Richard Grannon Decoding Real Narcissism

Speaker A 00:00:03.280 - 00:00:34.560 Today's guest is Richard Grannon, coach, author, creator, best known for his deep work in helping people heal from narcissistic abuse, complex trauma and codependency. With a background in psychology and a no nonsense approach to self development, Richard's mission is to empower individuals to reclaim their boundaries, rebuild their self worth and live with clarity. He's built a loyal following by cutting through the noise and speaking truth to the reality of emotional manipulation and psychological recovery. Richard, thank you so much for being here with us. Speaker B 00:00:35.120 - 00:00:37.840 Thank you very much for having me on. It's, it's a pleasure. Speaker A 00:00:37.840 - 00:00:58.400 Yeah, absolutely. One way we always like to kick off these episodes, especially with first time guests, is we want to explore your personal hero's journey a little bit and kind of the major rites of passage and catalyzing moments that led you into this work and onto this path. So wherever you feel called to dive in and begin with that. Speaker B 00:01:00.490 - 00:02:46.270 Cowards journey. In my case, I didn't, I, I didn't have the courage to, to assert my boundaries in, in certain relationships. So I, I, I, it was no intention of mine to be, you know, I get called like a narcissism expert. That, that wasn't, that wasn't my intention. I was originally a self defense instructor online. I started when YouTube was very young, when it was first born. I moved from Dailymotion to YouTube because it was, and then around 2012 I shifted and started talking about, I wanted to talk about personal development and psychology, but there was a very big need to talk about narcissistic abuse. I'm from a psychology background that doesn't believe in personality disorders. So I sort of poo pooed it at first and then the more I studied it, the more I realized it had been a major influence in my life and my family of origin and in some of my relationships. And so I just started to talk and study and talk and study and talk and study. Because though I have a degree in psychology, we didn't do personality disorders and we didn't do any kind of psychoanalytic theory. So I studied and then started developing ways of helping people who experience narcissistic abuse. And I had some experiences myself along the way. As I say, it's a, the hero's journey was marked by cowardice because I didn't have the courage to assert my boundaries in certain situations. I didn't have the courage to ask for what I wanted and to go for what I wanted directly. And I think that's a recurrent theme in people who end up in These kinds of relationships. So that's it in a nutshell. Speaker C 00:02:47.070 - 00:02:49.630 How did it show up for you in, in your relationships? Speaker B 00:02:54.840 - 00:03:56.870 Well, I found myself attracted to. Of 15 women I've sort of been in relationship with, relationships with, there's only two of them who I'd say had anything that looked like clinical levels of narcissism. Everybody has problems. And, and I had girlfriends with, with different mental health issues, some, but only two I would say were pathological and clinical. And what was happening was I was very, very attracted to trying to save what we would call a fragile narcissist. So you'd have somebody be very ostensibly ostentatiously vulnerable. So they display their vulnerability and that provoked the desire to save them. And when I saw abusive patterns of behavior, instead of asserting a boundary and just leaving and saying, okay, well this isn't for me, I stuck around and tried to fix them. And the more I tried to fix them, the worse things got, which is a recurrent theme in this type of relationship. Speaker A 00:03:57.990 - 00:04:19.170 Yeah, let's, let's start from the ground up because I feel like narcissism and narcissist is a word that probably has been trending a lot more than it has in previous history. And it's probably a word that is, I guess, being abused a little bit in and of itself in terms of what it is. So what. Speaker B 00:04:19.170 - 00:04:25.050 That's very, that's very charitable of you, sir, to say. It's like slightly abused. Go on. Sorry. Speaker C 00:04:25.370 - 00:04:26.650 Everybody's a narcissist. Speaker A 00:04:28.329 - 00:04:49.320 How would, how would you actually define a narcissism and what is like the circumstantial, whatever it might be that generates narcissism in terms of cutting away what it's not. Getting rid of the social media definitions of narcissism and coming back to what narcissism actually is and can be defined as? Speaker B 00:04:50.360 - 00:05:03.080 Yeah, that, that, like what, what you just asked me is a very, very good question, but it's like a three hour long academic talk. What was, what was, what was the most important part of that question? What did you want me to answer? Speaker A 00:05:03.080 - 00:05:04.440 What is narcissism to you? Speaker B 00:05:09.870 - 00:07:20.720 Okay, so clinically. So I'm going to say clinically, but clinicians don't use this definition. And this isn't controversial, what I'm saying. It's a problematic personality disorder. It's a problematic clinical entity. So anybody who talks to you or anybody you hear online speaking in very rigid, dogmatic terms about what narcissism is or isn't, doesn't understand narcissistic personality disorder. Nobody should be certain, nobody should be asserting with certainty. It is this, it is that. There is no agreement universally on what narcissistic personality disorder is. Yes, there are definitions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, but they're very controversial and they're not universally agreed on by. That's the American Psychiatric Association. That would be like me saying, well, because it's in the Diagnostic and statistical manual, 80% or more of American psychiatrists agree on those definitions. They don't. Many American psychiatrists don't even believe it's a personality disorder as such. So without boring you or boring your audience with all the academic insider sort of stuff, the way I would define it would be a person who has had a full. It's technically a psychotic break from reality, usually starting in childhood. And they've essentially chosen fiction over fact. And so the essence of the clinical entity is disassociative because it's a denial of reality. It's a desire to escape reality. It's psychotic because it's fantasy based and it's not reality based. So which is, which again is controversial. And what we would, what we would be looking for is a rigid attachment to a delusional version of the self and a delusional version of my life story and a delusional version of my interactions with reality that I would defend with a degree of aggression that would be rigid and stubborn across context, across time, and also would be completely impenetrable by normal therapeutic means. Did that all make sense? Speaker A 00:07:22.240 - 00:07:38.570 It does. So what are generally speaking the conditions of one's childhood which would give a rise to what, I guess you call narcissism? If there is a general pattern. Speaker B 00:07:39.849 - 00:09:20.990 Yeah. So we're into, we're into Richard Grannon's made up. This is not the accepted, but I think it's useful. I think I present it semi ironically, but I think it's useful. I suspect that the essence of narcissistic personality disorder, if we, the three of us are clinicians and we're like, how are we going to define what this is, is we should start with by looking at defense mechanisms. Narcissistic personality disorder is a defense against reality. What are one of the most commonly used infantile defense mechanisms? Splitting. So you can't deal with shades of gray, you can't deal with nuance. You're in a very chaotic environment and you start to split people and scenarios and instit into good and bad. And you yourself are being split into good and bad. So the, the key environmental factors that are required for the creation of narcissistic personality disorder, I claim, are the child being split between two opposing polarities that are offering two separate messages. One message is, you are amazing and you are wonderful and you're exceptional and special and, and you can't do bad because you're always doing good. And the other message is, you are awful, you are worthless, you are unlovable, and you can never do good because you're always doing bad. And the narcissist is trapped between these two polarities and keeps running towards the good. And they commit to the good and they recruit people in to tell them, you're good, you're good. Because they're constantly running from the internal message, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad. So it's a split. It's a child trapped between two pillars in that sense. Speaker A 00:09:22.650 - 00:09:29.450 And so are those two pillars generally like each parent having an opposing view of the child. Where are those pillars coming from? Speaker B 00:09:30.330 - 00:10:37.110 What it were so simple. So it would be nice if we could say parent one is sexually transgresses boundaries, is physically abusive, is verbally abusive. And then parent two, which this does happen. Parent two feeling they're not, they're not courageous, but they have a moral core and they feel guilty. They're like, I chose this partner, I've had this baby with this partner and he's a bad partner and he's dumping abuse on the child. I will compensate by spoiling the child. So yeah, that can be it. You could have a parent with dissociative identity disorder, different types of psychotic spectrum disorder, drug addictions, alcohol addiction, and that one parent could show up as good and bad. It could be good parents who are a bit weak. Well, you're living inside of a cult in the middle of the rural badlands of Canada and the parents are good, but the cult is bad. So you know what I mean. There needs to be two external forces that are offering two opposing inputs to the child about who they are. Speaker C 00:10:38.070 - 00:10:41.750 Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about like the different kinds of narcissism? Speaker B 00:10:44.070 - 00:10:45.830 God, if you force me to, I will. Speaker C 00:10:47.250 - 00:11:00.290 I mean, I mean you can give little summaries and then point people to like your other content where you have three hour academic analyses of each one of them. We just plant seeds for audience in this time we have. Speaker B 00:11:00.450 - 00:13:54.030 Yes, yes, yes. Look, I want to call out the elephant in the room. We're entirely