Thanks to Tsara Shelton for help with transcript editing.

Rob: Welcome to Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show WNJC 1360 AM out of Washington Township reaching Metro Philly and South Jersey. Sponsored by opednews.com. My guest tonight is Daniel Shaw. Daniel Shaw LCSW is a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist practicing in NY City and Nyack, NY. He is a training analyst, teacher and supervisor of analytic candidates at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in NY City. I've brought him on to the Bottom-up Radio show because he's written a book, Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation, which I believe helps us to better understand two of the major topics I cover-- top-down domination and the effects of psychopaths and related pathological people on our culture and on individuals. His website is danielshawlcsw.com.

And we'll pick up at the second half of the transcript.

Rob: So you, in your chapter about traumatic narcissism and cults, you put up some concepts and ideas I want to explore with you.

DS: Sure.

Rob: You identify the most common dynamics and I'm just going to read the list real quick. Purification of the ego, is one. Two, only perfection is good enough. Three, incessant urgency. Four, violation of boundaries as a norm. Five, inner deviance must be eradicated. Six, defend the leader no matter what.

DS: Right.

Rob: You want to talk about any of those?

DS: There're all pretty well characteristic of all of the groups that I have been to learn of. So you have soft cover copy right? What page are you on?

Rob: 49.

DS: Thank you, okay, so let me open it up and I can just go over that a little bit. Sure. So the first one, purification of the ego. Okay. That, I'm using that broadly because there are other cults that are for example pyramid schemes, commercial selling kinds of cults, where people have to sell products. I'm not naming any names here. And what has to get purified there is all of the wrong thinking that makes the person not be more successful. In every kind of group something has to be purified. In religious groups, and especially eastern groups, it's often called the ego which just means in these cultic groups, now maybe something in a legitimate religion that isn't traumatizing or abusive, but in a cultic group what it means is get rid of your personal individual subjective sense of self. Right now you become a collective self that lives only for the purpose of, you know, enslaving the delusional sense of omnipotence of the leader. So purifying the ego is always seen as this goal and it looks attractive because you want to stop being depressed or you want to stop being miserable in your relationships or you want whatever. You want to start being more successful in your business. Whatever it is, and oh, here's what you've got to do, you've got to purify your ego. And then you'll get out of your own way. There's a million slogans you can come up with that are used about all of this. And then, you know, everything will come together. Well that may be true in working under certain conditions and certain contexts. In a cult, it's all double speak. It's all meant, in fact, to be part of the campaign of subjugation. Okay. I'll move on to the second one. I don't know if you have any questions.

Rob: No, go ahead.

DS: Only perfection is good enough. Well that's how the game is rigged. You're supposed to keep trying harder. Try harder. Stop having negative thoughts that impact your sales numbers. Stop having negative thoughts that make your spiritual progress slow down. Etc etc. Well no matter how hard you try, that cult leader doesn't want you to slip away and succeed, then what? Then they don't have you to control. They don't have you to boost their own ego. You've gone off and you know become as good as they are, they're equal? They can't have that. So perfection isn't spoken of but the leader typically presents herself as perfect, whether or not that word is used. And behaves as though she is perfect, the last word on everything. And as a result the followers can never win. They can never do a good enough job. They can never try hard enough. They always have to stay there and keep trying and keep working and keep giving because they're not getting it. Because they're not perfect yet.

Of course nobody's ever going to be perfect and nobody ever has been is the unspoken problem with that whole demand. The next one we mention was incessant urgency. It's characteristic of these groups that there's a crisis that everybody has to stay up all night for months dealing with and working on, whether it's within the group because there is, people been saying this that or the other, or saying that there's been sexual abuse, or whatever it is. And everybody now has to go to their workshops and workshops and confessionals and chants and everything else because within the groups there's these malignant forces. That's one reason for the urgency.

The other reason is that something outside is going on. Somebody is going to write an article for the New Yorker. Do you know what my cult did when they found out she was going to write an expose? They trained dozens of people to be Reiki practitioners and to sit in a temple in India and do long distance Reiki on the writer of this expose so that she wouldn't write it. I mean it just boggles the mind. And you know so there's a crisis from without and there's a crisis from within, but for whatever it is, everybody's got to urgently work and not sleep and not eat and just work work work, that's typical in a cult. The violation of boundaries as a norm is a very important aspect of this. You know because you can't ever do anything that's good enough. And all you're trying to do is get the leader to recognize you as good. You know, you start being willing to do whatever it takes. And if a leader wants to use you to do something cruel or abusive to somebody else, well you'll go violate that person's boundaries just as yours have been violated because, you know, the guru wants it and that's going to be what makes the guru want you. So that becomes a norm in the group.

