The Narcissism of Empire: Walter White, Ozymandias, and the Israeli Psyche

How Breaking Bad Explains the Collapse of Empire—From Heisenberg to Hamas.

In this unflinching Friday Special, Enrique threads the collapse of Breaking Bad’s Heisenberg with the modern mythos of statehood and collapse. Starting with Walter White’s descent into sociopathic self-justification, he peels back each character—Skyler, Hank, Jesse, Gus—as psychological archetypes that mirror what happens to all of us when we build identities on disavowed grief and narcissistic projection.

The kicker? Israel is playing the same arc. From gaslighting the globe to weaponizing historical trauma, it mirrors Walter White’s denial, justification, and collapse. PrecisionCycle exposes how narcissism doesn’t just take down individuals—it topples empires. elevate.epo

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every empire thinks it's the exception. Until it finds itself sitting alone in the desert with blood on its hands, and no one left to lie to Walter White learned that the hard way thank you for joining me today as we discuss the psychology of Breaking Bad. Arguably one of the greatest shows in TV history. It currently features an episode. Ozzy Manus, which on IMDB is one of the only television shows rated 10 out of 10 by users and critics. It is that good. And if we take that as a image of just narcissism and psychological projection and all the. Negative that came out of the Breaking Bad World. We see how this story discusses the narcissistic collapse that we continually talk about on Precision Cycle Walter White is a very unique character to television and through this story we're able to see how our egos when left unchecked go into overdrive. as we bring this week to a close. and watch the world continue to spiral further into, chaos, let's take a moment to talk about breaking bad, honor it for the excellent work that it is, but also look at the psychological characters that, established in that show, Israel is. Really Walter White. If we want to, look at it from that perspective, this is Precision Cycle brought to you by Elevate dot epo. Thank you for joining me on a Friday. Greatly appreciated. Let's open it up. So when we talk about Breaking Bad, we're talking about character mythos created from the archetypes that this show produced. And there's great characters in this show in both the Breaking Bad and Better called Saul Universe. Obviously there's overlap there. Some characters present themselves in ways that create genuine interest and we fall in love with them. Other characters are just so evil that we also fall in love with them for different reasons. Hopefully today we can speak to some of the things that we keep coming back to in Breaking Bad because the thing that we look to in this piece of work oftentimes is how., Every empire thinks it's the exception to the rule. it thinks that it has a way to break away every empire thinks it can get away clean with some of the things that it does, It may revert to some moral high ground that they want to, engage in. But the reality through breaking bad, and through Walter White, we see how narcissism. At its core is something that just corrupts absolutely. People talk about money corrupting narcissism is the thing that corrupts, not the money So let's jump right into Breaking Bad and start to see some of these character types through the DSM lens, psychoanalytic lens. As we see what some of these motivations were driving these characters. We begin with Walter White. He is the. Narcissistic self mythologize. and this is somebody who justifies destruction under the guise of protecting his family. And that's something that's really seen throughout. Society, oftentimes people who would say that, my bad behavior is justified because I have to put food on the table because I have to provide for a family. you don't necessarily see the evil in that perspective because you are. Centering it on your own personal gain that is classic narcissism, and that is what Walter White was displaying here. It doesn't matter that you're selling drugs or creating an entire, shadow economy because you want to pay medical treatment And provide for your family after your death. but the reality is that. Is Narcissism 1 0 1, and before we begin, we should probably reset if people haven't seen Breaking Bad. It's essentially the story of Walter White, a chemistry teacher who finds out he has terminal cancer, decides he wants to pay for his insurance, medical expenses, and leave money for his family through cooking methamphetamine and selling it to the Mexican cartels. So he's essentially getting in league with organizations that he's not native to and has no previous business experience with yet we see how through time he starts to create this persona of Heisenberg who. Becomes ruthless and leads to all the worst outcomes for everyone who was in any way associated with them, including himself. but that's the understanding of Walter White, he's responding to, an issue that is very real in America, which is healthcare and the inability for people to really afford that. there's, that's one argument that isn't necessarily made in the show, but