Rob: And what you said in your book is that part of the delusional system of the traumatizing narcissist is they feel that they are helping everybody else and they are a gift to everybody else and that they are literally, if in any way challenged, their wonderfulness is being challenged and it threatens their ability to help the world.
DS: Yes exactly. They have superior knowledge, superior thinking, and to challenge them in any way is always viewed as an attack, and a malicious kind of attack, so that any kind of challenge that they. So actually the traumatizing narcissist creates a bubble in which they are protected by adulating followers. And they create this bubble so that they can maintain the sense of superiority and immediately dismiss any kind of critic. And they dismiss critics by discrediting them. So if you want to stay in the orbit of this traumatizing narcissist, you better fall in line, you better be subordinate, you better subjugate yourself because if you try to, you know, show your individuality or have any kind of deviation or criticism, you will be shown to be absolutely discredited. And it's like shunning or ostracism, you know. You dare to deviate, that's it you're out, shunned, ostracized. You know you this when, if I can just throw in a little, a quick anecdote. I know somebody who's kid married this lovely woman, but the woman's parents are extremely fundamentalist, Christian and very right-wing conservative. The kids are not. And so this woman was visiting these parents and they started really complaining about how much money people on welfare were collecting and what a disgrace and scandal it is. So this woman goes online and says well, you know, your numbers are all wrong, it's actually quite a bit less than what you're saying. And the response is, oh, well you got that off of the internet, that's just full of lies. So, you know, facts are immediately disputed and dismissed if they don't coincide with the traumatizing narcissist's position, with his or her ideology. And there's a way to discredit and disenfranchise anybody who deviates or criticizes.
Rob: Okay, so
my understanding is most psychopaths or sociopaths also manifest narcissistic
tendencies. The need to control, dominate, feel superior. How are narcissists
different from psychopaths?
DS: Okay, well, again a good question. Psychopathy, the psychopathic
personality disorder, is looked as, looked on as a separate personality
disorder from narcissistic personality disorder. And there are a number of
other personality disorders which, medically speaking, are psychiatric
illnesses that are called axis 2 psychiatric diagnoses, okay. Now these
personality disorders are fascinating. If you read somebody's book, for example
Lawrence Joseph's book on character, you know, you get these amazing portraits
of people who represent the different personality disorders, right. Well, one
of the big experts in the, this area on narcissism was Otto Kernberg, still
alive. And Kernberg's point was that you can look at different personality
disorders, but all of them have a sort of underlying narcissism involved. So I
agree with that. What you see with psychopaths is that they engage in criminal
behavior and they feel justified and they rationalize justifications for that
behavior. They are very much like narcissists, however traumatizing
narcissists, in my view, and this is maybe an arbitrary distinction that I
make, but I make it anyway because traumatizing narcissists may very well have
psychopathic tendencies, but they may tend to really carefully find ways not to
break the law. And well, I guess I'll give some of my leanings away here, I
would say that the people who wrote the laws that said that it was okay to
torture during, you know after 9/11 were flirting with psychopathology, flirting
with psychopathy is the way we say it, flirting with that, but they're using
the legal system to cover it. So those kinds of people who don't, who find a
way not to be breaking the law in order to get what they want and exploit others
and subjugate others, those people are in my category, traumatizing
narcissists. The psychopath really actually just breaks laws period, and does
so.
Rob: That's interesting. Because I've done a lot interviews about psychopaths. And one concept about psychopathy from Scott Lilienfeld, when I interviewed him, he's the president of the society for the study of psychopathy, is the idea of the successful psychopath. And that's the one who operates without getting arrested, without getting caught, without blatantly violating crimes.
DS: Yeah, well the personality disorders are useful in that they gather together all kinds of personality traits and they show that there are structures, personality structures that are common among different groups. And yet, most of us who work in this area recognize that these disorders often, these personality clusters, let's say, these clusters of characteristics, that they often overlap. For example, an obsessive compulsive personality disordered person is often also quite narcissistic, as is a psychopath. And you know, for my way of thinking, and this is again, this is not this---
Rob: We have lost the sound and I'm hoping once he figures it out he will call back in, this happens every now and then. What I do is try to fill the air time with a little bit of ideas and information here. So the book by Daniel Shaw is titled Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation. Subjugation. And what's important here is his model is based on the idea that narcissism is manifested within relationships. It's not like somebody just does it all on their own. He focuses on people in relationships, primarily parents. And what's fascinating to me is the idea that this can get passed on from generation to generation. Some people who are victims of traumatic narcissists become traumatic narcissists and some become the victims in a different tacit, more passive kind of way. Where they quell and quench their feelings, and don't have any feelings. They don't allow themselves to have hope of having relationships of feeling good of feeling love, it's really a kind of a vampirish kind of a thing to be a traumatic narcissist. Sucking the life out of a person, demanding that the person give all caring and concern to the narcissist. And if the person expresses concern or caring or needs of their own, they are shamed and belittled and demeaned. This is a real challenge that is faced. So I'm hoping that Dan will call in in a minute, if he doesn't then I'll probably have to call him in myself. What's really kind of courageous of Daniel Shaw is he even talks about how narcissism can happen within the psychoanalytic relations. You're back.
DS: Hey Rob, I called back in, are we back on?
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