Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

Excerpts from the Archives
of the
Narcissism List

Part 13

1. The Formation of a Narcissist as a Reaction to His Narcissistic Parents

I think that the reaction to a narcissistic parent can be either -----

ACCOMMODATION and ASSIMILATION

The child accommodates, idealizes, and internalizes the primary object successfully. This means that the "internal voice" we all have is a narcissistic voice and that the child tries to comply with its directives and with its explicit and perceived wishes. The child becomes a masterful provider of narcissistic supply, a perfect match to the parent's personality, an ideal source, an accommodating, understanding, and caring caterer to all the needs, whims, mood swings, and cycles of the narcissist, an endurer of devaluation and idealization with equanimity, a superb adapter to the narcissist's worldview, in short: the ultimate extension. This is what we came to call an "inverted narcissist". The child turned adult maintains these traits. He keeps looking for narcissists in order to feel whole, alive and wanted. He seeks to be treated by a narcissist narcissistically (what others would call abuse is to him or to her a homecoming). He feels dissatisfied, empty, and unloved if not by a narcissist.

Or

REJECTION

The child may react to the narcissism of the Primary Object with a peculiar type of rejection. He develops his own narcissistic personality, replete with grandiosity and lack of empathy - BUT his personality is antithetical to the personality of the narcissistic parent. If the parent were a somatic narcissist - the child is likely to be a cerebral one, if his father prided himself on his virtue - he will emphasize his vices, if his mother bragged about her frugality, he is bound to flaunt his wealth.

2. The Test of Archaic Chinese

Some people say that they prefer to live with narcissists, to cater to their needs and to succumb to their whims because this is the way they have been conditioned. It is only with narcissists that they feel alive, stimulated and excited. The world glows in Technicolor in the presence of a narcissist and decays to sepia colours in his absence.

I see nothing inherently "wrong" with that. The test is this: If a person were to constantly humiliate and abuse you verbally using Archaic Chinese - would you have felt humiliated and abused? Probably not. Some people have been conditioned by the narcissistic primary objects in their lives (parents or caregivers) to treat narcissistic abuse as Archaic Chinese, to turn a deaf ear. This technique is effective in that it allows the "inverted narcissist" (the narcissist's willing mate) to experience only the good aspects of life with a narcissist. There are good aspects to living with a narcissist, you know: his sparkling intelligence, the constant drama and excitement, his lack of intimacy and emotional attachment (some people prefer this). Every now and then the narcissist breaks into abusive Archaic Chinese, so what, who understands Archaic Chinese anyhow?

I have only one nagging doubt, though:

If so rewarding, why are inverted narcissists (the few that I met) so unhappy, so ego-dystonic, so in need of help (professional or other)? Aren't they victims who simply experience the Stockholm Syndrome (=identifying with the kidnapper rather than with the Police)?

3. Narcissism - The Individualist's Reaction

Narcissism could well be a reactive formation, a reaction to the assimilation of the individual in the masses, to the melting pots that many countries have become in an age of growing immigration and diminishing expectations. In the absence of the (imaginary) consolation of being part of a higher order (God, the State, the Party, the Nation) - people resort to themselves as a soothing source of reassurance of the meaningfulness of their life. And in a visual age (television, Internet), what could be better than watching oneself in the "mirror" that is others? Indeed, it is the age of images and reflections, perfectly suited to the narcissist. We each have our 15 minutes of existence experienced through the proxy of celebrity ("I felt suddenly alive!", "It was as though I was dreaming all my life!"). The narcissist believes his own superiority, having discovered the alchemist stone of "self-induced and self-generated celebrity".

4. Somatizing Our Emotions

We all tend to "somatize" our emotions. We try to prevent stress and bad emotions from "going to our head" by having a stiff ("blocked") neck. In Judaism one of the curses was : may the hand that committed this sin go dry (=paralysed). These are known as conversion reactions. Unable to face our emotions, acknowledge them, and cope with them - we let our body confront them and do the "talking" through selected organs. Headaches, rashes, paralysis, excruciating pains and even more complex medical syndromes (such as stigmata) - have all been known to originate psychogenically (a.k.a. psychosomatically). But this is precisely why a medical check-up is a MUST in the case of mental disorders - to rule out physiological causes.

Pain in the chest, for instance, is an integral part of the repertoire of panic attacks. Susan Sontag noted that each age has it own disease or medical condition as a METAPHOR. During the 19th century and the beginning of this one - it was tuberculosis, then cancer, then heart attacks, and now AIDS. People use these ailments to express their inner world - and still remain well within social and cultural norms. So, if I am mentally "sick" and I am scared to admit it (=to face the terrifying burden of my negative emotions) I will be inclined to choose a BODILY metaphor (=I will be inclined to get physically sick). Getting PHYSICALLY sick is socially acceptable. It is normative. There is no ridicule or disbelief involved.

So, people develop incurable tuberculosis, or feel pains in the chest, or grow phantom tumours. It is simply a way of saying: "there is something wrong with me. I am dizzily confused, my heart is broken, I don't feel I can stand on my own two legs".

But it goes both ways. Sometimes treating the physical symptoms alleviates the underlying mental problems. Mental and emotional problems are sometimes resolved by administering placebos (dummy medicines, like sugar pills), by "curing" an "incurable" "disease". This is the case with hypochondriacs of a certain kind. And, as we all know, REAL physical conditions might foster highly specific mental conditions which closely resemble their non-physiogenic equivalents.

This is what leads many psychiatrists to postulate that ALL mental problems are the result of chemical imbalances, whether in the brain or elsewhere. They discard the importance of talk therapy, or other human interactions, and prefer to rely SOLELY on psychopharmacology (medication). Admittedly, there aren't many such purists but the trend is clear and many previously "mental" disorders (like schizophrenia and depression) are now considered to belong predominantly to the domain of the more "physical" branches of medicine.

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