Paul Conti

But narcissism, people care about other people, but it's entirely vis-a-vis the self, right?

If I'm schizoid, I don't really notice or care much who you are.

But if I'm narcissistic, I absolutely care because I'm watching every last detail of you.

What might you have that's better than me?

It's an incredibly intense focus upon individuals.

and demographics of people, but the priority, the goal is entirely about the self, which is why they can become easy to say, I don't care if a million people die, right?

How different is that from going out and destroying one person or a million people, right?

It's in the same category of those people only, their existence is only meaningful in how it relates to me.

Right.

I mean, I don't even care about in that, like, being caring at all.

I mean, caring about in that noticing that a person exists, right?

I mean, someone who wants money and notices that there's a $100 bill out cares about that.

They don't care about the $100 bill and that doesn't mean anything to them.

It's just thoughts and feelings.

But it's going to attract attention.

They care about it because it's something that they want.

Mm-hmm.

The same way people will care about others, but only from the perspective of, do you have things that I want, or can I feel better about myself by taking something from you, by making things worse for you?

Right, so there's a difference between the mechanics of empathy.

So let's say, and we can define things different ways, but let's say empathic attunement is the ability to be attuned and to think, okay, what's going on in you?