February 17, 2024 • 12 mins
[Rerun] Dr. Kirk does a deep dive on narcissism.
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June 29, 2018
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
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Become a member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOUZWV1DRtHtpP2H48S7iiw/join
Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/PsychologyInSeattle
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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kirk.honda
June 29, 2018
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, deserving listeners. This episodeis a deep dive on narcissism and narcissistic
personality disorder. I recently sent outa survey to all my patrons on Patreon
asking them what sort of deep divesthey wanted me to do, and narcissistic
personality disorder was the clear winner.I've been wanting to do a deep dive
(00:22):
on narcissism for years. I evenbought a number of books years ago just
for this episode, and I've beencompiling research and whatnot, but other things
have taken priority, other deep dives, other professional endeavors. Also, I
knew that this episode would possibly beone of the most, if not the
(00:43):
most involved episodes I've ever done before, and it was always scary to me.
I would say, I would seeit on my list of episodes to
do, and I'd be like,oh, boy, that's going to be
like two or three months of researchand note taking and thinking and talking and
blah blah blahing. So but Ifinally have time to do it now.
(01:03):
So and the patrons motivated me byvoting for this as their most preferred deep
dive. And this episode is goingto be a long one. There's just
so much to talk about. Youknow, what is narcissism? What's the
history going back to Freud and beforeFreud? Are we becoming more narcissistic as
a society. Are there movies thatdepict narcissism? Well? Does Trump have
(01:26):
narcissistic personality disorder? What about Facebookand social media and taking selfies? How
do we treat narcissistic personality disorder?What's the conceptualization of it? Is it
even treatable to begin with? Andthere's really just so much bad information about
narcissism on the Internet. I couldn'tfind a single resource that explained narcissistic personality
(01:47):
disorder well enough for me to holdsomething up and say, like, this
is what you need to read inorder to really get narcissism. I just
could not find that there was oneresource that There were a couple of resources
that I liked. There was onevideo that I saw on YouTube that I
saw in all my research over thepast number of months, and I just
(02:09):
recently tried to find it again andI couldn't find it. You know,
I've looked at hundreds of sources,and the sources are either super simplistic,
which seemingly results in a lot ofpeople completely misunderstanding the point of narcissistic personality
disorder. It's laughable how lay peoplethink they understand these sorts of things without
(02:30):
any training. The other source thatI liked, in addition to that one
video I can't remember and can't findis Otto Kernberg actually has some short YouTube
videos. I mean, I've heardrespectable podcasts talk about narcissism and narcissistic personality
disorder in a way that completely missesthe point. There was one podcast that
talked about how every young person suffersfrom narcissistic personality disorder, or like half
(02:57):
of our society suffers from narcissist personalitydisorder, which I get because in order
to understand narcissistic personality disorder, youhave to understand personality disorders in general,
which is extremely difficult. You haveto understand personality in general, which is
really hard. You have to understandpsychological development and attachment and the history of
(03:20):
psychology and psychotherapy and psychiatry. Youhave to understand the nature of diagnosing,
which is extremely elusive. You haveto understand what it feels like to be
with someone who has narcissistic personality disorder, and so on and so on and
so on. There's just it makessense that no one gets it. What
I don't get is that everyone doesn'trealize they don't get it, and yet
they talk about it. Anyway.When I graduated with my degrees, I
(03:43):
did not understand narcissistic personality disorder.Just because I had the education didn't mean
I understood it. I had thecriteria, I had been given some vignettes,
I had written papers, I hadwatched videos, I had heard lectures
and pass my classes. I stilldidn't understand narcissistic personality disorder. In order
(04:04):
to understand the disorder, you haveto work with clients for years. From
and colleagues had a study in twentyeleven. In that study, they presented
some case vignettes of personality disorders tolay people, and they found that lay
people had a hard time understanding personalitydisorders in general, and they had the
hardest time identifying narcissistic personality disorder inthe vignettes. Something like four percent of
(04:30):
people got it right or something.It was some kind of really low rate.
