March 23, 2025 • 17 mins
We are talking to friend of the show, Dr. Kevin Volkan about his new book Human Aggression War and Genocide. Human Aggression, War and Genocide explores sociopolitical phenomena through the lens of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, concentrating on concepts like aggression, leadership, and the psychology of ethnic, national, religious, and ideological large groups.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I
am so thrilled to have one of my favorite guests
on the show. You probably remember him. He's not only
a colleague from cal State Channel Islands. I think he's
like the founder of the psychology department and they got
him from Harvard Medical School or something. Doctor Kevin Vulcan.
(00:22):
How are you? Are you blushing?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh? I'm terribly blushing, Wendy. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
No, You're like, uh, you know, you're You're like a warm, loving,
caring person, but you're also in encyclopedia. And that's what
I love about talking to you, as I always feel
smarter after I finished talking to you. So I brought
you on the show today because I want to talk
about the the most common relationship trait that people ask
(00:50):
about on the Internet. And we're talking about search terms
here when they have questions about love or the relationships,
and that search term is narcissist or narcissism. And now
we have these very public examples of people trying to
have somewhat healthy discourse with a certain narcissist who is
(01:10):
in political power now, and so I want you later
to be able to comment on some of the things
you've seen in the news. But doctor Vulcan, let's start
at the beginning. What actually is a narcissist, because there
are a lot of people that are just selfish that
aren't narcissists, right.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yes, So I like to consider narcism as a spectrum.
We have healthy narcissism, which also can be considered to
be having a healthy sense of self esteem, a healthy
sense of yourself. We have something I call compensatory narcissism.
And usually this is a kind of a narcissism where
someone usually sometime in later childhood, middle childhood, six five, six, seven, eight,
(01:52):
nine years old, they have some kind of what we
all call narcisstic wounding, something happens to them, some kind
of traumatic event, and then they they compensate for that.
They they try to fill in the empty space they
have from that event by by pumping themselves up. And
these are people who generally very easily in psychotherapy or
(02:13):
even just you know, if you can get them to
think about themselves and reflect will realize that they're being narcissistic,
that that they are pumping themselves up the Actually, yeah,
they have insight and they can relate to other people
in a healthy manner. And you know a lot of
politicians you can think of her like that, you know,
I think of the example that come to mind for
me are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. You know, both
(02:36):
of them, you know, lost their dads when they were kids.
Kind of traumatic and you see this sometimes in kids
who are divorced parents, and then they compensate for that
they go into a field where they're going to get
lots of attention. They're going to be able to show
how great they are and.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
They and is a field of public service. Right, my
fingers are making quotation.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Mark the publisher's something where they're going to be in
the public eye. But you know, these are people that
if you who actually probably sat down and talked to them,
would you seem warm and like they really cared about you,
and they probably really would care about you. And that's
opposed to somebody worse on the spectrum who have what
we call narcissistic personality disorder. This is a diagnosed personality disorder.
(03:16):
And these are people who the trauma has come very
early in their childhood, in infancy, and they have a
kind of appearance that gives them a message of I
hate you, don't leave me. But then adds on to
that the fact that the child is special. Give the
child the sense of feeling special, and what they do
is they coalesce their sense of self, their sense of
(03:38):
who they are, their identity around this feeling of being special.
The problem is is that feeling special is transitory, so
they don't feel that way all the time. So they
need constant admiration. They constantly need to be pumped up.
If they don't feel like they're getting pumped up, the
don't feel like they're getting the admiration to them, it
feels like annihilation. It feels like they're gonna die, they're
gonna gonna exist anymore. So they constantly have to get
(03:59):
attend and constantly have to get admiration. And then we
add sort of the most severe into the spectrum of
the malignant narcissists. And malignant narcissists have to get the
admiration of the regular narcisstic personalities ordered person. But they
get that admiration through having their followers go out and
perform violence on some kind of targeted group, some kind
(04:22):
of group that they project all their bad things onto
and then they get their followers to go out and
get rid of those people.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
To those malignant narcissists always have followers or do they
I mean I'm picturing a ruthless CEO, right, he'll get
other management to do the dirty work. Or do they
do it themselves.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
That would be a way of their followers in the
sense of their people that got to pay they have
to pay attention to the narcissists. So CEOs could be
a good example political leaders, of course, you know, people
like Hitler. Hitler is a great example of malignant narcissists.
