Richard Lloyd Jones: What's in it for me? Looking out for number one. Blow your own horn. If you want a job done right, do it yourself. North American culture is full of sayings like these, and they reveal something pretty clearly about our philosophy of life, don't they? One we're spreading all around the globe. Human beings really do look out for themselves, and this is killing us.
I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, the destructive culture of narcissism. Well, this is an appropriate time of the year to do this program. I think, because it's a time of the year when we are maybe, and this is debatable whether we manage to do it or not, when we are maybe a little more open to thinking of something other than me, me, me.
And it's this opening we'd like to exploit today on our program. As you must know, if you've been listening to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head at all, our association here in Brazil, the International Society of Analytical Trilogy, and our sister organization, the STOP the Destruction of the World Association, have a very large objective. And that's to make human beings more conscious of the problems in the human psyche which have never been adequately addressed and which lie at the root of our inverted society and feed all the destruction we are doing to our beautiful planet.
We offer Norberto Keppe's TV programs in any language you care to name to community TV stations all over the world. We have books and publications We give lectures and classes. And there are two other important things to let you know about our work here. We're holding an international congress of Keppe's science of psychosociopathology in July of 2008. If you're interested in that at all, please write me.
For more information, rich at richjonesvoice.com. I'd also like to let you know about a new program we'll be starting very soon where you can learn more about our work and how it can help your life and your society. We'll be offering monthly newsletters in this program and live teleclasses along with live question and answer sessions so you can really begin to penetrate this world of the human psyche defined by Dr.
Norberto Keppe. Again, that's rich at richjonesvoice.com, and I'll make sure you get the info about this. We're pretty excited about it and hoping many of you who are regular listeners to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head will really take advantage of this. We need, after all, to build a community of more conscious people, and that means understanding ourselves and our difficulties more completely, which is what our new program and this podcast are all about.
Now, narcissism. Dr. Cláudia Pacheco joins me again to look at this volatile subject. Cláudia, I remember the old joke about one narcissistic person talking to a group and after 10 or 15 minutes saying, well, enough of me talking about me, why don't you talk about me for a while? Lead us a little into Keppe's understanding of our human psyche as a way to begin this discussion.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Keppe explains that there are three elements, pathological elements, that are the most important to form a neurosis, a psychosis, or any disease, individual or social and even economic. And those are envy, megalomania or theomania, and narcissism. Those three elements are the most important pathological behaviors in humanity and they sort of blend. They blend in and out with each other. To be a megalomaniac person or a theomaniac person you need to do something in order to be proud of what you have done.
So it's something that requires a little bit of connection to reality. So you must connect somehow to reality in order to be able to accomplish something, to do something that you are proud of yourself. And this is more common in theomaniacs like states. You see this a lot in academic people, scientists, people from the field of arts, publicity, movies or cinemas.
Richard: Sort of a look
Cláudia: at me attitude.
Professionals, I'm the biggest, I'm the best in this field. So people can many times be very megalomaniac and doing things, not things really of quality, but things that call attention, that raises interest from the population, bad or evil, like Hitler. He raised attention when he did what he did. Saddam Hussein was totally theomaniac. We had also and we have important presidents in other countries.
We are not quoting them because they're still alive. So it's not so safe to speak about names nowadays, presently. But when you hear us, you will probably connect yourself to some or to refer to someone. But when we think about narcissism we think about another kind of behavior. A person that adores him or herself just because of what they are. I am so I adore myself.
This is a kind of theomania but it more restricted in in terms of influence. If you are a beautiful person you can be very beautiful but just being beautiful is not enough to cause so much impact on society or in people and this does not necessarily link itself with beauty, the true beauty, the real beauty in people. But it it's more linked to what you imagine about yourself, the ideas you have about yourself.
So narcissism and magic thought and fantasy, like idealizations, illusions, are very much together.
Richard: And how would we recognize narcissistic behavior, Cláudia?
Cláudia: We can be narcissistic in many ways, Richard. We can be narcissistic concerning our appearance, the way we look. We can be narcissistic because of what we do, what we think. My ideas are the truth, for instance. I think the best. I know everything.