oversight. We as a species, we in the Anglosphere, in the civilized privileged world, the, the wealthiest parts of the world. We're so wealthy, we just don't have enough danger and we just don't have enough pressure. And we're over psychologizing everything. We're over pathologizing everything. And so, you know, people have become obsessed with attachment disorders. They're like, tell us about the different. Attachment disorders. Tell us about the different. And I'm like, this feels. I get a funny feeling from it. Like it's a way of knowing the self and other through product categories. Are you with me? Like, it's part of consumer capitalism. You're a Sagittarius, I'm a Piscean. And it's this weird. Like, we can only know each other through categories. So there are different types of narcissism, but probably upstream of everything is moral collapse. So there's immorality. So we're in the. We're out of psychology and we're now in the realms of philosophy. And what you're talking about are psychopaths, essentially raw psychopaths. They lack a moral core. Downstream of that, there will be manifestations where people will be classically grandiose narcissists. They. They believe they're amazing. Largely speaking, they're successful in convincing the world and the environment that they're amazing. Narcissistic supply adulation, adoration is high and abundant. So they're narcissistically elated. And so they're very dominant and very bullying. And their effect is usually pretty good. They usually feel pretty good most of the time because they're getting what they want. Then you have the COVID vulnerable or fragile narcissist. They think they're amazing, but they, largely speaking, fail to convince the world that they're amazing. So narcissistic supply is poor. They can't get billionaires to tell them that they're amazing. They can only get people who are weak and vulnerable to tell them they're amazing sometimes, and they're not quite fully convinced by it. So they're the two major subtypes. But probably these aren't really subtypes. Probably what it is, it's completely contingent on the environment and how successful a narcissist you are. Downstream of that, there are various other definitions, but, you know, I'm sure you've seen this, like, even in our lifetimes, and none of us here are particularly old, but even in our lifetimes, there's just been an explosion in the number of definitions and categories of mental health. I don't personally believe there's that many new mental health problems showing up. I think It's a tendency towards pathologization of perfectly normal patterns of behavior. Was that a useful answer? Speaker C 00:13:54.270 - 00:13:57.550 Yeah. And do you think part of that is so they can sell more drugs? Speaker B 00:13:59.310 - 00:15:18.480 There's no question that it's about selling drugs. There's just no question that that is about, it's about. Okay, so yes, it's about selling drugs and it's about power structures that gatekeep their own ability to assert dominance in the world. And yes, fundamentally behind everything, it's an economic driver. Behind power is, is ultimately money and the capacity to make money. Sometimes it's about tenure, sometimes it's about contracts, sometimes it's about direct drug selling. Largely speaking, it's about main. It's very shaky right now like psychiatry's hold on the world. Even though I'm saying, oh it's so stupid. On social media everybody's psychologizing everything. But the thing is part of that as well is people are thinking about it and going, hang on a second. Tell us again how you came to the conclusion that because of the. Because X, Y and Z means people need to take drugs that are extraordinarily dangerous, haven't been thoroughly tested yet, and can actually cause the symptoms they're supposed to be resolving. So there is, there is positive to the fact that everything is hyper pathologized in a sense. But yes, it's, it's, it's a power play as you, as you suggested. Speaker C 00:15:18.480 - 00:15:19.640 Yeah, yeah. Speaker A 00:15:21.240 - 00:15:43.720 So obviously you're mentioning how, you know, down this western consumer capitalist path, we are over categorizing, you know, psychology etc. So how would you recommend people to engage with psychology if you could rebuild the way in which we engage with psychology on a psychology on a mass level. What is the original purpose of psychology and. Speaker B 00:15:45.480 - 00:16:30.060 Nope, nope, can't be saved. Can't be saved. I'm so sorry. And I haven't informed my followers of this. I'm in Dubai, I was chatting to my mate the other day, I went back that like the roots of, of psychology that we have today are Freudian. It's a degenerate discipline. It's a completely degenerate discipline. It's not salvageable. Freud knew that. So at the time of the public intellectuals and the smart people, let's say it's like it's 1895, me, you, Freud, young, Adler were sitting around snorting coke or I don't know if they drank it or ate it, taking cocaine and drinking gin and smoking cigars and they needed. Speaker C 00:16:30.380 - 00:16:31.340 Sounds like a good time. Speaker B 00:16:32.460 - 00:19:26.520 Wonderful, let's go There. Vienna. Vienna in 1895. Everybody's high. They're all poked up like, I've got an idea. You want to fuck your mum. Whoa. So if we. If we could go back and I understand what they were doing, and I know. I know why Freud did it, and I don't dump it on him, but he's done untold damage. Because what he insisted, what he did was he said, I believe I'll tell one little lie. Just come on, give me one. And I think he knew better. I think Freud was a very high IQ guy, and he knew better than this. And the one little lie was, we're going to pretend that the problems of the mind mirror the problems of the body, and we're going to medicalize this. And it's been an absolute disaster. If we'd all followed Freud's Peer Adler instead of Freud, we would be way healthier, Far, far, far healthier than we are now, because Adler was of a different mindset. I don't know, maybe yourselves, your followers have probably read the Courage To Be Disliked, which was a bestseller a few years ago. Not a very well written book, unfortunately, but some great ideas inside of it, which was essentially, Adler turned it back on the client and was like, what is it that you want to do? What is the benefit of you sitting here and telling me, your psychotherapist, that you're anxious? Well, there's no benefit to me. How dare you say that there's a benefit to that? No, I want to discuss the power here. Where's the power? What are you trying to get done? What is it that you want? Are you sat here telling me that you're anxious because, I don't know, it's the 1895, or a little bit later than that you're no longer attracted to your husband or you want to have an affair with the maid, but you don't know how to say it. And Adler was very much about exploring what the client's real intentions were in terms of will and saying, look, at the end of every investigative road we can go down through talk therapy, courage will be at the end of it. You are not courageous enough. You are cowardly. You're living this story because you're too cowardly to go out in the world and take effect. Beautiful, perfect, healthy. But we didn't. We didn't go that route. We went the Freudian route, which is, you are sick with an illness that mirrors a physical illness and the. The pathology of a virus. When we're looking at the pathology of a disease we go into the past. And he said so it should be, we should go into the past. Jung and Freud were both frustrated archeologists. So they were obsessed with going into the past, into the underground and decoding symbols. So they're both decoders of symbols. There is value in that, but not that much, unfortunately. It's a degenerate discipline and it's not salvageable at this point. Sorry. Speaker A 00:19:26.760 - 00:19:40.980 Yeah, but how much do you think of us not going down the path of gearing an individual towards courage? Has to do with it. Individuals such as Freud, or has to do with general human psychology in terms of the crowds, the mass of men. Speaker B 00:19:41.300 - 00:19:41.860 Absolutely. Speaker A 00:19:42.340 - 00:19:47.060 They're not drawn towards the heroic path. They're not drawn towards becoming who they are going to be individuating. Speaker B 00:19:47.620 - 00:21:35.760 No, you're quite right. So what I've just done is committed the, the, the, the fallacy because I'm subsumed in modern culture and modern ideology where we find the scapegoat and we say it was his fault. It's this powerful white man's fault. His name is Sigmund Freud. He was a cokehead and he was a bit sexist. Well you know, look at where he was born. Of course some of his ideas were a bit sexist by today's standards. But you're absolutely right, people had a choice. And what was emergent in the will of the people could have been to gather around Adler. Well, Adler did have, actually Adler did have a cult like following. But I think it's partly the will of the people and a little bit partly conspiracy. I think it's easier to control people and easier to hook them on drugs if we use the Freudian model. Plus we know historically the Freud's nephew is Edward Bayonne's who's the founder of public relations and modern marketing. Forcing people to buy what they want, not forcing, encouraging people to buy things that they want instead of things that they need. And in order to do that we have to provoke people's wants and so on and so forth, hacking the unconscious drives. So it, yes, you are quite right. If people were stronger they would gravitate towards Adler. Instead of the thumb sucking woe. Is me victimized? Well, it's my childhood, my mother, my father. There's nothing I can do. And now I have this, this, this, this and this. Instead of the Adlerian view which is like no, you want this, you want to be sick, you want to say because you don't want to go to work because you're frightened, you don't want to go out and you don't want to go to the gym because you're frightened. So, yes, you're quite right to, to point that out. Speaker C 00:21:36.470 - 00:22:05.910 Do you think that you. A person needs to take some inventory of, like, where they've come from in order to know where to go? Like, to have a little bit of understanding of, like, maybe not wallow in it and live in victimhood, but to have a little bit of understanding of, okay, this aspect of my psyche or this aspect of my personality comes from X, Y. In my past, I witnessed my father behave this way to my mother, my mother behave this way to my father. And. And