Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D., ABPP, on Intimacy and Narcissism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/11/12

Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D., ABPP, is the Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J. University Professor, professor of psychology, and by courtesy, religious studies and the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University and directs the Applied Spirituality Institute. He is a scholar in residence of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, the largest applied ethics center in the world. Additionally, he is an emeritus adjunct clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He currently serves as editor of the APA journal, Spirituality in Clinical Practice. He is an APA fellow (in Divisions 12, 36, 38, 46, and 47) and served on APA’s Council of Representatives (2016-21). He has published 29 books, including Living Ethically in an Unethical World (2024), Spiritually Informed Therapy (2024), Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis, 2002-2012 (2011), and Contemporary Clinical Psychology, Fourth Edition (2022). He has published over 250 journal articles and book chapters and writes and maintains a private clinical practice as a licensed psychologist in Menlo Park, CA. He has been frequently featured in most major national and international media outlets. Time Magazine featured him in 2005 and referred to him in a 2002 cover story about clerical abuse as one of “three leading American Catholics.” He served as vice-chair of the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other child protection Church review boards. He received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Brown University, an M.A. and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Kansas, and completed his clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship in clinical and health psychology at Yale University.

Plante discusses narcissism in American culture, its impact on relationships, and how online environments exacerbate self-presentation issues. They explored different narcissistic types, the erosion of community values, and coping strategies for narcissism, emphasizing early intervention and fostering healthy environments for children.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Thomas Plante. Do you pronounce the “e” at the end, or is it just flat?

Professor Thomas Plante: Just “Plant.” 

Jacobsen: Well, today we’re here with Thomas Plante, apology, to discuss narcissism and relationships, along with some recent technological developments that have transformed how people relate to even the most intimate aspects of life. When you look at the landscape of narcissism and intimacy, who do you see as the first social victims of narcissism, and what elements of intimacy tend to get knocked down a bit?

Plante: The challenge is that our culture, at least in America—I can’t speak for other cultures, but certainly in America—focuses more and more on the theme, “It’s all about me.” What’s in my best interest? What pleases me? What do I want? Even with dating and dating apps, people have their checklists—this is what I want—almost like a checklist for qualities you’d want in a car, a house, or food at a restaurant.

The problem is that when we nurture a narcissistic culture, it creates problems for intimacy and the give-and-take in a quality, long-term, satisfying relationship. If it’s all about me, then it’s not about us, and that causes significant problems. So, I think the major dilemma is that as we continue to nurture and support narcissistic qualities in our culture, including how we raise children, we reduce the ability to negotiate the give-and-take necessary for a fulfilling, intimate, long-term relationship.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To be subtle here in terms of clarification on “give-and-take, you don’t mean scorekeeping but simply the regular reciprocity found in a healthy union, correct?

Thomas Plante: Yes.

Jacobsen: The same principle applies to friendships, business relationships, or any healthy orientation of any social dynamic.

Plante: It should. We always have to remind ourselves. The world doesn’t revolve around us. We might like it too. It just doesn’t. The more that we are in touch with each other, the more we are here in the community. Now, some cultures do this much better than others. For example, a few weeks ago, I was in Japan. Talking to people there, they shared that nobody wants to stand out and be unique; everyone wants to fit in. Watching crowds coming out of the Tokyo subway, dressed the same, heading to work—it’s very different from America, where narcissistic culture is on steroids. It’s about give-and-take and being mindful and attentive to others’ needs, which becomes harder and harder for people.

Jacobsen: Does the online space affect this too? Things like alternate personas, pseudonyms, anonymity, in terms of the things people are willing to say, ask at one another, if not to one another. 

Plante: People do remarkable things from the safety of their computers without having to actually confront people in a personal way. People can be incredibly nasty. People can present themselves in a certain way that is absolutely not based on reality. They can do that all from the comfort of their own computer, wherever they’re located. That’s a huge problem. The other problem with social media is the fact that we’re always engaging in these social comparisons. So there’s a lot of research about upward and downward social comparisons, and people can present themselves as everybody is just great and wonderful and having a fabulous time. That makes people feel bad, and because of these upward comparisons. So, they’re more likely to then want to compensate for that by trying to pump up their own self-presentation. Then you get into an arms race about who’s more fabulous and wonderful and brilliant and whatever. This makes everything worse. 

