Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil | Lex Fridman Podcast #357

Narcissism is not arrogance. Na- narcissism is the opposite of arrogance. There is such a deep sense of inadequacy and incompetence in the self that the defensive structure around that becomes dominated by rocket-fueled envy.

The following is a conversation with Paul Conti, a psychiatrist and a brilliant scholar of human nature. My friend, Andrew Huberman, told me that Paul and I absolutely must meet and talk, not just about the topic of trauma, which Paul wrote a- an amazing book about, but broadly about human nature. About narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, good and evil, hate and love, happiness and envy. As usual, Andrew was right. This was a fascinating conversation. As the old meme goes, one does not simply doubt the advice of Andrew Huberman. Allow me to also quickly mention that I disagree with Paul a bunch in this episode, as I do in other episodes, even with experts. In part for fun, and in part because I think the tension of ideas and conversation is what creates insights and wisdom. My goal is to always empathize, understand, and explore ideas of the person sitting across from me. Disagreement is just one of the ways I think it's fun to do just that, as long as I do so, uh, from a place of curiosity and compassion. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Paul Conti. Do you see psychiatry as fundamentally a study of the human mind and not just a set of tools for treating psychological maladies?

Absolutely. I think psychiatry is our best way to understand who we are as people. I mean, it looks at our biology, you know, how does our brain work? How does, how does it connect the parts with one another? How does the chemistry in it work? It's the very foundational aspects of who we are and then it manifests as psychology. What do we think, what do we feel? What are our strivings? What are our fears? So yeah, I think psychiatry provides tools that we can use to, to help each other, but those tools come through it being a discipline of understanding.

So with every patient you see, with every mind you explore, are you picking up a deeper understanding of the human mind?

I think I'm trying to. I mean, I think we should learn, should be able to take something away from everything we do, you know, every interaction to some small degree.

Every conversation? It doesn't have to be a patient? Just anywhere? At Starbucks getting a coffee, you can learn something from that little experience?

Yeah, even if you just reinforce sort of gentle kindness and gratitude and, and decent human interaction. There's a reinforcement of that, that even if we don't take away memories or lessons so to speak, we can reinforce who we choose to be.

So understanding ourselves from those interactions too, not just the general sort of philosophical human mind, but understanding our own mind. Introspect on how our own mind works.