Also, most clinicians don't understand narcissisticpersonality disorder, so why would lay
people understand it, you know.For example, one study found that fifty
percent of patients with personality disorders whoentered a hospital were misdiagnosed. They're often
misdiagnosed with bipolar or major depression.When someone comes into their office to be
(04:56):
assessed who has a personality disorder,fifty percent of the time those patients are
misdiagnosed with something other than a personalitydisorder, often bipolar a major depression.
Half of the time qualified clinicians aremisdiagnosing. In this episode, I hope
to actually do my little part toeliminate that confusion. We see it on
(05:19):
the innet all the time. There'sa huge trend for people to be labeled
with narcissistic personality disorder. Of course, we know Trump is often identified,
but Obama was identified. Depending onthe echo chamber you existed in, you
either might be surprised by that orcompletely know that. If you're a Republican,
(05:41):
you've probably read several psychologists diagnosed Obamawith narcissistic personality disorder. That was
one of the main refrains of theright. Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with NPD,
Kanye West, Kim Kardashian. Theyall have. All you gotta do
is type in like famous people withnarcissistic personality disorder, and you'll see these
completely unfounded claims of several people.Now, what I'll say from all that
(06:03):
is, I'm not saying they don'thave narcissistic personality disorder. I'm just saying
there's no way for you to know. Basically, the media seems to think
that every celebrity is automatically a narcissist, like they're you know, Madonna.
Basically anyone who is huge and famousand basically makes their living from being famous,
(06:24):
is they're automatic they automatically suffer fromnarcissistic personality disorder because look at them.
All they want to do is bein the limelight. And it's like,
well, that's extremely simplistic that,I mean, that's that's like saying
anyone who's crying suffers from major depressivedisorder. It's a sign. But you
(06:45):
know, many people cry and don'tsuffer from major depressive disorder. Many people
end up becoming a celebrity and don'tsuffer from narcissistic personality disorder. Whenever you
look at narcissistic personality sort of articlesor narcissism. There frequently will have some
kind of picture of a young attractivewoman taking a selfie. Right, they'll
have some young woman taking a selfiethat is somehow equated with narcissistic personality,
(07:11):
so or even just generally narcissism ingeneral, which is super cliche, totally
not accurate. Taking a selfie isnot a sign that someone has narcissistic personality,
so or it's not even a signthat they have any narcissistic traits.
It's just a sign of someone whowants to take a picture of themselves,
and they're probably in a cultural groupof people that like to do that sort
of thing. And there's nothing wrongwith that, and it's not indication of
(07:31):
any sort of pathology. And justbecause you're old and cranky and you don't
ever take selfies of yourself doesn't giveyou the right to diagnose other people or
judge others because of their behavior.I'm Asian and a lot of Asians take
selfies, So you know, screwyou if you think that that is some
sort of indication of something wrong.Now it can it be a sign?
(07:56):
Can it be a yellow flag,so to speak, or a minor red
flag of narcissism. Yeah, absolutelycould be. But to again, it'd
be like saying if someone's crying,they suffer from major depressive disorder, and
it's just a gross misunderstanding of depressionand of narcissism. Also, in the
(08:18):
media, it just seems like narcissisticpersonality disorder is used to label people that
people just don't like, you know, a politician that they don't like,
a celebrity they don't like Kim Kardashian. You know, a lot of people
like to bash on Kim Kardashian,and many articles claim that she had a
narcissistic personality disorder. Now I'm notsaying she doesn't, right, I don't
(08:39):
know, but you would have toget a statement from a clinician who had
properly assessed her over time. I'mguessing that if Kim Kardashian ever did get
assessed or did go to therapy,that she wouldn't consent to that person blabbing
to the media. So we'll probablynever know, really if Kim Kardashian has
the disorder, and you know,we'll just have to live with that terrible,
(09:03):
that terrible notion that we just don'tknow how about that. How about
we just don't know. And Ifind it funny who the media, our
people on the internet decide to identifyas a narcissist. Right, Kim Kardashian
is a narcissist, but Donald Glover, no one's claiming he's a narcissist.
They're both celebrities who love fame,and they're both people who do a lot
(09:26):
of things for fame because the medialoves him and he's generally loved, and
Kim Kardashian has generally hated. Kimhas narcissistic personality disorder. Donald does not.
