Thursday, March 27, 2008
On Narcissism
Okay I'll drop 'meism' and just call it narcissism. Susan asks, 'Honestly, is there such a thing as a politician who is not a narcissist?' But then admits she can't 'warm to' Hillary. This is my point, Susan, narcissists are incapable of empathy, nobody can warm to them. It is certainly plausible to say that all politicians are egotists and it is certainly possible to warm to them - many speak of Bill Clinton with nostalgic affection. He may, politically speaking, be as bad as her, but he had the one thing she, as a narcissist, cannot have, charm. There are, in politics as in life, very few narcissists but they are usually very prominent. I always notice them - I seem to have a very accurate detector, I spotted most of the narcissists I know within a few seconds of meeting them - and become, for a time, gripped by their absolute remoteness. A psychotherapist I knew set out on her career convinced she could crack the narcissist's complex dance of denial and auto-justification. But, finally, she gave up, concluding they were untreatable; they just danced away whenever she got close. This is, I think, because unlike, say, depression, narcissism is not an affliction or accretion of the self, it is the self itself. People are born narcissists and die narcissists; to cure them would be to destroy them. Many years ago, I remember interrupting one narcissist to point out that what he had just said was factually incorrect and, in fact, absurd. He just waited for me to stop and then carried on. What I said didn't matter because it did not reflect back his own self-image. Since that self-image does not include the statement 'I am a narcissist', in the unlikely event that he reads this he won't recognise himself. Anyway, I am letting my obsession show so I'd better stop.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
This is, I think, because unlike, say, depression, narcissism is not an affliction or accretion of the self, it is the self itself. People are born narcissists and die narcissists; to cure them would be to destroy them
ReplyDeleteSo you don't think there are degrees of narcissism - one is or one isn't.
There are varyingly arrogant people, but a narcissist is in a different category from someone who is just very arrogant (as a psychopath is in a different category to someone who is just a complete bastard)?
I think, Brit, there are degrees of the effectiveness of narcissism. I have known people as narcissistic as Hillary but they are not running for president. But the underlying state of the self seems to be the same. It may be, of couse, that my n-detector only reacts to extreme narcissists, in which case there are, indeed, degrees of n.
ReplyDeleteIt odd but I do not think that either of them will win. And when a politician seems to have an agenda other than winning it is time to become wary. The Dem's had two attempts, three if you count FDR, over the past 100, where they got over themselves and presented a real politician, and they won. The peanut farmer does not count.
ReplyDeleteAcross the world republican parties tend not to worry over much about agendas, they seem to know from birth that power is the thing.
While Hil' comes over as a bit of a dead fish. The only time that she came across was when she cried.
We live in a narcissistic age.
ReplyDeleteNarcissism occludes the presence of the divine.
I think some self obsessed people are in fact very insecure which makes them completely different to the true narcissist, who like Hilary would be completely confident in their own genius...
ReplyDeleteSnakepit, that is quite right and what I was trying to say in reply to Bryan's post about this yesterday.
ReplyDeleteWe have become our own gods - and we're all narcissists now to a greater or lesser extent depending how successful we are in excluding the divine.
And Bryan, I share your fascination with narcissists, particularly women, but they all have the same effect, to seduce you down into their own unique hell.
So I think there must be degrees of narcissism.
The shrinks (always the last to wake up to anything resembling sense) have finally begun to acknowledge the uselessness - indeed the counter-productiveness - of any 'talking cure' in treating psychopathic criminal narcissists. Interestingly this came up in a late episode of The Sopranos, when Dr Melfi was introduced to the relevant paper and suddenly realised - what was obvious to everyone else - that she'd only been boosting Tony Soprano's narcissism all these years. He didn't take kindly to being 'fired', but at least he didn't take her out.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me like you're describing someone with NPD, as Johnny pointed out in the previous post. I can see why you would want to find an abbreviated form because NPD is a mouthful and "narcissism" is a useful word to describe a universal fallibility, not just an extreme condition.