it's always a constant theme there the reason this person is conducting this criminal activity and sliding deeper into his own personal sociopathy is because he has to meet a market variable. It speaks to the pressures that a lot of people live with, real pressures a lot of people live with. when it comes to daily life, the financial pressures, the pressures of providing for your family, the pressure of understanding how the healthcare system operates and why sometimes people prescribed what they are. So we see how this generalized anxiety. Feeds this narcissistic machine within Walter to create this Heisenberg character, which is the person he transforms himself into to create the drugs and then be the ruthless, distributor of them. this operates as grandiosity masked as necessity. This is the essence of the American experience . I have to go out and provide for my family because it's expensive to live and people have to eat. So because of that, I have to operate on my grandiosity. That's not unlike people who go into business on their own pursue that aspect of their personalities to achieve their lacanian drives and reach their end goal states. But we see how. Through that process, Walter White becomes this gaslighting machine who just manipulates controls every aspect of this until the empire collapses under its own delusion, people Associated with Walter are sucked into this universe and affected in negative ways to the extent that some of them actually lose their life. We go back and you look at Howard Hamlin, who, if we look at the better Call Saul series, we see shades of this , where Howard Hamlin was murdered by, Lalo Salamanca, essentially just for wanting to get answers. That's a very good, parallel to how people in Walter's universe, their outcomes appear. People who are just. Passively affected or actively affected because Walter decides that these people are gonna be the target of his ire. How their bad outcomes usually are associated with this connection. when he says, say my name, that's not confidence. That scene where he is saying, I'm the danger he's having that conversation with Skylar White about how. he has it under control. He knows what he's doing. That's not confidence. It's the cry of a man who traded truth for control. It's the cry of a man who is hiding behind the projection that his. wounded and weak ego has to project to feel some sense of control in his life. and these are the points in the story when we wanna look at them as these are these grandiose moments that define Heisenberg. No, those are the low point moments that define Walter White and his continued decline into. his narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy to the extent where he is essentially setting up military caliber weaponry to kill entire cartel members at the end. this isn't any type of real masculine containment. And so what we're seeing here is a character that slides deeper into shame. All that is shame at the end of the day, because this is the mark of a man who knows that his life was defined by his inability to Achieve the greatness he once thought he could achieve. he walked away from an opportunity that was going to give him, a big piece of, that was gonna give him that type of success and was cut outta that. And that's the permeating theme. The fact that he was left out of this thing that exploded and became this billion dollar idea that was such the ego hit. That was the ego hit to the person who's really weakly constructed. we see how someone devolves straight into Psychopathy. Walter White is a tragic figure. Somebody who has become a meme throughout, the internet and social media, but really speaks to that inner masculinity that fails us and has us living our worst lives and doing the worst things, for ourselves. Moving on to Skyler White. Skyler White is the enabler, who features a lot of internalized shame. She oscillates between appeasement and confrontation. She's more than willing to accept the money and the riches. while at the same time throwing it back on Walter, that what he's doing is not appropriate. And that's something that a lot of women find themselves Attached to. If you go back and we look at Karen Hill from last week's goodfellow's analysis, this is the same dynamic. This is somebody who is addicted to the action, but really wants to hide behind the moral high ground. they also want to protect themselves against any type of internal shame. she represents the Compromise Conscience that stays in the system too long. How many women don't stay in the systems too long to Karen Hill, Skyler White? They're both in it because they're attracted to the danger, they're attracted to the money. They're attracted to the idea that power is just over the grasp. this is a unique. Thing that occurs with women because their narcissism is often placed in the little bit of control that they do have in society. that's theory science that goes into that statement. what we see is there is this active attempt to shame Walter while at the same time. Manipulating and encouraging bad behavior. at the end when the truth comes out, she does the right thing and decides to distance herself. you see how her guilt mirrors