There's plenty of people who are clinicians, being interviewed on the media or
just writing their own articles blog postsdiagnosing people with various things, including narcissistic
personality sort which is uncool. Soin this episode, I'm going to try
(09:48):
to alleviate that problem. And I'mreally going to try to explain what narcissistic
personality is and what narcissistic personality disorderis, what it really is, what
it looks like, exact, howto recognize it, where it comes from,
you know, what causes it.And I'm going to talk about the
definition. I'm going to talk aboutthe prevalence, what is it exactly?
(10:09):
And I'm going to really try toconvey what the disorder is. I'm going
to really try to explain it froma number of angles, really try to
get rid of the misconceptions. I'malso going to talk about what narcissistic personality
disorder is, not what celebrities haveit. Does Trump have narcissistic disorder?
Does Obama do I have? I'mgoing to talk about myself in this episode
(10:31):
because I have some traits. I'ma podcaster. For example, I chose
a job that involves me yammering intoa microphone and asking other people to listen
to me. That's, you know, that's a narcissistic task. And along
those lines, I'm going to talkabout the spectrum of narcisism. What does
the research say, what's the historyof the term and of the diagnosis going
(10:52):
back to the eighteen hundreds, Whatdoes the DSM say? How can you
detect narcissistic personality disorder and someone howdo we treat it? That's very important
right for you clinicians out there?Can can we treat it? Right?
Welcome to the Psychology and Seattle podcast. I am your host, doctor Kirkkonda.
I'm a therapist and a professor andsomeone I would say about five percent
(11:16):
on the spectrum of narcissistic personality,maybe ten, not to brag, just
joking. This episode is just forpatrons of the podcast, So if you're
listening to this and you're not apatron of the podcast, this episode will
end before the content begins. Ifyou want to hear the full episode,
you have to become a patron ofthe podcast by going to Patreon dot com.
So go to Patreon dot com,become a patron, and when you
(11:39):
become a patron, you'll get accessto this entire episode, along with hundreds
of other deep dives that we've donethat I you know, borderline personality,
example, historonic personality, passive aggressivepersonality. I've done deep dives on them,
dozens of others. And remember thata portion of your monthly pledge goes
towards various charity that we support.
Hey, deserving listeners. This episodeis a deep dive on narcissism and narcissistic
personality disorder. I recently sent outa survey to all my patrons on Patreon
asking them what sort of deep divesthey wanted me to do, and narcissistic
personality disorder was the clear winner.I've been wanting to do a deep dive
(00:22):
on narcissism for years. I evenbought a number of books years ago just
for this episode, and I've beencompiling research and whatnot, but other things
have taken priority, other deep dives, other professional endeavors. Also, I
knew that this episode would possibly beone of the most, if not the
(00:43):
most involved episodes I've ever done before, and it was always scary to me.
I would say, I would seeit on my list of episodes to
do, and I'd be like,oh, boy, that's going to be
like two or three months of researchand note taking and thinking and talking and
blah blah blahing. So but Ifinally have time to do it now.
