What Heals Narcissism: And Why Its Healing Is a Global Imperative (2021)

In this video, Gary Rosenthal, author of Re-Visioning Narcissism: Healing Heresies for Polarized Times, offers a perspective on narcissism as viewed from the intersection of four avenues of vision: the mythic, historical, psychological, and spiritual. Historically, narcissism is arguably the earliest recognized personality disorder. Greek, and then Roman poets were writing about it over two millennia ago, and had given us numerous versions of the myth of Narcissus and Echo, from which narcissism was first named. Yet today, narcissism remains as rampant as ever. In fact, its egocentric lack of empathy is a form of developmental arrest that has become detrimental to the world’s democracies, and its hubristic disregard of science now threatens the fate of our species. For these reasons, narcissism–as well as what will be required for healing it–have been badly in need of a revisioning. And that’s what this video will begin to provide.