the guilt of citizens complicit and empire building. If we want to draw that parallel, the guilt that people. In society experience, when they see that their government is killing other people in their name, we oftentimes absorb that as a common, guilt that has us projecting our worst parts of ourselves as well. Skylar White, while she does present this moral compass in the story, is someone who is highly complicit in Walter White's downfall and his slide into all these pathological behaviors. Without any type of background There are significant issues with Skylar White and her anxiety management. She has a child who has special needs that is extremely difficult for anybody to have to manage and hold while at the same time wanting to believe her husband is doing things in an appropriate manner. But we also recognize how she fights herself when she understands that some of this work and the things that she's doing is, not on the up and up. We see the break at the end where she decides to move away from Walter. Not without blame in the story here, Skylar White does represent someone who I think a lot of men have, visions of as women in their life, women that, tell them That their fire is dangerous, while at the same time encouraging the fire. that's something that is, universal within Skylar White and Karen Hill, if we want to take that comparison. Moving on to Hank Schrader. Hank Schrader is the moral super ego and the moral compass of the show. The conscious that must be sacrificed for the empire to live. Hank is Walter White had every intention to build his empire. He had every intention to attempt to shield his loved ones from all the danger that came with that He knew that Hank was going to have to be part of something that he would have to kill off, whether internally or externally. because that part of ourselves can't survive when we're actively engaged in narcissistic behaviors. So embodiment here in the story, Hank Schrader, represents the piece of us that knows better. He represents the piece of us that wants to do things the right way. the one that wants this to show up the right way and be authentic and within the rules of the road. But we also see how he has to die, when the truth becomes inconvenient. And as it leads up to that brilliant scene in Zy, Manus, there's this quiet acceptance that Hank has at the end when he knows he is about to die. And I think for me, that's why the episode hits so hard and why it's so difficult for me to watch, because in that moment, you're not just killing , off a character. you're killing off a part of yourself that has. Had to suspend reality to be part of the story is that good You have to kill off that thing inside of you, not unlike a lot of narcissists have to kill off when we do that. Split the authentic self per wincott. If we want to go back to referencing Donald Wincott. To have our false self live. And this is really why Hank Schrader is one of the most, compelling characters in television because his pursuit for justice and truth is rooted in, an actual desire to improve outcomes and have society a great place for him to raise his family. However, we also see the juxtaposition between Walter White, who was involved in criminal activities and Hank Schrader, who is a. Law enforcement agent, the ways in which Walter had to lie to himself to be able to continue to operate essentially implicating that part of himself and really identifying the good split within them and actively killing it off. Hank Schrader to me, has always been the focal point of the story because he represents that little piece of us that we knowingly throw away when we decide that we're committed to this position and we're committed to this work that we're about to do, and the outcome. Moving on to Jesse Pinkman. Pinkman represents the inner child in everyone. he's a sensitive, vulnerable, corrupted individual, and he's been corrupted by narcissism we are introduced to Jesse as just a pot smoking drug dealing, young man who slowly starts to take on the son that Walter never had, and the father that Jesse always wanted. And so as his relationship becomes further entrenched in narcissism. We see how Jesse wants to belong so badly that his outcome is that he's enslaved. That's the extent of how much he wants to be part of something, part of a family. And that's hard to watch sometimes. After Omanis, the gang had essentially imprisoned Jesse to be the creator of the methamphetamine, tying him up and being chained in the basement. That's represents that piece of ourselves that we keep chained in our own little basement to produce and continue to produce narcissism. His outcome is that he ends up in change before he is released by Walter at the end. Literally that's symbolic of this inner child that didn't have the capabilities nor the cognitive skill to really develop into a fully mature human being. Somebody who is fully integrated and could integrate himself continually Even towards the end when we see him in El Camino, that childhood has now morphed into a warped sense of what adulthood looks like. But Jesse Pinkman this piece of us that continues to seek. the light and the parts of He represents that part of