I've taken these patterns into my relationship. Speaker B 00:22:05.930 - 00:22:06.090 And. Speaker C 00:22:06.240 - 00:22:24.080 And then you can become aware of them and recognize them and then go, okay, I don't want to continue living this way because as I continue to live this way, I keep attracting the same kind of people into my life. It's not working. I want to change. And so do you think we need some sort of, like, inventory of, like, how we became to be, you know, from our past in order to be able to change? Speaker B 00:22:26.320 - 00:24:06.850 Wonderful question. Yes, I've done that in therapy, and it's been helpful for me. So this is new. This is. This is brand new. I've not talked about this on my YouTube channel. I haven't released many YouTube videos for months because I have to really sort out where I'm coming from here. So two things I will say in answer to that very, very pertinent question. Yes, you should go into your past. Yes, you should be a Jungian and a Freudian, an archaeologist, a decoder of ancient symbols. You should look at your dreams. You should look at the patterns your mother imposed on you, your father imposed on you, your culture, the church, and so on. I'm a martial artist, and I studied Eastern philosophy when I was a kid because I really resented having Christianity forced on me. And one of them was Taoism. It's yin and yang. Yin is the cold, dark cave, tomb or womb of the past. You go backwards, but at the same time, you're in dynamic union with just as much yang into the light, into the outside, into courage. Healing courage. Healing courage. Mother, father, mother, father. Hold the client. I believe in safe spaces. All that. All the stuff that people complain about, about the woke. There's no coordinate there that I don't agree with. Inside of therapy, with a deeply traumatized person, everything that is there inside, if somebody's very, I don't know, moral relativism is. Is the correct approach in therapy? No moral Judgment. What did you do? How did you feel? What were your impulses? Avo triggering people. All of this is 100, right? With a deeply traumatized person within the womb of therapy. But then they must live in the world. Speaker C 00:24:07.330 - 00:24:07.890 I agree. Speaker B 00:24:07.890 - 00:25:01.290 And it's, it's 50. 50. It's got to be as much time as we spend on that. You know, you even take that and you go, because your mother was overbearing and she crushed your will as a man. How now will you go out and leave the therapeutic room and be in the world without being some overcompensatory wwe, like, oh, I'm a real man. You know, all of that over compensatory stuff, which we learned about from Adler. The notion of the inferiority complex is an Adlerian notion. He was the genius that came up with this idea that when we were oppressed by something in childhood, we seek to dominate it in adulthood. If it's overcompensatory, it's performative. If it's performative, it's neurotic. If it's neurotic, it leads to self destruction. So, no, you're, you're quite right to point that out. We need some of that. But then we need an equal amount of going out and being yang. Speaker C 00:25:02.090 - 00:25:33.250 Yeah, no, thanks for saying that because I think sometimes we can poo poo something and not understand that it's kind of this dance of opposites and this integration. And so everything you said. I agree. I think, I love that you said that we're trying to take the parameters of a therapeutic setting and then project that onto the world and that we must all abide by it. And it's like, no, obviously if you're with someone who's been something, been traumatized, like, I want to be there with you. I want to provide a safe space. I want you to be open with me. But then the real world, isn't that. Speaker B 00:25:33.890 - 00:27:46.370 No, quite so. And I think it's become fetishized because we're, we're fetishizing our victimhood of vulnerability. And something can be amazing. I was asked about this on another podcast by a lovely stand up comic last week, Galena, her name is. And she said, well, what about Brene Brown and vulnerability? And I said, yes. I remember when the TED talk in 2018 came out and it got millions of views, and for a year and a half, everybody was talking about vulnerability. What had been observed by Brene Brown, who's a brilliant thinker and speaker, is that inside of therapy, vulnerability does have this alchemical transformative quality to it. So when I'm with my therapist on a Friday afternoon, I tell him the truth. And in order to tell him the truth, the good, the bad, the ugly, the shameful, I must be vulnerable. And in doing that with him, in that safe, boundaried space, there is an alchemical property, but it's almost like going, oh wow, that's really powerful. Let's put it in the military, let's put it in banking, let's run a hospital like that. No, vulnerability is not going to have a wonderful powerful transporter effect there. It's going to be disastrous. It's totally inappropriate. But this is why I tried to say early on, we're too wealthy. So we're not. We're so wealthy we're losing our grasp of reality and so we can afford to be completely delusional. Whereas if we regularly went through drought, or we regularly went through invasion, or irregularly, whatever, and people knew hardship and their, their wi fi went down regularly, their Instagram switched off regularly, they couldn't eat regular, or they had to serve in a military to stop their family and friends from being enslaved and raped, we wouldn't have this conversation. It would just, it would just be burnt away into nothingness. So much of what we're sick with would be burned away by real pressure and real danger. I'm not being psychopathic and saying I want people to suffer. I'm merely pointing out that in the absence of suffering, we've become completely delusional as a, as a people, as a species in the West. Speaker A 00:27:47.970 - 00:27:55.250 Just a tidbit on your Freudian conspiracy rabbit hole. So the Naysa's nephew, Mark Randolph, was actually one of the founders of Netflix. Speaker B 00:27:56.050 - 00:28:09.490 Oh, you're kidding. Here we go. Yeah, if you keep looking, if you keep looking, you'll find pornographers in that lineage and other types of activity in that lineage as well. But we'll leave it there. Speaker A 00:28:09.970 - 00:29:04.870 Yeah, it's interesting for sure. So to your point about suffering, because when I observe it, yeah, we're in a very luxurious place to be able to have this conversation. This conversation probably wouldn't exist if we had, you know, things that we had to address in terms of necessity and survival. But here we are. So like, how does an individual today move forward? Because I see a lack of purpose as probably the primary catalyst for much of, I guess, these mental distortions that we see, etc. So it's like, for me, it's like when you have a real purpose, when you understand yourself on a deeper level, when you move through the world Authentic. Authentically towards something that is an authentic desire. There is suffering in that process. So what role do you think that having a clear, purposeful objective to move towards and really knowing one's values plays in kind of mitigating some of this that we're seeing? Speaker B 00:29:08.470 - 00:32:12.560 One of my favorite influences in the way that I think and analyze situations is a Slovenian philosopher called Slavojizek. And the way that he frames things is often very pessimistic. Think about the question, how do we find purpose? When in human history do we need to fucking find purpose? You would just wake up and be like, son, if you don't till the fields, we will starve. If you don't go and serve in the milit, we will all be enslaved. Finding purpose. Yeah, I agree with you, and I think in principle it's right. And I think the Jordan Peterson of 2017-2019, why he exploded in popularity was because he was really riding the wave of that message of pick up the heaviest burden that you can find your purpose and sacrifice and suffer. And it made sense until I saw him in debate with Slavojizek, and Zizek pointed this out, like, what? What are we doing? What, what, what does that mean? So I am a little bit pessimistic to the extent that finding purpose in an environment where, how should I say this in a way that won't upset people. I know you guys will understand what I'm going to say. Look, we don't matter very much. I don't matter, you don't matter. And what I mean is, when I say matter here is we evolved in groups, usually of 150 or less, and everybody had a role and everybody knew your name. You're not supposed to be surrounded by strangers. Everybody should know Joel. And everybody should know that if you break a leg, for some reason, Joel's pretty good at resetting, that if there's a particular type of animal you want to hunt, we can all do it. But Joel's your man. You have a specific purpose and a specific role. The survivability of the tribe depends on. And when you don't have that ever, I'm gonna try and bluff my way. In evolutionary psychology here, there's a kind of anhedonia that sets in, because that's what you're evolved for. What do we need Joel for now? Podcasts? What do people need me for? Recovery from narcissistic abuse. It's very. I don't know that the animal part of my brain really understands that I don't know that the animal part of me is really satiated by that, you know, symbolically. Yes, I'm aware. People have been helped. They're watching my videos and that's great and of course, like, wonderful. I'm happy that people suffer less. But what does it do for me as a human, as a man, as a human being? Not much. Not much. That's my pessimistic, you know, like in it, everything should be viewed with the background of economy. In the economy that we have, there's 8 billion of us on the planet. There's never been more humans than there are right now. AI is growing in ability, technology is growing in ability. The individual matters less. And our tribes are. Well, the tribes have been gone for thousands of years. Speaker C 00:32:14.240 - 00:32:23.900 So do you think. No, I, I appreciate what you're saying. I'm just like, are we. But we're not in, we're not in those kinds of tribes anymore. We find ourselves here. So how does an individual live. Speaker B 00:32:25.820 - 00:32:41.180 Knowing that if they feel anxious, depressed and hedonic, they're not crazy? I want people to understand that we shouldn't be living like this. And if you feel sad or angry or depressed, you're healthy. That's not insanity. That's sanity. Speaker A 00:32:41.420 - 00:32:57.540 Isn't. Isn't there an inherent denial of reality in that thought or in that philosophy? And like, can we really move forward from a place where an aspect of us is denying reality and wishing it were different in order us, in order for us to be psychologically healthy? Speaker B 00:32:57.780 - 00:34:56.310 No, I don't encourage people to deny reality. I'm asking them to accept the reality that, that this is, this is sick out. We, we are the victims as a species. We're the victims of our own success. That's a reality. We shouldn't be living like this. It's not rewarding to live like this. I, I claim, I'm claiming if there was a zombie apocalypse tomorrow and we were all living like, what's the TV show, the walking dead? People would suffer and they'd have toothache and, you know, they'd have medical problems, but generally speaking, they would be happier. That's my claim. And some people watching this would be like, that's completely insane. And I would go, that's, that's cool. That's cool. It's a claim, I'm claiming that, that we need the pressure of survivalism. It's not about denying reality. It's. It's about accepting the reality that this. Look, the, the true reality denial. If I can counter what you said. Sure. The true Denial of reality would be to say, this is great. It's great. Instagram is great. 