Hello wonderful people, welcome back. My guest today is Keith Campbell. He's a professor of psychology at the University of George's Franklin College and an author.

He specializes in narcissism, which is a word that everyone throws around now in 21st century with smartphones and selfies and social media.

What does it actually mean? What's the psychology of it? How do you study it?

So today expect to learn what the dark triad is, how narcissists and psychopaths are linked, what social media's influence has been on the uptake of narcissism, why you might want to increase narcissistic tendencies and much more.

We get into a ton of other stuff. I've been talking a lot about the men's rights, red pill movement, we get into some of that today and some wider things to do with what it means to lead a meaningful life.

Keith's a really, really interesting fellow. If you enjoy the episode and you want to buy his book as always, it is linked in the show notes below. And if you use that link to go and buy anything by any of the authors, you'll be supporting this podcast at no extra cost to yourself, just an extra cost to Amazon, which is brilliant.

In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by nature's fix. Nature's fix are where I go for my specialist supplements, if I want to get some 5HTP to improve my sleep and act as a serotonin precursor, if I need to get some curcumin, which I used heavily during my killies recovery, if I want to go and get myself some collagen protein or any of the other slightly more complex, slightly more involved in technical products.

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Talking about narcissism today, word that gets thrown around quite a lot, what is the correct definition of it and how does it manifest?

Well, you're right the terms used a lot. The most basic sort of foundational definition is somebody has a very positive view of him or herself, a lack of empathy and a need for admiration.

So that's that like in a nutshell when you talk about narcissism usually talking about positive self you think you're better than other people you have some challenges with forming close carrying empathetic relationships with people and you need people around to kind of boost you up to bolstery to admire you to give you a positive attention, etc.

So that's kind of the general term when people are used in the street they're often using it in a bit of a pejorative way to describe an ex boyfriend or an ex boss or whatever.

So it's you know so people I don't really use it technically right but then when you get into the psychology and the science part there's really you can break it down farther into really three different definitions of narcissism.

The one we're probably most familiar with is the personality trait and when I say trait I mean that this is something we all vary on there's a continuum some are more narcissistic some last most people around the middle.

There's a trait called grandiose narcissism which is this sort of sense of self importance in a sense of entitlement but with grandiose narcissism what you see is some energy and maybe charisma sometimes charm and drive and ambition.

So the more grandiose narcissists folks you meet are the ones that end up and you know in politics or in leadership because they have this drive and ambition and they're often very likable people when you first meet them and you don't see that the dark or more talk talks excited narcissism until later on.

There's another form of narcissism which is less familiar to most of us but it's when you see more with counselors and clinicians and you know in the mental health world is what we call vulnerable narcissism so these are people have the same sense of entitlement but rather than be more ambitious and energized they're a little more.

Service have low self esteem a little more introverted sometimes called covert narcissists or basement narcissists or in the closet narcissists because you have and so you have a fantasy about being successful but there's not really energy or drive to make that real so so and so you you can imagine if you think you're great and you're not out there engaging with the world you have a tendency for depression and anxiety and loneliness because you're not getting what you need.

And then to make it even more confusing there's a clinical or psychiatric disorder known as narcissistic personality disorder and PD and this is an extreme form of narcissism that's grandiose and a little vulnerable and what happens is your narcissism gets so extreme it impairs you in life it either destroys your relationships because you can have loving relationships with people or ruins your work.

Because you take too many risks or your terrible boss so you can't listen to people or whatever and then it becomes a disorder but that's relatively rare.

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