The first two installments of this series are:
Part II: The Natural History of Narcissism
Before talking about those pro-civilization forces that are under assault in the West today, a little background should be helpful. Narcissism is a condition of abundance. When you live on the edge of starvation, which is what subsistence is, and the likelihood of a child reaching adulthood is on the order of %50, there is very little time or energy to worry about the developmental line of narcissism. Throughout most of mankind's time, children were considered to be nothing more than little adults; when they were old enough to work, they worked, when they were big enough to fight, they helped defend the community. It was only with the Renaissance and the industrial revolution that men finally began to develop enough abundance to allow for an extended (non-productive) childhood, as well as the leisure time to reflect upon development. By the mid-1900's, the young science of Psychoanalysis had determined that the Narcissistic character, named by Freud after Narcissus, of Greek mythology, was essentially untreatable. Narcissus was such a handsome young man that all who saw him would fall in love with him. Unfortunately, none were beautiful enough for Narcissus, until one day he inadvertently caught sight of his reflection in a pool of water and fell in love on the spot. Echo was a young wood nymph who fell in love with Narcissus, who never even took notice of her. The two of them were doomed by their love of beauty to be alone forever, Narcissus ultimately becoming the flower which bears his name and all that was left of Echo being the fading sound of his voice, echoed by her. Like Narcissus, the narcissists were thought to be so self-involved that they could not form a real relationship with anyone, let alone their therapist and without the formation of a transference relationship, no therapy could take place. At the same time, the arrogance and tendency to alternately idealize and then devalue the therapist made them particularly unpleasant to work with; counter-transference issues abounded.
In the 1960's Heinz Kohut developed his theory of the developmental line of narcissism as well as techniques which allowed the patient to be engaged in treatment. Our understanding of this condition flourished. Kohut's brilliant insight was that the narcissist, far from needing no one, actually needed the other person to be, as for Narcissus, a mirror which showed them their own specialness.The other person was not seen as another independent person with his own needs and desires, but merely as an audience whose role was to admiringly mirror the Narcissist's greatness back to him. IN fact, It turns out that the Narcissist typically has extremely fragile self-esteem; he depends on the admiration of the world in order to maintain his self-esteem.
I have reviewed the genesis of Narcissism and its developmental vicissitudes in several earlier posts, especially Narcissism, Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part I and Part IV. Dr. Sanity has also written extensively about the topic; her essays on Narcissism and Society are excellent.
Narcissists come in many varieties. The football player who does a "hey, look at me dance" as he taunts his rivals after scoring a touchdown is exhibiting a form of narcissism which not only depends on an admiring crowd to cheer him and feed his neediness, but also must humiliate his opponent in order to increase the distance between the devalued "loser" and the exalted "winner." Wealthy, successful men who trade in their first wife for a so-called "trophy wife", or need "eye candy" when in public are, in part, relying on their ornament's beauty to exhibit their desirability and success for an admiring (or envious) public to see; some businessmen must not only beat their opposition in business but must be seen to crush them. Actors and actresses are notorious for needing applause and politicians, especially those that pander, are exhibiting their own need for narcissistic supplies when they sacrifice their integrity for approval. It is important to note that the audience can vary (from an idealized lover to an anonymous audience) and the attributes of the narcissist can vary (from beautiful looks to great athletic prowess to vast amounts of money) but in all cases they are using their gifts or position to earn or demand approval and admiration. A particularly problematic type of narcissist is one who relies on his intellectual gifts, which often are considerable, to prove his self-worth; this person can be a professor, or an author, occasionally a politician or statesman. The danger these types present is that they overvalue their own verbal productions, their words, over reality. A particularly smart intellectual can use words to remove the meaning from any reality and replace it with its opposite.
[You may remember a classic case several years ago which beautifully illuminated the vapidity of the intellectual who is divorced from reality, when two physicists hoaxed a prestigious academic journal by "deconstructing" gravity to prove it didn't exist.]
When the Narcissistic intellectual believes he alone possesses absolute morality, the need to be seen as smarter and better than anyone else can lead him to believe that his words matter more than reality. From Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part IV
...the left and liberal aggrandizement of their own ideological ideas presents a serious danger to our prosecution of the war. The ACLU, people like Ward Churchill, groups like Moveon.org and Human Rights First insist that their motives are pure (while everyone who disagrees with them have motives that are typically corrupt.) They are upholding human rights; the right to be treated with respect; the right to counsel; the right to free speech. As abstractions, these rights are inviolate; as explanations for their behavior (which could appear to be harmful to our nation's interests) they are superficially plausible; yet, reality always supervenes. To be more attached to abstractions than to the welfare of others in one's community is a classic signifier of the Narcissist. It is one step removed from the narcissistic disavowal of the other: my beliefs are more important than your life.
This leads to the crucial, clinical problem of narcissism. Since the narcissist's self-worth derives from and depends upon the infantile fantasy that the world revolves around him, when the fantasy is found to be a fallacy, they find themselves with no internal resources with which to sustain their self-esteem. When they are successful in gaining the emotional supplies they need, they can feel that they are "on top of the world." It is an invigorating feeling; the world is at their feet. They are the emperor of all they survey. But when cruel fate, or time, work their implacable will, and the gifts fade, they can no longer get what they need. Without their constant supplies of emotional nurturance, their self-esteem crumbles; depression, with feelings of emptiness and depletion are all they have left. The faded beauty withdraws into a reclusive state indistinguishable from despair; the football player first denies his skills are fading, then looks for other places to get the same feeling of intactness and greatness; some gamble, some may use drugs, with Cocaine being particularly adept at filling the need for such feelings. Even those whose success is most lasting and resilient must eventually recognize that his star is dimming. Many a wealthy tycoon has been devastated by finding that once he was no longer young and vibrant, his trophy wife, with her claims to a significant chink of his money intact, has found more interesting people to play with.
The Narcissist has the seeds of his own self-destruction within him from the start, and once he can no longer disguise his inner, hidden feelings of worthlessness, he has nothing. He has no love because he has never been capable of truly caring for another person's well being; he could only care for what they could do for him. Almost every narcissistic character will come face to face with despair at some point in his life, and will have minimal capacity to tolerate it; suicide becomes a genuine risk for this person who once insisted that the world revolved around him. As the Narcissist ages, the risk of suicide increases. For the Narcissistic Intellectual, the greatest risk is to be seen as being wrong. Since their self worth depends on others marveling at the brilliance of their ideas, being wrong is the worst of all disasters. Rejecting their ideas is tantamount to rejecting them. If their privileged viewpoint of the world proves to be inaccurate, it means they have failed and this is intolerable. For some, they will engage in the most contorted logical and verbal gymnastics to avoid admitting any error. For the Narcissistic character, despair is never far from the surface. The importance of this is magnified exponentially when the ideas to which the Narcissist is wedded, either his own ideas, or the approved theoretical/political orientation of the group responsible for doling out the accolades, are not only wrong but exacerbate the very problems that threaten the social order.
Without an orderly and contained mechanism for weaning the young from their infantile omnipotence, enhanced narcissism is inevitable, with disastrous consequences for society from multiple directions. Some of the forces at work which tend to make the weaning process more difficult will be the focus in the next post on this topic.
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