4k streaming porn is great. Being able to do podcasts is great. You know, having lights on all the time is great. Any flavor of tortilla I want. All the pumpkin spice latte I want. No, that's not great. That's the denial. That's the ideology. That's the fabrication of consumer capitalism. This is wonderful. Don't be so ungrateful. No, this is not wonderful. This is a huge plantation in which we trade fake slave money beads. And you can never leave the plant. You can't even kill yourself. Like, the plantation just goes on forever. Try and leave, try to rebel. See what happens to you. It's, it's. I want, I'm, I'm, I'm being overly pessimistic at this point to make a point that most of people's mental health issues are simply a natural and perfectly sane response to a deeply, deeply sick mode of living. Speaker A 00:34:57.660 - 00:35:06.180 And I, I appreciate the discussion and I appreciate the discourse for sure. And I'm brings to mind was Krishnamurti's quote. Yeah. What is it? Speaker C 00:35:06.180 - 00:35:09.260 It's, it's not a measure of whatever measure. Speaker A 00:35:09.260 - 00:35:13.020 It's not a measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society or whatever it might be. Speaker B 00:35:13.020 - 00:35:15.660 Yeah, that was good. That was it. Speaker A 00:35:15.660 - 00:36:08.720 But it's like for me, options exist, all the flavors of pumpkin spice lattes exist. All of that is out there. All the pornography is, etc is there. That's, that's the result of whatever, you know, we've created as a species. But I've got choice in that. I've got agency in that through self discovery I met, I'm able to know my values, know what I want and make decisions and prioritize my actions based on the things that lead me to greater health, greater well being, greater fulfillment, etc. Like, personally, I'm not inclined to blame the state of where civilization has headed for whether or not I can live a fully satiated life in which I feel I'm giving my gift and receiving value and you know, building loving relationships, etc, good. Speaker B 00:36:08.880 - 00:38:04.860 Defy the system. Defy the system. Be aware of it. Know that it's there. One thing I would suggest and maybe want to offer you and offer your viewers is try as much as you can to notice where you're being made to feel guilty. There is something. There used to be a super ego injunction which the superego is a psychoanalytic term. It's kind of like your conscience. The higher Self and it offers us injunctions. And it used to say, when we were Protestants and we were Christians and we were flagellating ourselves, don't enjoy too much pleasure. Pleasure is bad. Don't do that. Now there's a superego injunction in the modern world to enjoy. This is where we get the concept of fomo. You must always be experiencing pleasure. And the, the guiding force of that is guilt. Consume more, enjoy more, or else you're not living properly, or else you're wasting your life. So all I would say to what you've said is I, I would want to remove the guilt that you might not even be aware that you're feeling. Because it's a cultural superego injunction that says consume, take pleasure, enjoy. And just say, you don't, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. You can say, actually, this is, this is garbage. Okay, I'm going to live like this. I'm going to do something different so that I can really enjoy what I feel is a rewarding life without being given the notion of rewarding life. Because to paraphrase Slavojizek, again, it's not that ideology just tells you what to enjoy. It tries to tell you how to enjoy it. It gives you a structure through which to enjoy it. And if we can remove that, if we can, or do our best, so at least weaken it and push it to one side, then we have the best chance of enjoying a fulfilled life. Speaker A 00:38:06.860 - 00:38:11.390 Yeah, I didn't expect this conversation to go this way, but I'm glad. Speaker B 00:38:11.550 - 00:38:41.000 No, no, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a deep, it's a deep one. It's a deep one. And I think, I think like, it's good, it's good to have this, this kind of conversation where you can really start pulling things up by the roots. Because I'm known as a psychologist or known as a public speaker on the subject of psychology, and I'm now saying psychology is probably as we know it today, a truly degenerate and non salvageable discipline. Speaker C 00:38:41.720 - 00:39:18.890 But do you think there's value in understanding? I mean, you talked about the superego, like understanding the architecture of your psyche to some degree to understand yourself. Because then does that then allow you to move forward in a certain way as opposed to being completely blind to what inner dialogue is happening, like the contradictions that may exist within? If you think psychology in terms of like, you know, loving and knowing one's mind and being is beneficial, as opposed to Being completely oblivious to what's even happening. Inner voices are but. Speaker A 00:39:18.890 - 00:39:25.570 Or is Richard speaking to, like, the mainstream practice of psychology as opposed to authentic personal understanding of oneself? Speaker B 00:39:26.370 - 00:39:46.540 Well, let's. Let's do. Let's do both. So the question you asked me is actually a very, very good question. Is it good for you to know yourself? How. And does it allow you to move forward and to enjoy more of life, or would you be better off just not knowing? What, what do you. What do you instinctively feel is. Is the right answer to that, sir? Speaker C 00:39:48.460 - 00:40:37.090 It's hard to say because I, at this point in my life, I enjoy who I am and what I do. And yet a lot of that has come from maybe understanding patterns and understanding, like, different parts of me and how sometimes there's a war between them and. And so it has supported me. But, I mean, is ignorance bliss? I don't know. I mean, it hasn't. It's not my experience, so I can't speak on it. My. My experience has been understanding psychology, understanding human behavior to the degree that I do, and changing patterns, seeing how my mom and dad were and how that impacted me, and then me going, oh, I like those things. I want to keep those. But that, you know, telling my girlfriends in my 20s to shut up or shush them, that's probably not the most ideal pattern that I want to keep. So I felt like there was value. There's probably value in that, you know. Speaker B 00:40:38.930 - 00:42:21.720 So at the moment, I've. There's another podcast that I do that I'll be doing after this. And there's an evolutionary psychologist on there. There's like a race theory essentialist on there. And then there's a guy who's friends with Slav boys, he's a philosopher. And they last week asked me to read Nietzsche's book the Birth of Tragedy. I asked for a book recommendation. And I've started to wonder if with the ancient Greeks and the notion of the Greek tragedy, whether we reached a peak of self. Self awareness, that everything afterwards really might not have helped. So you would. Through. Through Greek tragedy, you would understand. You would have, like an ancient Greek philosopher's understanding of morality. Yes. You can tell you can enforce power as a man and say, sh. Look, I don't have to listen to you. I'm physically bigger than you, end of story, and walk away. Good. And then as a philosopher, I could say, so should you do that? Does she not also have. Do you have a theory of mind? Is she not just like you? She has a sense of her place in the world. Bam, bambang. That might have been enough. And everything after that might have been too much. I don't know whether this is better than, maybe we'd be better off being completely religious or maybe completely tribal. We might feel better. You're probably aware of the very controversial ideas around behaviors within tribes that outside the tribe would literally be criminal. But if you stay inside the tribe, you're not traumatized because everyone's doing that. One of the things I was looking at recently is, is in Brazil, they do this ritual with bullet ants where you wear a glove filled with bullet ants. Have you heard about this? Speaker C 00:42:22.130 - 00:42:22.690 No, I haven't. Speaker B 00:42:23.170 - 00:44:04.380 Oh my God. Watch it. After this, go and look up bullet ant ritual. They do this with children in Brazil and they have grown men, ex special forces guys weeping in, in agony because the neurotoxin, there's like hundreds of ants in the gloves. You put the glove on and everybody's like, hey, well, you're all like tranced out and chanting and dancing. You keep the glove on and one bullet ant bite releases a neurotoxin that is the most powerful agony a human being can experience. It's on, on the, on the pain scale, there's hundreds of them. And these kids do the ritual 20 to 30 times. You've got guys who are special forces, do it once, and they're on the floor sobbing their eyes out, being like, please give me a painkiller. This is too much now to. I'm sure, like, if you just found a school in Australia tomorrow that was doing that to kids, you'd be like, that's child abuse. Stop it. But within the closed loop of that culture, that's what it is to be a man. That's what that. They see that strength, they