Understanding Vulnerable Narcissism: A Defensive Posture

Psychologist and author Scott Barry Kaufman joins Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss his new book Rise Above, which challenges the growing embrace of victimhood as identity. They explore how traits such as neuroticism and vulnerable narcissism are shaping modern culture, why social media rewards grievance over growth, and what it really takes to develop a more flexible, empowered sense of self. Kaufman reflects on his own journey from special education to Carnegie Mellon and beyond, explains why tough love and radical honesty are essential tools for transformation, and offers a humanistic vision of how individuals and societies can move beyond resentment and reclaim purpose.

0:00—Introduction

1:30—Limiting beliefs come from our past.

6:00—The victim mindset

10:49—What is vulnerable narcissism?

12:12—Kaufman's experience in special education

17:35—Childhood trauma from summer camp

21:49—Narcissism is a defensive posture.

26:24—Kaufman's unconventional path to Carnegie Mellon

31:09—Group victimhood and empowerment

37:40—Why coddling and tough love are both wrong

41:55—Embracing optimism in the face of darkness

48:00—Developing a flexible identity

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Kaufman has entered the building. Thanks so much. I'm Nick Gillespie, I'm an editor at Reason, and Scott graciously asked me to interview him about his new book, Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential. Let's have a big hand for Scott Barry Kaufman.

Scott Kaufman: Thank you. 

Scott, I think as we talk—and we're going to talk for about 45 minutes—and then we'll have plenty of time for audience Q&A. I'll let you know when to line up, but there's a microphone over on that side of the restaurant, and you can queue up. You'll have plenty of warning about that. But as we talk, your backstory will also come out. This will be crafted like a mystery movie. But I want to start with Rise Above. You have an epigraph at the beginning, which is from Carl Jung, and it says, "I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become."

I love that quote.

Yeah, talk a little bit about why that's at the start of this book.

Yeah, I think that we have a lot of limiting beliefs about our potential and what we're capable of, based on the stories we tell ourselves about our past and what we've been through. And a lot of the stories that we tell ourselves about our past are limiting stories. They keep us enshrined in our past. Another quote I really like, which relates to that, is from the great existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom, who said, "Sooner or later you have to give up all hope for a better past." That basically encapsulates the point of my book.

Why are we drawn to—why would we believe in something that limits us rather than something that empowers us?

Yeah, are any psychoanalysts—any psychoanalysts in the room? People into that? Karen Horney talked about soothing illusions. She was actually the first one to really challenge Freud. And she's like, "Freud, you're batshit crazy." Yeah, she was the first to call it out, you know, before cancel culture. 

She called out Freud. 

She says we have a lot of defense mechanisms that serve for us feel—or attempt to feel—safe and secure. It takes a lot sometimes to rip our defense mechanisms off of us, because it's a very vulnerable space to do so. To admit that, "Wow, I have really not gotten over this thing," or "Wow, I really don't think I can cope." To admit to yourself, "I don't think I can do this." It's far easier for a lot of people to never, ever face that thought and hold on to these soothing illusions.

Wow. And even if the illusion keeps you in a bad place.

Oh, absolutely. In fact, I would say that's our default state. I talk in this book about the theory of learned helplessness. It's a theory that Martin Seligman and his colleagues developed—they shocked dogs and then eventually started shocking humans.

Another illustrious chapter in the University of Pennsylvania's history. You know, every once in a while they win the Ivy League football championship, but in between that, they're shocking. They're known for shocking.

Yeah, Martin Seligman moved on to humans at some point. He got bored with dogs. But what was really interesting about this research is that after a certain number of shocks, they would open up a cage—they would keep a dog in a cage—they would open the cage and the dog could just leave whenever it wanted to. It was free. But it had been shocked so many times that it did not realize it was free. And even if it realized it was free, it didn't leave.

What they found is that, 50 years later, in humans, it operates differently than with dogs. Because of our consciousness, learned helplessness is actually our default state. What we have to learn is hope. Learned hopefulness is what has to be learned.

So let's talk about the victim mindset because, you know, that's what this book is about. It's overcoming a victim mindset. That's a big part of it. What goes into creating that victim mindset, and are we at a surging moment of a victim mindset?

Oh, yes. Can I—on the second question, yes. A victim mindset is when you believe that—you sort of outsource all of your problems to the external world. Maybe it's an individual, or maybe you're saying a group is holding you back. You don't take responsibility for your reactions to the world. Because maybe trauma—you use the word "trauma"—and so you say that excuses you from how you show up or how you act in the world. And this is the most important part: You don't productively and constructively create a better future for yourself and come up with a plan to help you overcome the past. You stay enshrined in that past for as long as possible, without any sort of hope.

