] Red: whole field of evolutionary psychology is wrong Or oh, well, you know, it’s just memes, you know people’s ideas in their head They just have bad ideas and that’s why they we seem they seem like they have a disorder And it doesn’t really answer the question not in any meaningful sense at all And I think the reason why we sometimes get answers like that to what really are legitimate questions Is because there is this meaning memeness That exists around a theory like David Deutsch’s people get attracted. I know I was attracted to it
[01:44:37] Blue: Right
[01:44:38] Red: because it has these moral consequences that I like being able to see yourself as I’m going to be part of this Program of progress. That’s a very meaningful morally meaningful way to orient your life, right? It’s and I think that when people are orienting their life around a set of ideas that they become a little defensive about the ideas For
[01:45:00] Blue: sure on
[01:45:01] Red: the one hand. These are legitimate questions that need really really legitimate answers On the other hand, I don’t think we have all the answers yet So we’re going to have to admit that some of these problems are real as of today Now that doesn’t mean I don’t think we’ll solve them in the future I’m I’m really very convinced that we are universal explainers and therefore there are certain consequences that that puts limits as to What what is possible through evolutionary psychology? Let’s say Hard limits must exist because we are universal explainers Rather than try to dismiss the whole field, which I think is Pretty much always a mistake what I really want to ask is what can we learn from this theory that will take a Troubled theory a troubled theory like evolutionary psychology And how can we turn it into something that’s actually good by incorporating the idea of universal explainers? And I think the end result is probably going to make nobody today particularly happy If you if you are someone who is a scientist who’s in the evolutionary psychology field I can understand why you’d be threatened by the theory of universal explainers And that’s too bad because it’s going to turn out to be a true theory And it’s going to adapt your field and your field is going to have to change because of it Okay, you can get on board now or you can get on board later, but it’s going to happen
[01:46:26] Blue: Because it needs to happen
[01:46:27] Red: right on the other hand I can understand why Someone who’s bought into the idea of universal explainers might feel threatened by the studies that come out of evolutionary psychology And might therefore choose to not actually look at the fact that they’re raising legitimate issues that need to be addressed Now knowledge progresses from problems. So we should not fear problems We want to understand what the problems are And we want to really sit down and come up with good Testable explanations to deal with those problems not little ad hoc gloss over explanations that are completely non -testable That’s a tall order. I often say preparing epistemology is a harsh mistress. It is Right, but it’s exciting. It’s it’s fun even right as long as you can Realize you don’t need to panic That there are things that come out of psychology that seems problematic for universal explainers That doesn’t mean universal explainers are wrong. Now, we we just barely did some episodes episode 41 the problems of refutation and popper without refutation and then episode 42 Popper without refutation and resolving the problems of refutation in those episodes One of the things that I really emphasized is that a paparian refutation is always a refutation of the entire theoretical system So when we say that psychology has this concept of a narcissistic personality disorder And that poses a problem for the concept of universal explainers What we really really mean is that poses a problem for the content concept of universal explainers and every single attached tacit or You know implicit theory that we’re accidentally attaching to it right now
[01:48:21] Red: right or just assumptions that we’re making by accident or You know, I mean it doesn’t necessarily pose a problem for what we might call the ultimate theory of universal Explanorship whatever that is going to turn out to be which we don’t have today because we don’t know how to build an agi Right, right. I have complete faith That there is no problem with what that ultimate theory of a universal explainer ship is going to turn out to be That the problems only exist because we don’t understand it well enough yet But I can understand why people would get scared I can understand why people would if you’re if you’re on the universal explainer side You try to be dismissive of psychology And maybe even become confirmation biased where not only are you dismissive of psychology But you won’t even look up what studies exist You have kind of pat answers to dismiss them all and you’re not really willing to look into what is it that they’re finding Right,
[01:49:17] Blue: right.