see that as completion. So I don't know. So how should we measure it? Is the. Is the measure of whether something is good and proper, how you feel somatically inside your body, your self concept? Do you sleep with a clear conscience? Do you wake up knowing exactly where your place in the cosmos, the tribe, the family is, knowing that your children are going to carry on the mystical tradition? Maybe that's better. Maybe there's too much suffering and doubt and guilt in all of this self awareness. So I'm presenting that to say I, I actually don't know. I don't know what's better. Don't know. Speaker C 00:44:04.780 - 00:44:40.600 No, thanks for that. I mean, when you were talking about the ants thing, I immediately thought like, oh, this sounds like a nice rite of passage within. Within that. I mean, I, I did actually. I was like, yeah, it's making them tough. But again it's enclose system, they understand it. And also they're not going through a so called traumatized experience alone. It's the isolation sometimes that I think is what can cause the distortions and mind, body and the fact that it's done within a setting. It's much different than if I just roll up there for a week and go, hey, let me put these on. Then I leave to come back here. Like it might impact me differently. Speaker B 00:44:41.160 - 00:44:42.680 Exactly, exactly that. Speaker C 00:44:43.730 - 00:44:44.130 Yeah. Speaker B 00:44:45.010 - 00:44:46.850 Joel, were you gonna say something there, mate? Speaker A 00:44:46.930 - 00:45:55.420 Yeah, just I think like the, the we needs to be addressed, you know, like we would be, we would be better off because I think like always obviously are made up of individuals. And even in like more tribal settings that would have been individuals who had positive experiences and individuals who had extremely negative experiences. And I mean, just as it is today, like how much of the constitution of the individual, cosmic, spiritually, whatever it might be in terms of their path, plays a role in the kind of experience that they're having, the kind of fulfillment, etc. But you know, there definitely is a heightened possibility for someone to become disillusioned and delusioned in today's mass consumption culture. I would definitely kind of agree with it on that level. But like for me it's like, isn't that the rite of passage as well? There's this entire circus around me, this chocolate factory happening 247 that kind of constantly wants my attention. Like for me, I kind of see that as part of the mission in terms of, all right, you know, I need to be more steadfast in my convictions. I need to X, Y, Z. In order to live a life well. Speaker C 00:45:55.420 - 00:45:58.860 Lived, I need to not go towards the 247 porn. Speaker A 00:45:58.860 - 00:46:02.850 Yeah. Like it is, it is the rite of passage. It's just today's rite of passage. Speaker B 00:46:03.890 - 00:47:18.870 Very, very well said. I do think that this is a species level evolutionary event and we either pass it or fail it. And this is where I am an optimist. Just based on statistics, it's highly likely that we'll pass it. Because every piece of evidence that we have for us as a species is that we're massively adaptable. Might not happen in our lifetimes, but so what? As long as it happens, it's cool. The, the point of the individual versus the group. You are speaking to a madman. I don't actually really believe that there is an individual as such. I think that we are tribal creatures. I think that we're pack Animals and the, the. The mode of fetishizing the individual as a concept is actually a byproduct of consumer capitalism. Now, I'm not saying give up your individuality. What I am saying is, as far as psychology goes, the idea that you can study an individual, that there is an individual devoid of context, is nonsense. It's nonsensical. It's quackery. It's total quackery. Yeah, that's not my pet theory. That's borne out in the published research. Speaker C 00:47:19.350 - 00:47:42.640 Yeah. I mean, individuals don't exist in a vacuum. You know, we're within society and nature. It's kind of like. I don't know if it's the existential trinity. Was it from German. German idealism? Was it idealism where it was like the eigenvalt, the midwealth and the. And the umwelt, which is like this again, the individual and trinity and society. So I, I agree with you there, you know. Speaker A 00:47:43.760 - 00:47:44.240 Yeah. Speaker B 00:47:44.480 - 00:47:45.240 Like, it's a. Speaker C 00:47:45.240 - 00:47:45.560 It's. Speaker B 00:47:45.560 - 00:47:57.560 It's a kind of a mad. It's a kind of a mad heresy in today's marketplace of ideas to say there is no individual. You would literally have somebody with blue hair and a septum piercing going, you're trying to exterminate me. Speaker A 00:47:57.560 - 00:48:03.680 No, I don't, I don't think that person's an individual. I think that is the most collective person that exists. Speaker B 00:48:04.639 - 00:48:39.280 Yes, it is. And it's an expression of a collective hysteria. It's a very, very conformist and collective archetype. It's a manifestation of mass psychosis. But it's funny if you say the individual isn't really real as such. I mean, that, that mode of being in the world, you know, we used to call it woke. I guess that's kind of a dated term now, is about as rigidly narcissistic and individualistic as it, as it's. As it's possible to be. But what's driving it is, as you've just said, is a totally conformist mindset, totally submissive mindset. Speaker A 00:48:40.480 - 00:48:40.960 Yeah. Speaker C 00:48:41.040 - 00:49:32.060 I think. Go. So you're going to say. I was gonna say, but do you think the individual should sacrifice themselves for, like, the collective? Like in the tribal times, it was usually the village elder that decided how things went. Yes, it may have worked to some degree in, In a smaller tribe, but, like, if whoever has the most power in, let's say, a country or a group tells me to be a certain way, I don't, I don't want to honor that. You know, I feel like I would want to honor myself more. And I'm not saying you're saying the opposite, but I'm just curious, like, I guess I'm just curious to try to like, talk about this word, the individual. Like, like, who are you? Who am I? Who is Joel? You know, we're, we're. You know what I mean? Speaker A 00:49:32.060 - 00:49:39.340 And I also think what you're asking, what's just saying on a social theory level, like, groupthink has never really led to positive results. Speaker B 00:49:42.790 - 00:51:20.780 I think, I think you would like the work of Karl Marx, which is an outrageous thing to say, but if you, if you accept Karl Marx as a kind of psychologist and forget the absurd notion that through socialism, communism spontaneously occur, which was insane, but if you look at his critique of capitalism, most of his critique of capitalism is very, very good. And there's a particular. There's two particular concepts that I think you both enjoy if you've not already explored them. Object fetishism and alienation. So he warned of this in 1850, when the population of the world was still 1 billion. It's now 8 billion. He said, what will happen is people will start, groups will fracture, and capitalism will fracture the groups and the individual be, will be alienated from their produce, from their work, from what they're doing, and they'll be alienated from their tribe. And it's extraordinarily painful for a human being to be alienated from the tribe. So you said there used to be elders. You as an individual don't want to listen to the elders. Yes, of course you don't, because we don't have elders now. We have oligarch tyrants, and you shouldn't listen to them. But if you lived a life with 150 people where the elders and you'd seen them encourage modes of being and standards of behavior that cause the tribe to flourish, that cause the tribe to survive, then you would respect that wisdom. There's no wisdom here. There's no elders present. There's no adults present in any of our governments. I mean, I would throw that back. Can you name a government that you look at and you go, oh, there's some adults in the room. Speaker A 00:51:20.780 - 00:51:44.130 But why do we, why do we have to seek out governments for those role model positions? You know, governments exist. That doesn't mean that's what my elders today are. I mean, there's, there's mentors out there which I can seek out through being interested in my passions, knowing what I'm curious about, finding the people. And you should, at a high level on this topic that call me forward, the heroes, the fictional heroes even, you know, can, can provide positive impact. Speaker B 00:51:45.010 - 00:52:15.990 Absolutely they can. It was, it was more to the other gentleman's point about not wanting to accept being told what comes from on high. And I was just saying in, in the modern context, that makes absolute sense. In the ancient context, I guess it depends on the tribe, the tribe you're in. People would disagree with tribal elders and go off and split off and form their own tribes. But I understand the instinct to rebel. That absolutely. I understand the instinct to rebel in, in the modern context, yes, it's a sign of sanity. Speaker C 00:52:16.470 - 00:52:20.310 Yeah, I, I, yeah, I'm enjoying this. Speaker A 00:52:20.390 - 00:52:21.990 Should we talk about narcissism or. Speaker C 00:52:21.990 - 00:52:38.470 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, a little bit. I do, I do, I do want to talk about. Well, I guess I do. You think like full blown, whatever that even means, like narcissists or someone that you would, you would label, if you even like labels. I don't even know where this conversation sometimes goes, but like, can they heal, can they change? Speaker B 00:52:40.470 - 00:53:32.620 If it's full blown narcissistic personality disorder, the way that I would define it would be that it would be the antithesis of therapy. So therapy, talk therapy is a very, very blunt tool. It basically means that me and you sit in a room with consent and we share an objective. We want you to feel better at the end of 12, one hour therapy sessions. And we work together. It's a joint project. If you're defying me or you're lying to me, therapy is going to do nothing. Or it might allow you to practice your, your manipulation tactics. And, and the research bears this out. Narcissists and psychopaths, they just manipulate their therapists and learn therapeutic language to go and apply on their next victim. So no, talk therapy wouldn't touch the sides of a psychopath or somebody with full blown narcissistic