Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Sam Vaknin: Narcissism, Donald Trump, Uncanny Valley, Mysticism, Trauma, Chronon Theory

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

Sam Vaknin is an Israeli writer and professor of psychology. He is the author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited (1999), was the last editor-in-chief of the now-defunct political news website Global Politician, and runs a private website about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Please consider signing up for TOEmail at https://www.curtjaimungal.org  Support TOE: - Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE - PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE - TOE Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch  Follow TOE: - *NEW* Get my 'Top 10 TOEs' PDF + Weekly Personal Updates: https://www.curtjaimungal.org - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoriesofeverythingpod - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theoriesofeverything_ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 - Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything  

There's a quote that I have here that you said, Professor Sam Vaknin. When I was growing up, there was a stigma attached to having cancer. People were ashamed to have cancer as if having cancer was a choice, like can I have a side of cancer? But of course, cancer is not a choice. And I have a surprise for you. Mental illness is not a choice. Just as we should not stigmatize people with cancer, we shouldn't stigmatize people with

mental illness. To have a mental illness is not humiliating, it's not shameful, nor is it embarrassing. It's the absolute equivalent of having a physical disease. Admitting to it, confessing it, and coming clean about it allows you to leverage your mental illness to help countless millions of people. Can you please comment on that? Elaborate please. Well, first of all, the distinction between mental and physical is dubious at best.

It's all embedded in a template of wetware and hardware. Most of it takes place in the brain. Some of it takes place in the guts. We have a body to contend with. This body gives rise to a variety of ailments and dysfunctions and so on and so forth, some of which we historically and maybe in an antiquated manner characterize as mental or psychological, some of which we insist are biological and medical. But I think the distinction is spurious, is wrong. Everything is basically biological. The way we experience certain disorders is perceived as psychological. That's one thing. The second thing is that diseases are rarely choices

when it comes to what we call psychopathological or psychopathologies. Rarely choices. Whereas physical diseases sometimes are choices. For example, if you're a heavy smoker you're choosing lung cancer, probably. So the irony is that physical diseases in many cases are choices and yet they are never stigmatized. Whereas psychological diseases are rarely if ever choices and they are stigmatized. And that is possibly because we perceive people with mental illness as deficient, deformed, defective somehow. Something is wrong with them. Something is wrong with them constitutionally. It's not an outcome of choice, but it's an outcome of infirmity of some kind. Now, we

tend to associate immediately one deformity with another. If something is wrong with them on one level, in one sphere of life, in one realm, then probably something is wrong with them in other areas of life, in other realms. So we'd better stay away. We better stay away. We understand psychological disorders far less than we understand physical ones. So there is also the question of the unknown, the mysterious, the superstitious, the prejudicial, the atavistic, the primitive, etc. Our knowledge of psychopathology is laughable and unbeing charitable, whereas our knowledge of medical, biological, physical diseases is more advanced. It's still laughable, but it's more advanced. So you have a consequence of all these

and their outcome is a conspiracy theory. And the conspiracy theory says, they away from mentally ill people because you can never predict what they're gonna do. And because they are bound to be involved in the dark side, they are privy to some black magic or, you know, and so better stay away. It's a primitive reaction. Can you explain how the book Malignant Self-Love came about? And just for people who are tuning in

and who don't know you, you hold a PhD in physics, you have something called Cronon Field Theory, which we'll talk about soon. And it presents time as an interaction or a force as some people call it, mediated by particles called Cronons. And you're also a current professor of psychology and of business management. Malignant self-love was the outcome of a personal crisis, which led to the total disintegration of every aspect of my life. I used to be a very prominent businessman and stockbroker and venture capitalist

and entrepreneur and financial analyst and so on and so forth in my home country, which is Israel. And then I was sentenced to prison for financial fraud, for securities fraud. I lost my wife, I lost my life, I lost all my wealth, and I was a very wealthy person to be as a British understatement. And you lost all the wealth? All my wealth, yes. I lost my reputation, I lost everything. I lost my freedom. And I found myself hitting rock bottom. I found myself denuded and deprived of everything that constitutes identity. Because we tend to appropriate things, possessions, people

in our lives, circumstances, our personal history, and so on and so forth. We put all of it together and this forms our identity. And supposedly our identity is immutable. It's unchangeable. It's a core. We call it core identity. But I've lost all these Lego parts and I couldn't put my identity back together like Humpty Dumpty. So I had to review the quintessential question,

who am I? Not necessarily what has happened to me or how could I recover or what has led to this even, but who am I? This was clear to me that I ended up at the receiving end of a string of choices and these choices reflected some essence, reflected something essential. And so I needed to tackle this essence. I needed to tackle the quiddity of being myself and then go from there. And when I did this, with the help of mental health professionals as well, I understood that I was told that I have narcissistic personality disorder. And then I went to do research from the confines of prison. I started the research in prison. I smuggled books in and smuggled books out, and I wrote notes to candlelight at night. It was very romantic and very Hollywood-like. At the end of this journey of self-discovery,

I came to learn about narcissistic personality disorder. Mind you, it was a very, very new idea, very new concept. The very phrase narcissistic personality disorder has been coined by Heinz Kohut in 1974. So it's fresh. It's very fresh. It entered, it made its entry into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1980. And I'm talking about the 1980s. So there was no experience with this disorder, no knowledge. There were a few writings by Freud and Coat and Canberg and so on and so forth, but nothing serious.

Lowen wrote a book, nothing serious. No one knew what the heck is narcissistic personality disorder. I had to learn everything from scratch and I had to invent a whole new language to describe my internal experience and my impact on other people. I had to invent this language because there was no language, simply. I borrowed phrases and terms from ancient psychoanalytic literature. I borrowed the phrase narcissistic supply, for example. I invented new words which are in common usage today like somatic narcissus, cerebral narcissus, idealization,

devaluation, discard, this cycle, and so on and so forth. And narcissistic abuse, I popularized the term in the 90s. I was the first to describe narcissistic abuse. And I was overwhelmed by the reactions. The reactions were surprisingly massive. We're talking about the inception of the internet, and I was able to put together six support groups with 250,000 people. That's when no one was on the internet. It was like the very beginning of the thing.

And there was 250,000 people. So I realized that I've touched a nerve. And that was the very beginning of this whole narcissistic abuse movement online, which today is out of control in many ways, regrettably. This question of who am I occurred to you. Do you find that that is one that occurs to other people who are in your position? Or was there something different about your circumstance or your psychological makeup? I think in my case the loss has been truly extreme. I have a propensity for intellectual pursuits.

I studied to study at the university at age nine, so that shows you that I'm in love with intellect and science and so on and so forth. My reflex was to study. I cope with life and I cope with the world by trying to encapsulate it and contain it in words. Words are my instruments and my liberation. It's a kind of liberation theology, but with words. And so I resorted to my default mechanism of study the problem, capture it in words. It's a kind of wild animal that you have to cage, and the cage is the verbiage. So that's what I did. I think most other narcissists are much more grounded

in reality in this sense. They are much less, I think intellectual or, and they're much less curious. Narcissists are not curious because there's an underlying assumption that you're omniscient, that you know everything. There's nothing to learn. Why waste the time?

Everyone is inferior to you. You're intellectually superior, you're Godlike, and so on and so forth. I've always been humble in the face of knowledge. Very arrogant and haughty in the face of people, but very humble when confronted with knowledge. And so I embarked on this journey that now is out of hand and encompasses tens of millions of people all over the world. But at the time I was alone. I was alone for 10 years. Between 1995 and 2004 there was one website on narcissism. Mine. And six support groups, all of them owned by me. And one book. Mine. Published in 1999.