ourselves that we want to engage in Jesse Pinkman isn't just a sidekick. He's not comic relief. he's not even really a character once you zoom out. he's Walter White's inner child. The part of him that still feels the part of Walter White that still loves and wants to love, and he's the part that can't pretend forever. He's the part that has to at some point grow up. and so Walter didn't protect Jesse. He used him, because that's what narcissism does. When it can't feel safely, it exploits the vulnerable parts of ourselves to keep the illusion alive. and the thing about Jesse is that Walter didn't lose Jesse. He sold them. He traded his inner child to the cartel for consequences. this is the sad part we're tuning in to watch, both with Hank and with Jesse. Hank wasn't just a DEA agent he was the part of you that knows the truth. But gets shot anyway. Jesse's that inner child that we dump along the way, to be able to shoot the super ego. Moving on to Gus frs. He's probably one of the characters that most people will say is their favorite character. He's the controlled psychopath, very cleanly and that, and he represents state power . he's methodical, he's orderly. He's brutal. He represents institutional violence, cloaked in business casual. this is the thing that truly makes Gus terrifying. You go back to the scene where he dispatches of. Victor,? Victor? was trying to be proactive in the organization, trying to show Gus that he didn't need to take all this abuse from Walter. disrespect that, Victor had seen enough through watching the process occur that he could cook up a batch and they could be business as usual. He gets cocky thinking he can replace Walt's process. But what does Gus do? He goes and slits Victor's throat, not so much because he disrespected him in any way. Victor represents the unauthorized self mythologizing part of what narcissists hate, which is someone trying to insert themselves into a system of power without understanding the deeper code. when Gus kills Victor, it's not punishment. he wanted to show Victor not to confuse access with authorship. We don't necessarily like it when people come in and say that the system is wrong or there's a way to do it better. We tend to cling to old systems that have worked really well for us and continue to create opportunity and bring in revenue That's America as a whole. So Gus freeing is represented as an immigrant to this country, a Chilean national, but really falls within the rubric normalized American capitalism. Somebody who is ruthlessly going to go out and create, an empire, and his empire is with manners, violence. He's violence in a button down shirt. That is the soft sort of way that corporations, for instance, present themselves with those narcissistic psychopathic aspects of themselves that we excuse with the term fiduciary responsibility. But we see how that is like state power. He represents the law, he represents the bigger issue here. And even within the tension with him and Walter, we see how Walter is really protesting the state power, which is itself trying to align, to maximize distribution. And tries to set up the salamancas. And so we see here how Gus represents an empire and miniature somebody with precision but without a soul. And so that's really dangerous. Somebody is. Methodical and can run a very clean operation, and also, instill some of the worst violence. That is not unlike, for instance, the American Drone Program or the IDF in the Middle East. These are organizations with a lot of state. Controlled, power, which then exercise that and abuse it to indiscriminately kill, innocent, and, really impose havoc. We see at the end how Gus is taken out by, Hector Salamanca. And one of the only ways that Hector could, that great scene at the end even till the end, Gus comes out missing half a face, still adjusts his tie and collapses as if he was still trying to present himself with his best positive version to whoever he was encountering. that softness, hides the cold ruthlessness of A pure pathological narcissist who mirrors the state power dynamic. And so as we move here to amania, this is the collapse of the delusion. This episode, the reason it's a 10 outta 10 is because we're seeing how. The narcissist has to make that very conscious decision with himself, or lose everything. And the irony here was that Walt thought that he was saving himself from losing everything and ended up losing everything. And so it's interesting how hard we hold onto things how easy or how easy and fast they slip away. That's a very unique trope in psychodynamics. One of the things that I've always tracked with every one of my clients is how they seem to always wanna hold on to things and how those things they're dying to hold onto end up just slipping away even faster. you can't have healthy relationships. With that type of narcissistic pull, the mask falls off. In this episode, we see everything plainly for what it is. Walter is a weak, scared man who talks too much and gets his brother-in-law killed by cartel members, by American drug dealing cartels that he invited He had really geared and groomed into having this moment. It's not a mistake. It didn't happen by mistake. That