So if I know everything and if I am everything and I don't need anyone else, I don't need to learn anything. So generally people who are narcissistic, they become very mediocre because they are not interested in learning anything. They don't think anyone else or anything else is better than they are.
Richard: Yeah, they already know, right? They
Cláudia: don't... It's a pity among big narcissistic people.
It's that they are really satisfied with who they are. So this is very sad.
Richard: And this gets fed in our society a lot, doesn't it?
Cláudia: Yes. And so if you speak too much about self-esteem and love yourself, you are the best, you are a star, you need to help yourself and love yourself first and then love other people. This is totally feeding the narcissistic thoughts and craziness, mediocrity.
Richard: Cláudia, there's a big problem they're having in certainly North America at the moment because young people have been raised with exactly this philosophy you're talking about. Like, you're the best, you're fantastic, you're incredible. Even though
Cláudia: they are totally useless, they are
Richard: the best. And when they have to go into companies to work, they have big difficulties to accept criticism, to look at problems.
And so companies are having to hire experts to give incentive to these people, give them balloons, give them special emails to keep them moving forward because they can't bear to see that they're not good. And so they have to hear all the time that you're incredible. Not only you're incredible, you're like a genius. You're like fantastic. This kind of inflammatory language is everywhere now, isn't it?
Cláudia: So imagine yourself that we were in a position of being theomaniacs some time ago. Now we went down to narcissism. So this is even worse because then we have so many millions of little gods so poor in what they think, what they are, what they do. Sometimes a very ugly person can be very unpleasant-looking person can be very narcissistic. People who talk too much, for instance, they feel as if when they talk, they say the best and the most beautiful, interesting things.
So, we can have many examples of narcissistic behavior in our everyday life. I wrote down a few here of some clients, Richard. Hypochondriacs are very narcissistic. And Freud already made this connection, this relationship between physical diseases and narcissism. When you don't feel good, you have all the social structure supporting you. You have your family, you have your parents, you have everybody spoiling you.
And you have better rights, more rights than other common citizens. If you don't go to work because you are sick, you have all excuses. You have money from the government. You have the support of your friends and you are seen as a victim. You are adored in society if you get sick. So since people are very small in their childhood, learn this technique of getting sick in order to skip school, not to go to the dentist, not doing what they must do.
So, here comes a headache, a fever, a cold, vomiting, many kinds of escaping through narcissistic behavior.
Richard: Give us another example from the day-to-day experience, Cláudia. For
Cláudia: instance, if you ask a person, how are you? And they start a long story telling you how bad they feel. And they went to the doctor and the doctor asked them to do such and such tests.
And the results were such and such. And now they don't know what to do. They have many forms of treatment and they describe the treatment and how are the pills and the side effects they're having. So you regret you ask, how are you? And the person does not realize the enormous discomfort they create with this attitude.
Richard: Yes, that's right. There's so much room in relationships and conversations with each other for this narcissism to appear, isn't there?
Cláudia: If you talk to a person and if you're trying to communicate and they don't have empathy at all, they look at you, but you know they're not paying attention to what you're saying. So they are thinking about something related to themselves. What you say is interesting for their narcissism, so they pay attention. But if it's an objective thing, if it relates to science, philosophy, or society, they just turn off, and they just look at you with an empty look in the eyes, like a blank stare.
Richard: It doesn't compute. It's not landing into their consciousness
Cláudia: in some way. So you must have many friends who do this, who just speak about themselves and speak and speak and speak. So you put the telephone on the table and you go somewhere to do something and then you go back. Hello. Oh, yes, yes. And they don't even realize you are not there all this time because they are so self-centered to being too much worried the way you look when you go out.
The way you dress, if you have a brand clothing, or if it's okay if you are too fat or too skinny, or if you have a little belly showing up under your clothes. And nobody thinks that we really don't care of how people look. Normally, people don't care the way you look. If you are decent, Nobody will care if you're dressing this or that color, if the shades are matching with your hair color or whatever.
So, people can be very neurotic with these preoccupations. They can sometimes spend hours in front of their wardrobes choosing something and not being able to pick up something to dress, to use. So, this can be very neurotic. Another example is when you are sad or worried with something and then you start speaking about your problems and you imagine that the other one will be like sympathizing with you and feeling identified or feeling merciful or loving towards you.