Is there any commonality in the big five with narcissists? Also, why don't you define what a narcissist is? Well, there've been many attempts to reduce narcissism to traits. So the big five factor, factors, this is one attempt. There's another attempt, much more serious in my view, and that is the attempt by the Committee of the International Classification of Diseases, which is the diagnostic manual which competes with the DSM. The DSM is actually used only in the United States, Canada, and sometimes in the United Kingdom. But the rest of the world does not use the DSM. The rest of the world uses another

book published by the World Health Organization. This book is called the ICD and it's 11th edition. Now, in the ICD, for example, there's no narcissism. There's no narcissistic personality disorder. There's a confluence of several traits, for example, dissociality, antagonism, and so on and so forth, and perfectionism. So there's a combination of traits that give rights to something that is recognizable as narcissism. So trying to reduce narcissism to a list of traits is one approach. Trying to reduce narcissism to a list of behaviors, as the DSM does, is another approach. Trying to reduce narcissism to a literary text that describes the inner landscape and dynamics of the narcissist is a third approach, and this is the approach

in the alternative model in the Diagnostic and Statistical manual, but none of them captures, I think, the essence of narcissism. You ask me, what is narcissism? It's not an easy question to answer, but I will take a stab at it. First of all, narcissism is a post-traumatic condition with very few exceptions. People with narcissistic personality disorder and even people with narcissistic style, which is not like the disorder, it's narcissism light. These people have a background of what is known as adverse childhood experiences, ACEs. So they have a background of abuse and trauma in early childhood. Now abuse is a very misleading word because immediately it conjures up images

of physical abuse, beatings, sexual abuse, incest. There are many, many forms of abuse. For example, if you instrumentalize the child to gratify your own needs and your own wishes as a parent, that's abusive. If you pedestalize the child, if you idolize the child, thereby preventing the child from any access to reality, that's abuse. If you parentify the child, if you force the child to act as your parent rather than the other way around, that's abuse. If you pamper and spoil the child, if you're overprotective and prevent the child from having any meaningful interactions with peers, peers of the child, that's abuse. There are numerous forms of abuse. But all narcissists, with extremely

few exceptions, share this background. And therefore, it's a post-traumatic condition. Number one. Number two, narcissists are unable to tell the difference between external and internal. In this sense, they're very reminiscent of psychotics. That's not some Vaknin. That is Otto Kernberg. They're very reminiscent of psychotics. The direction is different. The psychotic confuses or conflates internal objects with external ones. Super interesting. This is called hyper-reflexivity.

While the narcissist confuses external objects with internal ones. So the psychotic is gonna hear hear a voice. He's going to say the voice is coming from the outside when actually the voice is internal. So he confuses internal with external. The narcissist is going to meet someone and then convert that person into an internal object. So he confuses external with internal while the psychotic confuses internal with external. But it's a mirror image of psychosis. Just to interrupt, I apologize. Would an example be, I heard Steve Jobs would hear other people's

ideas say no, but then one week later he would go to that person and recite the ideas if he came up with it and he would also believe he came up with it. Yes, that's an example. I'm not saying Steve Jobs is a narcissist. I'm saying would that be an example of a behavior? I think you could safely say that he was. Yeah, that's an example because as far as the narcissist is concerned, there are no external objects.

Objects in psychology means people. There are no external people. Everyone is an internalized object in his mind, known as introject. Everyone is an introject. Everyone is an avatar, a representation in his mind. An external versus internal, is that also to be thought of as subject versus object?

No, because the experience of the internal objects is subjective, even though the narcissist misidentifies the internal objects as external. So this is not the same as someone who does meditation and then they dissolve the boundary between subject and object? No. Another thing is that the narcissist does not possess an ego. Ironically, the narcissist is selfless. Narcissism is a disruption in the formation of the self. It starts very early in life,

and it has to do with the fact that the parent was unable to mirror the child appropriately. There was no maternal gaze which allowed the child to differentiate himself or herself from the mother and create boundaries. So consequently, the child does not evolve a functioning ego or a self or what have you. So there's an emptiness there. There's a void. Kernberg described it in Borderline and Narcissistic Disorders that there's a void there. And so the narcissist is incapable of perceiving external and differentiating it from internal because there is what I call an othering failure. maternal, because there is what I call an othering failure. How do you know that other people exist? When you were a small, small, small baby, mother looked at you. There was

a maternal gaze, and you saw yourself in mother's eyes. You were able to identify yourself in mother's eyes. And then mother left the room. She frustrated you as a baby, as an infant. She left the room and her gaze left with her. Gradually you began to grasp as an infant that there is mommy and there is you. It's her gaze that defines you. And her gaze is the first catastrophic, cataclysmic trauma in life. It's very traumatic to realize that you and mother are not one, are not unitary. The world breaks apart. There is a chasm suddenly that opens up,

apart. There is a chasm suddenly that opens up because Mother represents the world, and now, it's you against the whole world, and you're not one, so you can't control the world, etc., etc. It's a major trauma. But it endows you with the ability to tell apart external and internal. It gives rise to what later becomes the constellated self. It allows you to develop boundaries. So you know, I stop here and the world begins here. Or the world stops here and I begin. All this is absent in narcissism, in pathological narcissism. The child never goes through these stages. He never separates, individuates. He is never allowed to separate from the parent, usually the mother, and to become an individual. And so, narcissists spend an eternity trying to recreate the early childhood conflict, trying to separate individually. So they go around and they find

maternal substitutes. They find intimate partners, friends, and they convert them into mothers, substitute mothers. And then they try to separate from them and become individuals, because they failed originally. And this is known in psychology as a repetition compulsion. That's in a nutshell, I mean it's a lot more complicated but in a nutshell. So let's say we have an extreme narcissist, let's call them Carl, and you ask Carl, Carl does Alex exist? You point to Alex. Would Carl say no, Alex does not exist or maybe they would appease you and say yes, but inside they would feel as if Alex.

No, no, they miss, as I said, they misapprehend internal objects. They think they're external. This is why narcissism is a kind of psychosis. They first deprive you of your externality and your separateness. Because narcissists never succeeded to separate from the maternal figure, they don't know what it means to be separate. They've never

had an experience of separateness. So whenever they come across someone, they immediately merge, fuse, they go into what is called a symbiotic phase. So they can't tell that you are separate, that you're external, they regard you as an extension of them, of themselves, or internal object, or avatar, or icon, or whatever you want to call it. But they mislabel this internal object and they say that it's external. In other words, they have what we call

impaired reality testing. internal object and they say that it's external. In other words, they have what we call impaired reality testing. They don't grasp reality appropriately. They get reality wrong. They misread reality and mislabel everything. They mislabel their own emotions. They mislabel internal objects. It's a total case of extreme attribution errors. So they are very, very confused. Narcissism, I think the core of narcissism is enormous confusion. Enormous confusion. Because you don't have guidance from inside

because you don't have insides. You're hollow, hollow, you're a void. Do they lack a conscience? No, no, there's nothing there. It's total emptiness So they do lack a conscience Conscious is a group of interjects That are embedded in you installed in your mind if you wish during a process known as socialization

Conscious reflects societies values and mores communicated to you via socialization agents such as mother and father. You imitate mother and father. This is known as social learning, social learning theory. You imitate, emulate mother and father. They become role models, and later you have teachers and peers and influences even. They become role models. And later you have teachers and peers and influencers even, they become role model. So conscience is simply a name given to a voice or a group of voices that reflect society in you. Society reaches into your mind. There's a long arm of society and installs an app and this app is conscience. Now, this, of course, do not possess a conscience because to possess a conscience, you must, number one, realize that there are people out there,

external people. Number two, you need to have a functioning ego. Ego is a word used by Freud. I'm not saying that ego is a real thing. It's a metaphor. Ego simply means that you grasp reality properly, you realize the consequences of your actions, you can tell right from wrong, and you orient your behavior according to this information. Ego is like the interface with reality. That's one of the functions of ego. It has many other functions. One of the most important ones is to put you in touch with reality. When you want to do something, to tell you, wait a minute, hold it, it's going to have dire consequences. Don't do it. This is conscience. Or what you're doing is wrong. You're hurting people, and it's wrong to hurt people. This is conscience. Narcissus doesn't have any of this because he doesn't perceive that

other people exist, because he doesn't have an ego, because he has no interface or exchange or intercourse with reality, he lives in a fantastic bubble. Narcissism is a fantasy defense writ large. Even the opening text in the DSM uses the word fantasy. It's a fantasy. The narcissist lives in what is known as a paracosm, a virtual reality. It's the first virtual reality long before computers. Can you disentangle this usage of the word narcissism from our colloquial one where we say that someone who's self-involved and egotistical is narcissistic?

First of all, we make a distinction, clinical distinction between narcissistic disorders, for example, narcissistic personality disorder, which is an extreme form of mental illness, and narcissistic style. Narcissistic style is narcissism light. It simply means that you behave in a way that is reminiscent of a narcissist, but you don't have the psychological background, the motivations, the dynamics that are typical of a narcissist. You just behave in ways that remind people of narcissism. So narcissism, there are three types of narcissism. There is the clinical entity, the pathology, the sickness. That's one thing.

And they should be diagnosed only by qualified diagnosticians. You can't fling this word about and attribute narcissism to people. They need to be diagnosed. Only 1% of the population have narcissistic personality disorder. Another 5% to 6% have narcissism. And that's global or is that a u.s. Based statistic? No, it's a global statistic another five to six percent have

narcissistic style just a moment to linger on that one percent That's that's interesting to me because earlier it seemed like narcissists or people who have narcissistic personality disorder were made From trauma and to me it would seem like that's extremely social. So the trauma in Japan would be of a different sort or less or more than the trauma of Canada. But you're saying, no, no, no, it occurs approximately 1% globally. The prevalence is identical

in the 40 or 50 societies we have studied. Maybe we'll find different if we were to study another hundred. But I think 40 to 50 is a representative sample. And that includes Japan and countries in Africa and Egypt and Israel and so on. Interesting. The reason is that narcissism is a reaction to trauma regardless of the nature of the trauma, and it is channeled via social mores and conventions and so on. Let me explain what I just said. If you're a Japanese kid and you're exposed to trauma, you're likely to develop narcissistic defenses. As one option, there are other options.