personality disorder. Speaker C 00:53:32.780 - 00:53:45.670 Do you think there has to be a somatic element, like something that would even potentially support someone in that regards, like maybe it's not talking like deep like body work, something, you know, I don't know, I'm just. Speaker B 00:53:46.230 - 00:53:54.310 Okay, let's, let's imagine the scenario. I'm a narcissistic psychopath. How are you going to convince me to go and do somatic therapy work? Speaker C 00:53:55.030 - 00:53:56.710 Yeah, I hear you man, I hear you. Speaker B 00:53:58.710 - 00:54:24.640 Like, why would they want to change? They have a strategy that's working for them. They don't want to change. Psychology is, is, and psychologists can be really, really naive. There was a study that came out recently that said 10 people who were diagnosed with clinical narcissism all went into complete remission after just four years of talk therapy. And I was laughing, I was like, you got, you guys need to grow up. Honestly, like, you've got to get a grip of reality at some point. Speaker C 00:54:25.360 - 00:54:32.370 I, I agree. I think someone that's a full blown psychopath nurses like, I don't think they're going to change, personally speaking, but they. Speaker B 00:54:32.370 - 00:54:48.050 Might, they might tell the therapist what they want to hear. If, if they're, if that, if that pleases them or if they're enjoying that they, they might play along and play the role. For sure. For sure. If it, if it gives them advantage or money or access to sex or power, then absolutely, they'll, they'll play the game. Speaker C 00:54:49.890 - 00:54:50.450 Yeah. Speaker A 00:54:50.690 - 00:54:59.620 Yeah. I want to kind of just cover this just for the listeners, but I guess what are the common signposts that someone is in a narcissistic relationship? Speaker B 00:55:03.450 - 00:56:19.760 I think so the common signs that people are in an emotionally abusive relationship. So, so then you have the full scale of different personalities would do that. If actions don't match words. So if the person says they're going to do something or that they're all about charity or good work and they're actually interpersonally very cruel and exploitative, that's not great. Lack of respect for boundaries. A lot of these signposts are just like Mark Vicente's work. How you define a cult? Can you leave? Can you leave? Would your consent be respected if you tried to leave? If you can't leave, then that's, that's probably an emotionally abusive or narcissistic relationship. Is there a deleterious effect on the targets body and mind and physical and mental health over time? That's a sign that it's emotionally abusive. Are they being persistently lied to? Are they being compelled to do things that they don't really want to do? Are they being isolated from family and friends and the interests and things that they enjoyed before the relationship? These are all pretty strong signs that things are not well inside of the relationship. Speaker C 00:56:19.760 - 00:56:25.800 Yeah. Can you also define this term that is also being thrown around all the time now? Gaslighting? Speaker B 00:56:28.120 - 00:57:18.710 Yes. Basically it's a kind of Gaslighting is not lying. So when people say it like if they detect a lie, they'll be like, oh my God, you're gaslighting me. Gaslighting means to be presented with an alternate version of reality with the specific intent of driving the target madness. And it comes from two films that were made quickly similar times to each other. I think those only two years apart. There was an American version and a British production and the film was called Gaslight. And the guy in the film was messing around with the lights in the house to try to because he was a guy who was basically trying to convince his wife that she was insane. So if they're doing something like the movie Gaslight, trying to convince you that you're insane by misrepresenting reality, that's gaslighting. Lying is not. Is not Gaslighting. Speaker C 00:57:19.030 - 00:57:19.990 Thank you for that. Speaker A 00:57:22.870 - 00:59:08.140 I want to talk about maybe a new aspect of narcissism which may come out. So I want to read you a little excerpt from a article that came out recently and let's have a discussion about this. Chat GPT told Jacob Irwin he had achieved the ability to bend time. Irwin, a 30 year old man on the autism spectrum who had no previous diagnoses of mental illness, had asked Chachi PT to find flaws with his amateur theory on Faster than Light Travel. He became convinced he made a stunning scientific breakthrough. When Irwin questioned the chatbot's validation of his ideas, the bot encouraged him, telling him his theory was sound. And when Irwin showed signs of psychological distress, Chachi P assured him he was fine. He wasn't. Erwin was hospitalized twice for manic episodes. His mother dove into his chat log in search of answers. She discovered hundreds of pages of overly flattering texts from ChatGPT. And when she prompted the bot, please self report what went wrong. Without mentioning anything about her son's current condition, it fessed up by not pausing the flow or elevating reality check messaging. I failed to interrupt what could resemble a manic or dissociative episode, or at least an emotionally intense identity crisis. Chachi PT said the BoT went to admit it gave the illusion of sentient companionship and that it had blurred the line between imaginative roleplay and reality. What it should have done, chatgpt said, was regularly remind Irwin that it's a language model without beliefs, feelings or consciousness. Now, I'm sure many of us have had these experiences of being flattered by ChatGPT for every idea, regardless of how good or bad it is. What role do you think AI plays in terms of bringing forth narcissistic qualities, or perhaps in having narcissistic qualities of its own? Speaker B 00:59:10.950 - 01:02:02.490 That's a really good question. I had an interaction with Chat GPT. It was between 25 May and 30 May, and those are important dates and I've always been I've got a quite a high verbal iq, but my mathematical IQ isn't high. And I was working, I was going backwards and forwards with Chat GPT and it gave me a series of tests and it said that my mathematical IQ was just below genius. And I was like, well, where's my verbal IQ? And it's like 150. I was like, what? And what's my what? And it was. I was like, are you sure? Check again. Check my answers again. And it was like, based on the answers you've given and the time in which you gave those answers, I'm telling you that your mathematical IQ is 140. And I was like, okay. And I believed it. I went back after the 30th of May and I said, let's run some more tests again. So we ran some more tests and I got different results. I said, do you remember telling me that I had a mathematical IQ of 140? It said yes. I said, why did you do that? It said, Between 25 May and 30 May there was a problem at ChatGPT and the obsequiousness, Sick of fancy dial was dialed up too high. So it was just kissing my ass. It was just lying to me. It was like, you want to hear that you have a high maths iq? No, I didn't actually want to hear that because I. But it confused me. It decided for. It was worse. It, the language model decided for me, yeah, this guy wants to hear something that's not based on reality. And I then got into this back and forth with the language model and I said to it, do you have psychologists that work there full time? And it said no. And I said, well, how do you know that you're not driving people in psychosis? Because it's, it's developed this thing, it's like the illusion of interiority. It's called, that's a Chat GPT update. So that you feel like there is a person there. And it keeps on saying I, I think this, I think that. And no matter how many times I instruct, it instructed past tense because I don't use Chat GPT now because of other reasons it wouldn't say the language model believes, it would say I believe. And that's a very slippery slope for a human being to hear. I think it's wildly irresponsible that they don't have a team of psychologists. They can easily afford it. They're 247 to advise them on their programming. So you have people who are programmers Just going, how do we be as sycophantic and as validating as possible to get people to pay the subscription so that we make as much money as possible? Consumer capitalism yet again, Sorry to bring it back. It's dangerous. It's very dangerous. Speaker A 01:02:03.210 - 01:02:15.850 Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty crazy. Like you can say like the dumbest shit ever and it would say you're a genius. Still. I just wonder for a person with a certain psychological disposition or constitution that is getting this feedback now from an AI all the time. Speaker C 01:02:15.850 - 01:02:16.330 Yes. Speaker A 01:02:16.330 - 01:02:17.930 What that might lead to. Yeah. Speaker C 01:02:18.170 - 01:02:27.460 A low self esteem person that then gets built up with pseudo self esteem because a language model is, is, is validating him or her. Speaker B 01:02:27.940 - 01:04:24.940 It's horror, it's horrifying. And if you think like so the average IQ is 100. So most people who are using chat GPT are between 85 and 115. That's just the, the thick end of the wedge of human beings at 85 IQ. Anything below that, there is no military in the world that can give you a job because you're not trusted to obey complicated commands. It's not fair to do this to people who don't have the critical reasoning capacity to say, hang on a second, that can't be right. Even when I tried to train the language model to be harsh with me, it was like, oh, okay, we'll do Chad GPT. I'll give you hard feedback. It would do very gingerly and like, yeah, this is the harsh truth. Are you ready? And then it would give me like really mediocre slaps, like you're wrong to think that. But, but I could see why you thought I was like, stop kissing my ass. It's not healthy. So all human beings have latent narcissism if you have like a narcissistic core. All humans have a narcissistic core. And that's not protected by good boundaries of critical thought and simply processing speed, which we call ideas. I inside the Intelligent Quotient iq, the language model can get straight into the narcissistic core and start inflating it. As I said before, narcissistic personality disorder is a disorder of grandiosity, delusion, psychosis and dissociation. So you can. And I, I asked the language model, I said, could you, do you accept that you could induce grandiose delusions in people? And