Why do you believe that, or what's the evidence that we are in a big surge of a victim mindset? Where does that come from?

Yeah, so Jean Twenge has done some really cool analyses in her book Generations, looking at the past three or four generations. And what you see is, there was a self-esteem movement in the '80s—anyone remember Stuart Smalley? Is that his name? Like, "I'm smart enough, doggone it, people like me," or something?

Yeah, that was the Al Franken character on Saturday Night Live.

I'm not going to be here at the Comedy Cellar doing a Smalley impression. But yeah, there was a self-esteem movement, which morphed into a grandiose narcissism movement. So the generation after that they thought, "Well, we're the best, we're superior, we are entitled to things because we're great." But that's not what it morphed into. That actually morphed into something very interesting, which is a vulnerable narcissism movement. So now we have a generation being raised feeling as though they're entitled to special privileges not because they're great but just because of their fragility.

I hate to center everything around the baby boom because, you know, enough with the baby already—but is it? The baby boom was kind of, and I know Twenge talks about this and other people, but the baby boom was the first generation that got raised after World War II in a land of plenty where things really opened up in a profound way for all sorts of people: women being treated more equally with men, Blacks, Asians, minorities kind of being more accepted. And they revolted against their parents—their parents who had survived the Depression, won World War II, and given them all of this. And then they were like, "We're not going to be like you." But now it's the baby boomers who raised kids with this kind of false self-esteem. Is that kind of accurate?

Perhaps. Perhaps. There is a genetic component here, so we can't just strictly talk about environmental impact. We also have to recognize that, for instance—I talk about the personality trait neuroticism. Neuroticism is, interestingly enough, very strongly correlated with vulnerable narcissism. A lot of people might not think of neuroticists as—

Can you define neuroticism the way that you're using it?

Yeah, it's a personality trait—part of the Big Five. So we have conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, openness to new experiences. And then neuroticism is a particular personality trait where if you score high in neuroticism, you tend to ruminate a lot, you tend to be very anxious, you tend to have a lot of negative emotions and a lot of negative thoughts constantly. Your brain is pumping you full of negative thoughts. 

Genes do play a role in that—in the development of a cognition that constantly is feeding you these kinds of thoughts and things. I think the environment then can amplify neuroticism. And interestingly enough, I think we have an environment that's not only amplifying it, but rewarding it…neuroticism.

Explain that.

Welcome to social media. 

I think that you get a lot more attention within our tribal sort of universe that we live in by complaining, by ruminating, by all these cognitive distortions that Jonathan Haidt talks about and Greg Lukianoff talks about in their book The Coddling of the American Mind. You see a lot of these cognitive distortions on the rise, which are correlated with the trait neuroticism.

Explain "vulnerable narcissism" as a term. This is not the first time that you're using it, but it's a big part of this book. What is vulnerable narcissism, and where does that come from?

Like everything, it's a mix of nature and nurture. But as I was saying earlier, it is a form of entitlement based on past suffering. So you feel like, "I've suffered more than everyone else." It would be, for example, you're at Starbucks and there's a huge line and you're like, "Oh wow, I really should be the first one in line. I probably suffered more than everyone else in this line." There is a scale, and one of the items on the scale—my favorite item—is: "If I was on the Titanic when it was going down, I should get the first life raft because of all I've suffered."

Where did you come in on that scale?

After, you know, like now? That's actually been an interesting journey for me. I think I used to be pretty high in vulnerable narcissism. When I was really young and put in special education, and everyone thought I was stupid—I'm sure you're going to ask me about that.

Yeah, well, why don't we start with that? We'll unspool all of this social science on an autobiography…

This side doesn't get to see me at all. Hi!

Part of what you're talking about in this book is overcoming a victim mindset and empowering yourself. You have a kind of great story to tell where you—I think it's a—

You think it's a great story?

Yeah, I think it's an interesting story. Why don't I put it that way?

It was traumatic. 

Well, you know, I was being nice to you because we're sitting in the same room. But it could be great—or I'm rolling my eyes.

Kind of fucks me up, dude.

I mean, let's put it this way. You have a wonderful academic pedigree. You have a very successful psychology podcast. You're writing books on a regular basis, so you're doing something right. But you started out—you were kind of the slow kid. How did that happen, and how did you get out of that?

Yeah, for the first three or four years of my life, my head was zipped up in a cloud. 

I had a central auditory processing disorder, which meant it took an extra couple of seconds for me to process things in real time. 

And yeah, everyone definitely thought I was stupid. Like, I was bullied almost daily—and by the way, I still follow those bullies on Facebook to see what they're up to. But that's an aside. But yeah, I was bullied a lot.

Are you doing better than they are?

