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Why Narcissism?
The traditional depiction of a Psychoanalyst includes a certain pre-occupation with the sexual lives of the patients. This had some truth to it at one time. When the early analysts were laying the theoretical scaffolding for the science of the mind known as Psychoanalysis, most of the patients they saw were relatively well to do, coming from traditional two parent families, and suffering, so it was thought, from the need to suppress and repress their sexuality in order to become part of civilized society. Most children were not the center of their parent's universe in their earliest years, usually having to share their parents attention with multiple siblings; they had to learn to share at an early age. Furthermore, children who enter a world in which deprivation and loss is an all too real threat have minimal opportunity to develop over abundant narcissistic expectations; no parent could afford too much of an emotional investment in a single child when the risk of losing children approached 50% before age 5:
Child deaths, although still a problem today, were an incredible scourge of the 19th century. In 1870, with 4,000 deaths in the 0-4 age group, a Chicago child had a 50% chance of reaching the age 5. Accurate statistics are not available for earlier years, but conditions were probably worse. By 1900 there were over 8,000 annual deaths of 0-4 year-olds, but the odds of surviving to the age 5 had increased to 75%. Today the odds are better than 98%. The infant death rate (0-365 days) has fallen dramatically, but even more pronounced is the decline in the death rates for 1-4 year-olds.
Children in the 19th century were subject to cholera, smallpox, measles and all of the other adult diseases, but childhood diarrheal diseases were the most terrifying. Infants would become diarrheal, then dehydrated, and die. These deaths were directly related to poor sanitary conditions. Deaths were much higher in summer, after rainfalls and in low lying areas, all of which were related to contamination from the sewage filled Chicago River.
A variety of public health, medical, sewage and water supply improvements had dramatically cut the infant death rate by the turn of the century. The Chicago Health Department became an acknowledged leader in infant health with such measures as mandatory milk pasteurization (1909). Massive education programs, well baby clinics and comprehensive vaccinations were some of the many initiatives under the direction of legendary longtime leader Dr. Herman Bundesen. Chicago Lying-in-Hospital became a world leader in reducing infant deaths.
After World War II, with the widespread use of antibiotics and vaccines, child mortality declined to <2%. The baby boomer generation became the first generation in the history of man which was born into a world in which the vast majority could be confidently expected to reach adulthood. After the horrendous blood letting of WWII, newly returned GI's and the women who had been left behind formed families at record paces, moved to the suburbs, and created a now (retrospectively) idealized life style which included ever increasing availability off material goods and an ever decreasing risk of the natural ills that man had always been subject to. Because there was less need to have many children in order to support one's old age (Social Security had an important part in this, as did the movement off the farms) and the expectation was that all the children would survive and thrive, the parents were able to make a much greater investment, emotionally and financially, in their fewer children. Children with few siblings were much more likely to remain the center of their parents universe for extended periods of time. Further, the nartural inclination of all parents who love their children to protect them from the vicissitudes of life lead to parents raising children who had very little first hand experience of deprivation or disappointment. The extended time and the increased intensity of the child's position as center of the universe led to many baby boomers developing narcissistic pathology.
Classical Psychoanalysis was developed as a treatment for people who were able to form intense (transference) relationships. Patients entering treatment had already achieved the ability to form intimate relationships and could enter into a working alliance with the therapist, an "other" who became important to the patient, and through that important, new relationship the patient was able to gain a better understanding of himself. By the 1960's, it began to become clear that disturbances of the "self" (ie, narcissistic pathology) were serious enough as to render classical psychoanalysis impossible; the narcissistic patients seemed to be incapable of entering into a therapeutic alliance with an "other". They seemed to need unlimited emotional support and were intolerant of any empathic failure; every interpretation was a criticism that hurt them rather than an effort to help them know themselves better. The challenge of treating such patients was the impetus for Kohut to develop his theory of the developmental line of narcissism. The key realization was that people with significant narcissistic pathology were incapable of empathy, which is not only a prerequisite for healthy, mutually gratifying relationships, but is also a prerequisite for tolerating differences of opinion and the give and take that all societies need in order to function optimally. A narcissist could only be in a one way relationship; they could be gratifying to another, but only if it served their own unconscious needs. Since their needs are limitless (remember, the goal is reunion with the all gratifying, fantasied mother) their relationships were always characterized by terrible disappointments When these people grew up and began to take charge of the social structures of power, they began making changes that reflected this tendency within themselves. Personal gratification was the watchword; if a marriage was disappointing, making divorce easy (no fault) seemed to be a good outcome. [The needs of children in such situations were offered lip service but children neither voted nor paid the lawyers who arranged the outcomes of divorces.] Since religious teachings are intended to help us learn to control our impulses, attacking the position of organized religion in our social structure made sense. When the birth control pill arrived and it really did look like recreational sex was cost-free (STD's were an annoyance but easily treated with available anti-biotics), the occasional failures of birth control or impulse driven failures to use birth control, which in the past might have lead to lifelong inconvenience for the "victim" of a pregnancy, made legalizing abortion an obvious corrective, even if the legal reasoning had to be tortured to fit the desired outcome. The "I" was all important. The Vietnam war was lost, in part, because too many baby boomers could not question the belief that there was nothing more important than them. As Grace Slick once put it, in Rejoyce, from After Bathing at Baxters:
Steven won't give his arm
to no gold star mother's farm;
War's good business so give your son
and I'd rather have my country die for me. [Emphasis mine-SW]
We are now dealing with some of the consequences of just such an attitude.
In the first part of this series, I discussed the way in which enhanced narcissism has lead to increased difficulty in self control ("drive containment"). In the second part, I discussed the natural history of the narcissist, with the very real threat of severe depression and suicidal despair when their efforts to attain emotional nurturance from the environment fail. In this post, I have described, though somewhat schematically, how our advances in health care and technology have inadvertently set up conditions in which enhanced narcissism can thrive as well as fostering an environment in which the unrestrained expression of drive derivatives (sexuality and aggression) have become celebrated rather than inhibited. It remains to describe some significant contributions from religion, the legal system, the mental health apparatus, and the educational system, which have all reinforced the trend toward enhancing the narcissistic pathology of the baby boomer cohort. This enhancement has caused serious damage to our national political discourse, and undermines our defenses against ongoing threats to our civilization's survival from an implacable enemy. As well, I plan to show how our enemy, by melding his own, more traditional methods with our technological developments and money, have been affected by their own pathological narcissism.
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