[01:49:17] Red: Um, and how do we deal with that? And I can understand why if you’re in the field of psychology You just feel dismissive of the idea of universal explainers. That’s just some theory that This a physicist came up with what does he know about psychology, right? You know, I mean it’s and never really dig into why he came up with it What theories were the basis for it the the very fact that it’s at least partially rooted in The understanding of physics and how physics works, right? I mean, there’s no easy way to dismiss the theory of universal explainership and people who do try to dismiss it such as Marcus pretels Article when he was trying to do that for IQ He he’s very good at picking out the problem space With universal explainership But he doesn’t really seem to understand the problem with his alternative theory And of course it always comes down to this theory to theory comparison We’re in a we’re in a state of incommensurability to use the kunian term today The theory of universal explainership has really fairly serious issues that need to be addressed But it’s still a better theory than every single alternative that’s on the table And we’re not even talking about a happy medium, right? We’re talking about there’s a truth to this matter and we can get to it And it’s ultimately not going to be found to be at odds with the theory of universal explainership Once we really have a solid version of the theory of universal explainership
[01:50:43] Blue: Right
[01:50:43] Red: It’s only at odds with certain abstract assumptions We’re making today that will ultimately not even prove to be true And that’s really my opinion on this subject But I’m open completely open to I will not dismiss the other fields lock stock and barrel I think that that is just stupid I and I’ll get in trouble with others that I talked to who are fans of David Deutsch like me In particular any time I say anything at all positive about evolutionary psychology There’s an immediate backlash like a really strong backlash And for good reason, right? Ophalbalist in particular sent me an article of a review of a book that he read on evolutionary psychology and Oh my gosh, it was funny I mean his article wasn’t like trying to be humorous But it was a very serious attempt that took the book seriously The problem was is that the book was so obviously crap, right? Here’s he’s he’s seriously trying to go through and Respond seriously to each of the points that the author in the book has made And the points are so crappy Wow, you know, this is typical of these fields like You’re going to have some complete quacks out there and they’re going to say really dumb things But like my introduction to evolutionary psychology came through Steven Pinker He’s a much better scientist than this other guy, right? And he’s given numerous examples where he really just can’t dismiss it lock, stock and barrel, right? There’s there’s something to certain aspects of it Here’s the thing though.
[01:52:20] Red: There are things that need explanation You can you can have some sort of phenomena that exists and it needs an explanation and it needs a good explanation a good testable Deep far -reaching explanation Like if I were to ask a fan of David Deutsch, I actually did ask one I said, how would you explain a psychopath? And their answer was well, you know, some people develop bad coping mechanisms in their ideas Okay, this is probably a true statement, right? But boy, it sure doesn’t address anything
[01:52:52] Blue: very vague. But yes,
[01:52:53] Red: right It’s there’s nothing about this answer that that really is an explanation About why psychopaths clump around certain genetics about why they’re so hard to change You know, never mind psychopaths. Why with a narcissistic personality disorder? Why can’t you just explain to them? Look, you’re hurting yourself in the following way It’s not to your advantage to do this do this instead and why can’t they on a dime change? We know that people can’t change that way, right? Right overwhelming evidence. It just isn’t the case
[01:53:24] Blue: Very
[01:53:25] Red: very rare, right So an answer like this may even be the truth, right? Is to say, well, you know, they’ve developed bad coping mechanisms Right, that may even be the truth. It may be completely the truth But man, what a completely non -explanatory Really not particularly good answer that is. So what we’re really talking about is okay. Let’s let’s dig deeper Let’s try to understand. So Deutsch gives the example of um, you know, what if happiness is the genetic component of happiness is attractiveness, right? What if it’s because they’re physiologically more attractive and then he goes on and he says nothing if even if that’s the case Nothing in the future. You don’t know that maybe knowledge will change and culture will change And what we consider good -looking won’t change and that might affect that person’s happiness And so to even call it a genetic component, even if it’s physiologically linked to physical attractiveness You still can’t really say it’s the genes that caused the happiness Right and again completely valid point. Okay Here’s the problem with that statement though if we’re going to be honest with ourselves While there is undoubtedly a cultural component to physical attractiveness There’s a lot of cross cultural cross time aspects to physical attractiveness And you only live for, you know, 70 years anyhow, right? So even if you would have been considered good -looking in some other time period or in some other culture It almost just doesn’t matter, right? He’s right that we can’t call that a genetic component with a straight face And yet for all intents and purposes you were born with it.
[01:55:12] Red: It’s part of your physiology It was determined by your genes and there may not be much you can do about it within the time frame that you’ve got And that’s a better answer That that’s literally a better answer than trying to say the genes played no role
[01:55:24] Blue: Right
[01:55:24] Red: because now we’re we’re digging into the actual depths. Well genes do affect physiology Physiology does affect personal attractiveness personal attractiveness It has both a cultural component and well, let’s even let’s even go so far as to say it’s 100 cultural And yet Certain aspects of it have been stable in cultures across time just to give an example We often this comes from steven pinker We often talk about how the ideal form of a woman from back in I don’t know medieval ages or renaissance ages We we think of them as being kind of fat today because our Standards of beauty have changed Pinker points out Well, pinker points out that this isn’t actually true. We tell ourselves that but it’s not actually true In fact, every single one of those supposedly overweight women that was found attractive back then would easily be found to be attractive today But all these women were still curvy Right, they were still easily attractive by today’s standards. You pull them out of that Dress them in different clothes allow them, you know The makeup or whatever they need that would be normal for our era and they would still be considered attractive women today