And this will not happen because people are not really interested in knowing about other people's problems. They have their own interests. They have their own inner world, their own inner universe. They are like locked up in this small ball of fantasy. So who cares if you are passing through or undergoing a horrible time of your life, if you lost your father or your mother, or if you have a hole in your bank account, or if you don't eat because you don't have enough money.
Even worse, if you bring problems, they will be scared at you. So, just go away, leave here because you're bringing problems to me. So, this will like interfere in my fantasy world. So, people who feed your narcissism, they are welcome. But if they don't, if they take you away from the narcissistic thoughts, then they don't listen. And that's why probably, Richard, we work so hard to bring more awareness to humanity in order to save the planet.
And we don't succeed because people don't even see what is happening around them. They are not even realizing that the world is coming to a dead end.
Richard: And this is where I was going to go with this, Cláudia, was to ask you, what's the impact in our society? Now you're reaching that point that because we're so involved in our own worlds, our own ways of thinking, our own worlds, we don't see what's happening.
And so we can't really take any steps to make any differences in it, you know, to help at all. So what do we do about this? Yes,
Cláudia: this is a big problem because when you see husband, wives and kids adoring each other in a family, then we have the certainty, we're sure how distant people, human beings are from reality. So this idea of loving oneself and loving each other and just loving, and this loving thing can go just far enough to your relatives.
Like I heard yesterday a lady saying, What am I living for? I am living for my children and for my grandchildren, because when I die, what will stay from me here? My children and my grandchildren. This is so common. So this is what will be from me that will remain of myself in the world. I'll be in the world through them. So it's like a self-adoration, narcissistic thoughts through our children.
So Keppe writes in his book that the vital field, he quotes like this, the vital field goes up to where our interests go. And in the majority of cases, they don't go beyond the doorstep of homes. So people are so isolated, Richard. And so that's what we do. We try to talk to people and to show them how pathology, how narcissism, how megalomania are working against them.
Because our true nature, Richard, our true reality is left behind. And here comes inversion. Because of the theomania, because of the narcissism, because this wish to being godlike we have in our own magic world, we destroy. We deny our true essence, which would be the essence to be good, beautiful and truthful to the world, to the universe, to other creatures. So we invert and we see the true reality as negative because the true reality is against my narcissism, my megalomania, and I am envious at this, and I attack this.
I don't want anything to shy at my side or beyond my own world, my ideas. So it's a conflict. We start inverting things and values at the moment we adopt a too megalomanic or theomanic or narcissistic world.
Richard: Now, you were talking on the weekend about how oftentimes psychotherapy can feed this narcissism.
Cláudia: Oh, yes.
Richard: And maybe you could talk a bit about the distinction between what we do with Analytical Trilogy, Integral Psychoanalysis,
Cláudia: and the traditional way of doing therapy.
Yes. Things got much worse in the world after psychology took power. Because psychologists, these philosophies, these ideas of psychology, many schools, they feed a lot narcissistic thoughts and attitudes. So they feed fantasy. They feed the inverted will because people want what they want or what we want. Let's speak about us because this is an universal problem. So if we start acknowledging it we get better.
If not we just get worse. So our wills are inverted. Everything we want is to feed our megalomania, our narcissism and we see values upside down because of this. And therapies they do this and our therapy does the opposite. So that's why it is so difficult to bring people down to reality and show them that their true essence is much better and they don't even imagine how beautiful beings they could be.
We must go back to our previous essence which is not narcissistic. And our
Richard: will, as you said, being inverted, takes us away from that. Yes. How do you have more evidence about this inverted will? Because this is an aspect I think nobody has talked about before.
Cláudia: Let's talk about Christmas. Our inverted will creates a hell out of Christmas. You see consumerism going up so crazy.
The shop malls, traffic, spending money that you don't have, competing with gifts, envying the the happiness of other people and just thinking about yourself and becoming unhappy because you didn't get what you deserved, what you thought you deserved. And then you become crazy because you have to show up to your friends and to your family and you want them to praise you all the time.
