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