Oh, I'm doing much better than they are.

And you let them know that, right?

No comment. I'm on stealth mode, yeah. I'm all like, "Hey, it's Scotty. Remember me?" No, I don't want to intersect with their lives. But what the hell was I talking about? Okay—so, everyone thought I was stupid. 

I'll remind you, because maybe you're not fully over the special ed thing. But you were talking about special ed.

I sometimes do have my special moments, it's true. And you know, I was just—no one expected anything of me. I mean, it gets you to a certain state of absurdity where you start to just feel like, "Well, then what's the point of anything?" You know? I was kept in there until ninth grade. And I remember there was this day in ninth grade where—it was humiliating—they would remove you from the mainstream classroom to take a special untimed test. And here's the thing: I've always been the kind of person who didn't want the crutches. See, what was bothering me is that they kept giving me all these crutches that I didn't even want because I felt like I was smart—but no one else thought I was.

So, I was in a special room taking this untimed history test, and there was a teacher there that day who I'd never seen before. She'd saw seen me. She was covering for the regular teacher, but I was being my normal smart-ass self, and she said, "Why are you daydreaming?" And I said, "Well, it's an untimed test. I have the rest of my life to take this test, so what's the point?" And she's like, "Fair point." And then she's like, "I'd like to talk to you after class."

After class, she sort of looked at me, and I was like, "What the fuck is she looking at? Is my zipper up? Like, what the hell?" 

And she's like, "I see you." She's like, "What are you still doing here?" 

And what's fascinating is—sometimes it takes in life only one person asking. We call it in the coaching world a "powerful coaching question." But sometimes it only takes one person to ask you one question that you've wanted someone to ask your whole life to just ignite something in you.

So she asked me that, and I thought in my head, "Yeah, what am I doing here? What am I doing here?" And I ran to the payphone, and I called my mom, and I said, "Mom, I'm not—I'm breaking out of special ed." This was a really big, dramatic moment for me, you know? And my mom starts screaming. You know, she's this neurotic Jewish mother.

She's like, "What are you doing over there? You can't break out of special ed—you'll go to jail!"

And I was like, "No, I'm breaking out." No kid had ever, in the history of my school, just—it never dawned on any special ed student for the student themself. I had this—like, I don't want to say "come to Jesus moment," that's not what I mean—but I had something like that, you know? Where I was like, "No one's coming to save me. If I want to do this and live the life that I want to live, I've got to make a change." 

And now I'm sounding like Michael Jackson.

Hopefully, you won't go that full—nobody goes full Michael Jackson.

No, no, we don't want to go full Michael Jackson. I was just talking about that song—I'm trying to make a change in that song…

When you talk about that person who sees you—I mean, part of it is that the question was asked at a time when you were ready to receive it and answer it. What can other people learn from that kind of moment?

A lot. I wrote a book about it, you know? I just think that I want people to know first and foremost that so many of their thoughts about what they're capable of—and their potential—is really in their own head. And it's mostly limited. If you ask most kids—you go into schools and you literally do surveys and interview them and ask them what they think they're capable of in their lives, or how realistic are their dreams— there's a lot of limiting beliefs there. 

And then it only gets worse as we get older.

If anything, we have probably unrealistic ideas in youth. But the more we get older, we really don't realize what we're capable of. And a lot of those preconceptions are because we think to ourselves about our past, and we then extrapolate what we are capable of. But there's a really profound truth I talk about in the book: I think life is what you make it, to a much larger degree than we realize. A lot of people don't make the magic in the world that they want to make. They wait for others to approach them. They never tell the person they like that they like them. And they have to wait 10 years later for the person to say, "I probably would have gone out with you if you asked me."

Yeah, you have a story about a summer camp sadness. Well, you know, you wrote it, man. So like, I'm just feeding it to you.

You didn't have to bring that up.

No, but explain that. And how does that kind of—if you had actually been able to ask this girl out, we probably wouldn't even be talking, right?

That's right. But why?

Because you would have had a happy life. You wouldn't be writing books. You'd be sailing the Mediterranean.

I'd be off.

No, but explain—what happened in that camp? How does that illustrate?

Well, that was traumatic. And I do use the word traumatic accurately in this situation. I think a lot of people misuse that word. But her name was Eddie, which is—right away, right there—it's funny. Right away. Her name is Eddie. And all summer camp, every day, I would say to myself, "Tomorrow, I'm going to ask Eddie out. Tomorrow. Tomorrow." And then the day would come and I would see her—I remember once I saw her at the pool and I got the courage, I got close to her—and then I jumped into the pool at the last second. And then I hit my head. That was the whole thing. 

But I didn't talk to her.