We have more in recent times, you know. And then
we have people we could debate whether how malignant they are,
but they're showing some signs of it. But those are
(05:02):
the people you really want to be careful about. But
we do see them among CEOs, And there's been studies
of CEOs to find that CEOs also have lots of
characteristics of what we call antisocial personalities order but most
people would know this as psychopathy or sociopathy. A psychopath
or a sociopath and malignant narcissts share a lot of
(05:24):
traits with psychopaths or sociopaths, and I'm using those terms interchangeably.
There's some small definitional differences, but for our conversation those
aren't really important. So just think of psychopath.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Where the rules don't belong to them.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, rules don't belong to them. They do whatever they
want to get whatever they whatever they want, They'll do
whatever it takes. They don't really have a sense of conscience,
you know, those kinds of things. A lot of criminals
or psychopaths, that kind of thing, and the malignant narcists
will have a lot of traits in common with those people.
And we studies have been done and found like CEOs
have lots of the Some CEOs have lots of psychopathic traits,
(06:00):
but they're not necessarily psychopaths. They just have some of
the traits. And you can kind of say the same
thing about some narcissists, right.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
So, I want to share a secret with you. When
I was a young, hot blonde in my twenties and modeling,
I was objectified by a lot of these wealthy, successful,
powerful guys, and my girlfriends at the time would be like, Oh,
you should go out with him, or he should be
he'd be a great boyfriend for you. Oh my god,
he'd be a great first husband, they used to say.
(06:28):
And I never kissed the ring like they took a
few sniffs of me, and they'd be like, she's not
playing this game right. And I always thought to myself,
why don't I fit in with this power crowd. I
look like I should and I'm smart, but I just
couldn't do that game. So let's talk about having a
(06:48):
relationship with somebody who has Let's not talk about malignant
narcissists because we shouldn't have relationships with him. But you
know ones that have narcissistic traits? Is there a certain
personality type that they are most often attracted to, that
there are vulnerable to their you know, magical ways.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well, let's keep it, let's keep it simple. I like
simple explanations, So my psychology colleagues may disagree with us,
but I think this makes sense. The person who will
hang out with the narcisst is either not smart enough
to know that they're being manipulated by the narcissts, or
they're really smart and they know that because the person
is narcisstic, that the narcissist can be manipulated. So you
(07:29):
got people either really not smart or really very smart
and very strategic, and those are the people who who
will tend to hang around the narcissists.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That makes sense, right, And also I find if it's
a male narcissist, really highly sensitive empathetic women because they
feel sorry for the wound, and they will hang out
there as the doormat.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah. Yeah, And a lot of times the narcissists can
manipulate these kind of women, especially women who have a
rescue er complex or have a kind of a mommy complex.
They want to fix the guy. And this is true
with other personality types as well. The not just the narcisst,
but the narcisst will take advantage of that to get
attention from women like this. So they'll they'll they'll they'll
(08:15):
they'll use that, they'll give the woman what they want
enough of make him think they are they are fixing
this person. But then there but then at the end,
it's the narciss just getting attention. That's the main thing.
And you know, there's some great examples in the media.
I don't know if any of your followers have watched
the television show Mythic Quest, which is and I was.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Going to mention White Lotus because there's a.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
The New Ver, the New the new season of White Lotus.
There's some great examples of this and uh, but Mythic Quest,
one of the one of the main characters, is a
perfect example of this kind of narciss I mean, he's
just absolutely textbook.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
My guest professor, founder of the psychology department at California
State University, Channel I doctor Kevin Vulcan, who has written
about and studied the minds of power people narcissists. All right,
we're talking about relationships with narcissists. I want to talk
about what's been going on in our news because I
(09:17):
don't think you hold back your diagnosis when it comes
to the leader of the country. Right now, how would
you diagnose him?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Well, I have gone down in print as diagnosing him
as being narcissistic, But I will make the point that
I diagnosed him long before he went into politics. So
I maintained I don't need to change my mind about
things just because the guy went and got himself elected.
But yes, I think I think you know to some
degree he is is a textbook narcissist. Shows lots of
(09:51):
the signs, if not most of, if all of them,
and I have gone. You know, I feel a little
there's a little paranoia in saying this out loud to
the to the audience, and I don't want to. I
don't want to disparage anybody's political beliefs or the fact
that you like somebody, because the truth of the matter is,
there's narciss in all political spectrums. There's plenty of narciss
(10:12):
on the left, there's plenty of narcists in the right,
there's narciss in the middle, and you know they're they're
all over the place. So I don't want to disparage
anybody's political thoughts just because the person elected is a narcisst.