In my group I was spied on and many people were. There were hidden microphones in rooms and then your conversations would be thrown in your face later. Or people were appointed to be spies and to report on everything you said and did. The fifth, inner deviance must be eradicated. Yeah. You know, inner deviance is going to get you ostracized and shunned, booted out, rejected. You have got to, so either you'll get ganged up on and told to leave the group because you're never going to ever achieve enough for redemption to happen. Or you yourself become incredibly self-critical and self-loathing in an effort to eradicate your own deviance. Finally, defend the leader no matter what. This is important because the leader, the longer you stay around the more you see the leader behaving in ways that are highly questionable, if not outright illegal, immoral and so on. And yet you've got to come up with a way to defend that leader.

When Guru Mayi was involved in her campaign against her brother, she wanted people to go to his programs, public programs, and disrupt them. One of the people in the group took it upon himself to hire a thug to throw skunk oil at the audience of her brother's presentation. People were recruited to chase him around in airports when he was going somewhere and harass him and call him fatso and so on. I mean this is all orchestrated by this guru and her right hand man, and people did it. And I saw it. Now I didn't actually do that stuff but I had to spin it. I was a spokesperson and leader of a group, I had to spin it so that it sounded righteous. So that it sounded, what we had to do because of how awful the enemy was. So you know there's loyalties to the leader no matter what, is crucial. And it becomes very much a part of the, well once you leave a group like this, and you realize what you were willing to do. What you were willing to become. What you were willing to be just for the sake of this guru to pay attention and like you.

And you just feel like the stupidest jerk in the world. You know you feel so much shame and so much guilt and regret and loss. But you know, that's what you get. You left the guru, what you get is you feel like you're the worst person on earth. So you've got to get over that when you come out from under authoritarian rule. You've got to stop being afraid of retribution which is often how people feel. And you've got to stop feeling ashamed of yourself. You made a terrible mistake, you made a bunch of them, everybody does. I never met anybody who hasn't. And you know to one degree or another everybody has something they need to come to terms with. And people who lead cults are no different. So that's kind of what I've tried to ---

Rob: And I want to throw in a couple more things in the book that I think is really interesting. That the follower's rewards are recognition from the leader and the ensuant prestige they gain within their group. But those rewards are bestowed and receded at the leader's whim, keeping the follower in a fear, in a state of instability and fear about displeasing the leader and thereby losing status and favor.

DS: Yes.

Rob: Sounds like a really touchy place to be in.

DS: Really catch 22. You're always in a double bid. You're always in a double bid.

Rob: Now there are two phrases that you use that I want to get you to talk about a little bit. You talk about, you're talking about the Sullivan Institute in this. And you refer to one of the leaders as a charismatic confabulator.

DS: Right.

Rob: That could be liar who's charismatic, right?

DS: Yeah, exactly. Paul Newton, who lead that group claims that. Yeah, go ahead.

Rob: And then you go on and you say that when things go wrong in these groups, narcissism runs amuck.

DS: Well what I'm saying there is that the group is often threatened by apostates who want to go public with what they've seen. Or who, I mean that's typical. And that becomes a red alert for the group. And in that case, the group gets, the leader starts terrifying everybody in the group that if they listen to any of that or if they stray from the group, hell and damnation is bound to come. So this, so at that point you know the narcissistic leader is basically going to, you know, put everybody into some, like, battle situation and they'll have to work harder and stay up all night and they'll have to, you know, have secret meetings and they'll have to spy on people. The whole thing becomes insane. This happened to the Sullivan Institute group which claimed to have a connection to Harry Stack Sullivan but which had no actual connection to him or to the institute that he was involved with The White Institute. There was no actual connection between those.

Rob: And one example of this kind of craziness is Jim Jones and what happened in Guyana.