You could become codependent. You could develop borderline. I mean, there are other options, but one of the options is to become a narcissist. So you're likely to develop narcissistic defenses. However, the way these defenses manifest would be socially preordained. Society will dictate to you how to express your narcissism. So in Japan, for example, we have collective narcissism. The Japanese narcissist would brag about belonging, belonging to Toyota, belonging to a club, belonging to a socioeconomic stratum. So the Japanese narcissist expresses his narcissism, his grandiosity, via his affiliation, via belonging to a collective or social group. While in the United States, which is highly individualistic, the narcissist would emphasize

his own accomplishments, his own standing and status and relative positioning and possessions and wealth and mate or a partner and so. So it's still not system regardless of how it's expressed. It's important to understand that narcissism is multifarious. Is as many guys isn't disguises and it's wrong to say that all narcissism be the same, they all have the same constitution, composure, and comportment, and so on. No, it's not true. It's highly- Interesting. It's highly culture bound. It is so culture bound. In other words, it so depends on culture

and society that there are very serious scholars that contest the clinical meaningfulness of narcissistic personality disorder, they say it's not a mental illness. It's a form of social dysfunction or social problem or it's not a mental illness. Definitely, anti-social personality disorder, also known as psychopathy, strikes me at least, and many other scholars, is totally not a mental illness. It's not a mental illness. It's comprised of behaviors that society finds detestable, unacceptable, objectionable, obnoxious. So, that's society's problem. We are medicalizing and we are pathologizing too many things, way too many things. The DSM started off with 100 pages in 1952. Today, 60 years later or 70 years later, there's a thousand pages. Thousand, tenfold. Have we become ten times more crazy? Or maybe we are

over-pathologizing and over-medicalizing behaviors which shouldn't be. Maybe narcissism is nothing but being an a-hole and a jerk. I happen to think so. Of course, all behaviors are determined by internal dynamics, specific constellations, certain constructs that operate or don't operate, and so on and so forth. You can't say just because the narcissist has a special constellation or complexion or combination of constructs and psychological processes and dynamics, that means he's mentally ill. You can't say that. So I had interjected when you were describing the differences between the three types of narcissists.

You did? I already forgot. Can you please continue? So we were just on narcissistic personality disorder and then you were saying there were two other kinds. Yeah. Okay. So that's a clinical thing. Then the second layer or second type of narcissism, if you wish, is the narcissism of ostentation. It's the need to be seen, the need to be seen is primordial. It's a survival strategy. Babies who are not seen are dead babies. They die. You need to attract attention from day one. The minute you're

born, you need to attract attention. You start to smile. You start to smile. You start to cry. These are all behavioral cues intended to manipulate the adults around you to keep you safe and give you food and keep you warm and dry as a baby. Two-day-old baby, one-week-old baby. So the need to be seen is embedded, it's biological. And the population nowadays has exploded. So now we are coping with 8.2 billion people. It's very difficult to be seen. It's very difficult to be noticed. We used to live in villages where everyone knew everyone

and everyone made everyone's business their own business. So everyone was getting a lot of attention. Sometimes this attention was annoying, a nuisance, intrusive. Yeah, I agree. But you got attention all the time. So now we live in anonymous warehouses known as cities. These cities are also virtual environments because they are not linked to any manufacturing, anything tangible, and they are not linked to the soil or to nature.

This is a virtual environment which functions as a warehouse, a human warehouse. It's difficult to garner attention. It's difficult to be seen and to be noticed. And this gives rise to narcissistic behaviors, which are not necessarily clinically pathological, but they are highly narcissistic, all the same. Attention seeking, addiction to narcissistic supply, escalation of behavior, very similar. Addiction to narcissistic supply? Yeah, narcissistic supply is a general term for attention, adulation, admiration, affirmation, being feared, being noticed, and so on. It's addictive, so you need to escalate

your behavior all the time in order to obtain the same impact or outcome. I understand. And this is the second layer of narcissism, and it's much more common, of course, in the clinical manifestation. And there's a third layer of narcissism, and that is the societal cultural layer. Narcissism is hard-baked, built into many of the tenets and the percepts of civilization, modern civilization, postmodern civilization. It started with Protestantism, the highly narcissistic version of Christianity, and it progressed from there.

And it merged and coalesced with narcissistic elements in other religions, other ideologies, other creeds, and so on and so forth. And today we have a narcissistic civilization. And yes, it's a universal civilization. Of course, China is totally indistinguishable from the United States in every way that matters. And so is Japan, and so is Israel, and so is Egypt. Wherever I go, I feel at home. I feel at home because it's a universal civilization. And so this civilization is highly narcissistic. It rewards narcissism. It incentivizes narcissism. In July 2016, the magazine New Scientist came up with a cover story, Parents Help Your Children

Be Narcissists. So simple as that. It's a positive adaptation. It's an adaptive strategy. If you are a narcissist, you end up in the White House. If you're a narcissist, you end up being the richest man on earth. If you're a narcissist, you end up being an influencer. Narcissism pays. Narcissism is a coping strategy, but also enhances self-efficacy, the ability to extract favorable outcomes from changing environments. So people adopt narcissism as a shortcut to success, and they're right to do so. They're absolutely right to do so. And so you have a confluence of these three types of narcissism, the clinical, the ostentatious behavioral one, and the societal, cultural, efficacious one. This creates what I would call a narcissistic sphere or narcissistic bubble. You have no incentive to exit narcissism. Imagine that Donald Trump comes to me as a patient and I tell him, you know Donald, you're

highly narcissistic. It's really horrible. We need to treat it. We need to say why. Why do we need to treat it? I'm having gorgeous girls. I'm having billion. I'm a multi-billionaire and I'm the ex and future president of the United States.

Give me one good reason to not be an analysis. What would you say to that? You're right. It's a positive adaptation. You see that the mistake in psychology and definitely in psychotherapy is to impose your values to impose values. I call it axiological practice. When you impose values, you're getting it wrong. When you start to use words like good and bad, evil, wrong, you're getting things

wrong. You're getting things wrong, absolutely. The only two questions when someone comes to you or when you come across someone is, is this person functional? And is this person ego-synctonic? In other words, content. I wouldn't say happy, but content. Okay with himself, feels comfortable with him. Ego-synctonic. Ego-synctonic means you feel comfortable with yourself.

So, regardless of your diagnosis and your, anything else, if you are fully functional in all fields of life and if you're happy with who you are, why would I interfere? Why would I intervene? Even if you're diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, why would I intervene? It's illegitimate to intervene by imposing my values. Then you're not. Narcissism is bad.

I don't care that you're happy. I don't care that you're functioning. You're a narcissist and I should cure you. That's wrong. It's absolutely wrong. It also denies the autonomy, personal autonomy of the other. It's dictatorial, it's authoritarian. It's not okay. It's not okay. And large part of psychology and psychiatry is being abused for social control and not only in dictatorships. We use or abuse psychology and psychiatry to impose specific social ethos, specific values, specific conventions and norms, specific behavioral scripts. We recruit psychology and psychiatry and psychotherapy to exert an influence which is illegitimate, undue, wrong. It's wrong to do this. It compromises the alleged scientific nature of psychology and psychiatry.

They are not sciences, they are pseudo-sciences, but still they have a claim to science. So it compromises it and it causes people to lose trust in the profession. Because when you dictate to people how they should be, it means you are assuming a grandiose superior position of supremacy. I will tell you what is healthy. I will tell you how you should be. I will tell you whether the way you are now is okay or not because I have the absolute God-given yardstick and benchmark as to how you should be.

And I'm going to shape and mold you, shrink, you know, these words and these phrases indicate the fear, the fear of this imposition. You say a head shrink, no. Sometimes not a positive view of psychiatry. Is some of this not already taken care of, at least in cluster A and cluster C, as far as I know, that if you look up any of those disorders and they'll say, okay, here's an

outline, here's a checklist for them, and then number nine would be, does this interfere with your work life and personal life? And if it doesn't, that's a major marker against you having a disorder. That's the way it should have been. That's the way it should have been. But it's not the way it is. This is known as the polythetic problem. You have nine criteria in, for example, narcissism, the DSM-IV, the fourth edition, and it has been carried over to the fifth edition, shockingly, because it's like 25 years old, and it has been carried over to the fifth edition, shockingly, because

it's like 25 years old, and it reflects knowledge that is long ago debunked. But okay, to diagnose a narcissist, I would need to identify five out of nine diagnostic criteria according to the DSM-IV and 5. That is if I'm not using the alternative model of the DSM-V which was relegated to the appendix. Okay. If you qualify, if you meet five of the diagnostic criteria, you're diagnosed and that has nothing to do with whether you're functioning or not functioning well, how you feel about yourself, and even has nothing to do with whether you're functioning or not functioning well, how you feel about yourself, and even has nothing to do with whether your behavior conforms to your particular idiosyncratic culture and society.

