now that Elon Musk has ascended to become the real president of the United States I decided to reread his biography by the best biographer ever isacon it's a hefty to and it goes into great detail about Elon Musk the men and Elon Musk the entrepreneur and no this video is not about Elon Musk and I do not envy Elon Musk I pity Elon Musk I wouldn't trade places with him for all the riches in the world he has had a wretched childhood and he is having a horrid personal life to be Elon Musk is to
be in tumed in a torture chamber regardless of his accomplishments I truly honestly pity him I don't envy him I know know what mental illness is like in this biography Elon musk's biography by isacon it is shocking that isacon did not consult a diagnostician a psychologist a clinician with some experience in autism spectrum disorders and personality disorders literally literally everyone in the book every every one interviewed for the book keeps telling isacon that Elon Musk is mentally ill Elon Musk himself admits to it he self diagnoses as someone with aspes syndrome at some point he
even admits to being bipolar and so I would have thought that Consulting a mental health professional or mental health practitioner uh would be a normal course of action for a biographer and that is a major Omission in in a book that is otherwise attempting to be balanced although Isaac's on admiration for musk and a is clear throughout the text I have read this biography twice not an easy task not an easy feat and of course I have never met Elon Musk nor interviewed him nor am I qualified to diagnose people professionally or otherwise I'm a
professor of psychology I am not a clinician or a diagnostician but I do consider myself to be an expert on narcissistic personality disorder and musk strikes me as an extreme case perhaps the most radical case I've ever come across of an overt sadistic narcissist now musk self diagnoses as an autist someone with autism spectrum disorder Asperger syndrome is no longer used we today say that it is level one autism spectrum disorder or just autism spectrum disorder according according to the icd1 level one is DSM language and so it is mask who decided that he is
an aspie someone with aspar syndrome he has never been diagnosed and self diagnos diagnosis and a staunch refusal to attend therapy or to be inspected or investigated by a diagnostician these are in themselves markers of grandiosity everything in the book tells me that Elon Musk has narcissistic personality disorder that's at least my opinion again I haven't met him and everything I'm saying should be taken uh with a mountain of salt because of this lack of direct access and because of my um focus on teaching and studying the the personality disorders but the preponderance of evidence
in the book is overwhelming musk regards himself in Messianic terms as a savior of humanity charting the course to a problem free multiplanetary future Problem free because musk is out to solve all of Humanity's problems and predicaments and protect it from incipient threats such as climate change and artificial intelligence this is the kind of grand I it that borders on psychotic disorder but this grandio fantasy in the case of Elon Musk is coupled with real accomplishments they fall short of his pretensions and his fantasies and his self-concept of course there's a grandiosity gap there between
the way he sees himself and the way he really is but he is an accomplished person no one can take this away from him musk is driven he is detailed oriented he is knowledgeable daring and Visionary and this leads us to the core question that I'm going to tackle in this video can high functioning narcissist so-called can they be productive constructive positive even we do have the construct of prosocial or communal narcissis a narcissis that is a pillar of a community that is essentially moral and ethical and altruistic and charitable and helpful and compassionate and
caring and so on or at least pre pretends to be because this is the locus this is the way this kind of narcissist obtains narcissistic Supply his charity and altruism entous but is there a class of narcissists that really have their act together high functioning and could these people be useful could this be could these people be good for society the greater good could they be leaders who are trustworthy and should be followed are they productive and constructive and positive is narcissism even the next evolutionary stage are narcissist what Nichi called the uberman the future
Superman Believe It or Not There are voices in academ that glorify and glamorize narcissism they suggest that narcissism is very positive that what we call pathological narcissism is merely an adaptation to a changing environment and that we need narcissist both as society and as individuals we need narcissist in our lives because they guarantee our survival and our well-being there's a new lamaran theory that um epigenetic changes are later Consolidated at Gene level with no changes in the DNA in other words an environment can induce certain genes to express themselves and this expression is passed on
intergenerationally and narcissism could be just one such epigenetic change According to some Scholars and there are others as I've mentioned who regard narcissistic traits and even Psychopathic traits and behaviors as conducive to survival and not only surviving but to thriving it is all based of course on a misconstrual and misunderstanding of the concept of positive adaptation first of all narcissism is found universally so it cannot be a reaction to stress ores in specific environments in other words narcissism is not a reaction to changes in the environment because it can be found in all environments all