But certainly that that would have been my diagnosis. And
I will make the caveat this is a diagnosis from
a distance, so it's only a preliminary thought. It's not
(10:32):
anything official because you know, we are as psychologists not
supposed to be diagnosing people unless you know we are
seeing them, you know, personally and everything. So anything I
say is is is some is somewhat speculative.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Right, well, personal opinion. So well, what's interesting is that
various world leaders and they may have their own versions
of narcissism. As you said, the politics attract them, for sure.
Various leaders of other countries have shown up at the
White House to meet them, and I've noticed a different
kind of style of relating. And I wanted you to
(11:07):
point out, not because we need to have a conversation
about politics, but because there's information here for all of
us in our relationships. A lot of people listening might
be in a relationship who's a little with somebody who
has a little bit of narcissism. Right. You mentioned it's
a spectrum, and so there are different ways that they
could relate. Could you compare for me how the leader
(11:28):
of the UK Prime Minister Kiir Starmer related to President
Trump compared to say Zelensky from Ukraine. What were the
big differences there?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
So, you know Starmar as far as I know, and
I'm not an expert on Starmer, but I know what
I know of him is that he's kind of a
little bit He's got a kind of a little bit
obsessive compulsive personality in a good way. You know, He's
very detail oriented, might have a little bit of social anxiety.
Sometimes he comes off being a little enigmatic, sterious, but
he's basically kind of lacked a lot of charisma and
(12:05):
you know, but he did a smart thing for Trump.
He knew that Trump responds to flattery. So he got
this invitation from the King, you know, and brought it
to Trump. And that was a pretty good strategy. That
wasn't a bad strategy. But he wasn't He wasn't prepared
with a contingency, not flexible enough personality wise. When that
didn't go well, right, and I can't remember what exactly
(12:28):
was somebody else got an invitation or something and that
didn't go well. So he wasn't able to, like, you know,
switch gears really quick. And so are.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You saying that some narcissists don't even know that they're
being flattered? And you mentioned earlier that there are two
kinds of people in the aura of a narcissist. One
are people who might not understand that they're being manipulated,
and another group who are highly intelligent and manipulate the
narcissist back. So are you saying that some narcissists, you
(12:59):
can flatter them and compliment them and they just eat
it up. They don't even know that it's a game.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Well, whether they know or not, the need for attention
and to have that sense of self pumped up so much,
what we call the grandiose self. Keep that pumped up
is so important. That's an existential question for these people.
If that grandiose self is not pumped up, they're going
to feel like they don't exist. So that overrides anything
they might realize that this guy's flattering them, you know,
(13:26):
unless unless it's something so obvious that the strategy is
and the narciss knows it's going to in the end,
you know, damage their reputation or keep them from getting attention. Generally,
they won't really care as much as long as they're
getting that admiration coming in, that attention coming in. And
I think Starmer, you know, started to a good idea,
but he didn't really he wasn't really flexible enough to
(13:48):
adap on the fly to Trump being somewhat erratic. And
Trump is a little bit erratic, you know, in the
way he's dealing with things, and that also may be
a strategy that Trump uses, but this guy wasn't. He
wasn't really able to really on the fly flexibly adapt
at least that's my take on it. And I would
say also there are other leaders that are similar to that.
I would say the German Prime Minister Schultz, similar to Starmer,
(14:14):
you know, again, very pragmatic, very you know, detail oriented guy,
a little bit obsessive, also kind of you know, having
a relationship with Trump. Very difficult for these kind of guys, right,
And that.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well, I think worse for Zelensky because he's he was
having his own existential crisis, which is living or dying
as a country.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yes, yes. And Zolensky, however, is more I think emotionally
intelligent and is very charismatic. He's also creative and very adaptable,
very resilient. But as you said, he's in a very
very bad situation. He's being attacked by one of the
people that Trump most admires and sees himself in, which
is Putin, and so Zelenski becomes a foil that Trump
(14:56):
can then project his own negative qualities onto and then
it becomes very easy to beat Zelenski Wili's down. And
I think we saw that in the White House meeting.