Because some cultures and societies encourage behaviors that other cultures and societies pathologize. And we need to be culturally sensitive. That is absent in the DSM because the DSM is a list. And if you satisfy a portion of that list, you're diagnosed. End of story. Nothing you can do about it. You can't protest. You can't say, yes, I meet eight of the nine diagnostic criteria, but in my country, this is normal behavior. You can't say this. I meet nine out of the nine diagnostic criteria, but I'm very happy with who I am. And my functioning is perfect. I'm president of the United States, I'm multi-billionaire,

and I bed every beautiful woman around. I'm perfectly happy. You can't say this.. You can't say this. You just can't say this. These are not acceptable arguments. If you meet the diagnostic criteria, which is wrong. So what would be those criteria so that someone, I know that you mentioned that you shouldn't self diagnose, you need to be clinically diagnosed. They include, for example, lack of empathy, exploitativeness, envy, and so on and so forth.

They're widely available only. Currently on screen is the DSM criteria and you can pause it. In the DSM-5, in the appendix, in the text revision which was published two years ago as well, there is something called alternative model. Alternative model sounds a lot like a text lifted from Dostoevsky. It's literature. It's written like literature. It's beautiful.

And it describes the life and the internal processes of the narcissist. And I'm kidding you not, it reads like Dostoevsky. So I would much rather adhere to the alternative text than to the DSM's bullet list of nine diagnostic criteria because I think the alternative model captures the essence of narcissism, not the behaviors, not the way other people react to the narcissist, not the way the narcissist feels about other people. It captures what and who, what it is to be a narcissist and who is a narcissist. That's the alternative model, not the diagnostic criteria.

Let's say that a woman is in a relationship with a man and it's all splendid. She loves him and he loves her. At least that's what she perceives. But something's off and she can't put her finger on it. She suspects he may be a narcissistic abuser, this has happened to her in the past. What would be some checklist

that this woman can use as a heuristic? And then I would like to ask you the same question, but from the male perspective. Let's start with the fact that today, nowadays, half of all people diagnosed with narcissistic personalities are women. That did not used to be the case 40 years ago when about 75% of people diagnosed with NPD were men. So the gender bias, either the gender bias is disappearing, I hate your earphones.

Sorry about that. No, don't worry. Either the gender bias is disappearing or women are becoming more narcissistic. I believe it's the latter because women are also becoming more masculine. According to studies by Lisa Wade and many others, women describe themselves now in strictly, exclusively masculine terms. In 1980, eight out of nine adjectives that women used to describe themselves were identified as feminine, and today eight out of nine adjectives that women use to describe themselves are definitely masculine. For example, competitive, ambitious, ruthless, and so on. So women have become

more male-like, more masculine. And since narcissism has always been a men's problem, a men's mental illness, so it seems that masculine women are becoming more narcissistic. Now, the first thing to understand is that your gut instinct and intuition are frequently wrong when it comes to the circumstances and the external world and objects and. And even decision making and so on they are about their own about half the time. Your intuition and gut is not your intuition and gut instinct are really wrong when it comes to other people. We perceive other people correctly. We perceive other people correctly. We often perceive situations and decision trees wrongly, but we perceive other people very correctly. So the first tip is if something feels wrong, off-key, not well put together, something doesn't fit, walk away. You are likely right. This, by the way, has a name. It's called

the Uncanny Valley Reaction. In 1970, there was a Japanese roboticist. His name was Masahiro Mori, of course. He conducted a series series of studies and he discovered that people react with growing discomfort. They become more ill at ease the more a robot resembles a human being. Exactly the opposite of what we would intuitively think. It's counterintuitive. The more the robot resembles a human The more uncomfortable we feel in the presence of the robot and this is known as uncanny valley

when you're in the presence of a narcissist a Narcissist is an unfinished human Some a work in progress that would never progress narcissists lack critical elements that comprise human beings. Narcissists lack empathy. They have no access to positive emotions. They lack a functioning ego. They don't have a constellated self, etc., etc. In many respects, narcissists are therefore a kind of artificial intelligence, a kind of robot. But externally, they look like human beings. It's like a very good simulation of a human being, but it's not a human being. So you would have an uncanny valley reaction in the presence of a narcissist. A voice in your head or in your gut or wherever

it is would tell you, this thing looks like a human being, but it's not full-fledged. It's half-baked. Something is wrong. It's not fully put together or rightly put together. I mean, something's wrong there. You should obey this uncanny valley reaction. Second tip, do not pay any attention to the way the narcissist behaves with you, because the narcissist is trying to manipulate you, trying to charm you, trying to obtain outcomes. He's goal-oriented like psychopaths, also goal-oriented. Pay attention to how the narcissist treats other people, not you. How does he treat the waitress? Right.

How does he treat the cab driver? How does he treat, I don't know, the concierge? Pay attention, how does he treat his mother? Pay attention to how the narcissist interacts with other people. Because with you, it's an act It's a show. It's a theater production. You can't trust it. You're not obtaining any reliable information from his interaction with you

That's a second tip third tip Alacrity speed The narcissist would offer you marriage on a second date usually if he's very slow. And he would suggest to have four children with you on the third date and he would ask you to move into his place or he would move into your place on the fifth date. That's too fast. The speed is alarming, indicative of something that is wrong. He is not interacting with you. He's interacting with some figment in his fantasy and imagination.

And because he's already intimate with his mind, this intimacy, Erzath's instant intimacy, carries over to you. So it's a legitimate request from the narcissist to the partner to say hey Would you like to be married? I want to do this. It's a legitimate request on After two years, it's not feigning something in order to be more you mean if that he means it It means it that's why when you when you go online word 90 and again and being charitable 90% of information is wrong

They say now this is gaslight, narcissists lie. No, narcissists are delusional. They fully believe everything they're telling you. That's the problem. The problem is they deceive you because they're authentic. They're real. They're meaning. This is a point of contention with people who dislike Trump. They'll say, versus the Trump supporters, the dislikeers will say he's lying and the

Trump supporters would say, I sense authenticity and honesty from them. So do I. I think he's authentic in his insanity, in his delusionality, in his cruelty. Everything is authentic. The narcissist truly believes his stories, his promises, his intentions, the fantasies he imposes on you or introduces you into. The future as he delineates it, he doesn't future fake. Narcissists don't future fake. They fully believe the future that they're selling you on. So this is important to understand. This is a confusion between narcissists and psychopaths.

Psychopaths manipulate you knowingly. This is known as Machiavellianism. Psychopaths, if they make a promise, they know they're going to break it. If they make an offer, it's goal-oriented. They know the difference between fantasy and reality. They're selling the fantasy to you. They remain stuck in reality, the psychopaths. They are firmly embedded and grounded in reality, but they want you to lose your mind. They gaslight you, they falsify your reality, they induce, induct you into fantasy, and they do it intentionally in a premeditated manner. It's part of a plan. The narcissist is not like that. Narcissists are highly automatic. Most of the processes are unconscious, and they believe everything they say, they believe because they're grandiose. Everything

they say is the Word of God. How could you distrust or doubt it? No way. It's a God speaking. So that's the second sign, the alacrity, the speed. The fourth sign is control. Narcissists have severe separation insecurity, which colloquially is known as abandonment anxiety. Exactly like borderlines. But while a borderline clings like a codependent, a borderline would cling to you and would emotionally blackmail you in order to make sure that you don't abandon her and don't reject her, and she would become hysterical and emotionally dysregulated if there's even a hint or a whiff of abandonment and rejection.

The narcissist tries to control you. The narcissist's solution to the conundrum of abandonment is to control you. So the narcissist from the get-go, from the first date, would be in control. He would take the keys from your hand and lock your door. He would drive you to a restaurant of his choosing. He would order food and drinks for you without asking you. He would then interrogate you why it took you so long to be in the bathroom, and so on. He's in control.

You feel like an employee with a very strict boss and that's from the first minute. Finally i'm in the minimal tips but i'm giving five sure finally fantasy. In congruence there is there a huge discrepancies. Be in the autobiographical data provided by the nalcissus. The autobiographical data provided by the narcissist, and usually in the first few meetings or occasions, the narcissist would focus on you exclusively. It's like a laser focus, and you become the total center of attention,

you're idealized, and it's irresistible. You fall for it. Yes, it sounds attractive. It's attractive. You fall for it, it's intox sounds attractive. It's attractive. You fall for it. It's intoxicating. And you want more and more. And only the narcissist can give it to you. And so this way he gets you addicted.