DS: Well it's the ultimate example because there have been other cases of mass suicide but nothing with as on the scale of what ended up happening with Jim Jones. And you know we, I just hope we'll never see anything like it again. And yet it does keep happening. But certainly being able to get all of these people, so many of them, hundreds I guess, to move to Guyana, to live in the jungle, and to follow Jim Jones as he decompensated to florid schizophrenia and use more and more drugs and was more and more abusive and promiscuous with followers and to just keep following, no matter what, even to the point of murdering their own children and themselves. It's just astonishing. I don't think, I think that stands out as the most grotesque example, Waco maybe being the second. But then of course, the Moonie's mass marriages being another sort of horror. But the truth is these horrors happen on miniature scale and don't get talked about in much smaller groups. They may not be actual suicides or murders but there's a soul murder that happens in cults that is what I'm talking about. A traumatic injury to the sense of self that robs you of freedom. Of course we have to look at the fact that we gave away our freedom and we do so willingly, at least it seems that way while we're in the group. Certainly the horror of Germany during World War Two, just people giving away any sense of decency and honor and allowing that genocide to have happened. It's stunning to imagine. But there it is.

Rob: Yes, now you say in your comment on this that "traumatic narcissists create totalitarian systems in which their malignant envy and paranoid fear, defended against with delusional omnipotence and bolstered by self-righteous rage and hatred merged to shape a contemptuous agenda to enslave control and annihilate others." And then you say, "The narcissist is convinced that his selfish cruel agenda is in fact a generous compassionate offer of enlightenment and liberation conducted under his superior auspices for the benefit of the rest of the inferior world."

DS: I'm glad you like that sentence. I wrote it in honor of George W Bush.

Rob: You wrote that in honor of George W Bush?

DS: I did indeed. I certainly saw the Iraq war as an example of exactly what you just read. An example of delusional narcissistic sense of omnipotence, it's called national exceptionalism I believe. And you know, that our agenda to enslave and pillage and plunder and then abandon Iraq is couched as this incredibly honorable necessity that is going to purify the world. I mean, they're just, there's hardly a more blatant example of what I'm trying to describe about the traumatizing narcissist, on a global scale at least, in current times. I would say it's the perfect example.

Rob: Wow. Yeah. Well let's get into, you mention national exceptionalism. That is a symptom of America. Of American. Of the mainstream media. So talk about national exceptionalism and how that fits into your model of traumatic narcissism.

DS: Well first let's give credit to Eric Fromm again who identified this very clearly. And I don't think term exceptionalism was used when he was writing as it is now. But certainly that's what he was referring too. Nationalistic narcissism and exceptionalism are, as far as I'm concerned, the same thing. The idea that this is a superior brand of humanity here in America. America has the most superior kind of principles and ethics and government. And therefore, okay which by the way, I like democracy and I'm good with that, I'm not entirely a marxist, I'm semi-capitalistic to some extent, personally I'm just saying, it's not that I'm like you know it's not like I'm a communist. Although I wouldn't mind being a socialist, probably. Especially a Scandinavian one. But anyway, especially when I have to pay my healthcare premium because I'm self-employed. But at any rate, so you know, Fromm really identified this as narcissism. We're the best. Ra ra, you know we are the most humane, the most intelligent, the most capable and we have the best principles and morals and ethics and the best kind of government and therefore we have a right to go into the world and do whatever we want to do.

You know, if it means overthrowing a dictator that can attack us, well why shouldn't we? That's who we are in the world. It's a, it's an extremely dangerous idea, obviously. And it's a destructive idea. It's narcissistic, it's a delusional belief in your own superiority and omnipotence. And it's good to see Obama backing off a little bit, but you know, and people criticize him from both sides. But look what he was left with when he went into office in Iraq. Look at what he was left with. The whole place had been pillaged and plundered and raped and everything was a disastrous mess. Everybody who could make a buck out if it got out of there with their money. And they left the place in ruins and Obama was supposed to like, you know, patch that all up. Good luck.

Rob: Now you also mention in your book about how this idea of American exceptionalism, a form narcissism, was used to rationalize the virtual eradication of the Native American aboriginal population and to justify the slave system. Can you talk a little bit about that?

DS: Yes. First of all I think we should recognize that slavery has existed pretty much since the dawn of mankind. Certainly, is right there in the old testament and I'm sure it goes back well beyond that. It is one of the most horrible things people can do to each. To dehumanize anyone, enslave them, subjugate them, you know, totally. It's an incredibly cruel destructive human potential which unfortunately has been exercised throughout history over and over and over and over. So not just in the wiping out of aboriginal populations, not just South Africa, not just Germany, not just America, not just with slavery in this country and others. All over the world, again and again and again, the crusades, you know, the inquisition, all in the name of righteousness and superiority.

