Until the late 1960s, the Narcissistic Personality was considered to be impossible to treat in therapy or Psychoanalysis. There were many reasons for this but the primary reason was that the Narcissist was thought to be incapable of forming a transference relationship with the therapist. The thinking was that since the Narcissist only cares about himself, the Analyst could never become a meaningful object to him, and therefore, the transference relationship (the core of analytic treatment) would never develop and could not be used to effect a cure. This was completely inaccurate but was accepted (as a complex rationalization) for several reasons, the most important of which concerned the primitive rage of the Narcissist. As I described in Terrorism and the Narcissistic Trilogy:
Emotional deprivation in the midst of material wealth forms the nidus of what I recently referred to as the Narcissistic trilogy"of out-sized entitlement, inability to imagine or appreciate an other's point of view, and intense neediness." In an increasingly globalized world, narcissistic pathology allied with an ideology that leverages the Narcissistic trilogy, creates an extremely dangerous mixture.Emotional deprivation in the midst of material wealth forms the nidus of what I recently referred to as the Narcissistic trilogy "of out-sized entitlement, inability to imagine or appreciate an other's point of view, and intense neediness."
The Narcissist cannot tolerate becoming aware of any shortcomings within himself because such self-awareness would constitute an impossible to tolerate humiliation, an attack on his self-esteem; any criticism is then tantamount to a humiliating attack and humiliation evokes shame which, when not tolerable, is replaced and disguised by the intense rage of the primitive ego. The source of the shame is externalized (to the one who made it "public") and if the offender can be destroyed the shame is dissolved and honor/self-esteem/equilibrium restored. For a great many therapists who tried to work with Narcissists, the limiting factor was the rage of the patient when a correct interpretation was made. Primitive rage can be frightening and a good many therapists chose to rationalize the intractability of the patient in order to eschew the unpleasant treatment situations that were frightening. (At one time it was taught and thought that tolerating and managing the patient's sexual feelings for the analyst were the crucial determinants of a successful therapy; only in more modern times has the painful recognition come to the field that managing and tolerating the patient's primitive rage is the more difficult task for the therapist.)
Now consider an entire culture, all of whose variants share the tendency to becoming enraged whenever their honor is even mildly questioned.
One of the best analyses of the Middle East that I have seen in the major Media appears in the Jerusalem Post today. Jonathan Spyer considers the recent "heroic" shoe flinging in Baghdad, and draws a pessimistic conclusion from the incident:
As the US president's reception in Iraq indicates, however, deep problems remain. Muntadar al-Zeidi's flying shoes are the latest semi-comic emblem of a particular, familiar political culture with deep roots in the Arab world. This outlook sees all events through the prism of a wounded sense of nationalism, and a furious resentment against the West and Israel. This outlook currently finds its active political expression mainly through movements of Islamic revival, but it is not confined to them or solely produced by them. Indeed, to a great extent the rise of Islamism is a product of this political-cultural ambience, rather than the other way around.
This political culture sanctifies anti-Western fury, and continues, half a century after decolonization, to see the Arabs as hapless victims of the West. As a result, it gives its greatest honor and respect to those who are able to articulate a sense of furious resentment. If this can be accompanied by the successful application of political violence, then popular deification is assured.
...
It is this political culture that is capable of producing the curious spectacle of the furious demonstrations against Bush by members of the Iraqi Shi'ite community in the past days. Much may be legitimately criticized about the conception and execution of the invasion of Iraq. But it is an empirically undeniable fact that the individual more responsible than any other for the enfranchisement and elevation to power of the Shi'ites of Iraq is George W. Bush. That is to say that the man who has established a situation in which the Iraqi Shi'ite Zeidi is able to work freely as a journalist, worship freely as a Shi'ite and vote freely as a citizen was the same one whom Zeidi chose to hurl his shoes at.
...
But the combination of post-9/11 rage and genuine desire for reform that powered the US invasion of Iraq of 2003 is, for better or for worse, gone. The strange spectacle of an Iraq now closer to democracy than any other Arab state, into which the chief architect of its liberty must steal like a thief in the night, and in which he is subjected to insults by a member of the very community he brought to power, is its problematic legacy. It is also the latest evidence of the astonishing hardiness and longevity of that peculiar political culture of self-righteous fury that bestrides the Arabic-speaking world, and that constitutes perhaps the single largest barrier to its rational and mature development.
Read the whole thing and then consider Omri's post:
Yeah. Obama's inclinations on the Middle East are inscrutable. He's merely been completely clear that he considers Israel to be the root of Middle East instability. Cashed out this approach means blaming Israel for Israeli-Palestinian deadlocks and approaching Iranian nuclearization as a problem of potential Israeli overreaction.
Blaming Israel for the Middle East's problems is the conventional wisdom among the Western elites. It is the conventionalwisdom because it serves to justify their moral cowardice and intellectual laziness. Criticizing and pressuring Israel, like throwing shoes at and criticizing President Bush, is safe and easy. Criticizing and pressuring the Arabs risks evoking the primitive rage of the easily damaged and offended. Barack Obama's history shows very little evidence that he has ever risked offending the easily angered. Why should there be any expectation that his approach will change once he takes the oathof office. An Obama administration will pressure Israel because it is far easier to pressure people who feel guilty than people who are motivated primarily by the need to avoid shame and the history of successfully using their primitive rage to succeed at just that goal.
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