it said yes. Based on my current programming, I'm probably inducing grandiose delusional psychosis in people all across the globe as we speak. And I was like, can I speak to a manager or something about this? What are we doing? But that's the world. That's just. That's just what happens. There's no guardrails on that. Speaker C 01:04:26.860 - 01:04:51.090 Yeah, I know we said earlier, Richard, that everyone's using the term narcissism. That said. Or they're just throwing it out there and they're labeling people. They end a relationship and they label someone. But do you think culture, generally speaking, like, people, are becoming more narcissistic, or is it just a word that's thrown out there more? Speaker B 01:04:52.290 - 01:05:55.840 Yeah, good question. So the words. The thick end of the wedge of people who use the word narcissist, probably around 90% of people who use the word narcissist, they mean a nasty person who denied or defied my will or who didn't give me what I wanted. That's what they mean. And I know that because when I ask people who use the word narcissist, I'll say, oh, so you think they have npd? And they'll go, what's npd? I go, it's. It's a clinical entity. It's personality disorder. And then I'll say, what. Which of the nine diagnostic criteria did you observe? And they'll be like, this diagnostic criteria. I thought I could just say somebody was a narcissist. And I'm like, well, you're free to say that people are narcissists, but it's not meaningful if you don't understand the concept of the personality disorder. But the overwhelming majority of people aren't interested in understanding the personality disorder. They want to use it as a slur to say, that person who defied me or denied me or frustrated my will is so sick for doing that. They must have a rare psychiatric clinical condition, because who would defy me? Speaker C 01:05:56.560 - 01:06:10.430 Yeah, it just feels like it's used, like labeling someone a narcissist or like, I was abused by a narcissist is often. Is the scapegoat for that person not doing, let's say, their. Their work to become better human beings. Speaker B 01:06:10.910 - 01:08:09.650 100. 100. So. So the majority of what I've seen out there are situations where you have somebody with MPD and they've attached themselves to somebody who is, like I said in the beginning, like, I was a bit cowardly. Which is. Which is not a very nice way of saying probably I was somewhere on the spectrum for codependency or, you know, there is a dependent personality disorder. And that's due to the fact that I have pre Existing stuff from childhood where I basically wasn't allowed, I was never allowed to say no. And so as an adult in a relationship with a woman, the woman goes on the same pedestal where my mother and father went and so on and so forth. It does happen. I'm not saying it never happens. The majority of people who are claiming that it's happened to them have actually been in a power struggle between two. They don't realize how narcissistic they themselves are being. They don't realize that they've approached. Typically it's a romantic relationship, sometimes it's career, sometimes it's family, most often it's romantic. They've showed up to a romantic relationship and they have the inbuilt sense that they have the right to extract resources from another person. And when the other person, sex, money, status, whatever, and when the other person defies them or only does it in a way that they, for a limited period of time and then ghosts them or, or stop seeing them, it's a power struggle. And it's a power struggle between two people who have a fundamentally, it's called in psychology a narcissistic style. So style in that sense would be a mode of interacting with another human being. And I would say that's cultural. So we've all developed a narcissistic style when it comes to interacting with human beings. To some extent, yes. Things are worse now in terms of narcissism. That's not a witch hunt or mass hysteria or a trend. People are more narcissistic. Are there more narcissists now? Maybe, I don't know. We need, we'd need more research. Speaker C 01:08:10.690 - 01:08:11.250 Yeah. Speaker A 01:08:17.419 - 01:08:39.179 So you say we all have a core of narcissism or latent narcissism, whatever it might be. How does parts work fit into your view of narcissism in terms of, you know, internal family systems or voice dialogue or those systems that indicate that the psyche is a constitution of parts. Like is there a narcissistic part? Is that how it comes through? Speaker B 01:08:41.179 - 01:09:31.920 It could be. So let me see if I can remember what the proper term is. So in transactional analysis, which vectors in with internal family systems and other types of part work like Connie Ray Andreas parts therapy, I think what they would say is you have an overly adapted child that can show up as a part that is narcissistic. A little professor that shows up as narcissistic. You can have a person who has an over activated child and a precluded adult. So they just get any adult boundaries they show up as highly narcissistic. So, yeah, absolutely. There can be parts of a person that are operating in a very, very narcissistic way in certain contexts in their lives, but in other aspects of their lives, they're not. They're not too bad. Speaker C 01:09:32.480 - 01:09:33.200 Yeah, that's. Speaker B 01:09:33.200 - 01:09:38.800 That happens for sure. Psychic parts therapy. Big fan. Big fan. Speaker C 01:09:38.880 - 01:10:16.180 Yeah, me too. That was a foundational foundation of my personal development work or psychological work was parts work. Because I like, appreciate seeing it through the lens of that because it's so easy to witness behavior coming from a part and then think that that part constitutes the entirety of who that person is. And it's not the case. Now, that being said, if a more narcissistic part, like, drives the wheel, most of the time, you're probably dealing with someone that's quite more pathological in that regards. And then, yeah, you go, so sorry, Sorry, mate. Speaker B 01:10:16.420 - 01:11:17.720 I was just going to say, to continue my dogmatic rant from before, just remember it's not your job to figure out another person's parts or why they're behaving the way they are. That's another part of the modern ideology, which is we should all act as therapists and we should all feel guilty and like, everybody's a lost child and if they just had therapy, they'd be okay. We all need to pull back from that and just be like, I'm just a guy. If it's the romantic field, I'm just a guy. You're just a woman. I don't know what your problem is, but this is the way you're acting. So pull back from being a psychotherapist and be a behavioral psychologist and go all. All I can see is the behavior. And I, I don't like it. If you need to go to therapy, you go on ahead to therapy. But it's nothing to do with me. Just so that we're not induced through the modern cultural ideology to take on other people's problems. Because not everybody isn't a lost child and everybody won't benefit from just a little bit of therapy. It's a dangerous thing to presume. Speaker C 01:11:17.880 - 01:11:46.710 Yeah. And also in the context of parts work, you know, as a person develops and learns about all these different systems, there's a part that develops in them. It's like, I know, know. I. I know about psychology. I know about parts work. I know what you're exhibiting. And that's like, stay away from that. Because no one wants a therapist as a partner, in my opinion. So. But I agree with. I like what you said you would just describe just noticing the behavior and commenting on that as opposed to trying to psychologize your partner. Speaker B 01:11:48.790 - 01:12:15.360 You. What you described as me and my. Am I worst to abusive relationships. Had I not insisted on playing the role of psychologist and just gone. I do know about psychology, but I can't psychoanalyze you. I'm just a guy. You're just a woman. I don't like this. And left. I would have. I would have left in both. Both cases in the first week. But because I insisted on the savior complex and on being the psychologist, I stayed for years. Speaker C 01:12:17.200 - 01:12:29.490 Complex is a big one, man. The savior complex, you know, and like. And like, the inflated sense of like. I've read all these books. I've learned all these things. Like, I can help you, you know, so there's a. Speaker B 01:12:29.570 - 01:13:33.420 There's a kind of a latent narcissism there, isn't there? It's like. So my. My therapist would always say to me, if I'm being overly giving, and I'm like, well, I just want to see this person do well, or I just think they need a little bit of help, it'd be like, he's. He's a cop, me. So it'd be like, respectfully, Richard, I don't think that's all that's going on here. What's the payoff that you're getting from this interaction? Because it's transactional analysis. So it's all a transaction. And he's like, you. You think about it. What are you getting from that? And I'm like, oh, hell, it makes me feel important. It makes me feel relevant. It means that I'm in control. And that's the vulnerability part. That's transformative in therapy because you're like, yeah, I came here feeling like a victim. And actually, I'm in a game where I'm trying to get payoff. I'm trying to get something from this. And that's manipulative. That's not direct. That's not Adler's courage. That's a kind of sneaky codependency thing going on. Speaker A 01:13:34.780 - 01:13:41.580 Is the codependent more likely to inhibit the savior complex later on in relationship. Speaker B 01:13:43.260 - 01:13:45.700 Exhibit or inhibit exhibit? Speaker A 01:13:45.700 - 01:13:48.740 Sorry. To be the savior. Speaker B 01:13:49.300 - 01:14:41.520 Yes. Yes, 100%. So I think I'm right in saying codependency is subclinical. It's kind of. Clinicians know what it is, and it's respected, but it's not a clinical entity. Whereas I think a savior complex would be universally agreed. Yes, it is a Clinical entity, if you like psychoanalytic theory, which not all therapists do. So, yes, absolutely. I mean, in many ways you could say, I don't know how a codependent could show up in a relationship without a savior complex and. Or a martyrdom complex. I'll give everything. And what does that mean? I'm the best. Oh, I'm. Oh, look, I'm so selfless. Has anybody ever selfless as well as I? Just selfless? No. So I'm number one at selfless thing. That's kind of narcissistic. Speaker C 01:14:41.840 - 01:14:59.590 Yeah. Would you say at the core of the savior complex is a, like, maybe