So, you know, we have as part of our human condition this terribly destructive delusional impulse which does not discriminate. You know it's not just stupid people who go that way. Often the smartest of them all can go that way. And it's an ever present danger, the absolute power corrupts absolutely, they say. You know, narcissism, this kind of traumatizing narcissism always has existed in my view and always will, and all we can do as people is try to understand it better and try to encourage other ways of being. You know here's the place where I get kind of sad. You know, I'm a psychoanalyst so I talk to one person at a time, maybe sometimes a couple. And one life at a time, my hope is that I can help somebody become more free, more capable of owning their own self, their sense of subjectivity. And more responsible and thoughtful and reflective as a person. You know, that's nice, and I make my living at that and I'm very grateful for it and I love my work. But I don't do the work that, on a global scale, stops this kind of narcissism from destroying whole cultures or races or nations.

Rob: Does anybody do that work?

DS: Well, you know, how does one do that? There are ways. I recently, you might have seen in the New York Times an article about Rabbi Andy Bachman. He's leaving, he's created a wonderful reform temple in Brooklyn where young people can finally feel that being Jewish meant something about being, doing good in the world. But ultimately Bachman, whom I've met and I know, his wife as well, Bachman feels like, oh that's still not enough. I still want to do something more directly involving helping those who suffer. And so he's figuring out what that is. And I can't tell you how much I admire that. You know, and people with money should be doing it. He doesn't have money. Bill Gates and malaria, good. He has more money, he should do more things. But that's good that he's doing malaria. You know people with money in this world, you know that's related to the example of narcissism although it's been around forever. You know but we have a new age of Robber Barons. They're called hedge fund owners and executives. And they amass unbelievable amounts of money for what? For what exactly? Many of them will get into philanthropic work, which is great. But much more is needed, and I hope we'll see much more as these internet millionaires and billionaires start aging.

Rob: So, we kind of went all around in different places. This is really interesting. I've written a good number of articles about how we need to de-billionairize the planet. That billionaires are monstrosities. They're abnormal and that they are dangerous. So tell me more about these ideas you have about people with a lot of money.

DS: Well, money is one of the great defenses against any feelings of inferiority. Am I allowed to use a four letter word here?

Rob: Uh no.

DS: Okay I will not. But you know there's a certain kind of forget you that's possible with a lot of money, right? Everybody wishes they could tell somebody, forget you, if they had enough money to do it right? Look, I'm not against money, I'd like to have more than I have but I agree that there is an obscene quality to the way wealth is now accumulated and how it's made and how it's used, or misused.

Rob: But stay within the topic that was traumatic narcissism. Where does narcissism fit in with great wealth?

DS: It fits in this way. It bolsters the sense of superiority. It's bolsters that desperately needed feeling that you have power and control and superiority and you know and you can prove it because you can build the highest house on the highest hill. You can wear the most, you know, extraordinary clothes, you can buy whatever you want. It's the ultimate narcissistic fantasy. I'm perfect, I'm beautiful, I have everything and nobody can touch me. I don't need anything from anybody because I've got all of this money. Meanwhile, if you've ever known very wealthy people, they're hardly, they're very rarely people I've met who are as needy as some very wealthy people are. Who need 20 people at all times be at the beck and call in order to walk across the street. Or get a newspaper or something, so it's a tremendously, for many, it's a tremendous bolster of narcissism and for people who are narcissistically tending in that direction, money just increases the narcissism. I don't say that everybody who has money, or lots of it, is necessarily narcissistic. You know, I think there are people who, I think we're all narcissistic in some ways. Small and large. And sometimes people with lots of money are extraordinarily narcissistic. And money helps them maintain it. I think that's the best I, that's what I can say about that.

Rob: Okay.

DS: I do want to say, Rob, though that I'm with you, that there's a big dangerous problem with the way wealth is currently distributed on the planet. So, I'm with you there.

Rob: Now in terms of talking about cults, you bring up the tea party.

DS: Yeah.

Rob: you want to talk about that?

DS: Would you like me to say a few words on that?

Rob: Yes, please.

