12. The Narcissistic Hunt

Your friend didn't "go" from any phase to any other phase. He didn't change at all. He was simply pretending, lying, putting on his best face to get you hooked. For some reason, you represented narcissistic supply to him. It was crucial for him to get his supply from you - so he set out to do it. Narcissists are relentless exterminators when it comes to obtaining supply. Deep inside they are misanthropes and, if men, mostly misogynists. They hate the fact that they are dependent on others for sustenance, that they stand to crumble if not supplied properly, that they are mere reflections. They resent it. So, they are critical, contemptuous, insulting, and lack any empathy. BUT when they are out to get you, they can be the MOST charming, stunning, captivating, wonderfully-sensitive things. It is THE great deception. And you are not the first person to fall prey to it - nor, I am afraid, the last one. OF COURSE he lost all interest to you. Why should he invest his scarce and cosmically significant resources in a has- been source of supply?

And THIS is the victimization process. This sudden loss of interest, respect, "love", sensitivity and compassion. The transparentization of the "meaningful" other. The dawning and shocking realization that you have been used and ab-used and mis-used, that you were no better than any domestic appliance to him. Becoming an object is what drives the victims to near insanity.

13. WHY?

To avoid a proliferation of "he/she", I will use "it" to denote a unisex narcissist.

Didn't you feel something was wrong from the very first minute when it couldn't stop talking about itself, bragging, outlining grandiose schemes, and ignoring you altogether?

Couldn't you penetrate the torrential charm, the incisive intelligence, the baby face, the "need to be protected", the "no one understands me" facade?

Didn't you ask yourself "is this for real" with growing intensity?

Weren't you repelled and upset by its haughtiness, venomous diatribes, constant criticism, self pity and "ne'er do wrong" attitude?

Didn't you sense that it was vacuous despite its academic degrees, vain despite its professed modesty, vicious despite its exhibitionistic altruism?

Ever wonder why it humiliates and then melts into a saccharinic show of unbearable sentimentality?

Had you no suspicion that something was awfully wrong when it exhibited abnormal attachment to Mommy/Daddy?

Did you feel that you had to compete and do battle to gain minimal acknowledgement, a modicum of attention, a fleeting (insincere, absent-minded) smile?

Then WHY, on earth, WHY did you stay?

WHAT were you looking for and how can you be convinced that you did not get it?

14. Unified Dysfunction Theory

Ever since Freud and Bleuler there has been an overt effort to "scientify"psychology. Freud - a medical doctor (neuorology, as it was known then) tried to invent a "physics of the mind" with structures and drives in lieu of molecules and forces in Newtonian mechanics (a.k.a. "Psychodynamics"). He used "scientific" language and believed that he was "objectifying" the subjective (=analysis).

Psychology and psychologists are beset by an inferiority complex given to them by physicists. They also want to be considered "an accurate science" with predictions, falsifications, repeatable experiments, the whole smorgasbord of respectability (not to mention budgets and prestige). Just compare the status of physicists and psychologists in courts of law ...

So, when quantum mechanics developed - there was a movement of "quantum and the mind" or the mind as a physical field. Now, in physics, physicists are self-importantly discussing the next illusion of grandeur (=narcissistic grandiose fantasy): TOE. A Theory of Everything (formerly known as a Unified Field Theory). Immediately the ugly, statistical, stepdaughter, psychology, also wants to have a TOE. What life does a discipline have without a TOE of its own? In comes the "Unified Dysfunction Theory" (which - on pure philosophical grounds - is impossible as long as the psychophysical problem has not been solved).

Humans are not atoms. The brain is more complex than any cluster of galaxies. The processes of energy conversion in the body far outweigh in complexity anything happening in the stars, to mention but one basic issue. We know very little about the brain (contrary to scientific claims. There are texts from 1900 which claimed as confidently that we know everything there is to know about the brain). We know even less about mental processes. Psychology is made up of one third fairy tales (psychoanalysis), one third educated guesses (object relations, behaviorism), one third prejudices and superstitions and some primitive ability to manipulate moods (psychopharmacology). Psychology today is where physics was when Plato was roaming the Earth. One should not succumb so lightly to the proposition of a unified theory pertaining to such a little understood phenomena and based on such fragmented knowledge.