To some degree, Zelensky has not figured out how to
manipulate Trump, or we manipulate Trump's need for admiration and
attention to his Let me.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Ask you this question. So, when Zolensky got out of
the car, and the first thing President Trump did is
insult his clothes, and I thought that was interesting. Is
that sort of a little like a shot across the bow,
like let me see if I have control over you,
let me kick you a little bit. And what could
Zelensky have said in response to I think President Trump's
(15:36):
made a sarcastic comment like, I see you dressed up
for the occasion. What could Zelenski have said to, you know,
kiss the ring bow down to him?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
At that point he should have said, in my opinion,
again this is my opinion, he should have said, you're
absolutely right, President Trump, will you please help me to
find the right clothes because you are such a fantastic dresser?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Would and he would have ed.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
He has a hard time doing that because Zolensky has
not only you know, his own sense of self work,
which is being attacked, you know, in a physical existential way,
but he also has to and these leaders, you have
to remember, they have to respond also not just to Trump,
but to their constituents. So they have two, you know,
very opposite kinds of you know images they have to project,
(16:24):
and they've got to find a balance between those things.
And Zolensky, you know, when he got in the White
House and he's starting he's trying to talk to Trump,
he's trying to tell Trump things, He's trying to talk
over Trump, And that's just a big mistake. Right away,
when I was watching that, I knew that was going
to be a mistake.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Hey, doctor Bulk, we're running out of time again. I'm
so sorry. Before we go, just some very quick thoughts
on if somebody is in a relationship with somebody who
has pretty strong narcissistic traits, is there any way for
it to work out or should they be thinking about leaving?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It really dependent on the person and the individual. If
somebody is really on this more severe end of the
narcissistic personality disorder spectrum, probably best to like maybe take
a break and then reassess and maybe think that's not
going to necessarily be the best situation. It's very hard
to change that kind of narcissist. They're not really going
to change very easily.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Oh yeah, don't hope they're going to change, that's for sure. Oh,
Doctor Kevin Vulcan, it's always a pleasure to have you
on the show I hope to have you again in
the future. You have such good wisdom to add into
our lives. Thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Thank you, and.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
By the way, I want everyone to know that you
do have a new book out. It is called Human Aggression,
War and Genocide. Ooh, it's a dark topic. The subtitle
The Psychological Roots of Violence by doctor Kevin Vulcan. You
can find it anywhere Human Aggression, War and Genocide.
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I
am so thrilled to have one of my favorite guests
on the show. You probably remember him. He's not only
a colleague from cal State Channel Islands. I think he's
like the founder of the psychology department and they got
him from Harvard Medical School or something. Doctor Kevin Vulcan.
(00:22):
How are you? Are you blushing?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh? I'm terribly blushing, Wendy. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
No, You're like, uh, you know, you're You're like a warm, loving,
caring person, but you're also in encyclopedia. And that's what
I love about talking to you, as I always feel
smarter after I finished talking to you. So I brought
you on the show today because I want to talk
about the the most common relationship trait that people ask
(00:50):
about on the Internet. And we're talking about search terms
here when they have questions about love or the relationships,
and that search term is narcissist or narcissism. And now
we have these very public examples of people trying to
have somewhat healthy discourse with a certain narcissist who is
(01:10):
in political power now, and so I want you later
to be able to comment on some of the things
you've seen in the news. But doctor Vulcan, let's start
at the beginning. What actually is a narcissist, because there
are a lot of people that are just selfish that
aren't narcissists, right.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yes, So I like to consider narcism as a spectrum.
We have healthy narcissism, which also can be considered to
be having a healthy sense of self esteem, a healthy
sense of yourself. We have something I call compensatory narcissism.
And usually this is a kind of a narcissism where
someone usually sometime in later childhood, middle childhood, six five, six, seven, eight,
(01:52):
nine years old, they have some kind of what we
all call narcisstic wounding, something happens to them, some kind
of traumatic event, and then they they compensate for that.
They they try to fill in the empty space they
have from that event by by pumping themselves up. And
these are people who generally very easily in psychotherapy or
(02:13):
even just you know, if you can get them to
think about themselves and reflect will realize that they're being narcissistic,
that that they are pumping themselves up the Actually, yeah,
they have insight and they can relate to other people
in a healthy manner. And you know a lot of
politicians you can think of her like that, you know,
I think of the example that come to mind for
me are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. You know, both
(02:36):
of them, you know, lost their dads when they were kids.