DS: I am, I'll tell you this. That to me is the best example of the use of the phrase, they drank the Kool Aid. Which stems from of the course the horrors of Jim Jones's cult. But the tea party is a group of people who typically, from what I gather, from what I'm able to gather what I read, are often working class people. And they have been convinced that government is the enemy. All that government does is take from them to give to people of color, is basically what they're saying although they don't say it.

I think it's absolutely based on racism. Although, not only on racism. It's basically the idea that government is evil, it's taking our money, it's using it to give to people who don't deserve it. And we don't want it. Well no, from what I understand again, the people who have been selling this have been, you know the mouth pieces for think tanks that are funded by some of the world's biggest billionaires. Rupert Murdoch and Rich Mellon Scaife, and the Koch Brothers and etc. These guys fund these think tanks that very very ingeniously catch the attention of the lower middle class, the working class. People who, in fact, are going to and if they don't already, heavily rely on the security net provided by the government such as Medicare, such as highways, such as you know, you name it. And somehow these billionaires are going to convince all of these relatively poor people that they should vote for republicans who are going to dismantle the safety net and stop having government do anything. To me it couldn't be more, a better example of drinking the Kool Aid. Of course it's been written about by people who know a lot more about it than I do. The guy Frank who wrote the, Whatever Happened to Kansas.

Rob: Pity the Poor Billionaire, his newer book.

DS: Right and Naomi Klein's work on disaster capitalism. I mean people are, Paul Krugman's work, these people know what they're talking about from a tremendously well researched place. And I'm using secondary sources but, let me tell you, as a former cult member, it just. Well when I actually first got out of this cult, knew I had been in a cult, back in the Reagan, still in the end of the Reagan era, I think it was, I saw it. I saw it then, I could see it in silent majority, the religious right, I knew what was happening right then and there. That the people who wanted to think of themselves as the most righteous, the most moral, were being, you know manipulated by the industrialists and the capitalists and the billionaires and this was going to come together as some anti-immoralism campaign which was basically going to be a root to make it acceptable to people to have no compassion for the poor. And to entrench racism in the country. I saw it. And I still see. That's how I see it. Just my opinion.

Rob: Okay.

DS: And how are we doing on time, are we going to?

Rob: I think we're going to wrap, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about was narcissism in relationships. Because I'm sure there are people listening who are in relationships with this kind traumatizing narcissists. What do you have to say to people who are in those relationships? And we've already learned that a lot of times, those people are in them because their parents were them.

DS: Right, right, they are following the model they already have learned is often the case. But not always. And you know, I'm always cautious of making absolute generalizations. So often, not always, is the way I put it. You see these people who have found this model in their own families repeating it adult relationships. Well that's true of many of us. Most of us I would say in fact figure it out sooner or later at some point in our lives that, oops we just became our mother or our father or something like that. But what I would say is this, that these relationships are painful and debilitating for the people who are being traumatized by a narcissist. Very often they feel completely trapped in these relationships. And very often when they come for help, it becomes clear to them that what they need to do is leave the relationship. And yet that feels too hard and too impossible.

And this is where many therapists, including myself, feel like, oh boy we've hit the wall. We hit the place where, you know, you can illuminate to a person who's being traumatized by a narcissist, what's going on in that relationship. They can see it. But can they leave it? And very often that's a lot more difficult than people would think. Sure, you can go on Montel you know one of those Dr. Phil and the audience could yell at you, leave him leave him! But yeah it's not that easy. People stay in bad marriages, sometimes for years and years and years without ever getting a divorce, or only getting a divorce once their kids grow up and you know, you make an attachment, it's not that easy to sever.

I didn't leave that cult quickly or easily, and most people don't. Most people do not. Most people leave after a tremendously painful struggle. And it's very painful afterwards. So I would say for people in these relationships, they should seek help, they should talk to a therapist or whatever kind of counsellor that feel comfortable with. But certainly somebody trained in trauma work is always a good, a good person to see. They won't, they'll understand the potential for trauma in these relationships. Even if they're not an expert on cults or an expert in marriage or an expert in traumatic narcissism, that's not what's needed. What's needed is help to understand the nature of trauma and the difficulty of working in one's way out of trauma.