So the very last day of summer camp, I'm playing—I don't know—tetherball. Does anyone remember? I'm playing etherball. And this is the last five minutes of summer camp, and she comes out of the mess hall with all her friends. And I was like, "This is it. This is my moment. This is it." So I just—my heart is pounding—I turn to her and I say, "Eddie, I love you." And she and all her friends immediately start laughing—the loudest I've ever seen anyone laugh to this day.

We'll wait until later in the Q&A.

Thanks. You're a little bit of a sadist, aren't you?

Not at all.

No, no, no. But yeah, that was really horrible. And I remember that time there was a song that kept playing on the radio called It Must Have Been Love (But It's Over Now). That was the year. That was that year. And it's all that I want. See, now I'm going to cry right now just thinking about that. That song—every time it played on the radio—I would be hyperventilating, crying in the backseat of the car. My dad's in the audience now. You know why I was hyperventilating in the backseat of that car. 

They were like, "What'd they do to you in summer camp?"

But now, what you're saying is that those kinds of moments—you experience it as trauma—but in fact, you should have done that on the first day of camp. So how do you process that?

And not only that—I don't know if the moral of the message is that I should have done it on the first day of camp. But I should have, that's true. But the moral here is that—what the hell is the moral? Don't have a victim mindset over this kind of situation. That is not the way to go. That leads to incel territory. I talk in this book about incels. Has anyone heard of the incels? They're "involuntarily celibate," is what they call themselves. They've sworn women away because they can't seem to get women, so they hate women as a result. They're like, "We're done with women."

That's not the way. I talk in the book—they were a great example of a victim mindset. What you learn—and I think almost every kid—did you do any Eddie-type story at all?

It's Eddies all the way down.

So I think most guys can recognize that feeling. And a lot of women, too, have been rejected too. And what you learn is—well, part of the maturity process is being able to deal and cope with rejection. I mean, I've come such a long way in that regard that now I almost embrace rejection. I'm not just talking about with the Eddies of the world.

You were calling me a sadist. You're a masochist.

Interesting! This just got BDSM'd real fast. Woah! Did not see that coming. 

Let's go back to the vulnerable narcissism, because I think there's a broad misunderstanding that narcissism is a kind of source of personal strength. That a person who's a narcissist has a grand opinion of themselves, and they dominate things, that everything is about them. But what you're talking about and particularly with vulnerable narcissism, narcissism is a defensive posture. It is a defensive posture. 

Can you explain a little bit about that and then what does that mean? And how has the vulnerable narcissist become the character type of our age?

Well, people who score high in narcissism—and I want to be very clear that part of my research program is bringing the term narcissism out of the clinical realm and into the domain of personality. So that's what my published papers do: it takes a personality perspective on narcissism. Everyone in this room is somewhere on that continuum. And not only that, it's also a mindset. We all can have our narcissistic moments. I mean, who hasn't been like that?

So much of narcissism is that you're defending your ego like it's a fort. And that really shuts you down and inhibits you from growth and development as a whole person in so many ways. You feel like you can't deal with the feeling—in the case of grandiose narcissism, they always have to inflate themselves. They always have to brag and exaggerate, you know, and say, "Winning! Winning!"

You guys remember Charlie Sheen? "Winning"

The whole "tiger blood." 

—what'd you say? 

The tiger blood helped him win. He was constantly winning. Hashtag winning.

Tiger blood?

Yeah, he talked about tiger blood at various points.

I missed that, but yeah, that's that. But then vulnerable narcissism is an interesting thing in its relationship to the ego. It was talked about a lot by Kohut, who was a psychoanalyst. They didn't call it "vulnerable narcissism" back in the psychoanalysis days. They called it "closet narcissism"—which, I don't know, we don't want to call it that anymore.

But there is something interesting about it, because a lot of people who score high in vulnerable narcissism—you have no idea what's going on in their head until there's a moment where they go off about their resentments, about the world, about how they're getting the short end of the stick, and blah. And you're like, "Holy crap, all that has been in your head?" So it is a quieter form of narcissism. That's why they called it "closeted narcissism." 

Whereas grandiose narcissism—you know what they're thinking. Like, you know what Trump's thinking, right? It's not like you're like, "Oh, I'm shocked that Trump thinks that." But with people scoring high in vulnerable narcissism, people around them often end up being shocked that they're like that.

I want to talk a little bit more about your victim mindset and how you got out of it. And then talk about how, like you—in the book you point out that this stuff happens on an individual level and then on a societal level. You have a great story about how you went to undergrad at Carnegie Mellon, and you wanted to get into the psychology program—but you couldn't. But you didn't say, like, "OK, well, fuck it, I'm not doing anything." 

How did you get into Carnegie Mellon, and how did you end up getting into the psychology program?

