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Feb. 12, 2012 - Davis Aurini
14:33
Psychology IV - The Narcissist

Part 4, the Narcissistic Personality Disorder I wonder if any of you can figure out who I'm talking about?

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Part 4, the narcissist.
Now, as much as psychopathy is endemic to government and to large corporations, narcissism is endemic to our culture right now.
We're the culture of attention, of Facebook updates, of me, me, me, me, me, look how goddamn special I am.
It's sad really, and I don't understand why, but for some reason most people want to watch all these idiot narcissists on the idiot reality TV programs, acting like idiots.
It's very much a promoted personality disorder right now.
But that said, there's a fine line between acting narcissistic and being a clinical narcissist.
Now, as before, before we get to narcissism proper, let's re-examine the personality type it's based off of, the sanguine.
A sanguine is the best friend and the worst enemy of the choleric.
Now, I'm probably betraying myself a bit here.
I'm very choleric of temperament.
And so I do tend to view all these personality types as how I relate to them.
So when you get the melancholic or the phlematic, these are the people that I rely upon.
The melancholic is the techie that I count on being part of the team.
The phlematic, that's somebody that I can trust to be there, to be part of the party.
I don't understand them, but I know that I can trust them.
The sanguine, on the other hand, that's the person that starts shit for the choleric person.
Most bar fights probably boil down to a drunk sanguine mouthing off a drunk choleric person.
The sanguine is extroverted.
They're the joker.
They're the life of the party.
They're the one that starts the party in the first place.
Might be the choleric that winds up running the thing, but it's a sanguine that initiates the whole thing.
They're the experimenter.
They're the jokester.
They run out, do new things all the time.
Stand-up comics tend to be very, very sanguine.
At the same time, they're not that tactical.
They're not very much of a reader.
Which isn't to say that they can't be readers.
My best friend is incredibly sanguine, and he reads constantly, but he's very much a seed of his pants sort of a person.
He just gets an idea in his head and says, hey, haven't done this before, let's do it, you only live once.
And we've had some great adventures together because of that.
They're a motive.
Reputation is very important to them.
See, a choleric can be talked into a fight because you're offending his principles.
A sanguine will start a fight because you're not giving him the respect that he deserves.
Which isn't to say that they're hotheads that'll always fight, but the hothead is a good way of thinking of them.
Very active, very, very proactive, seeking out new people and new situations all the time.
Fun people to be around, essentially.
The superego, where does the superego come in?
Well, the superego basically tells them two things.
First of all, that even though you love doing new things, you love getting to the meat of it without eating the potatoes, that you do have to finish the tasks that you start.
It gives them a bit of discipline.
You know, lets them acknowledge the ego instead of being pure id.
And the other thing it does is it makes them accept people for who they are.
The sanguine might want to party 24-7 when they're not hungover, but they'll accept other people's limitations, particularly the phlematic and the melancholic.
They won't push these, or the melancholic especially.
They won't push these people too hard.
And with the phlematic, the phlematic will tend to follow them around to parties.
They'll not abuse this power with the phlematic.
And once again, it's the superego that the clinical narcissist is completely lacking.
The clinical narcissist is pure id.
They live in a world of narrative.
Narrative matters, not facts.
That said, they don't lie very often.
Now, the sociopath will lie constantly.
They'll lie for no reason if they're a particularly stupid sociopath.
The narcissist doesn't tend to lie, but they tend to reinterpret the facts.
They will say that what they're doing is the greatest thing that's ever been done.
They'll try and convince everybody that they have just the coolest thing going on, that nothing like it exists, that they're a completely unique person, a completely unique idea that they have in their head, that this latest adventure is the first, they are the Jesus of this adventure.
They won't lie about the facts specifically, but they'll twist them, they'll exaggerate them, they'll bend them to fit into a narrative.
Because that's what they need.
They're narrative.
They need to be the center of attention.
They need to be the center of the universe.
And where the sociopath doesn't acknowledge that other people are real, that they don't have real emotions, the narcissist won't acknowledge that other people have real desires, real objectives of their own.
The only purpose that other people have in the narcissist's mind is worship.
The people surrounding them need to worship them.
They need to admire them for being a genius or for being the coolest guy ever or for being the most badass guy ever or what have you.