That's a terrifically complicated difficult situation as we know from Vietnam and the veterans that are still today wandering around homeless. Trauma is not easy to get out of. And people need to seek help and helpers need to know what trauma is, and how to be helpful. And that was really the aim of my book, because it is geared to the mental health professional. Although I do hope and I have already seen that lay readers also can find it valuable. Some of the therapists I know have recommended the book to their patients, and that's been very useful. But that book is really written to the mental health professional in an effort to say, you know don't take lightly this kind of trauma. Yeah it's not rape and it's not murder, it's not all of that. But it's emotional and psychic, psychological in a way that mimics violation and rape, and it needs to be understood.

Rob: Alright, we're getting near the end here but I realize I do have one or two more questions. I want to say one more thing about the relationships. One thing you've made clear is that the victims think that they will be able to do enough to make the relationship better through their behavior and that's never going to happen.

DS: Right. It'll succeed for a bit, but the cycle will begin again. And that way the traumatic narcissist is, traumatizing narcissist like a batterer, there's always going to be that cycle where, you know it escalates, the violence occurs, in this case it's usually verbal and emotional violence. And then there's sort of a rapprochement,and there's a nice time and then once again the escalation begins. Traumatic narcissists, this is the reason why, in my view. The traumatic narcissist is a very unstable person. They need, in order to maintain a sense of superiority and omnipotence that they need, they have got to get fed with proof of it. And when they're not getting enough proof, their anxiety is raised. So what do they do, they turn to their significant other and they accuse the significant other of not giving them enough and showing enough, not doing enough, not caring enough. And this significant other feels, you know, terrified and turns themselves inside out and trying to do enough and are finally the significant other breaks down and begs forgiveness and then the narcissist relaxes and forgives and it's nice for a while and then once again it recycles and it, the cycle continues.

Rob: Okay so - go ahead.

DS: Yes, go ahead.

Rob: I want to move on to some like bigger picture things. You talk in the book about lesser of two evils. A sense of only people, you're talking about a patient feeling he, about your patient Tom you refer to, about a sense of only having choices that amount to lesser evils. This is something that a lot of people on the left talk about, and on the right. There's nobody in politics except lesser of evils. Where does this idea of lesser evils fit in with narcissism.

DS: Right, okay. Well in the narcissist situation and that relational system, what becomes, what's on stage is attachment. The victim's attachment to the narcissist has become all important. It means it's there lifeline. It's their ladder. It's how they can feel good about themselves if that narcissist approves of them. Recognizes them. So in that situation, they have little choice. They can't, they feel like if they get rid of the narcissist they'll be alone. And they will have nothing. But if they stay with the narcissist they'll be hurt and disappointed and feel bad about themselves again and again and again. So which is the lesser of those two evils? Well, I think they're both terrible and neither of them is good but.

Rob: This sounds exactly like what I feel like when I go to the voting booth.

DS: Right and I understand. And the thing is, there is, in those tangible relationships the person who leaves the narcissist only fears in a phobic way that they'll be alone and that there will never be another chance. That's not a reality, that's a fear. In politics, we may in fact be having to face a reality, that you're voting for somebody who at best is going to be a compromise. And I don't know what to say about that. I think that politics is extraordinarily attractive to narcissists and it's very difficult to sort out your self-interests from interest in the public good and many people go astray in that direction. Politics is, you know, unfathomable to me. I don't know how anybody can do it. And I know that anybody who does is constantly making compromises, no matter how idealistic they are. So yeah. We are faced with, often faced with choices that amount to the lesser of two evils and that might be the best we're going to get for a while. You know I have like bring back FDR buttons on my refrigerator. I feel like at least he managed to get something done during those times. And he actually had some principles. And yeah, he made mistakes and did some accommodating. But for the most part he stood up to those who would selfishly take anything they wanted out this country and not want to put anything back in, he stood up to them and he accomplished something. And of course it all got undone. Does it start with Reagan? Yeah, probably starts there. It all got undone.

Rob: One last question. In some ways, the way that people function within corporations sounds like the way they function in cults.