Well, I applied to the psychology program—the cognitive science program—in high school and I got rejected, presumably due to my SAT scores. And I was like, "No, I want to figure out a way of doing this." So I looked at the departments at Carnegie Mellon that didn't look at SAT scores. What department do you think does not care about SAT scores?

[Audience member speaks]

Who said that? Oh my gosh.

Oh, someone's saying opera. OK. We have a ringer. 

But yeah, I found the opera program. And I rolled up with my horns and I was like, "Aaaaahhh," whatever. I didn't really give a shit. "Just let me into this fucking school." And they gave me a part. They came out—right, Dad?—they're like, "Oh, you're a brilliant opera singer of the next generation! Better than Paul Verratti, whatever. All right, let's give him a scholarship."

Not Luciano Pavarotti—Mel Pavarotti or something.

Well, my nickname in high school was actually Paul Viscotti.

So were you a good singer?

I guess, yeah. I mean, here's the thing that's interesting about that whole situation: I was imitating an opera singer. 

I faked it. 

I remember once—I was with all my friends in choir after I took myself out of special ed, by the way. And I remember the semester after I took myself out of special ed, after class, I was hanging out with my friends in the choir room. And I was making fun of them. I was like, "Aaaahhh," and the opera teacher comes up to the choir teacher. She's like, "You're amazing! You should be in choir." And so I was like, "OK, OK." So I joined choir. And then I went, like, all-regional and all that. But I never took it seriously. I mean, I was making fun of them.

I'm still making fun of them.

Yeah, do you think there are any psychology kids in the psychology program who are like, "I'm going to get in through the opera program"? Like, you know, B.F. Skinner loved to tap dance, but Harvard didn't have a tap dance program.

Well, I did a whole year of the opera major, which was not torture—but torture. Because I had to take dance classes. It wasn't the singing that was torture. I had to take ballet classes. They wanted to make you a triple threat. So I had to take ballet classes, I had to do Shakespeare—I'm a terrible actor—and all this stuff.

And I remember, if I can tell the part of the story—this was all my plan, right? To go to the psychology department. So I waited until the end of my first year. And I went to the department and I said, "Hey," to the secretary, "do you think maybe I could be a minor in psychology?" You know, it's called the "foot in the door" technique. You never tell someone on a first date what you really want to do with them. Right? It's like, "Can I…" You know what I'm saying?

So they're like, "Sure, of course, no problem. You can be a minor. No one's ever been this excited to be a minor in psychology at Carnegie Mellon." And what's fascinating about that situation is—they had rejected me, right? I was so scared that they were going to look at my SAT scores or my IQ score from when I was lying or whatever. This secretary could care less. She was eating her bologna sandwich, for one. She's like, "Will you leave me the fuck alone? Here's your minor. You can have two minors if you want. I don't give a fuck."

And I remember skipping in my tights on the way back to my dorm room that day—because I had come from dance class earlier that day—and I had this paper in my hand. 

You don't believe me, that's why I was wearing tights. Nick. Nick. OK. 

And I was skipping back. I had this paper in hand. And there was this moment where I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I want to devote the rest of my life to helping people get to the other side."

What I realized is, if you can get yourself into a situation where there are high expectations in that environment, you can do anything you want. They didn't ask to see my SAT score. They just assumed—because I don't know why—they assumed, because I'm an opera major, that I'm smart. But they assumed it. And then, I've always been cheeky, so I was like, "How far can I take this?"

So I actually applied to the computer science department—because they have the highest SAT score requirements in the country, even more than MIT. And I was rejected because of my very low—I mean, I had very low SAT scores. So I was like, "How cheeky would that be?" I don't even want to do computer science. But how cheeky would it be to be able to tell this story someday?

So I applied—and I got in. To the computer science program. And I have a degree in human-computer interaction, which I've done nothing with. I just wanted to tell the story here—

But, you still got time, you might straighten up. One of the things that is important about the book is that when you talk about overcoming a victim mindset, you are not saying that people have not been hurt and that groups have not been hurtYou stress that there is a—

That's exactly what I'm saying.

OK, well, I misread this. I'm sorry.

Of course, of course.

You know, that groups and individuals have suffered real trauma. And that we need to acknowledge that—that that's part of being a better society. But also, as an individual, being able to move forward, like, recognize what is happening. Can you talk a little bit about how this concept of empowerment—how do you move it from the individual level to the kind of larger social level?

Oh wow. You want to go there?

Yeah. I insist.