was something that the narcissists in their subconscious have already planned out and gamed out. They've already understood what all of the angles are, and he can sit there and look that shocked as he wants to look. The reality was that. Walter knew Hank was not going to live, and it's really sad in that moment because Hank is the only one lying on the ground, accepting his death. He's the only one showing any type of masculine containment. He understood that was his final moments. He understood he wasn't going to fight or argue with a career criminal. And he understood that in that moment Walter had completely gone to the dark side. because the empire crumbles here. not because of the enemies, but because the lie itself was too difficult to hold up. as it all came to a head, here we see how Hank. is that super ego element, that good part of ourselves, his death is so painful to watch because that's the part of ourselves that we have to kill off too, in understanding that we've backed the wrong horse here. Omand isn't an episode, it's a mirror held up to every narcissistic regime that believes its story is righteous because it's loud. And if we use that ideal that, it's a mirror held up to a narcissistic organization or entity. It brings us to Israel. As of June 20th, the world is on the brink of World War, mainly because conflicts have, been unable to be addressed appropriately by American leadership and world leadership. And quite frankly, we have, a rogue state in Israel who took the tragedies of the past couple of years and the attacks on its settlers to really unleash the worst of itself on the Palestinian people. And we can sit here this isn't going to sit here and have a debate about politics. Who's right, who's wrong, what? Land belongs to who, what we're doing in the media right now is engaging in more narcissism. intellectualization, secondary defense, To explain away human suffering, kids being killed indiscriminately just human suffering. These are the things that we can do because We live in a privileged American society where we're not necessarily feeling any of that, but we see how Israel, and again, we're gonna make the distinction here, that this is a criticism of Israel as a nation. This is not a criticism of the Jewish faith. This is not a criticism of anyone who believes in the Jewish faith. This is a criticism of the people of Israel who support Bibi Netanyahu, the right wing government there that has taken the idea of Israel and really put it on the forefront and the precipice of its own collapse. Israel claims moral superiority while inflicting generational trauma. That is not something up for debate. the reality has always been the past couple of years that yes, Palestinians, Hamas may have, attacked. But the response to that has been outsized and even more cruel. at the end of the day, you're still killing babies. you can justify that however you want to justify it We're still killing off that part of ourselves to believe these lies. We see how Israel gaslights the global stage. We're just defending ourselves. No, you're not. you're taking the blueprint from what we spoke about a couple weeks ago where, Ulysses s Grant and other presidents used with the American Indians out in the West, we could take the battle of Little Bighorn. they wanted the Black Hill diamonds for the same reasons. what do they do? They said, yeah, go ahead and settle. Encroach pissed them off, and when they get pissed off, we're going to pathologize. The people getting upset because you provoked them and then give that the justification to wipe them out. And that's exactly what America has done. That's what Israel's doing is provoking people and then pathologizing the response to the provocation. This is classic narcissism. This is classic gaslighting, and it weaponizes its own trauma. To justify domination. This is the thing we've been talking about, the Holocaust for the past 80 plus years. this is something that does not justify. Committing your own atrocity and killing and participating in your own Holocaust. This is not an entitlement yet Israel believes narcissistically that it is entitled to just mass murder and its attempt to protect itself. And then we see how on the tropes online, Israelis who are celebrating people dying and then coming out and ironically saying the same things about when they themselves are being bombed by Iran. these are the classic projective tropes of people who are in severely entrenched narcissism. You see this clinically, you see this within the industry. A lot of it has been normalized. because it's politics and within the mental health narcissism has been normalized because we have a lot of narcissistic providers who engage and enable that. that's just looking at the facts that modern day society rewards, narcissism, promotes narcissism, and actually pathologizes empathy. So what does Israel how does it operate? It sacrifices the Hank figures, right? The truth tellers that it slaves the, jesses it, the Palestinians and pretends to be Gus, right? The calculated, precise, justified person in an entity in this entire matrix. this is happening in real time and this is why Israel has lost a lot of the