But if he does provide, and when he does provide, autobiographical material, it's usually contradictory. Usually there are severe discrepancies. And usually they contain, the personal history of analysis contains a lot of evident fantasy, evident. Examples. Analysts can tell you that his work is groundbreaking and he is about to win the Nobel Prize. I'm kidding you not. Sounds stupid, isn't it? But then the contradiction would be, he may say this, but then.

It's clear that it's fantasy. It fantasizes. Oh, sorry. What I meant to say was, can you please provide an example of something from their past that they would say at one instant and then they would contradict it later? On a first date, on a first date, the narcissist would tell you that he was a member of the special forces or the SAS or depending on the country. And then on a second date, he would tell you that he never served in the army. Okay, that's interesting, but I don't see how they believe that then.

At any given moment, they believe it. That's the thing that's difficult. It's difficult to wrap your mind around this. They're not committed to any single version of reality. They're committed to the contemporary fantasy, and the contemporary fantasy could last six months. It could last six hours. It could definitely last six minutes.

But at any given moment, they're committed. One of the reasons now that you ask why, one of the reasons is dissociation. Dissociation is a set of defenses, a group of defenses, the most famous of which is amnesia, forgetting things. But there are other types of dissociative defenses, which I will not go into because they're more typical of borderline, derealization, depersonalization, and so on. The narcissist dissociates a lot. In other words, the narcissist has memory gaps. These memory gaps are substantial, not small.

I'll give you a personal example. And these memory gaps pertain only to autobiographical personal history, not to other types of memory that involve executive memory, episodic memory, and so on. Not, for example, to professional knowledge or to recognizing people that could be of use to you. I'm not talking about this. I'm talking about your own life story. Once I made an exercise, I sat down

and I wrote every single thing I remembered from my eight years first marriage. I was married for eight years to the same woman. It was a tumultuous period. I was at the time very rich and very famous and in my country and so on. So you can imagine we very rich and very famous in my country and so on. So you can imagine we traveled a lot. There were many things to remember. It wasn't like a humdrum pedestrian existence that it's difficult to forget.

So I made a list, a very exhaustive list of every single thing I remembered from my marriage, and then I assigned a time value to each of the memories. So for example, I remember having lunch, that would be one and a half hours. Okay, it's like a time. I see, okay, a duration. A duration. When I summed up the durations,

what I got was about one day, about 24 hours. That's all I remember from eight years of marriage. And I think I've been over-generous. I think it's closer to 10 hours. That's all I remember. So narcissists have tremendous dissociation, enormous. They needed to dissociate as children in order not to confront the full wrath and brunt of the abuse and the trauma and so on. Of course, dissociation is a classic reaction to trauma. Also in borderline. Actually, in borderline, dissociation is a diagnostic criterion. But Kernberg already said that borderline analysis are the same thing. Okay.

How does analysis compensate for these memory gaps? He invents stories. He says, he says, let me think what could have happened. What's the most plausible thing to have happened? What probably had happened? And this occurs at an unconscious level, so it's a confabulation. It's largely, it's a confabulation. It's largely unconscious.

And then the narcissist believes it and is committed to it and would defend it to the death if you were to challenge it or undermine it or provide evidence to the contrary. He would dispute the veracity and objectivity and the very existence of the evidence. And I'm talking about tape recordings, video recordings, nothing. No way to shake the confabulation. No way to undermine it or to challenge it, period. That's reality as far as he's concerned. So if a narcissist finds himself earlier in the morning sleeping in his bed and then at four o'clock in the afternoon in the country club and he can't remember what had happened

between point A and point B, he would fabricate, he would confabulate the intervening period. He would say, probably I went to work and at work probably I met my boss and then probably gave me a project and I was so immersed in the project that I forgot everything about it, about the environment. And so he would invent all this and then the next day you would ask him, what did you do yesterday? Oh, I woke up in the morning. My boss gave me a project. I worked all day on the project. I needed to relax and I went to the country club. work all day on the project. I needed to relax and I went to the country club. It sounds like being in a relationship with someone who has NPD would, this is where the

term gaslighting comes from, because they would make you feel as if you've lost your mind because you found camera evidence that suggests otherwise, but they're so confident with saying otherwise, with contradicting what you already consider to be reality, that you tend to actually lose your mind. Yes, only it's not gaslighting. In the case of narcissism, it's confabulation. Gaslighting involves premeditation, intentional misleading regarding reality. So providing you with misleading information regarding reality, which would cast your own judgment of reality, your own.

I see. I see. So that's the subtle distinction is that most people believe that the narcissist is doing it purposefully. There's effort. It's effortful. No, no, I see. Psychopaths do. Psychopaths do, narcissists don't. The famous movie, the famous two movies, Gaslight, they involve a psychopath, not a narcissist. The men there is a psychopath. It seems far easier to emulate a psychopath than a narcissist. Yes, and that's why- For people who aren't narcissists.

And that's why I say that psychopaths are normal. A psychopath is an exaggerated person. Okay? You have goals, a psychopath has goals. You're sometimes defined. A psychopath is always defined. I see, so it's a spectrum and they're extreme. Yeah, they're like an extreme human being,

an exaggerated human being, kind of a caricatured human being. But they're human. They're identifiably human psychopaths. They have a self. They recognize people as external. They have intact reality testing. They don't play by the social rules. End of story. Not nice. Many of them should add amputee prison. Many of them do. But there's nothing to do with mental illness. The narcissist is entirely different ball game. He can't help it. These dynamics are unconscious. It's doubtful whether he has an unconscious even.

Some scholars doubt it, like Lakan and myself. It's a seriously disrupted, it's like, you know, the girl interrupted, it's like human interrupted. It's a seriously disrupted person who was in the making, raw material. It's protoplasm. It's not a psychopath. The psychopath is full-fledged. Maybe the psychopath is too full-fledged. It's a kind of malignant individualism, you know, psychopathy, malignant individualism, which doesn't recognize the constraints of society and any refuses to obey any expectations and so on. But the narcissist can't, even if he wants to, he just can't do it.

He doesn't have the tools. He doesn't have the nothing. It's help. So what hope is there then for the narcissist? None. And don't buy into all kinds of self-styled experts or self-enriching experts. I regard this as an extreme form of charlatanism and not to say con artistry to claim that NPD can be healed. I've seen this online. What about coped with?

What about coped with? You can definitely modify certain abrasive and antisocial behaviors of the narcissist using modalities like schema therapy, even transactional analysis, some forms of CBT. Yeah, there are some modalities that allow you to somehow reach into the narcissist or to the narcissist and somehow convince the narcissist to modify behaviors in the short term, by the way. There's always a relapse. It's like eternal maintenance. You have to do it again and again. Recurrence. So, but behavior modification is where it stops. There's nothing else that can be done with or to the narcissist. Nothing. That's not some Vaknin only. There's Theodore Millen, that's Kernberg, that's big names.

We all think that... It does seem like there's hope. The hope is to do something on a daily or weekly basis. So for instance, we shower, hopefully on a semi-daily basis, and we don't think, oh, I'm not cured of my uncleanliness. Shoot, I need to shower again. So in the same way, can not a narcissist just view what they have if they're self-aware enough and then also wanting to change? You're talking now from society's point of view. Yes, you can reduce, as I said, abrasive and antisocial behaviors of narcissism and render

narcissism innocuous so that the narcissist no longer adversely impacts people around him. But what about the narcissist? What about the internal experience of the narcissist? What about the depressive cycles the narcissist is going through? What about the pain and the suffering? This is what cannot be tackled, touched, healed, nothing. This is the hopeless part. Yes, of course you can modify. It's like a clockwork orange. You know the movie, yeah?

I don't mean society to modify the narcissist. I'm saying if there's someone who's watching who has NPD and they think, man, I don't like my lifestyle, I have these depressive episodes like you mentioned, there are negative effects to me. I'm not sure. You can modify behaviors, but behaviors are only external. It's like domesticating a dog or taming a lion.

You can modify behaviors, of course, but you can not touch the inside of the narcissist because there's nothing there. There's nothing to do internally. of the narcissist because there's nothing there. There's nothing to do internally. If you condition someone to mimic, essentially, certain behaviors, yes, it makes a narcissist's life easier also if he's less antisocial, less abrasive,

less obnoxious, less, of course, life becomes more pleasant to him than to others. I agree, but this is society's point of view. I see. They would still feel empty. Yes, they would still feel empty, depressed and broken and suffering, or they would feel ashamed. The narcissist's biggest horror is to get in touch with his reservoir of shame. They would still be mocked and ridiculed on multiple occasions because of their grandiosity and so on and so forth, and they would spot it.

The process is known as mortification. Mortification. Yes. They would still sometimes become emotionally dysregulated and suicidal if, for example, they've been shamed in public. So they are still broken. They're still broken. They are still broken. In BPD, in borderline personality disorder, we have a better prognosis.