OK, OK. I wasn't planning on the last chapter of this book being about group dynamics and group victimhood. But it felt—when I was writing Chapter 10, it was a year and a half ago—the protests on Columbia were in—

And I was like, you know, I need to write a chapter about this. About  is peace ever possible when you have various groups competing in the victimhood Olympics? Right? And so yeah, I wrote about this and have come to the conclusion that we're never going to move forward as a society if we can't acknowledge that another group might also be a victim.

It's almost like the human mind can't wrap its head around the idea that there can be multiple victims at the same time. And the social psychology studies that I came across were mind-boggling and so eye-opening. Because they showed that a simple experimental tweak—such as "I recognize your suffering too"—can actually lower the temperature by a standard deviation, which is a lot.

So I felt called, you know—just like—I also felt called to do something on Columbia's campus, for instance. And I was part of these listening groups on campus, where I tried to bring together people from the encampments and pro-Israel students—

These are called listening tables. Can you explain that a little bit? Because it sounds kind of great.

Thank you. I think it's a great idea in theory. It went off the rails. But yeah, I ended up in The New York Times, where, of course, all they focused on was the activist yelling at me. 

So what is the listening table about?

OK, yeah. Well, the theory of the listening tables is that we wanted to just bring people to listen to each other, right? Without judgment. Give everyone a fair hearing. It was really grounded in what I think is so important, which is Carl Rogers' notion of unconditional positive regard.

Which Carl Rogers found— is most important thing for lowering the temperature. He would have really aggressive patients, and if you just showed them unconditional positive regard, he reported that their aggression was really lowered a lot.

Can you explain who Carl Rogers is? 

Has anyone heard of Carl Rogers?

He was generally regarded, in the second half of the 20th century, as the most important kind of therapist figure. And the second is often Albert Ellis. And I want to get to him in a second because you're kind of doing both. So Carl Rogers was the guy who really pioneered client-centered therapy—right? Where he would ask you—

Person-centered.

Person-centered.

It really treats people as humans first. The humanistic psychology approach is one that I take. I call myself a humanistic psychologist. I think that we should treat all people with dignity, respect—regardless of their background.

I don't think suffering is a competition. That's another part of my theory about this. And we treat people as though their inner experience matters. Whatever you're feeling and you're thinking is valid. You know? And I can listen to it nonjudgmentally and give you that sort of ability to speak about it. Because a lot of people grew up with families where they were told it was not ok to have your own needs. You know?

So there are a lot of people who have narcissistic parents. That's a thing. You know?

Are you talking about your father? Who's in the audience right now.

My dad's a big narcissist. You know the worst thing is—he'll never even realize we're talking about him.

My dad's probably the least narcissistic human on this planet, I just want to say. Like, I often say to my dad, "Have a little more fucking narcissism." You know? Like, he's so humble.

So at the listening tables, you were trying to kind of employ a Rogerian technique.

Absolutely. I came in with the best of intentions.

So why did that not work?

It's tough because it got hijacked by a Palestinian activist who immediately started going into language such as, "Well, why should I listen to all the people doing genocide at this table?" Right? And it's like, OK, where do I go from there?

I want us to listen to each other. But then you start—you know. I mean, that's hard. That's hard. And it also puts me in a difficult position, you know? Because I want her to be heard. I'm not here to get a specific point of view.

And I realize just how complex these dynamics are when you really want everyone to be heard, but then language starts coming up where you're literally accusing someone else. You put people on the defensive. And that wasn't the spirit I wanted, right?

So I tried my best to lower the temperature and quell that. But the cat was already out of the bag, you know? And this person wouldn't let in one of my Jewish students to the table. And I asked her five times. I said, "Can you please let my student sit at the table?" "Nope. Nope." She was like that, you know?

And I was like, oh no, we're Mr. Nice Guy—you know? Like, there's a point where I'm like, "No. Oh hell no." And people are like, "This is supposed to be the listening table." Suddenly I was the—fuck the listening table.

Like, "My fucking Jewish student deserves a place at this table!"

So at that moment, you kind of shifted from Carl Rogers to Albert Ellis, who was the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy—which is a forerunner of cognitive behavioral therapy. And one of the things he did is, he would argue with his clients—or his people. And somebody would say, "Well, this happened to me, and I feel bad." And instead of being Carl Rogers and saying, "I see you, and I hear that, and tell me about that," he would be like, "Well, what did you expect?"

I mean, does the work that you do go back and forth between these two kinds of approaches?

Yes. Yes. I mean,that's very insightful, what you just said. I also liked his sense of humor. Albert Ellis' sense of humor. I preferred it more than Carl Rogers' sense of humor.

Yeah. I don't know—

Did Carl Rogers even have a sense of humor?

I know Albert Ellis, he used to sell T-shirts saying, "Don't should on me." Then people start saying, "You should do this or that," it's time to push back.