Jacobsen: I haven’t actually thought about this one. Are there areas of narcissism in American culture that are more presenting of a super duper self than others? So, I’m not just generic; I’m better than everyone and everything, and in every quality, I have more specific aspects, smarts, and looks–I don’t know. 

Plante: First off, we have to understand that there are different kinds of narcissism out there. There are different flavours. Some people are more benign narcissists who want all the attention. They like attention. They like to think of themselves in a favourable way and present themselves in a favourable way, but they’re not trying to hurt anybody. They’re not trying to push anybody down. Those are more benign narcissists. Then we have these what we might call phallic narcissists who are like they need to not only feel great but need to push other people down, insult, bully, and try to make other people feel bad.

Then we have what we call the malignant narcissist, for example, which tends to be the most dangerous, which some people would say that some American politicians suffer from–where they have this combination of narcissism, paranoia, and antisocial personality, which means that not only does the world revolve around them; they think that everybody’s out to get them. They’re willing to lie and cheat and steal. It doesn’t matter because the ends justify the means. There’s no empathy for anybody else. Those are the most dangerous kind.

So, there are a lot of different flavours of narcissism comes in different flavours. There may be what we call comorbidity with that narcissism. In other words, other kinds of psychiatric problems are associated with this person or whatever other than just narcissism. So, we have to be kind of thoughtful about that. We have to kinda be mindful that the thing is, is that and it’s hard for people. We have to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. That’s really hard for a lot of people to do. 

Jacobsen:” Let’s take a direct question in inverse order, just for fun. If you were to take the common characteristics of a healthy person, psychology, psychological structure, and relationship, and then you were to look at an unhealthy person, in terms of what we’re talking about with regards to narcissism. What are the factors that are most key to identifying healthy versus unhealthy? So, looking at narcissism but trying to emphasize the more constructive, positive, healthy versions of people.

Plante: A certain degree of narcissism, self-interest or whatever, is important for survival. For example, I teach ethics. I’ve been teaching ethics for 35 years at Stanford and 30 years at Santa Clara University. When we ask students over three and a half decades to talk about how they decide to solve problems and ethical challenges, egoism, which is basically a kind of narcissism, is always part of the equation. They’re always gonna consider the egoism or the narcissistic view about “what’s in my best interest?”.

And that in and of itself isn’t necessarily so bad. Some ethicists will say that egoism can actually be a good thing. It can be for a variety of reasons. But can we temper that within with other principles that can operate, like the common good, like putting yourself in other people’s shoes, cooperation and collaboration and so forth? So, a little bit of narcissism isn’t necessarily so bad.

It’s just that when it sucks all the air out of the room. That’s when it’s particularly problematic. So I think there are a couple of ways of thinking about this. So, for example, if we can see our other people, I know it’s hard for people as family, brothers and sisters or something like that. If we could see the sacred in them, if we can see the importance in them, something like that, then we’re more likely to treat people well. Now, some people are able to do this, and we have to be thoughtful about this.

They can say, “Well, look. I benefit when I treat other people well, because then I have a good reputation. People like me. People cooperate with me.” Lots of times people can come to appreciate that they get a lot out of treating other people well and respectfully and all of that.

So, in some respects, sometimes we might call that altruism that is in the service of narcissism. It can, so somebody might say, “Hey, look, I’m treating people very well, and people love me, and they think the world of me, and that makes me feel good.” Maybe that’s not so bad. 

Jacobsen: What would you consider, in essence, a healthy countercultural relationship? 

Plante: That’s hard. Are we talking about it? It depends, at least. 

Jacobsen: That’s a good point. It was a pretty general question. I’ll rephrase. What would you do if we had a rising measurement of either self-perception or objectively identified narcissism? This changes the culture more towards unhealthy relationships. People think more about me rather than we, et cetera. So what would you characterize, given that the current culture is like that, as a counterculture relationship? What would you consider a healthy one, where people are treating each other decently, benevolently, with a give-and-take/with reciprocity, thinking of the general commons and their own ‘commons of 2’–as I call it–and so on?