They need that narrative.
Everything needs to fit into this narrative.
And so because they're very extroverted, outgoing, because they're a people person, what they'll do is, one, they will chastise you if you're good at something.
So let's say part of their narcissism is that they're a good driver.
If they drive with you, they will constantly criticize your driving and talk themselves up about what an amazing driver they are.
They will make themselves out to be an expert.
And if they aren't an expert, if they have no idea about what you're doing, if they don't know anything about your field of expertise, they'll often pick a contrarian viewpoint.
For instance, if you're a doctor or a dietician, they'll grab some fab diet and claim to be an absolute expert on Chinese herbal healing or whatever it is and completely discount your entire body of knowledge.
They seek to chastise you, to push you down lower than them, so that you'll follow them and worship them and learn from them.
They want to be the center of attention, the center of the story.
They want to be the only protagonist, but they need other people to take part in their play.
And time to time, because the narcissist is their ego is not based upon actual reality, but just their interpretation of it, reality will come in every so often and kick them in the ass.
They're the greatest musician ever, and their band falls apart and they never get a record.
In that case, they'll change the narrative.
All of a sudden, they don't want to go commercial.
They don't want to sell their souls to be a really popular musician.
No, they prefer being the indie scene.
Their band fell apart.
Well, you know what, bands aren't what a true musician does, you know, because a true musician can't subsume their art around other people.
They need to speak the truth.
That's why they're going solo now.
They constantly reinterpret everything around them to make them number one.
When their plans fall through, they'll say, well, that was always my plan to do this.
That wasn't a screw-up.
That wasn't an accident.
No, it was on purpose.
What do you mean that I screwed up?
I didn't screw up.
I don't screw.
I can't screw up.
And this is where you get the narcissistic rage.
Sometimes, a narcissist will get to the point where they can't rewrite the narrative anymore.
The facts are coming in, and reality doesn't allow them any more wiggle room.
And when that happens, when they have to acknowledge that they're not a superhero, that they're not the best musician ever, or the smartest guy, or whatever they were claiming to be, when they are forced to acknowledge that that doesn't exist, they react with extreme violence.
The sociopath will use violence instrumentally.
For instance, if they're a gangbanger, they'll use it to get ahead.
If they're bigger than you, they'll use it to push you around.
But it's always instrumental.
They don't really feel angry about anything.
They just decide to switch on the anger circuit because it gets them something.
The narcissist, when all of their delusions, when all of their phantasm, their smoke and mirrors have been shattered and blown away, all they have left is an absolute rage with all existence.
And they will lash out at anyone and everyone that they can surrounding them.
Murder suicides happen this way, Where the identity that they had gets destroyed, and so they murder their wife and children and kill themselves, because if they just killed themselves, they wouldn't be the successful family man anymore that committed suicide.
No, no, no.
They have to kill the wife and kids, the other witnesses around them.
Their identity is all that they have.
Now, how do you look out for these people?
They'll try and put you down and then build you up all over again.
They'll react very, very harshly if you have an opinion that's just slightly different from theirs.
If you have a field of expertise that is slightly different from theirs.
They will attack you harshly for it and then try and reprogram you with their truth.
Alternatively, let's say you have a field of expertise that is unassailable by them.
For instance, let's say they have part of their identity is that they support the troops and you've been over to Afghanistan twice.
At that point, they won't try and tear you down as a soldier.
They can't do that without contradicting their own identity.
So what they'll try and do is they'll butter you up a little bit.
They'll go on and on about how much they support the troops, and then they'll run away because you're producing a crack in their identity.
That you are a better soldier than they could ever be.
You're producing a crack, they'll run away if there's nothing they can do with it.
If they're stuck with you in the same room, that's when the narcissistic rage comes out.
They form the cult of personality.
So look out for situations where a person doesn't broker any disagreement, any discussion, and is extremely grandiose in what they claim about themselves and what they promise.
Narcissists can be pretty dangerous to be around.
If you let them, they'll pull you into their world.
They'll get you to invest all your resources on a stupid dream.
And they'll throw you away the instant that you begin to be any sort of a threat to them.
And worst case scenario, if you do pierce the veil of their own self-delusion, they will physically attack you.
But they're not as dangerous as the borderline.
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