ReplyDeleteEgomaniac? Megalomaniac? Solipsist?
I'm not sure that's really true about Dr Melfi in The Sopranos. I thought the crux was that the paper pointed out that treating psychopaths only increases their recidivism since all they learn are new ways to exploit people. Whether or not it boosts their narcissism is beside the point. Which leads on to the matter of our complicity. Both Dr Melfi and the viewer have to consider that they may have been a little narcissistic in thinking that Tony was ever redeemable. And self-pitying: it's easier to play the victim and go along with the psychos of this world than stand up to them. Dr Melfi is certainly prone to feeling very sorry for herself, though mind you who wouldn't when facing regular interviews with the awful Dr Kupferberg and his absurd water bottle.
ReplyDeleteSo if Hilary is as er er "unwell" as she's made out to be, just why do so many people think she's fab and are rooting for her as the next President? Because it's easier to look the other way, go along with her and blame the system rather than stand up to it all? Oh my, what a mess.
Bill Clinton is a true politician, able to rise above principle whenever necessary (which is not to say he is devoid of principle). His charm is something else. It derives from his being a Snopes with table manners.
ReplyDeleteHilary strikes me as a scorched earth kind of woman when cornered. If she gets in she'll make George look like Tony Benn.
ReplyDeleteI can't let a discussion on Hillary and the Sopranos pass by without sharing this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shKJk3Rph0E
She's already way ahead of you and happy to cast herself as a psychopathic mob boss.
I agree entirely with your assessment of Hillary. However, have you checked out the things Matthew Yglesias has been saying about McCain--this guy seems to believe that US military power is the answer to all the world's problems. There is a real risk that people will make the same mistake as was made with Bush, and go buy the charming sentimental mush. Also did you see the NYT article on McCain the postmodernist candidate: it explains why the media adore him. If Yglesias is right (and I suspect he is about McCain) then there is really only one choice that is not truly scary.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a narcissistic age.
ReplyDeleteNarcissism occludes the presence of the divine.
Sorry, I can't let that slip by unchallenged. Worshipping the "divine" is, in my opinion, the height of narcissism. Normally it comes with the correlation that oneself is in the image of the divine, and that the divine purpose is about elevating the self to divine status.
You can say many things about atheists, and an atheist may be a narcissist, but not because of his atheism. What is narcissistic about truly recognizing one's mortality? What is more narcissistic, believing one is mortal, or, contrary to all evidence, that one is immortal?
Bryan, your statement that narcissism is rare flies in the face of the "common wisdom" that we live in a narcissistic age, though I believe the latter is usually a self serving observation along the lines of "everyone is narcissistic except me". But I think that self interest is pretty much in our genes. If narcissism is loosely defined as "love of self", then it is probably a universal condition, and a arguably good thing at that. Whatever the faults of self love, it is superior to self hate.
ReplyDeletei feel the self is multi-layered and narcissism is about a false identification, as if the most superficial, mechanical, observable layer is the whole. They need mirrors, reflections, because their sense of self is, in a sense, two-dimensional. Image is all.
ReplyDeletei wouldn't say narcissism is the self, but rather a misprision about the self.
A good article on narcissism:
http://www.darkage.ca/blog/_archives/2005/9/15/1230943.html
In a fundamentally meaningless universe, Duck, why do you squabble over meaning? You're pissing in the wind.
ReplyDeleteNarcissists are often very charming. They have studied their whole lives, how to look good to other people. How to get the applause they need.
ReplyDeleteMany times no one but the closest people to a narcissist suspects that they are one.
Grace
http://flourishingincrisis.wordpress.com/
Hello Brian, excellent post.
ReplyDeleteI know this is a late response, but it's something of an obsession of mine at the moment.
I don't agree that narcisissists are born - they are very certainly made, don't you think? Either through some mal-parenting, which is most often carefully tailored for the task, or by a dreadful psychological injury to the self at an early, fragile age.
I'm not as quick as you at spotting the sly ones, but a day or two later, as I process things, it all starts to make no sense whatsoever.