Kind of traumatic and you see this sometimes in kids
who are divorced parents, and then they compensate for that
they go into a field where they're going to get
lots of attention. They're going to be able to show
how great they are and.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
They and is a field of public service. Right, my
fingers are making quotation.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Mark the publisher's something where they're going to be in
the public eye. But you know, these are people that
if you who actually probably sat down and talked to them,
would you seem warm and like they really cared about you,
and they probably really would care about you. And that's
opposed to somebody worse on the spectrum who have what
we call narcissistic personality disorder. This is a diagnosed personality disorder.
(03:16):
And these are people who the trauma has come very
early in their childhood, in infancy, and they have a
kind of appearance that gives them a message of I
hate you, don't leave me. But then adds on to
that the fact that the child is special. Give the
child the sense of feeling special, and what they do
is they coalesce their sense of self, their sense of
(03:38):
who they are, their identity around this feeling of being special.
The problem is is that feeling special is transitory, so
they don't feel that way all the time. So they
need constant admiration. They constantly need to be pumped up.
If they don't feel like they're getting pumped up, the
don't feel like they're getting the admiration to them, it
feels like annihilation. It feels like they're gonna die, they're
gonna gonna exist anymore. So they constantly have to get
(03:59):
attend and constantly have to get admiration. And then we
add sort of the most severe into the spectrum of
the malignant narcissists. And malignant narcissists have to get the
admiration of the regular narcisstic personalities ordered person. But they
get that admiration through having their followers go out and
perform violence on some kind of targeted group, some kind
(04:22):
of group that they project all their bad things onto
and then they get their followers to go out and
get rid of those people.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
To those malignant narcissists always have followers or do they
I mean I'm picturing a ruthless CEO, right, he'll get
other management to do the dirty work. Or do they
do it themselves.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
That would be a way of their followers in the
sense of their people that got to pay they have
to pay attention to the narcissists. So CEOs could be
a good example political leaders, of course, you know, people
like Hitler. Hitler is a great example of malignant narcissists.
We have more in recent times, you know. And then
we have people we could debate whether how malignant they are,
but they're showing some signs of it. But those are
(05:02):
the people you really want to be careful about. But
we do see them among CEOs, And there's been studies
of CEOs to find that CEOs also have lots of
characteristics of what we call antisocial personalities order but most
people would know this as psychopathy or sociopathy. A psychopath
or a sociopath and malignant narcissts share a lot of
(05:24):
traits with psychopaths or sociopaths, and I'm using those terms interchangeably.
There's some small definitional differences, but for our conversation those
aren't really important. So just think of psychopath.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Where the rules don't belong to them.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, rules don't belong to them. They do whatever they
want to get whatever they whatever they want, They'll do
whatever it takes. They don't really have a sense of conscience,
you know, those kinds of things. A lot of criminals
or psychopaths, that kind of thing, and the malignant narcists
will have a lot of traits in common with those people.
And we studies have been done and found like CEOs
have lots of the Some CEOs have lots of psychopathic traits,
(06:00):
but they're not necessarily psychopaths. They just have some of
the traits. And you can kind of say the same
thing about some narcissists, right.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
So, I want to share a secret with you. When
I was a young, hot blonde in my twenties and modeling,
I was objectified by a lot of these wealthy, successful,
powerful guys, and my girlfriends at the time would be like, Oh,
you should go out with him, or he should be
he'd be a great boyfriend for you. Oh my god,
he'd be a great first husband, they used to say.
(06:28):
And I never kissed the ring like they took a
few sniffs of me, and they'd be like, she's not
playing this game right. And I always thought to myself,
why don't I fit in with this power crowd. I
look like I should and I'm smart, but I just
couldn't do that game. So let's talk about having a
(06:48):
relationship with somebody who has Let's not talk about malignant
narcissists because we shouldn't have relationships with him. But you
know ones that have narcissistic traits? Is there a certain
personality type that they are most often attracted to, that
there are vulnerable to their you know, magical ways.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well, let's keep it, let's keep it simple. I like
simple explanations, So my psychology colleagues may disagree with us,
but I think this makes sense. The person who will
hang out with the narcisst is either not smart enough
to know that they're being manipulated by the narcissts, or
they're really smart and they know that because the person
is narcisstic, that the narcissist can be manipulated. So you
(07:29):
got people either really not smart or really very smart
and very strategic, and those are the people who who
will tend to hang around the narcissists.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That makes sense, right, And also I find if it's
a male narcissist, really highly sensitive empathetic women because they
feel sorry for the wound, and they will hang out
there as the doormat.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah. Yeah, And a lot of times the narcissists can
manipulate these kind of women, especially women who have a
rescue er complex or have a kind of a mommy complex.