(01:03):
So and the patrons motivated me byvoting for this as their most preferred deep
dive. And this episode is goingto be a long one. There's just
so much to talk about. Youknow, what is narcissism? What's the
history going back to Freud and beforeFreud? Are we becoming more narcissistic as
a society. Are there movies thatdepict narcissism? Well? Does Trump have
(01:26):
narcissistic personality disorder? What about Facebookand social media and taking selfies? How
do we treat narcissistic personality disorder?What's the conceptualization of it? Is it
even treatable to begin with? Andthere's really just so much bad information about
narcissism on the Internet. I couldn'tfind a single resource that explained narcissistic personality
(01:47):
disorder well enough for me to holdsomething up and say, like, this
is what you need to read inorder to really get narcissism. I just
could not find that there was oneresource that There were a couple of resources
that I liked. There was onevideo that I saw on YouTube that I
saw in all my research over thepast number of months, and I just
(02:09):
recently tried to find it again andI couldn't find it. You know,
I've looked at hundreds of sources,and the sources are either super simplistic,
which seemingly results in a lot ofpeople completely misunderstanding the point of narcissistic personality
disorder. It's laughable how lay peoplethink they understand these sorts of things without
(02:30):
any training. The other source thatI liked, in addition to that one
video I can't remember and can't findis Otto Kernberg actually has some short YouTube
videos. I mean, I've heardrespectable podcasts talk about narcissism and narcissistic personality
disorder in a way that completely missesthe point. There was one podcast that
talked about how every young person suffersfrom narcissistic personality disorder, or like half
(02:57):
of our society suffers from narcissist personalitydisorder, which I get because in order
to understand narcissistic personality disorder, youhave to understand personality disorders in general,
which is extremely difficult. You haveto understand personality in general, which is
really hard. You have to understandpsychological development and attachment and the history of
(03:20):
psychology and psychotherapy and psychiatry. Youhave to understand the nature of diagnosing,
which is extremely elusive. You haveto understand what it feels like to be
with someone who has narcissistic personality disorder, and so on and so on and
so on. There's just it makessense that no one gets it. What
I don't get is that everyone doesn'trealize they don't get it, and yet
they talk about it. Anyway.When I graduated with my degrees, I
(03:43):
did not understand narcissistic personality disorder.Just because I had the education didn't mean
I understood it. I had thecriteria, I had been given some vignettes,
I had written papers, I hadwatched videos, I had heard lectures
and pass my classes. I stilldidn't understand narcissistic personality disorder. In order
(04:04):
to understand the disorder, you haveto work with clients for years. From
and colleagues had a study in twentyeleven. In that study, they presented
some case vignettes of personality disorders tolay people, and they found that lay
people had a hard time understanding personalitydisorders in general, and they had the
hardest time identifying narcissistic personality disorder inthe vignettes. Something like four percent of
(04:30):
people got it right or something.It was some kind of really low rate.
Also, most clinicians don't understand narcissisticpersonality disorder, so why would lay
people understand it, you know.For example, one study found that fifty
percent of patients with personality disorders whoentered a hospital were misdiagnosed. They're often
misdiagnosed with bipolar or major depression.When someone comes into their office to be
(04:56):
assessed who has a personality disorder,fifty percent of the time those patients are
misdiagnosed with something other than a personalitydisorder, often bipolar a major depression.
Half of the time qualified clinicians aremisdiagnosing. In this episode, I hope
to actually do my little part toeliminate that confusion. We see it on
(05:19):
the innet all the time. There'sa huge trend for people to be labeled
with narcissistic personality disorder. Of course, we know Trump is often identified,
but Obama was identified. Depending onthe echo chamber you existed in, you
either might be surprised by that orcompletely know that. If you're a Republican,
(05:41):
you've probably read several psychologists diagnosed Obamawith narcissistic personality disorder. That was
one of the main refrains of theright. Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with NPD,
Kanye West, Kim Kardashian. Theyall have. All you gotta do
is type in like famous people withnarcissistic personality disorder, and you'll see these
completely unfounded claims of several people.Now, what I'll say from all that
(06:03):
is, I'm not saying they don'thave narcissistic personality disorder. I'm just saying
there's no way for you to know. Basically, the media seems to think
that every celebrity is automatically a narcissist, like they're you know, Madonna.
Basically anyone who is huge and famousand basically makes their living from being famous,
(06:24):
is they're automatic they automatically suffer fromnarcissistic personality disorder because look at them.
All they want to do is bein the limelight. And it's like,
well, that's extremely simplistic that,I mean, that's that's like saying
anyone who's crying suffers from major depressivedisorder. It's a sign. But you
(06:45):
know, many people cry and don'tsuffer from major depressive disorder. Many people
end up becoming a celebrity and don'tsuffer from narcissistic personality disorder. Whenever you
look at narcissistic personality sort of articlesor narcissism. There frequently will have some
kind of picture of a young attractivewoman taking a selfie. Right, they'll
have some young woman taking a selfiethat is somehow equated with narcissistic personality,
(07:11):
so or even just generally narcissism ingeneral, which is super cliche, totally
not accurate. Taking a selfie isnot a sign that someone has narcissistic personality,
so or it's not even a signthat they have any narcissistic traits.
