Translator: berat güven
Reviewer: Peter van de Ven "Narcissism" is a word a lot like love: we use it, we talk about it,
we don't really know what it means, and we never know
if the person we're talking to has the same definition
in mind that we do. And narcissism is particularly complicated because of its strange history
in Greek and Roman mythology. It comes from the story
of a guy named Narcissus, who is this attractive young man who wandered the woods
looking for the ideal partner, he had many suitors he rejected, the most famous being Echo,
who repeated everything he said. Eventually, Narcissus stumbled
and saw himself in a pool of water. He immediately fell in love
with his reflection and froze. He died there. And in this place a flower grew, a daylily which today
we call the narcissus. The term "narcissism," or self-love,
came to psychology in a couple ways. It was first used by somebody
named Havelock Ellis, who was a British sexologist who talked about self-love in a very
sort of graphic and physical way - that I won't talk about. (Laughter) But then, Sigmund Freud borrowed
the term and used it in several ways. He talked about this sort of
fundamental love or self-esteem that a child would have
for him or herself. Our connection or our attachment
to our own ambitions, he even talked about it
as something linked to leadership. Today in psychology, we use the term
"narcissism" in three different ways or to describe three different
forms of narcissism, and this is where a lot
of the confusion comes from. When most of you think about narcissism, you are probably thinking about
what we call grandiose narcissism. This is somebody
with an inflated self-concept, maybe a bolder sort of personality, somebody who might be
charismatic or extroverted, but also somebody who might be callous,
have a strong sense of entitlement, maybe manipulative or well into,
you know, use or hurt people. When you think about
sort of the classic narcissistic actor, you know, politician or leader, you are probably thinking
about grandiose narcissism. The second form of narcissism,
which most of you probably don't think of unless you are in the clinical
psychology business, is vulnerable narcissism. These are folks that have
some of that same sense of entitlement and the same sense of self-focus,
but are relatively shy, and in fact, they can be anxious,
have low self-esteem and be hypersensitive to criticism. So we talk about these sometimes
as covert narcissists because they are hard to spot,
you don't really see them out there. Sometimes, we talk about them as
shy narcissists because they are shy; sometimes as basement narcissists, as in living in your mom's basement,
spending all your time on the internet and wishing you got the attention
that you so rightly deserved while being too scared
to go outside and meet people. Finally, both of these forms of narcissism
are personality traits, meaning we all sort of vary on them,
we all have some level of both of these, and you can be both
grandiose and vulnerable, but the challenge with narcissism,
or one of the challenges, is if you become so narcissistic that it sort of pervades
all aspects of your life, it can lead to some real problems. So, imagine you go to work,
and you are like: "Everybody suck up to me,
high-five! I am awesome." You might get away with that,
but then at home, you are like: "Hey kids, daddy is awesome.
High-five daddy!" And then, you are like, "Hey, honey!
You want to hear about how awesome I am?" If you do that and you
can't really control it, it can damage your love relationships,
damage your performance at work, and eventually be diagnosed
as a clinical disorder, a narcissistic personality disorder,
which is the third form of narcissism. And this is relatively rare, we are talking about one or two percent
of the population at any one time. So when you talk about narcissism today,
when I talk about it today, I want want to talk mostly
about the grandiose form because this is generally what we think
about when we talk about narcissism, it's what we have most of the research on, and also grandiose narcissism has some
real benefits as well as costs in life. Most of us think of narcissism
as something bad; nobody is like, "Hey, I am a narcissist!" or "Hey, meet my new boyfriend.