But again, it's more or less the same. In BPD, we have a very efficacious treatment modality. It's called dialectical behavior therapy, DBT. DBT reverse, heals, you could say heals borderlines because they lose the diagnosis. They can no longer be diagnosed with borderline in 50% of the cases. If you were to wait until you were 45, 81% of people with borderline personality disorder lose the diagnosis. So the prognosis is excellent, you know, and yet multiple studies have demonstrated that many of the internal dynamics are there. The feeling of brokenness, of emptiness, of, it's still there.

I see. You know, medicine, classical medicine has been going on for at the very least 5,000 years. Maybe if we run another interview, you and me, 5,000 years from now, I'd be a lot more optimistic. Right, right. So, prior to dialectical behavioral therapy being invented, there was no hope or almost no hope for the person with borderline personality disorder.

Now there's some hope. And it's been invented. By a... So we don't know who knows 100 years from now, 50 years, 10 years. There's also experience, listen, 5,000 years, we know a lot about the brain, the skull, experience. Yes.

Psychology started, if I'm very generous, started 150 years ago. It's young. Yes, it's young, not young. Like it didn't start with Carl Jung. You mean literally young. It's Jung, yeah. In German, it's Jung. Now from the man's perspective, a man is going out with a woman, okay? Is it the same five signs? Same. It's a myth that male narcissists and female narcissists are not the same. They're absolutely the same. The female narcissist is likely to be a bit more histrionic. So she would be, there would be displays of hyper-emotionality, which are essentially

fake. And so she would pose as hyper-emotional. She would be seductive and flirtatious. Towards you or toward other people in front of you? You're talking about the date. Ah, you mean, you know, with everyone, with everyone. I see. And she would emphasize external appearances, her looks, her clothing, her makeup, but that's a throwback to the patriarchy. It's a throwback to otherwise there's no psychological difference between men and women. Nowadays, maybe 40, 50 years ago, yes, but nowadays

no. And for the people who scrubbed forward to this part of the interview, can you please quickly recapitulate the five factors that you outlined earlier? The five tips you mean? So those five factors, the first one being that you want to observe how they treat other people not just exclusively yourself and then the second one slips my mind, the third one, celerity, fourth, domineering, fifth has to do with contravening information about their past. Yeah so I said if he moves too fast, first of all,

if you feel uncomfortable, trust your feeling, walk away. If he moves too fast, but I mean, dramatically too fast, insanely too fast, walk away. If he misbehaves with other people, if he abuses other people, humiliates them, insults them, and so on and so forth, but is very nice to you, very kind with you, walk away, but he's very nice to you and very kind with you. Walk away means he's acting. And if he's domineering, is immediately in control, walk away.

Basically these are the things. And all these things happen on the first date. Oh, and contradictory autobiographical information. Contradictory, yes. All these things happen on a first date. It's a lie to say that he put on a mask. He was a wonderful actor. I didn't know any of this until, you know, two years later.

It's nonsense. All of this happens on the first date. You just have to pay attention and you have to prioritize your well-being over other needs. Many, many people, they're so lonely they overlook things. They say, okay, maybe he's obnoxious, but he is, I don't know, kind to me. Don't deny, don't repress. Don't sacrifice your future well-being just in order to be with someone because you're lonely right now. The narcissist announces his or her narcissism loudly, ostentatiously, visibly, conspicuously, on a first date, on a first minute.

And above all, your body keeps the score. You feel queasy. You feel drowsy. You feel something's wrong when you're with a narcissist. And that happens in the first 10 seconds. Now, if you were abused as well as a child or teenager or whenever, does that dull your body's earlier we referenced, you sense something's off, your gut instinct. Does that dull it and it leads victims to repeat a harmful pattern? It actually sensitizes you to it. In other words, if you grew up in a dysfunctional, abusive family and so on, you are likely to immediately identify an abuser and react.

Oh, it sensitizes you to it, I see. Yes, not desensitize, sensitize. You are likely to react very powerfully to the presence of an abuser, but you may find the abuser attractive because that's your comfort zone. That's what you're used to. That's where you grew up in, that was your upbringing. You were conditioned to love abusers.

You've learned as a child to associate love with pain, love with abuse. So you're far more likely to identify an abuser, but you're also more likely to be attracted to an abuser because it's like recreating your childhood, recreating your comfort zone. You know the ropes. You know the behaviors. You know how to manipulate. You believe. Because it's like recreating your childhood, recreating your comfort zone. You know the ropes, you know the behaviors, you know how to manipulate your belief, you know how to manipulate the abuser, and everything feels safe. It's what we call a secure base. I see.

Professor, can you please tell me your thoughts on the mind-body problem? I think in most philosophical inquiries, the problem is always language rather than essence. The minute you say mind-body problem, you make certain assumptions about reality. For example, you make assumptions about the separation between mind and body. You make assumptions about possible interactions between mind and body. You make assumptions about observer and observed, the Cartian assumptions. I think the question is phrased wrongly. Not your question, the question is phrased wrongly. I don't think the question should be about mind and body. I think the question should be about external and internal. Everything that we are is internal our body included.

We create a model of the world. Which by the way in psychology is known as internal working with create a model of the world where we are the inner sanctum. We are we are the internal. and all the rest is external. This raises very important questions about the concepts of background and the concepts of context and the concept of information. The minute you phrase the question in these terms, there is no need anymore to make distinction between mind and body. The experience of the internal cannot be divorced this way. For example, take trauma. Trauma has a pronounced

bodily dimension, but obviously trauma has a pronounced mind dimension. Can you truly tell the difference? I don't think so. I think if you were to define yourself as the internal, then the whole problem collapses. I don't think the problem is the body-mind issue. I think the problem is experiencing yourself, the experience of self, which partly is comprised of introspection, proprioception, and so on. The experience of the self. We self-report.

We say, I experience myself this way. And that gives the impression that someone is providing the report. Who is reporting? No? But if you divide the world into internal to internal and external, the reporting is an act of externality. It has nothing to do with the internal. When you report, you report to me. I'm always external to you. You could report to yourself, of course, but that would be within the internal. It would not exit the internal, and therefore it would be meaningless as far as the question of body-mind. If we refrain the question in terms of internal and external, we get rid of the dilemma and the conundrum completely. Because any attempt to communicate the internal to the external, by definition, is exclusively external. And so, your experience of yourself is exclusively internal and has no external bearing or meaning. It's meaningless. Your experience of yourself is meaningless.

For example, can you truly communicate to me who you are and how you feel? Of course not. Never, ever. That's known in philosophy as the intersubjectivity problem. And so if we accept that there is an internal realm and an external realm and that acts of introspection are essentially external, not internal, because introspection is meaningless, without self-reporting, then no problem arises. The problem arises the minute you say both mind and body are in the world. They are both external and now how we can, how can we put them together? They're not, they don't have the same ontological status. That's what I'm trying to say.

So does the problem of external versus internal have an analogy of self versus other? Yes, it's a particular case, a private case. It's not an equivalence though? No, it's a private case. Private case of external versus internal. Sorry, disembroil for me, self versus other and internal versus external. Is one an example of the other? The other is external, the other is external, the self is internal. So it's a private case of external versus internal.

But I can give you another case for example, science. Science is a case of internal versus external. Science is external, completely external. And the scientist is completely internal. So can we therefore make any meaningful statements about the scientist in a way which would somehow create a connection No. I do not think that internal and external are, for example, two facets of one reality. I don't think that they are bridgeable. I don't think that they are communicable. I don't think the science is a reflection of the internal state of the scientist.

I don't think so. the internal state of the scientist. I don't think so. Even if the scientist reports his or her internal state and links it to the science, that would be a totally external act. We have no access to the internal ever in any way, shape, or form, not by a language, not by a philosophy, not by, no way, simply no. In this sense, my attitude is solipsistic. And of course, if you're a solipsist, the question of mind and body becomes meaningless, because you are the only object. And so, everything is you, it's like God. Would you ask about God if there is a mind-body problem with God? No, because God is everything. God is being. And I think the big mistake

we are all committing as philosophers, physicists, psychologists, I mean, all of them, is this constant eternal confusion between internal and external. It's the belief, the erroneous belief, that we can somehow communicate internal states, that there is a language bridge which would allow us to convey unequivocal information about our internal landscape, about who we are, about what we think, about about what we feel and that's unmitigated Nonsense, there is no such breach in principle. There can never be such breach And so why ask about mind and body none of them? none of them is

external and The only meaningful questions about are about the external world Because we cannot ask meaningful questions about the external world because we cannot ask meaningful questions about the internal world. Are you saying that there is an internal world, we just can't speak about it with language? I don't know. I don't know if there is an internal world. I have to trust. I have to take your word for it. I have to take your word for it. I only know that if there is an internal world, it has no bearing on the external.