Plante: Yes. I think it can be very refreshing, very refreshing when you do bump into people like that, communities like that, where they’re sort of being very gracious to one another, taking care of each other, have other people’s best interests in mind and stuff like that. So I think what helps with that is if you can have smaller communities that seem to nurture and support that. Now, so as an example, people may have found that in their religious communities over the years, their religious-spiritual communities.

They may have found people with a like mind. People have shared values or something like that. They may have found intimate relationships outside of those communities and matchmaking situations in these communities, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The other thing is that people used to not move around so much. Now, people move around all the time, across the country, the world, and so forth, so they don’t kind of hang around people that they grew up with.

And you’re just very much a part of the community. It doesn’t have to be religious; it could be set completely secular, but you’re part of a community where people know each other again, and they take care of each other and things like that. We seem to have lost that because people first move around a lot. Secondly, more and more people are not affiliated with any kind of spiritual or religious kinda community that keeps them together and takes care of one another and all of that. So there are so many now kinda lone rangers, if you wanna call it that, lone rangers. So where do they go to find community?

Maybe their yoga class. Where do they go? And so I think it’s really hard. When you don’t have that community, then you don’t not only do you not have certain values and things like that that are being reinforced and so forth. You don’t have people kind of watching out for you. You don’t have people who are vetting for you, so when people are dating, for example, through anonymous apps and stuff like that.

There’s really no vetting process there. Whereas if you’re part of a community, people know each other, they know the scoop, they can fill each other in on who’s behaving and who’s not behaving, who’s been naughty, who’s been nice, or something like that. So we’ve lost that. It’s unfortunate, but I think we need to somehow find a way for contemporary society to try to get that back. 

Jacobsen: We have a rising secular community or, better yet, a demographic rise.

Secular communities: What about people who are trying to do that in a small way, with things like Sunday assemblies, ethical and cultural movements, and humanist communities and societies? Do those do you meet the same sustainability standards? 

Plante: I don’t think they do, to be honest.

I understand that those attempts, those attempts, that they’ve tried to do that kind of thing, but I tend to think that most of those things have kind of fizzled out. They’re not that sustainable. That also seems to be true for these spiritual-religious communities that tend to have very little dogma, very little tradition, or something like that. For example, the Unitarians tend not to have that many churchgoers; you could say that they are long-term sustainable. Now, it’s kind of a tough one because a lot of the religious and spiritual communities have been suffering with fewer and fewer attendees. Certainly, the pandemic really put the kibosh on a lot of that.

It was already declining. It really declined quite, quite significantly. In fact, Gallup has done polling for many, many years in this regard. If you ask people, have you been to some kind of a religious, spiritual service in the past seven days? People historically, about 40% of the American population said yes. Then that went down to 30%, but that’s based on self-report.

And if you actually look at the people who actually show up, that 30% turns into 15%. So it keeps kind of going down. The spiritual and religious communities may have their issues, but they’ve got a long-standing tradition and so forth that have sustained these communities over decades, centuries, and even millennia. Some of these newer communities. I don’t think they’ve been very sustainable. So, I think we have to find some way to create or nurture more contemporary communities that, maybe, have some of the benefits of some of these ancient traditions but are modernized in a certain way.

In fact, I just published an article recently in one of the professional journals about how you have to change or die and that some of these communities. Unless, they’re willing to look at themselves and make some changes, may just die on the vine. For example, there’s an article in this week’s New Yorker Magazine that talks about shakers. There’s only apparently, there’s only 2 shakers left: 2. Or just the New Yorker article.

It’s a tradition, that that is certainly dying. That can that can happen to many other traditions too. They’re not careful. 

Jacobsen: Then we have the elephants in the digital room. What has online pornography done through dating dating and mating?

Plante: Yes, that’s a very good question. There’s some good research about that; I’ve got patients in my private practice over the years who have had some troubles with that.

The pornography thing is a problem for a couple of reasons. First off, young people and kids that’s how they’re learning about sex and some relationships and sexuality through online pornography. In fact, the New York Times actually, the New York Times Magazine had a big feature article. I don’t know. Maybe it was a year or two ago on this very issue.

Basically, this makes the argument that this is how people are learning about sex through pornography. That’s not a very good way to learn about sex and relationships. Then, people who are engaging in online or other kinds of pornography can have an addictive element where they need more and more excitement in order to meet their satisfaction needs. So things can get a little bit out of hand there. Then, when they try to maintain or start a regular relationship, they can find it boring compared to what they’ve seen online.