He is really narcissistic!" (Laughter) You know, it is generally
considered sort of pejorative, but in the case of grandiosity,
it can really help. So, grandiose narcissists
are really good at starting relationships. You go to a bar
and somebody approaches you and they seem really
confident and charismatic - Red flag! You know. (Laughter) But these same people, once they are
in relationships, have problems because they are more likely to cheat, more likely to be a little manipulative, they are more likely to be controlling. Same thing with leadership. Grandiosity is really good
for becoming a leader whether in an organization or in politics. The problem is once you are
in that leadership role, people who are narcissistic
take big risks, they do things to get attention, they have ethical challenges or problems
that end up bringing them down. One place where we see this benefit
of narcissism most clearly is in media and especially social media. We've done about ten years of research
on narcissism and social media, and what we have find is:
it sort of works. People who are narcissistic
have more friends or followers or links in social media. They tend to be more active. They take more selfies. They take more selfies
with their whole body, not just their face. (Laughter) They do that. They do very well in media, and if you think about
social media without narcissism, it would be kind of lame. I mean, it would be like cat videos and - (Laughter) Somebody saying, like,
"Hey Keith, how are you doing, bro?" and you are like, "Fine," and that's it. (Laughter) And where this really struck me -
I was teaching a seminar on narcissism, and like most of my classes, the students were watching
their phones the whole time, and so I walked over
to one of the students as I wanted to see
what she was looking at, and it was Kylie Jenner,
one of the Kardashian gals, driving a Ferrari in Los Angeles. And it kind of blew me away. One, because she wasn't doing anything,
she was just driving a Ferrari. And then I thought about it,
and I thought, "Oh, my God. She is a genius!" She basically disintermediated
the entire media structure in society. So, in the old days, if you wanted to do
the Kylie Jenner reality show, you needed to get a bunch of people, and have some scripts
or at least a producer, and have grips and best boys
and all those things you don't know what they mean
at the end of a movie, and then you'd put it together,
and you send it to a network, and the network will distribute it
to everybody else, to your fans. Kylie got rid of all that. She just got on her phone,
filmed herself, sent it right to her fans, which is just amazing,
it's an amazing change. And so you might say,
"Well, gee, that's a little shallow"; I mean, it's not the most
important thing in the world. But others have used this
to really positive ends. So, a recent application of this was the ice bucket challenge, which probably you are aware of
or even participated with. And the idea was
to raise money and awareness for ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, which is really a terrible,
debilitating illness. And the idea was you had to give money, or you had to dump a bucket
of ice water on your head or have your friend do it or whatever. And this really worked with narcissism because, like,
who else is wanting to do this? "Hey, look! Check me out,
I got my ice bucket, it's great!" It is not just narcissism, it is also fun. I think I did it with my kids, you know,
"Hey, dump water on dad." It got a lot of people involved, but narcissism
was an important piece of it, and it really worked. So, there are ways we can use
some of this narcissism to very positive outcomes
or very positive ends. I am not the first person to figure out that in the modern
economic or social world a little bit of narcissism helps, but I think we need to have
a careful balance. So right now we have mentors
and teachers or professors like myself telling kids "Hey, you have
got to be a thought leader. You have got to build your brand." Yeah, maybe, but maybe,
you know, have some thoughts, and at the end of that,
you can be a thought leader. (Laughter) You know, maybe build your reputation, like "I am a good person
who does good work," and then focus on the brand
and the turtleneck and everything. So I think there is
sort of a process we can use. And where this really struck me was, my daughter was in kindergarden, and one of her teachers gave her
this "all about me" assignment. And the idea was
"write your special talent." So she was at home, and she said,
"Well, daddy, what is my special talent?" I said, "Yeah, I don't know.
I don't have a special talent." And my wife said,
"I don't have a special talent." I said, "Why, the only kid
I have ever met with a special talent was a two-year-old
reincarnated Lama in Tibet who blessed me with a Buddha statue,
which is pretty cool. But other than that,
most kids don't have that." So she wrote she was "nice," which isn't really special,
and it is not really a talent, but it's still pretty important, you know. (Laughter) I mean, it's better
than, like, "I am evil" or whatever. (Laughter) So, I felt good about that. I think the point is we can learn a lot from narcissism,
from understanding narcissism, from narcissistic
individuals in our lives, about what to do and what not to do. And what we can learn
is how to put ourselves out there, be assertive, don't be afraid to dump a bucket ice
on your head for a good cause, to push yourself and build
sort of a broader social network than you might be comfortable doing. But what we can also learn is
how not to let our ego take over our life; we're not the same thing as our ego. And in fact, I mean,
the best way I think about ego is it's a tool in your tool box: you want to use it,
and then you want to put it away and go enjoy the rest of your life. Thank you very much. (Applause)