It's just a sign of someone whowants to take a picture of themselves,
and they're probably in a cultural groupof people that like to do that sort
of thing. And there's nothing wrongwith that, and it's not indication of
(07:31):
any sort of pathology. And justbecause you're old and cranky and you don't
ever take selfies of yourself doesn't giveyou the right to diagnose other people or
judge others because of their behavior.I'm Asian and a lot of Asians take
selfies, So you know, screwyou if you think that that is some
sort of indication of something wrong.Now it can it be a sign?
(07:56):
Can it be a yellow flag,so to speak, or a minor red
flag of narcissism. Yeah, absolutelycould be. But to again, it'd
be like saying if someone's crying,they suffer from major depressive disorder, and
it's just a gross misunderstanding of depressionand of narcissism. Also, in the
(08:18):
media, it just seems like narcissisticpersonality disorder is used to label people that
people just don't like, you know, a politician that they don't like,
a celebrity they don't like Kim Kardashian. You know, a lot of people
like to bash on Kim Kardashian,and many articles claim that she had a
narcissistic personality disorder. Now I'm notsaying she doesn't, right, I don't
(08:39):
know, but you would have toget a statement from a clinician who had
properly assessed her over time. I'mguessing that if Kim Kardashian ever did get
assessed or did go to therapy,that she wouldn't consent to that person blabbing
to the media. So we'll probablynever know, really if Kim Kardashian has
the disorder, and you know,we'll just have to live with that terrible,
(09:03):
that terrible notion that we just don'tknow how about that. How about
we just don't know. And Ifind it funny who the media, our
people on the internet decide to identifyas a narcissist. Right, Kim Kardashian
is a narcissist, but Donald Glover, no one's claiming he's a narcissist.
They're both celebrities who love fame,and they're both people who do a lot
(09:26):
of things for fame because the medialoves him and he's generally loved, and
Kim Kardashian has generally hated. Kimhas narcissistic personality disorder. Donald does not.
There's plenty of people who are clinicians, being interviewed on the media or
just writing their own articles blog postsdiagnosing people with various things, including narcissistic
personality sort which is uncool. Soin this episode, I'm going to try
(09:48):
to alleviate that problem. And I'mreally going to try to explain what narcissistic
personality is and what narcissistic personality disorderis, what it really is, what
it looks like, exact, howto recognize it, where it comes from,
you know, what causes it.And I'm going to talk about the
definition. I'm going to talk aboutthe prevalence, what is it exactly?
(10:09):
And I'm going to really try toconvey what the disorder is. I'm going
to really try to explain it froma number of angles, really try to
get rid of the misconceptions. I'malso going to talk about what narcissistic personality
disorder is, not what celebrities haveit. Does Trump have narcissistic disorder?
Does Obama do I have? I'mgoing to talk about myself in this episode
(10:31):
because I have some traits. I'ma podcaster. For example, I chose
a job that involves me yammering intoa microphone and asking other people to listen
to me. That's, you know, that's a narcissistic task. And along
those lines, I'm going to talkabout the spectrum of narcisism. What does
the research say, what's the historyof the term and of the diagnosis going
(10:52):
back to the eighteen hundreds, Whatdoes the DSM say? How can you
detect narcissistic personality disorder and someone howdo we treat it? That's very important
right for you clinicians out there?Can can we treat it? Right?
Welcome to the Psychology and Seattle podcast. I am your host, doctor Kirkkonda.
I'm a therapist and a professor andsomeone I would say about five percent
(11:16):
on the spectrum of narcissistic personality,maybe ten, not to brag, just
joking. This episode is just forpatrons of the podcast, So if you're
listening to this and you're not apatron of the podcast, this episode will
end before the content begins. Ifyou want to hear the full episode,
you have to become a patron ofthe podcast by going to Patreon dot com.
So go to Patreon dot com,become a patron, and when you
(11:39):
become a patron, you'll get accessto this entire episode, along with hundreds
of other deep dives that we've donethat I you know, borderline personality,
example, historonic personality, passive aggressivepersonality. I've done deep dives on them,
dozens of others. And remember thata portion of your monthly pledge goes
towards various charity that we support.
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