So, I do worry about online pornography for a wide variety of reasons. I’ve had a number of patients in my practice who have really struggled with it, where it had been quite damaging for their attempts at finding satisfactory, normal kind of regular relationships. Some of these folks have gotten themselves in trouble. They’ve had it on their work computer. They have had child pornography pop up. 

Jacobsen: Oh my gosh.

Plante: Which is illegal, of course. So, once you start walking down that road, I don’t think it generally ends very well. 

Jacobsen: If you were to characterize the ethic of a narcissistic person or culture, in fact, individual and collective, what would be that ethic? 

Plante: The ethic. The ethic is like, “It’s all about me.” It’s just the rallying cry if you will. It’s all about me. There was once a wonderful I. It reminds me of a line from a movie a number of years ago with Bette Midler. When she plays this role, she’s very narcissistic. She’s talking about herself, talking about herself. Then she finally pauses and says, “Oh, enough about me. What do you think about me?”

Jacobsen: [Laughing]. 

Plante: And it was kind of funny because there’s so much truth to that. You think about it.

You probably know people in your life. I certainly know plenty of people in my life who are more than happy to talk about themselves, and they’re whatever, but they never ever ask you a question about yourself. It just doesn’t happen. So, unless you bring something up, they will not ask. And if you do bring something up, then, about yourself or you start to tell a story or whatever, their eyes glass over, or they start looking around or something like that. And that’s part of our culture. So, I think the rallying cry is all about me. It really isn’t if that can only be damaging to satisfactory relationships. 

Jacobsen: How has Professor Jean Twenge’s research played into this? I am aware of a number of people who reference her work. 

Plante: I know I know of her work. It’s down in San Diego. She does great work, has a lot of good quality publications, gets a lot of press, and so forth. So, I think, yes, people do pay attention to her work. It does underscore, particularly young people’s, way of being today. Because she does focus primarily on young people, I think she does great work and research, and you certainly hear a lot about it.

Jacobsen: How does the self-absorption of a narcissist differ from a person who tends to find more meaning, value, value, and sustainability of self-concept from being alone more than from being in a community? So they like people. They have nothing wrong with people. They have no social deficits. They’re just more introverted in terms of their spacing.

Plante: Yes, that’s fine. It’s fine because, certainly, America, at least American culture, kind of pulls for extroversion. It’skind of funny because I do a lot of psychological evaluations for people who want to become clerics. They wanna become priests, nuns, or deacons in the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, or Orthodox churches.

I do a lot of, well over 1,000 of, these. So, we complete the psychological evaluation and testing. A lot of people will say that they experience themselves as introverted. But when you look at the testing, they’re not. They don’t come out introverted compared to national norms. I have experienced an awful lot with people who, because our culture really pulls for extroversion, think they’re very introverted, but they’re just like everybody else.

It’s just that extroverts get so much attention and are reinforced in our culture. So there’s nothing wrong with those who tend to be more introverted and interested in more alone time than others. They get to recharge their batteries by being by themselves as opposed to being with other people. There is that well-known author, Susan Cain, who wrote a very popularbook called Quiet, which talks about life as a narcissist. I think it got an awful lot of press, and a lot of introverts kind ofcame out of the woodwork after that book was published.

But no, there’s nothing. Folks who are introverted are not necessarily narcissistic. They just need that kind of alone time to kind of recharge their batteries and feel more comfortable. That’s perfectly fine. Hopefully, they can find pathways in relationships, careers, and so forth that are suitable for their personality type.

Jacobsen: What have you seen in your practice as the most extreme cases of narcissism in terms of just interpersonal dealings? What comes to mind? What stories can you tell without any identifying material that you could talk about publicly? 

Plante: Yes, you certainly have to be thoughtful about confidentiality and all of that. You have to be careful not to disclose too much when you’re in this business. But, no, I’ve certainly had patients who are narcissistic on steroids. They’ve said some pretty amazing things. I can remember one couple I was seeing; they were engaged, but they were not yet married. They were having some conflict. He said right in front of her that he thinks about cars and that his fiancee is like a Volvo, very reliable and very stable.