West. This is why Israel is no longer the force. It was because we see through apac, we see through the blind lobbying that has overtaken both the Republican and the Democratic party to the extent where again we're normalizing death, human suffering for money. And, the extents to what Israel has done is quite long and extensive, but I just go back to 2010 Stuxnet, when they were able, to release a virus into the Iranian, defense system where they were actively controlling and destroying, Iranian systems, that were, engaged nuclear fission. you can have your opinions about whether or not sovereign nations are entitled to have their own nuclear programs, but we see how since 2010 stuck net. Israel has continued to essentially go out there and continue terror campaign against the Arab world by gaslighting the western world. just like Walter White Israel believes it's the victim, even as it becomes the villain in its own story. Breaking Bad really does a great job of paralleling. That real story because Walter was all about playing the victim to justify killing people, to justify swindling, to justify being the person who proliferated death. This is not unlike Bibi Netanyahu. This is not unlike Israel. So we see here how narcissism and narcissistic empires collapse from within. Empires built on disavowed grief and mythic inflation of their own self. Eventually hit a point of reckoning. Now is that reckoning for Israel Amania was that reckoning for Walter White. The solution though isn't more control. It's initiation, integration of the inner child, the Jesse Pinkman. Accountability for the ego. Walt restoration of the moral compass. Hank, that's precision cycle. That's what we do. That's why we keep saying we're different than therapy. Because therapy goes out and tries to wonder why Walter White is feeling what he feels while he continues to murder and create his empire domination, campaign. Precision cycle looks to, yeah, you're committing murder if we wanna go to those extremes, right? But why are you doing that? Because you have a failure to integrate your inner child. You have a lack of accountability of your ego, and you are desperately looking to restore your moral compass, and that's what Precision Cycle does. It helps you integrate these parts of yourself so that you can no longer be that narcissistic version that goes out blindly consumes blindly, destroys, blindly, keeps taking from people and gaslighting them. And becoming the worst version of yourself. Walter White had to watch it all burn down before he told the truth. In the end, he said, I did it for me. How long until Israel does the same that they've done it all for themselves. And that is the reason why they are currently engaged in essentially a operation that will genuinely take them off the face of the earth if they continue to go down a military path with Iran, that's been a lot to link together and we can have a whole conversation about that. I just want to introduce this topic and if there's interest to go deeper into it, we can This week has been a little difficult for me because I've had to deal with some personal issues, but we will be back on track for next week. I also want to announce that we are Precision Cycle TV on YouTube. TikTok Instagram and now Twitter. You can find all of our media there. Please interact. Please come and check us out. I also invite you to contact me, DM me for your June calibration call. The calibration call is your opportunity to take advantage of special pricing for Precision Cycle. You come in, we will sit down, you talk to me. We take that information, we run it through the seven dimensions of personality assessment that Precision Cycle features. You get a roadmap to how we can keep you from becoming the worst parts of Walter White. We help you bring yourself back into calibration so that you are the best version of yourself, so that you are the person who is getting the raise. So you are the person that is holding boundaries. So you are the person that is now more successful and has DMS full of. Texts from people that find you attractive in whatever way you wanna feel attractive and be attractive, because that's what Precision Cycle does. It helps us move past our inner child, reconcile the pain and the wound there. It helps us integrate the Hank Schrader part of our personality so that we hold on to the strength of that moral compass. And we balance out our drive with actual controls and boundaries that keep us calibrated, centered, active, and successful. Please feel free to reach out. This isn't therapy, this is not coaching. This is Precision cycle. Thank you very much for joining me on a Friday. As the world continues to spiral into chaos, my hope for you is that you have a wonderful day and weekend with your family, with yourself, that you appreciate the beauty of life, the beauty of this world, and that we continue to find the things within us that bring us together and not tear us apart. we'll be back on Monday with three new shows. This week got a little bit sidetracked, but we're back on track. Thank you for joining me for this episode of Precision Cycle, brought to you by Elevate Dot epo. I'm Enrique. Thank you very much.