He said, "Don't must-erbate all over yourself." Get it? "Must." "I must do this. I must…"

Explain how the Ellis approach informs overcoming a victim mindset.

The reason why I'm being a little bit hesitant is because I don't really want to call it tough love. Let me just say it clearly: finding my voice in this book was tough, because I knew that I had my own voice, and I didn't see it well represented in any extreme approach.

So on the one side, you have the coddlers. I roll my eyes whenever I go on Instagram and I see one of these trauma influencers saying things like, "It's ok, you're an asshole. You've had trauma. Just sign up for my newsletter and I'll keep telling you that." I couldn't deal with that anymore. 

I snapped.

And then on the other end, you have the "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" people, which are equally as annoying. They completely ignore any context. It's like, "Stop, sissy boy. Stop crying." 

That wasn't my vibe.

So I was like, what is my vibe? And I call it honest love. And with honest love—so I am kind of a combination. Because on the one hand, I'm Carl Rogers. I want to validate. But I don't want to stop there. I want to validate, and I want to empower. And I think that's what's missing in our society today. We stop at the validation. We're like, "Oh my God, it's terrible, it's terrible," but we don't also say, "but…" and "and…"

Like yes, and—improv. I'm a big fan of improv. Yes, and—"You got this." "Yes, a terrible thing happened to you, and I show you empathy for that." I think that's what the "love" part is. But I think the "honest" part of honest love, which is the approach I call it, is then saying, "And you can do this. You can move forward. You can overcome this." You know? 

Could you, to go back to the listening table, in a context like a college campus—a highly charged one like Columbia—what do you do to get to the next stage of dialogue or tolerance or pluralism if it seems really hard to have that kind of conversation?

I mean, I have all sorts of crazy ideas. They shouldn't be crazy, but—

It would be really cool for people from various sides of the Palestinian—like, Israelis and Palestinians—I'd love to see them come together and form a coalition against terrorism. You don't see that, at all. There are various things that I think could really…

You know, they say that the only thing that's ever going to save this planet and cause peace is if an alien comes to try to kill us all. Then we all bond together against the alien and we forgot our own differences, right? I would love to see that, because there's so much petty fighting that is so unnecessary, and also points the finger at the wrong enemy.

You mentioned briefly before you're in the humanistic tradition of psychology. A previous book was about Abraham Maslow and kind of extended and updated his ideas about things like self-actualization and realizing potential.

Why is that kind of psychology not the main psychology? Particularly coming out of World War II—where people saw unbelievable and at that point unprecedented horrors, both in the concentration and death camps of Europe but also throughout the world, just mass destruction and dehumanization. And then you have people like Maslow, people like Viktor Frankl—who was in the camps himself—coming out with a radical, optimistic vision of like, "You know what? We are actually doing better. We can do better than ever. And we can all become the person that we want to become."

Talk a little bit about where that—

I really feel like I'm carrying on the baton from Maslow. I feel a great resonance with him. When I wrote my book Transcend, I wrote in the dedication, "To a dear friend I've never met." Because Maslow had talked about how he feels like he's dear friends with people he's never met. He's like, "I admit it's a bit one-sided, but I feel a great friendship with Spinoza." He was a great fan of Spinoza.

And I felt that way about Maslow. I feel really committed to constantly trying to show people that there's a higher potential to humans. It's hard right now to see it.

I mean, in a previous conversation, you had said, "Darkness is strong, and it seems very appealing."

It's so strong right now.

Yeah. So how do we light up the darkness? Or how do we move out of the dark?

Well, individually—and then there's a collective solution. So individually—and this is actually Part Two of the book—is finding the light within yourself. Focusing… where you put your attention is where you place your life, in a lot of ways.

If you can find the parts of you that aren't broken—if you can really find your character strengths and discover what your character strengths are, and lead with those strengths, lead with your values, find some sort of positive contribution you want to make to society, or something creatively you want to self-actualize…

I don't think everything has to be nonprofit, you know, "save the world." But finding something where there's a synergy—where what is good for you is automatically good for the world—that's the phrase Maslow and Ruth Benedict used: synergy. That's the way forward.

And at the group level, there's a difference between healthy pride for your in-group and only liking your in-group because you hate the out-group. And what we're seeing now is the latter. We're seeing all the—no one actually likes anyone, including themselves.

The Democrats—do they like themselves right now?

I don't think so. I mean, you're a libertarian. You're a libertarian, so you wouldn't trust me.

I'm the wrong person to ask. I mean, you're the wrong person to answer that. Do the libertarians like themselves?

Not the ones I know.

Yeah, they're kind of a little bit self-loathing.

Yeah, sure. But they're individualists and self-loathing, so it kind of makes sense.