But he’s the kind of guy that needs a Porsche now and then. He was trying to say that she was; she’s a great wife in terms of keeping things stable, but he needs some more excitement. Monogamy may be hard for him, so that was pretty remarkable. Another patient was gonna boycott her son’s wedding.

Jacobsen: [Laughing]. 

Plante: She didn’t like who he was going to get married to. When you kind of unpack why she was so upset with the person her son was gonna marry, basically, she said, when you kind of really get to it, “Because she’s not just like me. She’s not just like me.”

Jacobsen: Horrifying. 

Plante: Her son should marry somebody just like me.

Jacobsen: So, she was gonna boycott the wedding. Luckily, she ultimately did not boycott the wedding with a littleencouragement on my part. But there’s another guy. He got himself in trouble. He caused a scene. He was a college student who caused a kind of scene where he ended up throwing those big water coolers that are pretty big.

He was having a conflict with a secretary or admin in an office building or something. He was a customer. He got upset, so he ended up pulling one of those things out and throwing it at her. 

Jacobsen: Oh my.

Plante: When I asked, he said, “Well, she deserved it. She wasn’t giving me what I wanted.” 

And, you’re like, “Okay. All right. We have a lot of work to do here.” So, here I live in Silicon Valley. I live and work in Silicon Valley in Northern California. You’ve got it: a lot of these very successful tech. Executives, and so forth, are notorious for their narcissistic tendencies. And they can really create a lot of damage among those who either live with or work closely with them. So here, certainly in Silicon Valley, narcissism is very much reinforced, especially when people are so successful. They’re billionaires or close to it, and they feel like everything they do and say is a gift from God.

Jacobsen: Being mindful of time here. When you have people who come to you, one or both partners are narcissistic; in terms of treatment modalities, how much can you attenuate overall narcissism? Also, the subcomponents of what we call narcissism in a clinical setting, a therapeutic setting, can be diminished or even eliminated–differing opinions. 

Plante: Yes, because people, as they develop and get a little older and whatnot, just become who they are for the most part; people don’t change their personality very much once it’s kind of solidified. So if someone comes to me and they’re in their twenties, thirties, forties, as opposed to being little kids or something, basically, your goal is to try to help them develop the strategies, the coping skills, and so forth, that can help them cope and manage with who they are as opposed to radical change who they are.

That’s typically the goal. So when when so it’s trying to help them develop skills, strategies, feedback mechanisms, and so forth, that can help put the brakes on some of the impulses that they have to act in a narcissistic grandiose way. So, again, you’re not really trying to cure them. You’re trying to help them cope. Some things, in the psychiatric psychological world, you can kind of fix and some things you can’t.

Really, it’s about coping. Certainly when it comes to personality styles or personality disorders or anything like that, it’s really more about coping than curing. 

Jacobsen: It’s unfortunate. But if the evidence goes there, then we follow up. 

Plante: Right. Right. I think early intervention is always helpful because you see this stuff starting to unfold early in the game. Usually, people don’t wake up at age 40, and all of a sudden, they become narcissists. Usually, you can kind of see this coming. So, it’s helpful if you can try to engage in early intervention. Also, as I say, it takes a village here. When you think about it, it’s not just psychotherapy or anything like that that can that can help. It takes a lot of different things. So when I think of my own son, my own son is 28 years old.

I think he’s a great guy. I think he’s a wonderful guy. You think about, “Okay, how he became who he is? Well, certainly, part of it is genetics. Part of it is parenting, and part of it is the village that surrounds him. He was very active in Boy Scouts, and he was very active in music. He was very active in track and cross country. In some respects, you kind of shape people not only through culture and parenting but also the kind of community that surrounds them. I think we all have to be very thoughtful about that, if we’re parents or whatever, and be very mindful of what kind of communities we can surround our children with so that they can be good human beings.

So, for example, as I mentioned, my son was really into Boy Scouts. I was not a kid myself. Even to this very day, including a few hours ago, whenever I text him, I always text him an eagle emoji to remind him that he’s an Eagle Scout and should behave as such. I’ve been doing this ever since he went off to college. Literally, every time I text him, I alwaystext him an eagle as a little reminder that this is who you are. Embrace, embrace that. This is just a friendly reminder.

Jacobsen: Thomas, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. 

Plante: Sure. I’m always happy to help.

Last updated May 3, 2025. These terms govern all In Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices. In Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.