Paul Conti

What might you be thinking?

What might you be feeling?

Some people have a lot of empathic attunement, but we can look at that as mechanistic, right?

It doesn't equate to care, right?

And empathic attunement can come along with empathy or not, right?

So yes, people who are narcissistic, they can mentalize well.

So you mentalize, meaning the ability to understand or to consider thoughts, feelings, motivations in other people.

So people who are narcissistic can have empathic attunement or mentalization, depending upon how we want to describe those things.

But that has nothing to do with...

with actual empathy or kindness or consideration.

There's one more thing about the narcissist is some people can be sort of benign narcissists where

They want great things for themselves, right?

But if they have enough great things, they can sort of tolerate others being happy too.

And these are people who sometimes are actually quite highly liked, right?

Because they have to have the most money, the most power, the most of anything, anything more than anyone else could challenge.

But as long as I have that, it's okay that you have some too, right?

And then that can make you happy and can make you like me, right?

So benign narcissists can be well-liked from that perspective.

But.

It's still all about them and that can change if, for example, there's a scarcity of resources now, right?