DS: You know it's been said of the military, it's been said of corporations, it can be said with any group. And I think there are cult like corporations and then there are corporations that maybe, more generally been benign or benevolent or responsible. But yes, you know, certainly the movie The Wolf of Wall Street demonstrates the cult mentality. All of those things we discussed, the violation of boundaries as a norm, for example, loyalty to the leader no matter what. You know you can see all of those qualities there. And that is an unfortunate aspect of the times we live in with the deregulation of the banks we saw a whole generation, a few generations now, of people just recognize that it's all just a casino and all I have to do is kind of learn the game and learn how to rig it and take away the money and not feel any responsibility about that. I've talked to many people who have been ripped off and lost their money. Not Madoff people, but people in smaller situations losing millions and that's a big part of our culture these days. We'll see where it goes. People, the only consolation I can take is when somebody says, well these things go in cycles. I hope that's true, I hope we will cycle out of the place we are economically and politically and culturally at this time in history. I hope we will find a way to cycle out it into something more humane and more truly ethical.

Rob: Well okay so that gets me to what should really be the absolute final question. And that is, how do people protect themselves from traumatizing narcissists? And how do we as a culture, as a world, come up with solutions to do something about them?

DS: Yeah, well I think the main thing is that we have a lot of access to communication in different forms now. And yeah, there's just an incredible amount of stuff out there and who's every going to wade through it. But people who know about this problem need to speak about it. Certainly I'm part of a group, I work with colleagues who are affiliated, not in any financial way but just in terms of our work we're affiliated with the International Cultic Studies Association. I-C-S-A. It's a not for profit that tries to help people deal with cultic situations. And many of us recognize in the field who do work with cult survivors that there are often now one on one cults and there are many business and corporate cults. So we're seeing people come out of these things. It's not just the religions anymore. ICSA does great work, I don't get paid a cent by ICSA, I volunteer all the work I do. I believe it is an important resource for people to understand the nature of cults and to understand the nature of traumatic narcissism.

There are other organizations. I think there's been some negotiations going on in Syria that have been lead by a fellow in England who is trying to de-radicalize Muslim youths there in England. The name of that group is slipping my mind. But these groups that seek to educate the public about radical ideologies or about cults. These groups need to be supported. People need to write their memoirs and write their articles about these subjects. And they need to just be out there and we can only hope for a critical mass at some point to form, and has happened during the great depression for example, people finally had enough of being exploited and they voted for a way of not being exploited. So we have to hope, and we have to speak out.

Rob: I just have to pick up on one thing you said. You said that there are business and corporate cults. What's that about?

DS: Well it's about money, of course. It's about power and money. And power and money are the things that narcissists love. If they can't have money at least they want power but they'd prefer both. And to them it means proof of their superiority and ability to do whatever they want and have whatever they want. And these businesses and corporations that are structured in that way are--

Rob: Would an example be like multilevel marketing groups?

DS: No question of that. Multilevel marketing groups benefits a few people at the top and deludes and deceives everybody else, you know, on every other level. Because all you're doing is you're selling this stuff to each other and you're spending all your time and energy and money on it and you're never getting anywhere. Just a few people at the top are getting. And they're getting what they get because they're selling all these motivational tapes. They haven't gotten rich from the object or the commodities they sell, they get rich from selling all these motivational tapes and booklets and workshops and so on. That's how they're making their money. It's out there.

Rob: So what would you, let's wrap it up with you giving any final words to the listeners about traumatic narcissism and narcissists.

DS: I believe that they've always been around and they probably always will be. Everybody complains about Facebook, oh people and teenagers and millennial are all so narcissistic and all they do is send pictures of themselves. That's nothing, that's just normal human sillyness. That's not traumatic narcissism. Traumatic narcissism operates at all levels of our lives. Microcosmic levels to macrocosmic levels. And wherever it is, it always means that people are being exploited and abused and subjugated and dehumanized. And as human beings, my hope is that the more we can understand this and learn about and talk about it the more we can begin to build, you know, more constructive social systems. More constructive healthy creative relationships. More constructive and healthy government. But you know, it's a lot of work. No one person's going to do it by themselves. And we all just have to keep chipping away.

Rob: The description you gave there evoked in my mind the words malevolent and evil.

DS: It's always out there, there's always going to be that aspect to our world. It's there. And sometimes it's cloaked in righteousness. You know somebody said no greater evil has ever been done than in the name of religion. Well, it's not just religion, it's also capitalism and business and, you know, it's relationships. It's there and we need to educate ourselves and I hope I've made a tiny contribution in that direction.

Rob: You have, and thank you so much.

DS: I want to thank you Rob, you ask great questions. You obviously really looked into the material. I'm very honored and I greatly appreciate that and I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.

Rob: Thank you so much,