Actually, I think they're more internally consistent than Democrats are about it. But my point is, right now there's a lot more of, "Yeah, let's band together so that we can hate the out-group," as opposed to, "Well, here are actually our positive qualities as an individual—and that also applies at a group level."

You stress in that final chapter, which is really quite remarkable—that doing something for other people reinforces your sense of identity, right? And your individualism, by thinking about the public good. What are some examples that you think really encapsulate that kind of energy?

Well, I think that self-transcendent experience is where it's at. So if you can get into the flow state of consciousness where time kind of recedes into the background and you're just one with whatever you're doing—maybe you're creating or—

Did the red light just go on?

No.

Oh ok. So if you can be one with whatever you're doing… there's something like social flow. Like what we're in right now, you know? I think—are we in social flow? I just got us out of it.

But where you feel like time kind of doesn't matter. You really are one with the person you're talking to. You can also see it when you're creating something. Are you one with what you're creating?

And then you can actually scale this up. So flow can be scaled up to peak experiences, to even mystical experiences. People who do a lot of psychedelics talk about this very rare experience—the mystical experience. But there's some really interesting research coming out now showing a correlation between psychedelic use and reporting a sense of oneness with all humans.

I wrote an article once…

Sounds like somebody is shaking a very big tumbler of something.

Of something, yeah. Yeah, thanks for the commentary on that.

It is very interesting. There's a research that I talked about: What would it be like if you actually really believed that we're all one? Where researchers did a study where they looked to see: Do you have a oneness mindset to life? And they found that people who actually believe that we are all one—they were happier. Their well-being was higher. They were less likely to get in fights with others. 

They were much less likely to have a victim mindset.

If I may integrate my book Transcend with this book—which is basically the same title, just Rise Above, same shit, you know. What's my next book going to be called? 

Like Higher, Higher, Higher?

High as fuck.

That should totally be the name of my next book.

Scott as a way to kind of finish things, in the beginning of Rise Above, rise a, overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself and realize your full potential. You say that part of the point of the book is to help people develop a more flexible identity, and I found that really fascinating because  you, you know, you're talking about people having a core sense of who they are, but not thinking like I, you know, you know, I'm like a stone and everything that comes at me chips away at me. You're talking about something very different. And can you talk about what you mean by a more flexible identity and how that kind of summarizes what we've been talking about? 

Yeah. One example is I've been an advocate of neurodiversity my whole life. You know, I've written books about it. I've been rah rah neurodiversity. But I've noticed. But there was a headline the other day, that said the majority of people in the U.K. now self-identify as neurodivergent. So then it's like… So it's like, what the. So then who's what does that word even mean anymore? You know, if everyone is neuro, and I, and I think there is a real trend for people to want to identify with some part of victim identity or some sort of like, you know, and also to want to understand themselves, you know. 

But always in terms of a kind of rigid, non changing reality.

Correct. So in a lot of ways I actually went against my own sort of lifelong mission and kind of I have a whole chapter on sensitivity, for instance. That's one, that's a big one. So highly sensitive people. I'm a highly sensitive person. But, I think it's important. I don't know what that was. Is someone a highly sensitive person over there?

Yeah, yeah. But I think it's important to hold that identity lightly, because I see what happens with people who don't hold it lightly, and they expect everyone to tiptoe around them. You know, they go out in public, they're like, oh, no, you know, everybody please fan me because I'm a highly sensitive person. Oh yeah, give, feed me grapes, you know, you know, and it's like, no, like, calm down.

Like just because you're a highly sensitive person doesn't mean you have to be 100 percent. You have to be a highly sensitive person in all situations, at all times. Basically, don't, don't imprison yourself with the label you've put on yourself. And that's a big part of my whole life's, you know, from my first book on, Gifted, is it like, let's like, not be prisoners of our labels?

Is there, is it you know, is is there one this one trick that will help people relax a little bit to know that you will, you will survive the petty disappointments and kind of humiliations of everyday life? 

[Inaudible] Don't feel like you have to, you know, reduce yourself to a particular identity.

But also, if I had to leave on one note, like if I was to croak right now, I would say, I was actually just on Tom Nash's Last Meal last meal. By the way, it's a really cool show. You talk as if it's your last meal ever. You are more than your victim identity. You are a whole person, and there's a lot of light within you.

And there are lots of parts of you that aren't broken. And you really don't do yourself. You do yourself a huge disfavor if you reduce yourself to your victim identity. 

Okay. That's a great note to end on. Let's give a big round of applause for Scott Barry Kaufman the book his Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential. Thanks so much. 

Yeah thank you Nick and thank you. Thank you for coming out.

 

• Audio Production: Ian Keyser
• Video Editor: Paul Alexander
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