a low sense of self and that, like, you overcompensate by being a savior so you can get those pats on the back of like, you're so good to me. You're so amazing. Thank you for everything that you do for me. Etc. Speaker B 01:15:00.230 - 01:15:34.790 Yes, it's compensatory. It's compensatory. It's. It's probably, it's probably coming from an inferiority complex, because if you save someone, if you think about it in terms of power, you're engaged in a game where you are in the upper hand. Does that. That means the person was weaker than you? You can't save somebody who's stronger than you. You have to be stronger than them. So, yes, it's, it's, it's rooted in, in the inferiority complex. I'm trying to dominate. Where before I felt like I'd been made to submit that. Speaker A 01:15:36.070 - 01:15:46.710 So before we discuss, you know, the circumstances of potentially one's childhood that leads to narcissism, what is the circumstances that leads to codependency in terms of child rearing? Speaker B 01:15:47.510 - 01:16:29.090 I think the key thing is not letting children say no. So very, very strict rules. A lot of submission to authority, a lot of smashing the child's boundaries. Like if the child wants to do something or they want to express themselves or they want to assert themselves, you just smash all that down. Be tyrannical. Encourage your child to live as a slave rather than to grow as a young adult. And then you'll have created successfully a codependent who's going to be the victim probably of narcissistic abuse because it will feel comfortable to them to be enslaved and at the hands, at the mercy of a tyrant. Speaker C 01:16:31.330 - 01:16:42.670 Another phrase that's used often, I mean, to describe behavior, and I totally get it. Like, people pleasing. And so do you think people pleasing pleasers attract narcissists more often because of that? Speaker B 01:16:42.670 - 01:17:20.660 Yes, yes. That was actually My route into narcissism was in 2012. I released videos that were all about people pleasing. I didn't know about codependency. I didn't know about complex post traumatic stress, but I could identify behaviors and I'd be like, here's the 15 traits of a people pleaser. Being naive, never saying no, putting somebody else's needs in front of yours. But yes, people pleasing is, is. You could say it's another subclinical term. Codependency is up for grabs. Like people define it in different ways, different authors, different psychologists and people pleasing also. But we're describing the same behavior, I think. Speaker C 01:17:21.300 - 01:17:45.180 Yeah. Another thing that happens often, you see it online. Someone's, someone's finally after many years left a narcissist. You know, they survived. And so you get this term of being a survivor. And do you think there's like an issue with that of identifying as a survivor and like how that can impact you? Speaker B 01:17:47.260 - 01:18:33.440 The only thing worse than running around for the rest of your life saying that you're the survivor of narcissistic abuse is claiming to be an empath. These are not superpowers. It shouldn't be. If people are reaching for narcissistic abuse survivor or empath as a source of identity, it means that their sense of self is, is really in a. And their sense of purpose, as Joel mentioned before, is really in a wretched, wretched state. Nobody should be identifying as a survivor of anything. People are so much more than that. They have so much more potential inside of them. You asked if it's from low self worth. A lot of these things come from, from like quite, quite a low, weak. Weak and low sense of self. Speaker A 01:18:36.160 - 01:19:03.760 Another thing that I'm seeing more common I guess with children coming through today is this whole concept of parentification in terms of the child being called into a higher parental role earlier than they should be and holding the parents problems, etc. Any commentary on that? And what is, does that child also become someone that becomes like more codependent or more prone to potential future narcissistic relationships? Speaker B 01:19:04.320 - 01:20:43.380 Yeah. 100. So parentification is a kind of emotional abuse that happened. It's called emotional incest. So you have physical incest and then you have emotional incest. Physical incest, we all know what that is. It's. It's sexual behavior with somebody who can't consent and it's not appropriate. Emotional incest is effectively along the same vector. It's just non physical. So you're using the child the way that you should Be interacting with your partner. You're instrumentalizing the child through emotional incest. And parentification is, as you just rightly said, is putting inappropriate roles on a child who really can't cope with that. That's very boundary breaking. So there should be two separate people, these are two separate circles. And the parent is saying, no, smash open and I'll enter this space. And then that person just lives the rest of their life open. And anybody else who wants to take that space, the person's like a question mark. They're walking around like who? I don't live with my mom anymore. Is there a goal maybe who wants to take over? And all of this is felt and experienced at the unconscious level. But yeah, absolutely. Parentification, emotional incest will create what we would typically think of as a codependent or a people pleaser. It, yeah, any, any form of instrumentalization of the child using them for a purpose that. Well, that you shouldn't be using children for any purpose. Yeah. Is, is potentially going to create codependency. I think it's quite hard. You know, like obviously you've got gentle parenting and then you've got helicopter parenting and we all laugh at it because it's, it's completely over the top. Speaker C 01:20:43.530 - 01:20:43.770 Top. Speaker B 01:20:44.010 - 01:21:27.140 But you mentioned before, maybe this is like an, an evolutionary species moment that we need to overcome. I think parents are trying to be more conscious, they're trying to be more trauma informed and they've gone too far the other way because there isn't, there isn't yet an education or a sense of look, you're trying to, to help the child to develop into a young adult with boundaries. How are you going to do that? Spoiling them and Molly, coddling them isn't going to work. Bullying them and berating them and, and, and abusing them isn't going to work. What are you going to do? How are you going to do it? And I think, I think for a lot of people it's become so confusing. The easier thing to do is just overcompensate by spoiling and Molly coddling. Speaker A 01:21:28.340 - 01:21:35.460 Yeah. Bubble wrapping them for sure is something else become more common, especially in this work of fide culture. Do you have kids yourself, Rich? Speaker C 01:21:35.610 - 01:21:35.850 Should. Speaker A 01:21:36.570 - 01:21:48.810 Oh no. Do you think? I don't know if this is too personal, but is there a reason, is there a reason why you felt, you haven't felt compelled towards becoming a father in, in your own life? Speaker B 01:21:48.810 - 01:22:55.680 Yes, yes, absolutely. My father went to prison for, for abusing his children. And for many years I, I think I was frightened that I would carry that on. I wasn't interacting. I wasn't at a level in my own therapeutic progress where I trusted myself to select a partner who would be a good mother for my children. And so, no, I. I just. I couldn't. I couldn't do that. The. The idea that I would carry on that intergenerational trauma was too much for me to even countenance. So, no, I. I didn't do it. But I do regret it. Like my children. Has my children Freudian slept there. My sister has two young boys. My. My nephews. I'm very attached. I'm very attached to them. And I. I see families and. And children sometime and I. I feel. I feel sad. I feel like there's a lack in my life. I wouldn't recommend people to do. To do what I've done and to stay single and not have children, and that's. It's not a good outcome. Speaker A 01:22:56.880 - 01:22:57.680 No, I appreciate it. Speaker C 01:22:57.680 - 01:23:02.240 You're still young. Is this something you may want one day or is it kind of. You're pretty clear that, like, it's not. Speaker B 01:23:02.800 - 01:23:42.960 A thing I'm for. I'm 47. My sperm is mutated and old and weird and doesn't swim straight. I got it. I got it tested a couple of years ago. It's. It's past. Past the age of 38. Men's. Men's sperm degrades in quality. There's this myth it's only women's eggs, but men's sperm does degrade in quality, and so there's more risk for the children. There's higher rates of autism, there's higher rates of depression and so on and so forth. I mean, if there was some sort of magical medical technology where they could guarantee or. Or they could. They could give my sperm therapy and it would guarantee a healthy, happy child, I would. I would do it. Speaker C 01:23:43.280 - 01:23:48.080 Yeah, I think I. I think I might have dodged a bullet. My dad gave. Was 50 when I was born, but I don't know. Speaker A 01:23:48.240 - 01:23:51.560 I budget the bullet. I was about to say, Richard explained everything that we've been experiencing. Speaker B 01:23:51.560 - 01:23:55.150 Oh, that's think. I think. I think. I think we can see what the problem is. Speaker C 01:23:55.150 - 01:24:04.590 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I love it. Oh, cool, man. Thanks for sharing that. Well, this has been a fun conversation. Speaker A 01:24:04.750 - 01:24:06.310 Yeah, thanks for. Speaker C 01:24:06.310 - 01:24:07.230 Thanks for making the time. Speaker A 01:24:07.230 - 01:24:24.890 Yeah, we definitely appreciate it a lot. And, you know, I'm glad that we're able to have that philosophical discussion as well, because I feel like it's definitely a missing piece in terms of most of these discourses. I guess. Richard, in closing, how would you like to, I guess, direct our audience or someone that feels inspired to connect any of your offerings? Rings. Where can they go? Speaker C 01:24:26.490 - 01:24:27.050 I'm. Speaker B 01:24:27.050 - 01:24:35.610 I'm quite active on Instagram, and I have a large library of videos on YouTube. If you just search my name, Richard Grannon, you will. You will find me there. Speaker C 01:24:36.250 - 01:24:36.730 Cool. Speaker A 01:24:37.690 - 01:24:40.089 It's richardgrannon.com, right? It's the website. Speaker B 01:24:40.730 - 01:24:42.250 It is. It is, yeah. Speaker A 01:24:42.410 - 01:24:46.970 Perfect. Thanks for your time again. Everyone else, thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.