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.

5. The "Love" of the Narcissist

Narcissists often call the way that they experience narcissistic supply - love. They tend to "emotionalize" situations and behaviours of themselves or of others by labeling them as emotions. This is similar to the way a birth blind person tries to grope with colours. The narcissist often insists that a source of narcissistic supply "loves" and "is loved" by him and, conversely, a source of negative supply "hates" him, is, to him, his "enemy", and so on.

6. Misogynism Once More ...

I am a conscious misogynist. I fear and loathe women and tend to ignore them to the best of my ability. To me they are a mixture of hunter and parasite.

Most male Narcissists are misogynists. After all, they are the warped creation of a woman. A woman gave birth to them and moulded them into what they are: dysfunctional, maladaptive, emotionally dead. They are angry at this woman and, by implication, mad at all women.

The narcissist's attitude to women is, naturally, complex and multi-layered along these four axes:

1. The Holy Whore
2. The Hunter Parasite
3. The Frustrating Object of Desire
4. Special and De-Specialing

The narcissist divides all women to saints on the one hand, and to whores on the other. He finds it difficult to have sex ("dirty", "forbidden", "punishable", "degrading") with feminine significant others (spouse, intimate girlfriend). To him, sex and intimacy are opposites rather than mutually enhancing propositions. Sex is reserved to "whores" (all other women in the world). This division provides for a resolution of his constant cognitive dissonance ("I want her but ..." "I don't need anyone but .."). It also legitimizes his sadistic urges (abstaining from sex is a major and recurrent narcissistic "penalty" inflicted on female "transgressors"). It also tallies well with the frequent idealization-devaluation cycles the narcissist goes through. The idealized females are sexless, the devalued ones - "worthy" of their degradation (sex) and the contempt that, inevitably, follows.

The narcissist believes firmly that women are out to "hunt" men and that this is almost a genetic predisposition. As a result, he feels threatened (as any prey would). This, of course, is an intellectualization of the real, absolutely opposite, state of things: the narcissist feels threatened by women and tries to justify this irrational fear by imbuing women with "objective" qualities which make them, indeed, ominous. This is a small detail in a larger canvass of "pathologizing" others as a means of controlling them. Once the prey is secured, goes the narcissistic fable, the woman assumes the role of a "body snatcher". She absconds with the narcissist's sperm, she generates an endless stream of demanding and nose dripping children, she financially bleeds the men in her life to cater to her needs and to the needs of her dependants. Put differently, she is a parasite, a leech, whose sole function is to suck dry every man she finds and Tarantula-like decapitate them once no longer useful. This, of course, is exactly what the narcissist does to people. Thus, his view of women is a projection.

Heterosexual narcissists desire women as any other red blooded male does (even more so due to the special symbolic nature of women in the narcissist's life - humbling a woman in acts of faintly sadomasochistic sex is a way of getting back at mother). But he is frustrated by his inability to meaningfully interact with them, by their apparent emotional depth and powers of psychological penetration (real or attributed), and by their sexuality. Their incessant demands for intimacy are perceived by him as a threat. He recoils instead of getting closer. The narcissist also despises and derides sex, as we said before. Thus, caught in a seemingly intractable repetition complex, in approach-avoidance cycles, the narcissist becomes furious at the source of his frustration. Some narcissists set out to do some frustrating of their own. They tease (passively or actively), frustrate, or pretend to be asexual and, in any case, they turn down, rather cruelly, any attempt by a woman to court them and to get closer.