cultures all societies all natural settings all ages all genders and so on so this cast in serious doubt the belief that narcissism is some kind of adaptation but even if it were a positive adaptation as I said it's a misconstrual a misconstrual because positive adaptation is on the individual level individuals can adapt positively if a sufficient number of individuals adapt the same way you could have a positive adaptation in a PO on a population level on a cohort level or on a species-wide level that much is true but it starts with the individual the misperception
that evolution is linear that it is error free is a misperception of course um evolution is not linear and it is replete with many errors and mistakes one step forward two steps back two steps forward one step back that's the way Evolution Works narcissism could be an evolutionary experiment that failed like so many other mutations what may be detrimental to an individual may be beneficial in the long run or maybe beneficial on the level of the species that much is true so we could say there is an argument that narcissism pathological narcissism may be may
be bad for the narcissist but it's good in the long run and it is conducive to the survival and thriving of the human species that's another argument and these are the alleged advantages of narcissism number one narcissists are supposed to be charismatic and self-confident and therefore Natural Born leaders but that is not what the studies show the studies demonstrate that The Superficial charm of the narcissist and the psychopath wears off narcissist antagonized people antagonism is a major characteristic Diagnostic and clinical feature of narcissism they antagonize people they're conflict prone even the covert narcissist is passive
aggressive the overt grandio narcissist is often outright aggressive externalizes aggression the psychopath is defiant and the charm wears off pretty fast what remains behind is an obnoxious personality which cannot or who cannot interact with people in a meaningful way let alone lead them anywhere so they are of course exceptions to this rule there have been numerous leaders in human history who can safely be remotely diagnosed across time as narcissist or Psychopaths Hitler comes to mind Stalin ma to some extent currently erdogan Donald Trump you know netan I mean these people are clearly narcissist or Psychopaths
and they leaders and they're self-confident so this seems to uphold this Theory but look at the outcomes would you like to have been led by Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or ma or even nany so we'll deal with the outcomes a bit later number two the alleged advantages of narcissism I remind you second Advantage narcissist are Visionaries they have Vision they have a goal Focus the goal oriented that is more true of malignant narcissist and Psychopaths and their vision and their goal orientation has to do with their grandiosity and fantasy the very pathological elements in
narcissism predispose The Narcissist to have a vision or to be a Visionary and to set goals and to push people to accomplish these goals and Elon Musk is a prime example of this and so so maybe grandiosity and fantasy are not such bad things maybe maybe they're good on the species level it is true that narcissist often set unrealistic goals that result in waste and self-defeat again Elon Musk is a prime example of this but they set goals and they get people they motivate people they get them to do things and to accomplish The Impossible
and they have a Clear Vision where they're going and they're self-confident with it they're charismatic that's allegedly the second Advantage again this is a way this is kind of idealizing the narcissist all narcissists believe that they are cosmically significant all of them perceive themselves as Godlike even covert narcissist and yes many of them have a vision or their Visionaries the vision thing many of them are gal oriented and so on and so forth but the in the overwhelming vast majority of cases narcissists are failures and losers and it's precisely because their goals are unrealistic grandio
fantastic inflated detached from the constraints of reality a vision has to be grounded if it is not then it's not a vision it's a Dream It's a fantasy it leads nowhere except to a waste of resources many disgruntled people pain to go around and Devastation which is the case 99% of the time with narcissist the next supposed advantage of narcissism is a lack of empathy you see in this Topsy Turvy World which involves quite a few academics quite a few Scholars everything that we consider to be bad or deficient with narcissist is actually an advantage
they lack empathy or they lack affective empathy they have no emotional empathy and that's a good thing it's a good thing according to these Scholars because it allows the narcissist this deficiency this launa this lack allows the narcissist to make tough decisions because when you don't have empathy you don't care about people when you don't care about people you are cleare eyed you can see the situation exactly as it is there's no interference empathy is a kind of interference it degrades performance and this doesn't happen to narcissists they're objective they're neutral they don't take other
people into account because other people don't exist and that's a good thing especially when you're a leader or a business uh tycoon or whatever then you need to ignore other people their fears their emotions and so on when you send people to battle as a commanderin-chief you cannot think about their pain their families and so on when you're a business tycoon you need to fire people as Elon Musk says mercilessly and relentlessly you need to do that and the lack of empathy is an asset the problem is that when that because the narcissists lack empathy
