1: “John was your classic self-absorbed, narcissistic jerk,” David Brooks quotes therapist Lori Gottlieb in her book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

“By day he worked as a writer on fabulously successful TV shows, winning Emmy after Emmy,” David writes in How to Know a Person. “But he was a monster to everyone around him, cruel, inattentive, impatient, demeaning.”

John sought out a therapist because he wasn’t … continue reading

1: M has contempt for her daughter-in-law, D. 

“The mother-in-law is always perfectly polite to D, but inside, she looks down on her,” Iris Murdoch states in her celebrated lecture “The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts,” as shared by David Brooks in his book How to Know a Person.

“But M is aware that she can be a bit superior, conventional, and old-fashioned,” Iris notes. “M … continue reading