They want to fix the guy. And this is true
with other personality types as well. The not just the narcisst,
but the narcisst will take advantage of that to get
attention from women like this. So they'll they'll they'll they'll
(08:15):
they'll use that, they'll give the woman what they want
enough of make him think they are they are fixing
this person. But then there but then at the end,
it's the narciss just getting attention. That's the main thing.
And you know, there's some great examples in the media.
I don't know if any of your followers have watched
the television show Mythic Quest, which is and I was.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Going to mention White Lotus because there's a.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
The New Ver, the New the new season of White Lotus.
There's some great examples of this and uh, but Mythic Quest,
one of the one of the main characters, is a
perfect example of this kind of narciss I mean, he's
just absolutely textbook.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
My guest professor, founder of the psychology department at California
State University, Channel I doctor Kevin Vulcan, who has written
about and studied the minds of power people narcissists. All right,
we're talking about relationships with narcissists. I want to talk
about what's been going on in our news because I
(09:17):
don't think you hold back your diagnosis when it comes
to the leader of the country. Right now, how would
you diagnose him?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Well, I have gone down in print as diagnosing him
as being narcissistic, But I will make the point that
I diagnosed him long before he went into politics. So
I maintained I don't need to change my mind about
things just because the guy went and got himself elected.
But yes, I think I think you know to some
degree he is is a textbook narcissist. Shows lots of
(09:51):
the signs, if not most of, if all of them,
and I have gone. You know, I feel a little
there's a little paranoia in saying this out loud to
the to the audience, and I don't want to. I
don't want to disparage anybody's political beliefs or the fact
that you like somebody, because the truth of the matter is,
there's narciss in all political spectrums. There's plenty of narciss
(10:12):
on the left, there's plenty of narcists in the right,
there's narciss in the middle, and you know they're they're
all over the place. So I don't want to disparage
anybody's political thoughts just because the person elected is a narcisst.
But certainly that that would have been my diagnosis. And
I will make the caveat this is a diagnosis from
a distance, so it's only a preliminary thought. It's not
(10:32):
anything official because you know, we are as psychologists not
supposed to be diagnosing people unless you know we are
seeing them, you know, personally and everything. So anything I
say is is is some is somewhat speculative.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Right, well, personal opinion. So well, what's interesting is that
various world leaders and they may have their own versions
of narcissism. As you said, the politics attract them, for sure.
Various leaders of other countries have shown up at the
White House to meet them, and I've noticed a different
kind of style of relating. And I wanted you to
(11:07):
point out, not because we need to have a conversation
about politics, but because there's information here for all of
us in our relationships. A lot of people listening might
be in a relationship who's a little with somebody who
has a little bit of narcissism. Right. You mentioned it's
a spectrum, and so there are different ways that they
could relate. Could you compare for me how the leader
(11:28):
of the UK Prime Minister Kiir Starmer related to President
Trump compared to say Zelensky from Ukraine. What were the
big differences there?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
So, you know Starmar as far as I know, and
I'm not an expert on Starmer, but I know what
I know of him is that he's kind of a
little bit He's got a kind of a little bit
obsessive compulsive personality in a good way. You know, He's
very detail oriented, might have a little bit of social anxiety.
Sometimes he comes off being a little enigmatic, sterious, but
he's basically kind of lacked a lot of charisma and
(12:05):
you know, but he did a smart thing for Trump.
He knew that Trump responds to flattery. So he got
this invitation from the King, you know, and brought it
to Trump. And that was a pretty good strategy. That
wasn't a bad strategy. But he wasn't He wasn't prepared
with a contingency, not flexible enough personality wise. When that
didn't go well, right, and I can't remember what exactly
(12:28):
was somebody else got an invitation or something and that
didn't go well. So he wasn't able to, like, you know,
switch gears really quick. And so are.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You saying that some narcissists don't even know that they're
being flattered? And you mentioned earlier that there are two
kinds of people in the aura of a narcissist. One
are people who might not understand that they're being manipulated,
and another group who are highly intelligent and manipulate the
narcissist back. So are you saying that some narcissists, you
(12:59):
can flatter them and compliment them and they just eat
it up. They don't even know that it's a game.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Well, whether they know or not, the need for attention
and to have that sense of self pumped up so much,
what we call the grandiose self. Keep that pumped up
is so important. That's an existential question for these people.