In principle, it can never impact the external, can never interact with the external. It's meaningless. The external has nothing to do with the external world. The only meaningful questions are about the external world because you can never talk, you can never speak meaningfully about the internal world. Any statement you make about the internal world is, at the best case, doubtful. There's no ontological bearing and status. Cannot, in principle, have an ontological bearing and status.

It's like God, you know, more or less. It's like God. This sounds different than the way that I hear some solipsists speak where they're speaking as if everything is internal. Yes. And you're saying everything is external. Solipsists make the mistake that they endow

an internal state with ontological status. I'm saying I don't know if there is an internal state. I only know one thing. If there is an internal state, we cannot discuss it in external terms. It has no bearing on the external world. And because the only meaningful questions must somehow correspond to an external thing, somehow. You cannot ask a meaningful question that does not correspond to something external to the question. So what?

This is interesting, this sounds anti-solipsistic. It's not anti-solipsistic, it's a solipsism that is skeptical, skeptical solipsism, if you wish. Okay, if you want to combine the, skeptical solipsism. The solipsist is like the atheist. The atheist says, there's no God. I disagree with that. That is a religion. There is God and there is no God. They have ontological equivalency. These two sentences are equal ontologically. There is God, there is no God. It's like a counterfactual, but if I say, I don't know if there is a God, that's a valid statement. It's a valid statement

about what? About the external world, not about the internal world of God, not about God's composition, not about God's mind, not about God. When I say, I don't know if there's of God, not about God's composition, not about God's mind, not about God. When I say I don't know if there's a God, it's an ontological statement about the external world. Similarly, I don't know if you have a mind. I don't know if anyone has a mind. I don't know anything about the internal world of anyone, ever. I think I have an internal world. I'm not quite sure of this either. It could be an ever. I think I have an internal world. I'm not quite sure of this either. Could be an artifact.

I don't know. An artifact of? An artifact of my hardware, for example. There's no ability to discuss the internal world in any meaningful way. And since body, mind are internal, definitely the mind, there's no reason or way to discuss this question meaningfully. It's exactly as you asked me, do you think God exists? Why would I waste my time on this question? Similarly, why would I waste my time on the

body-mind question? It has no bearing on the external world in principle. And these are the only meaningful questions I'm willing to ask. I'm a scientist. I'm a physicist. I didn't ask you if God exists. No, I know. I'm comparing. I'm saying.

Oh, you're saying like if someone said. If someone asked me, does God exist? I would give the same treatment. I would answer the same way. It's a meaningless way. It's a meaningless question. It's a meaningless question. The mind-body problem is a meaningless question. What's Wittgenstein's private language argument?

Wittgenstein argued that there is no possibility of a private language. And I beg powerfully to disagree. I mean, I just did it. I just disagreed. I actually think the only true languages, only pure languages, if you wish, echt in German, or real languages, are private. I think public languages are desperate attempts to translate private languages to each other. I think we all have private languages and we are trying to translate them to each codified statements, strings, codified statements, we call language. So I believe that the only form of language is private language, is the internal dialogue, is the feeling of one perceiving oneself, feeling oneself, talking to oneself. And that's why I think concepts in psychology such as interjection are very powerful concepts because they imply the internalization of voices from the outside, mother's voice, father's voice, teacher's voice, never mind. Internalization of voices from the outside, mother's voice, father's voice, teacher's voice, never mind.

Internalization of voices and appropriating them, making them your authentic voice, sort of coalescing. Everything coalesces. All these intros are coalescing and become you. Lacan said that the unconscious, Jacques Lacan said the unconscious is the sum total of other people's speech. He made the unconscious totally relational. And I fully agree. I think we create a private language by appropriating speech, by appropriating public language, and that is proof that the only true form of language is private. Because what do we do? We take public language and we convert it to private language. By the way, we do it all the time, even when you are an adult. Why do we need

to translate from public to private if there is no private language or if private language is useless or meaningless? Because the only real language is private. And of course, you know what? Forget Wittgenstein. Look at reality. I always prefer reality to Wittgenstein. In reality, of course, everything is filtered. When I talk to you, it's filtered through your memories and through your upbringing and through your knowledge and through your circumstances and through the fact that I didn't let you sleep well and a million things. So this filtering converts my public speech into a private language. Or this filtering converts my public speech into a private language. Introspection is totally private language. What did we say in the previous question?

That the internal and the external, and the internal is managed via private language. Actually I have a theory that I'm working on. It's called the intrasychic activation model. And there's a video on my channel. YouTube channel. Yeah, that deals with IPAM, intrasychic activation model. And there I deal with the issue of language, private languages, public languages, and so on and so forth

as a facilitator, a mediator, and so on and so forth. So that's my view. I think the only language is actually private. I think we convert all public speech to private languages. And because these languages are private, there's no meaning. It's meaningless to talk about the interface between internal and external. There's none. Even as far as language is concerned, there's none. You cannot discuss the internal.

You cannot communicate the internal. There's a firewall. It's not communicable. So the private language is meaningless? Private language is meaningless to others. Absolutely. It's not communicable. But at the same time, is the only pure form of language? Yes.

Because the only dialogue we ever manage is with ourselves. I can never understand what it is to be Kurt, to be you. You can never communicate it to me. Never mind how hard you try, and if you won six Nobel Prizes in literature, you can never communicate it to me. Never mind how hard you try, and if you won six Nobel prizes in literature, you can never communicate it to me. You can hope to trigger me, to trigger in me reactions which you assume, God knows why, resemble your reactions. And this is called empathy. You can hope that I will empathize with you. And you could try to use language to make me empathize with you.

You could say I'm sad. Or you can even use behavior. You can cry and you could hope that I would empathize with you. But do you have access to my internal words? Of course not. Is this a breach? No. Are you communicating?

No. You're not. You're not because the reaction inside my head in all probability has nothing to do with the reaction inside your head. Communication means, what you send is what you get. If communication is changed on the way, it's not communication. So when you broadcast to me, I'm sad, I'm crying, and so on, what you trigger in my brain, what you provoke in my brain has nothing to do with what's going on in your mind.

Nothing. Nothing. Because I have my own memories and my own fears and my own recollections of crying and sadness. It's like nothing. The way you love is not the way I love. The way you see red is not the way I see red. The color red. Even objective frequencies. It's not the thing. We cannot communicate our internal experience. Therefore, it has no bearing on the external world. And therefore, the only true language is a private language, not a public one. Because a public one falsifies

the meaning. Public one is a failure. Public language is a failure. Why do you think there's so much conflict, so many wars? Because public language is a gigantic failure. Because we pretend that the public language communicates internal states. It does not. And when we make this assumption, we end up fighting and killing each other. Because, you know, how could you not empathize with me? How don't you understand me? Probably you're a bad person. You're pretending not to understand me, or you're goal-oriented. You want something from me.

It immediately provokes, public language provokes paranoia, provokes paranoid persecutory ideation because it's such a failure. And so we try, we attempt desperately to come up with morevalent objective public languages. For example, mathematics. Mathematics is a language that is monovalent. Mathematician in Japan, in India, in Israel, and so on,

will see the same thing, will think the same thing, and any mathematician will tell you it's rank nonsense. I'm a mathematician also. It's rank nonsense. Yes, you see the same equation, of course, but what it conjures in your mind, for example, the images, the visuals, completely different from one person to another. Otherwise, we would not have relativity theory. Completely different. There is no possibility for an objective, neutral, value neutral, memory neutral public language. And so the only language possible is private. Do I know that you have a mind? No. Do I know that you have internal states? No. Do I know that you're using a private language? No.

And so why discuss it? You understand what I'm saying? Not why discuss it with you. Why discuss it in philosophy? I think it's a gigantic waste of time. So the private language is associated with the internal and the public is associated with external. Yes, you could put it this way.

It's again a case of, a private case of external versus internal. The reason I say that is that earlier it sounded like you were saying all that we can meaningfully talk about is the external. And then it also sounds like you're saying that all that is pure as a language is the internal to me the pure. No, I didn't say all you can discuss is AXR. I said the only meaningful questions pertain to the external. I did not say that you can answer these questions which would then constitute language and communication.

I said the only meaningful questions you can pose would have to do with the external, because that is something that has ontological status and the questions can be communicated. Whether you can answer these questions, that's an entirely different story. Wittgenstein suggested that private languages, the problem with private languages, if they were to ever exist, he claimed they don't exist. But if they were to exist, they said private languages would be incoherent. They would not produce consistent statements when confronted with the same circumstances and so on. And there I actually agree with him.