[01:56:41] Red: Okay, and then he also gave the example of if you go to you know Tribal people living completely cut off from Modern the modern world, right and you ask them you know rate the attractiveness of the women the girls and the women in your tribe and they will Pick out here are the most attractive girls You can then take a picture of all the women and the girls go over to modern europe And you can ask a modern man Which of these girls is the most attractive and they will pick out exactly the same girls Right, I mean there’s a huge amount of stability that seems to exist in terms of attractiveness That doesn’t mean it can’t be changed because there’s almost assuredly ways that it could be changed, right? But somehow the that stability exists enough That a good explanation as to why am I unhappy? Probably has to talk about well, you know, you have an asymmetrical face and that has Stably over time that’s been considered unattractive Right, doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for the future of that changing because david dutch is right that Jeans can’t directly code for happiness Okay, that just shouldn’t be possible under universal explainer ship But they may still impact you in some way anyhow
[01:58:01] Blue: Yeah,
[01:58:02] Red: and this is really what i’m trying to get at is that we want to dig in now We want to dig in and accept yes universal explainer ship is true and yes So is this the field of psychology? But what does that mean? Well, how do we mesh those together and how do we come up with what’s ultimately a much better explanation? Where we can try to understand Why does narcissistic personality disorder exist and what do we actually do about it once we really understand it? What do we do about it? How do we actually mesh these theories together and come to what is not an ad hoc? Explanation that’s defending one of the two turfs But a real explanation that’s actually far -reaching that’s actually going to be helpful There there probably is some real hope in the future, right once we have the right knowledge Right now today for all intents and purposes if you have a narcissistic personality disorder There probably isn’t much hope for you today As you were saying it’s not completely without hope some people have changed But it’s so much effort and our our ability to help the person is so bad as of today Yeah, that that in many ways we’re currently writing them off today And in many ways, that’s the only choice that seems to be available to us
[01:59:20] Blue: Right.
[01:59:21] Red: That’s not going to be because universal explainership is true Once we have the right knowledge that will no longer be true But I don’t even know what I mean by What’s we have the right knowledge? Are we talking about an improved form of therapy? Are we talking about a need to take certain kind of drugs to stimulate? You know parts of the brain that are receiving signals I mean like I have no clue, right? I mean it’s I don’t doubt that there exists some way to help these people But I It’s unclear how to go about getting the knowledge to help them It will take us to the regular conjecture and refutation process We will have to theorize about how to help them try things and they’re going to fail And we’ll get better over time and it will be an evolutionary process And that’s what that’s what’s really going on. We are getting you know If you lived a hundred years ago, there probably was not even a concept of a narcissistic personality disorder And there was probably zero hope of you not damaging everybody around you if you happen to be a narcissist, right?
[02:00:28] Blue: Now
[02:00:28] Red: we at least have come far enough to realize some people are destructive and it’s really hard to help them and So we’re making progress right that really is good progress Uh, I guess that’s at a high level That’s my opinion We will ultimately find that there’s no conflict between the final theory of you know, there’s no such thing as a final theory, but Then a theory of A theory of universal spider ship That is good enough to where we can actually build an agi We will find that there is no actual Conflict between what we’re finding in psychology today and that final theory that Things like narcissistic personality disorder will be able to explain them in a way that makes sense We’ll say this is what was really going on This is why it became a problem and this is what you do to undo the problem going forward
[02:01:23] Blue: Right,
[02:01:23] Red: unfortunately. I realize that’s cold comfort for anyone who’s currently dealing with it is called
[02:01:27] Blue: comfort for now But it is For the future.
[02:01:32] Red: Yeah, I think Well, let’s do this for the next podcast. We will um, I will crack open evil genes the book evil genes Okay, and I will talk about the findings that were in that book And how to try to go about Reconciling them with universal spider ship in a podcast that is bound to offend everyone I will do my Yeah, I will I will do my best to try to work out a very rough theory of how to reconcile the findings of psychology with universal spider ship And you know, I’m probably wrong
[02:02:14] Blue: And that’s okay And
[02:02:16] Red: it is okay. I mean like the very fact that I’m willing to go try That’s what matters right get an idea out there. Let it get criticized and really you don’t have to worry about much more than that Right,
[02:02:26] Blue: exactly. Yep.
[02:02:27] Red: I’m not an expert in these fields So there’s only so far I can get but I think it might be of interest to people who have asked these hard questions And wish that they had some sort of idea how to try to reconcile the two fields,
[02:02:38] Blue: right? Okay. Let’s do it then Okay. All right. Thank you everybody. Thank you everyone.
[02:02:44] Red: All right. Bye. Bye The theory of anything podcast could use your help We have a small but loyal audience and we’d like to get the word out about the podcast to others So others can enjoy it as well to the best of our knowledge We’re the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutch’s philosophy as well as other interesting subjects If you’re enjoying this podcast, please give us a five star rating on apple podcasts This can usually be done right inside your podcast player Or you can google the theory of anything podcast apple or something like that Some players have their own rating system and giving us a five star rating on any rating system would be helpful If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on facebook or other social media to help get the word out If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast We have two ways to do that. The first is via our podcast host site anchor Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands f o u r dash s t r a n d s There’s a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations If you want to make a one time donation go to our blog, which is four strands dot org There is a donation button there that uses paypal. Thank you
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