So it's it's hell and people get. Thank you. Sick and they and many times they commit suicide at this time of the year because they are all trapped in this narcissistic thoughts and where where is the spirit of Christmas? Where is the spirit of this birth of Jesus of God in the world? So everything that should be this beautiful time sharing with one another and enjoying the spirit of Christmas which is love and happiness and hope is lost.
So it's lost under this cover of money, sensorialism, power, prestige, appearance, representation, selfishness, acting like in a theater. So that's what we create. The world we create is this horrible, neurotic, destructive, sick world. And we could have, if we would give up narcissism, envy, and megalomania, we could have heaven here. We could have a beautiful time, really beautiful time, and happy.
Richard: What's our way to this beautiful, happy, paradise time?
How can we get there?
Cláudia: Being humble and trying to apply this psychopathology, psychosociopathology in ourselves, in our everyday life, understanding it, the more the better, and having virtue, being good, doing good, and for others, and trying to make a huge effort to connect to reality. So look around and see how objectively, how the world is, what is needed in the world. What can I do?
What can I do of good to improve life in the planet? I can do many things. If I say I don't know what am I going to do it's because I'm so narcissistic that I don't look around me. I'm trapped in my own thoughts, in my own narcissistic thoughts. There's no place for God in my life and
Richard: for my own ethics, right?
Cláudia: Yes, ethics, sure.
Richard: You talked last time about how if we are aggressive, if we are depressed, we're unethical, that we're far from our true essence. Yes,
Cláudia: and it's so sad because we don't see anyone else. We don't see that we need to be ethical. We don't see anyone else. It's just me, me, and me. And universities are the big houses, institutions, the big houses, the big homes for narcissistic people.
You see a totally different spirit from a simple person, a hardworking person. So if you have those people who serve, they are much more empathic than people in power in society become so oppressive and so unpleasant. You can have a very nice conversation with a manicurist, with a hairdresser. They are serving you. They are more empathic.
Richard: Interested in serving, not interested in being served.
Cláudia: Yes. Sometimes they are really not too interested in serving like a virtue but they had to to survive. So they are benefited by that. If they had the chance to be a powerful person they would immediately take the opportunity but this would be their ruin. So sometimes it's much better not to have too much money, not to have power in society because then you can have your health a little bit more preserved because of the need.
You need to do that so you have a habit, a discipline to serve and this is very healthy. All of
Richard: this must be fed. This narcissism must be fed very much by the culture of individualism that we see so dominant now in the world, even here in brazil which is much more linked to the family. We see a lot more of this narcissistic individualism.
I mean if we're individual, if we're thinking individually, we're not thinking about other people, we're thinking about what works for me. So everything that I do in life, I'm thinking, how can this be a benefit to me? Not how can this be a benefit to others or to the world, but how can I benefit from this? So if I'm at a party, I'm looking at this person thinking that person has influence, but this person has more influence.
So probably I should talk to that person. Oh, but here comes another person with even more influence. And I'm constantly thinking about what side of my bread is buttered. I always want to figure out what's good for me. This must feed narcissism tremendously narcissistic. But
Cláudia: it does, it does. And not only feeds narcissism, but it feeds insatisfaction, because narcissism is like a short circuit of energy.
And my universe is so small, so poor, because it depends only in my a prioristic thoughts, my imagination. And There is nothing more unsatisfactory than a kind of life like this. So poor. So that's why we see more and more depression, panic attacks in Western world or all over the world. Because this is the dominant philosophy of the world.
Richard: Then this would be maybe also a culture of trying to get pleasure.
Yes. And a culture of trying to be happy, to bring happiness would be much more a service culture. Or an attitude of trying to help other people, to serve other people.
Cláudia: Yes, Jones, we should try to understand what could be a Christian society, a godly society. You could name it Christian, you could name it the true Jewish, or the true Muslim, or the true spiritual, a transcendental society, where God and His values, not our values, would dominate.
Because when He created the world, or the universe, it was everything meant to follow his rules and his rules are the rules of beauty, goodness and truth and are not our rules. Well
Richard: said Cláudia. It's obvious that our narcissism stops us from following these rules. In fact it causes us to put ourselves above them, hence our problems with going against the laws of nature.
Much to think about. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Have a Merry Christmas.