I think all languages, private and public, produce incoherent statements. Why? Because of Gödel. Kurt Gödel. Kurt Gödel. Gödel suggested that you cannot have a system that is complete and consistent. You have to choose. If the system is complete, if it describes everything in your environment, in your life, it's likely to be inconsistent. In other words, incoherent, in Wittgenstein's words, incoherent. And if it is coherent and consistent, it's likely to be limited, very limited. That's Kurt Gödel. So I think we can pose questions about the external

world, never about the internal world, not meaningful questions. But I think we will always fail in providing the answers. That's why science is not about the truth. It's asymptotic to the truth. Science is the greatest failure in human history. Every scientific theory has failed. No exception, I mean, relativity. In due time, all scientific theory fails. And you have also the problem known as incommensurability of theories, theories that succeed each other, don't have anything in common, and so on and so forth. So science

is the record of human failures at attempting to use external communication or public language. That is science. And there we are using a language, mathematics, which is supposed to be neutral and objective and not suffer from human foibles and limitations. And yet we keep failing. Yet we keep failing all the time. We are doomed to fail when we try to communicate externally with a public language. We are doomed definitely to fail when we try to ascertain whether we use private languages because we have no access to anyone's mind. And so we are doomed to fail. The best we can hope for is to pose meaningful questions. It's the best we can hope for. Scientific endeavor is about posing the right questions, not about giving the right answers

because there are no right answers and never will be. 2000 years from now. So for a scientist or a scientific theory to be proposed, it's usually done so as provisionally saying that, well, it's fallible, something else is likely to replace it. It's a criterion, yeah, criterion of falsifiability. If one is to say that it's asymptotic to the truth, how do you even declare that without presuming that there is some truth? And then even to say that it's false, assumes that there is a truth, how do you even declare that without presuming that there is some truth?

And then even to say that it's false assumes that there is a truth for you to say you've missed the mark. How do you rectify that? The very fact that we can falsify predictions is a strong indicator that in theory, there could be a prediction that would never be falsified. Which is what I call the truth. That's my definition of the truth. If you could falsify predictions means there could be a prediction you would not be able to falsify.

And that we will at that point, we would call it the truth. However, what are the chances of this? Zero, of course. Just a moment. What are the chances of this? Zero, of course. Just a moment. Because string theory is by many accounts not falsifiable because they can always wiggle around and say that you've disproved a certain type of string theory. There are some edges to that, but let's just presume that's correct.

Then would that mean by your account string theory is true because it's unfalsifiable? No. They don't make predictions that in principle are falsifiable. You need to make a prediction that in principle could be falsifiable, but can never be falsified. Oh, you mean, sorry, sorry. Just to be specific, you mean will never be falsified or can never be falsified? So you need to make a prediction that in principle can be falsified, but all the attempts to falsify it have failed. Even that is deductive, even that is dubious. But if you have been trying

for, let's say, for discussion sake, you've been trying for a million years to falsify a prediction and you fail, for a million years You cannot fail. Then you could say that the probability that this is the truth is very high, but you need to be able to falsify. The problem with string theories and other nonsense such as many-world theories is that they are in principle not falsifiable. There's no way to test them. You understand? But of course, you can imagine, and of course, you know that if you can imagine something, it exists. You can imagine a theory in the future, which would yield a prediction. And then immediately, all of us would try to falsify it, and we would be working for

one million years to falsify it and not succeeding. We tried like 20,000 methods and 400 million techniques, and we failed. We cannot falsify it. Well, at some point you have to say, this must be the truth. Of course, this will never happen, but it can happen. This is known as counterfactual philosophy. It's a counterfactual, but counterfactuals are very important in philosophy. So we can say that there is a truth. You can say there is a truth. It's statistically deductive or induction-deduction

problem and so on and so forth. It's all true. I would agree with these criticisms, but there comes a point where practically you must stop. Like what, million years, 10 million, is okay. 50 million years, how much, where would you stop and say this must be the truth? The tricky part though, and I know that we don't have much time, but the tricky part is even saying one million years, if one is to be this radical skeptic

that would lead one to doubt the external or internal or what have you, why can't to be this radical skeptic that would lead one to doubt the external or internal or what have you, why can't you be such a skeptic to even doubt the veracity of what probability means and also that a million years has occurred? First of all, I don't doubt the external. I doubt the internal. I don't doubt the internal either. I just, as I'm saying, I have no way to verify that it exists. I have no way to verify or to falsify. I cannot tackle the internal deductively or inductively. There's no way for me to interact with the internal, to approach it, or to describe it, or capture it with language. Simply, it's a supposition. It's a hypothesis. simply it's a supposition, it's a hypothesis. And that's it. The external, no. I am firmly grounded in reality, yes, I believe in the external. I mean, the external exists as far

as I'm concerned. A million years is an example. If you have been trying to do something for a million years and you have failed, that is what we call the truth. The truth is probabilistic, of course. For example, the sun keeps rising. Now we have records of 10,000 years ago which describe the sun as rising. We personally have had 60 years of experience with the sun rising. My mother had 90 years of experience, her mother had, you know, etc.

So at some point we say, you know what, for 10,000 years the sun has been rising. It is true that the sun is rising. I agree with you that tomorrow the sun may not rise. Absolutely can happen. But how likely it is? Everything is probability. In the foundations of reality, there is probability. When we discuss micronome theory, micronome theory makes probability even much more fundamental than quantum mechanics. Even much more fundamental than quantum mechanics because I don't believe there's any other way to tackle reality. I'm not saying that reality is probabilistic.

I'm saying that we, owing to our limitations, can tackle reality only probabilistically. All other ways are blocked. We have no access to all possible other ways. Now, God's point of view, if there were such an entity—maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist—but if there were such an entity, God, not limited in time, not limited in space, all-encompassing, etc., etc. Maybe God doesn't need to use probability. Probably God doesn't need to use probability. But you know, the Kabbalah is the mystical tradition in Judaism. The Kabbalah said that for God to create the world, he needed to minimize himself. This is called Tsimtsun, the minimization. He minimized himself. And the act of creation was very traumatic. Many vessels were broken, and that the role of humanity is to heal God. To translate, God suffered trauma in the act of creation, and our job is to heal God. The implications are

mind-boggling, and it's to me shocking that someone in the 13th century or 17th century could have said such things. It's amazingly daring to say such things. Some of the texts are from the date back to the 13th century, others to the 17th. And so what does it mean to heal God? Presumably, when God withdrew when He made space for creation, He lost many of His capacities. He became mentally debilitated, mentally ill. I think one of the capacities that God has lost, inevitably, is certainty. God cannot be certain what would happen in his creation. He set things in motion, but he no longer is in control. He cannot maintain certainty. This is the uncertainty principle, yes? This is why reality is constructed on probabilities, because God withdrew from the world. Had God been imbued in the world, had he still been present in every molecule, everything would have

been utterly deterministic. And Einstein would have been right when he talked about God and dice. But God doesn't play dice because God is no longer with us, according to Jewish mysticism. He withdrew. We are a machine set in motion. This is the Newtonian view of reality. We are machines set in motion. And it's utterly non-deterministic, indeterminate. It's uncertain, it's unpredictable even to

God. Why? Because now that God has created the world, He is no longer everywhere. He is no longer the perfect, all-encompassing being that He used to be. He had to sacrifice his perfection to make us. Now, this is very profound. And I'm actually talking to you physics now, not mysticism. It's very profound because it talks about the fabric of reality. What is it? Reality is probability. Reality is potential. And again, this segues to my Cronon field theory. In my Cronon field theory, I dispensed with all the certainties of physics. In my Cronon field theory, there's no mass, no velocity, no momentum, no motion, no bodies, nothing. All the language that you knew, that you know from physics has no trace in my work. And yet, it yields all the equations and all the predictions of all the other theories, relativity, quantum mechanics, you name it. And the philosophical foundation of Krone-Phil theory is to say

that potentials and events are one and the same. Exactly like the wave-particle duality. In my theory, there's the potential-event duality. Events are potentials, reified. Everything is potential. Even you, you are potential. The distinction between potential and reality is wrong. Reality is the potential. The minute you accept this philosophical principle, you won't believe the mathematical and physical outcomes, in terms of physics and mathematics. This single simple principle, you can recreate all of physics, all I and people I work with, I mean, I'm not alone. We succeeded to derive both relativity theories, quantum field theory, you name name it we derive by now after ten years of work We derived every known theory in physics

I can say every known theory even Hawking's work on and Bekenstein's work on entropy the fine You name it. We did everything and the whole theory is events or reality is potential. Now that sounds very philosophical, but it's not philosophy. It's a theory in physics with very heavy mathematics and so on and so forth. It's not just babbling, you know. But this is the philosophical foundation. Well, Professor, I would like to do another podcast with you just on chronon field theory. My pleasure. Anytime.

So thank you for spending so much time with me. It's been a pleasure, truly. If people have questions about chronon field theory or they would like to learn more, I'll leave the link in the description and something will also be on screen here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having will also be on screen here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you, sir.

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