they are unable to read people properly narcissists misread the room they misread people social cues body language even and in this sense it is true that narcissist resemble people with Autism Spectrum Disorder and because the narcissist lacks empathy and is unable to decipher and decode other people The Narcissist most frequently makes decisions which are wrong in inefficacious lead nowhere and a very damaging when you go through the biography of Elon Musk you realize how wasteful this man is despite all his claims to efficiency and parsimony this is an exceedingly wasteful man the bulk of his
decisions are absolutely wrong because he has no clue what makes people tick he has no theory of Mind according to him the next Advantage is the lack of access to positive emotions again this is perceived as a disadvantage by mainstream psychologists and professors of psychology but this Niche niche of narcissism glorifying and psychopathy glamorizing Scholars say that a lack of access to positive emotions is an asset it's an adaptation because it renders decision making less clouded so if you don't take a more emotions into account if you are not hampered and impeded by emotions then
you're likely to make decisions which are much more objective much more in tune with reality exactly like empathy emotions are a form of perturbation a form of disturbance take away take out of the picture empathy and emotions and you're likely to become a much better decision maker that is so dramatically untrue that it makes me doubt the credentials and the and the knowledge of these alleged Scholars the inability to decipher emotions creates impaired reality testing people are motivated mainly by emotions what makes people think is emotions the effective landscape of people their internal World matters
much more than than any cognition or any textbook to understand people to work with people to accomplish things you need to be attuned to their emotions you need to be empathic and if you are not your inability to decipher emotions to read emotions creates impaired reality testing because people are part of reality if you're unable to gauge people your reality testing sucks and to compensate for that narcissists distort their cognitions they have cognitive distortions it's a little like a blind person a blind person has no access to colors to to visuals to shapes to and
so what the blind person attempts to do is compensate for this lack for this deficiency via the sense of hearing auditory sense or smell or touch the narcissist does the same he's unable to grasp people he's unable to glom them unable to understand them people don't make sense to The Narcissist they don't even exist as far as the narcissist is concerned they are production units they are objects they are totally interchangeable and so narcissist exactly like someone with autism keeps failing keeps failing with people and to compens St for this The Narcissist distorts his reality
and his cognition to convince himself that he is actually very good that he is actually efficacious or self-efficacious that whatever it is that is wrong with him is actually a positive evolutionary adaptation and he is the Moses is going to lead the tribes of Israel through the desert into the Promised Land the need for narcissistic Supply renders narcissist some narcissist prosocial and communal and that part is true the need for narcissistic Supply pushes people like Elon Musk to accomplish things and that much is true there's no debate in this it's a it's an engine it's
a driver of actions behaviors combined with other traits it leads to outcomes but there is a caveat here there is a flaw in this Theory the need for narcissistic Supply renders narcissist Pro social communal accomplished only if this self- enhances the narcissis it's about self-enhance M it's not about the accomplishments it's not about other people it's not about it's not about anything it's about the narcissist it's self referential it's self-directed it's internal it's not external as long as a self-enhancement continues uh and only if the self-enhancement and self-aggrandisement continue the NES goes on but the
minute the self-enhancing and self-aggrandizing aspects of the activity seiz or reverse there's negative Supply and so the narcissist abandons everything and moves on he's peretic he's itinerant he is not reliable the minute there is a collapse the minute the minute there mortification The Narcissist turns turns destructive including self-destructive he becomes punitive he becomes vengeful and in a way that is totally divorced from reality in a way that is detrimental to The Narcissist himself and to his goals let alone to the environment and the human mil narcissist are fools they're fools they can learn only from
their own experiences and mistakes and the majority of them never learn at all because they consider themselves omnicient or endowed somehow or above other people whom they hold in complete contempt the opposite of stupidity is not intelligence the opposite of stupidity is wisdom narcissist can be intelligent never wise I repeat this a narcissist can be intelligent and even accomplished but never wise often extremely intelligent people are also inordinately dumb remember in the phrase idiot saan remember the idiot the idiot in idiot savan there's an idiot there it never ends well never mind how long the
illusory facade is maintained the facade of success the facade of accomplishments the facade of Genius the the amazing facade of uniqueness and unprecedented never mind how long the narcissist maintains this convincing facade that deludes and deceives everyone it always always ends in a devastated and dangerous Wasteland others pay the price and the narcissist as well I repeat this it always do you understand the world always the word always always implies there is no exception you could be a tycoon you could be a president you could be a writer you could be and for a while
for a year or two or 10 or 20 you could be considered the eighth wonder of the world ultimately it all comes tumbling down and crumbling the wizard of o the curtain what you see be behind the curtain is the true narcissist a makavelian d sympathic reality deprived insane manipulator