If that grandiose self is not pumped up, they're going
to feel like they don't exist. So that overrides anything
they might realize that this guy's flattering them, you know,
(13:26):
unless unless it's something so obvious that the strategy is
and the narciss knows it's going to in the end,
you know, damage their reputation or keep them from getting attention. Generally,
they won't really care as much as long as they're
getting that admiration coming in, that attention coming in. And
I think Starmer, you know, started to a good idea,
but he didn't really he wasn't really flexible enough to
(13:48):
adap on the fly to Trump being somewhat erratic. And
Trump is a little bit erratic, you know, in the
way he's dealing with things, and that also may be
a strategy that Trump uses, but this guy wasn't. He
wasn't really able to really on the fly flexibly adapt
at least that's my take on it. And I would
say also there are other leaders that are similar to that.
I would say the German Prime Minister Schultz, similar to Starmer,
(14:14):
you know, again, very pragmatic, very you know, detail oriented guy,
a little bit obsessive, also kind of you know, having
a relationship with Trump. Very difficult for these kind of guys, right,
And that.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well, I think worse for Zelensky because he's he was
having his own existential crisis, which is living or dying
as a country.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yes, yes. And Zolensky, however, is more I think emotionally
intelligent and is very charismatic. He's also creative and very adaptable,
very resilient. But as you said, he's in a very
very bad situation. He's being attacked by one of the
people that Trump most admires and sees himself in, which
is Putin, and so Zelenski becomes a foil that Trump
(14:56):
can then project his own negative qualities onto and then
it becomes very easy to beat Zelenski Wili's down. And
I think we saw that in the White House meeting.
To some degree, Zelensky has not figured out how to
manipulate Trump, or we manipulate Trump's need for admiration and
attention to his Let me.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Ask you this question. So, when Zolensky got out of
the car, and the first thing President Trump did is
insult his clothes, and I thought that was interesting. Is
that sort of a little like a shot across the bow,
like let me see if I have control over you,
let me kick you a little bit. And what could
Zelensky have said in response to I think President Trump's
(15:36):
made a sarcastic comment like, I see you dressed up
for the occasion. What could Zelenski have said to, you know,
kiss the ring bow down to him?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
At that point he should have said, in my opinion,
again this is my opinion, he should have said, you're
absolutely right, President Trump, will you please help me to
find the right clothes because you are such a fantastic dresser?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Would and he would have ed.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
He has a hard time doing that because Zolensky has
not only you know, his own sense of self work,
which is being attacked, you know, in a physical existential way,
but he also has to and these leaders, you have
to remember, they have to respond also not just to Trump,
but to their constituents. So they have two, you know,
very opposite kinds of you know images they have to project,
(16:24):
and they've got to find a balance between those things.
And Zolensky, you know, when he got in the White
House and he's starting he's trying to talk to Trump,
he's trying to tell Trump things, He's trying to talk
over Trump, And that's just a big mistake. Right away,
when I was watching that, I knew that was going
to be a mistake.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Hey, doctor Bulk, we're running out of time again. I'm
so sorry. Before we go, just some very quick thoughts
on if somebody is in a relationship with somebody who
has pretty strong narcissistic traits, is there any way for
it to work out or should they be thinking about leaving?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It really dependent on the person and the individual. If
somebody is really on this more severe end of the
narcissistic personality disorder spectrum, probably best to like maybe take
a break and then reassess and maybe think that's not
going to necessarily be the best situation. It's very hard
to change that kind of narcissist. They're not really going
to change very easily.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Oh yeah, don't hope they're going to change, that's for sure. Oh,
Doctor Kevin Vulcan, it's always a pleasure to have you
on the show I hope to have you again in
the future. You have such good wisdom to add into
our lives. Thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Thank you, and.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
By the way, I want everyone to know that you
do have a new book out. It is called Human Aggression,
War and Genocide. Ooh, it's a dark topic. The subtitle
The Psychological Roots of Violence by doctor Kevin Vulcan. You
can find it anywhere Human Aggression, War and Genocide.
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