Narcissism

I feel I am always in the gap between two or more selves, and there is a nothingness in

that gap. What I feel is blankness… an in-between… a splitting apart… in the cracks

between things. That doesn’t seem like a feeling. It seems like a lack. A place. I am in

that place most of the time… I exist in the cracks between possible selves…

A long-term goal of psychoanalytic treatment with patients who suffer

mortification is its transformation into shame, which includes the capacity to

tolerate it and to use it as a signal. This long process entails working through both

the early mortifying traumas as well as the unstable defenses related to them.

Without such transformation, the individual is left with two unstable narcissistic

defenses:

self-damning, deflated states designed to appease and hold on to self objects,

narcissistic conceit, designed to project the defective self-experiences onto self-objects.

Both defensive styles require continued dependence on self objects

and must be mounted again and again.

Tolerating bearable shame can make self-appraisal

and self-tolerance possible, ultimately leading to

psychic separation and self-reliance.

can you feel the pain?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

“I am he; I have felt it. I know now my own image …

I am he, I burn with love of my own self

… he dimmed the pool with tears, and the image

became obscured by the stirring water …

until it departed.

(cited in Orlowsky and Orlowsky, 1992, p. 74)

Narcissus’ life ends prematurely;

he is an adolescent unable to grow old.

What did he recognize in his reflection?

Perhaps his desire and the experience of ultimately

never being able to attain the love of the other,

while depending on it for his existence.

Narcissus thus recognizes himself

as a separate, extremely lonely and

isolated, dependent and needy being:

a fatal conclusion for a narcissist.

Narcissus’ tragedy consists of being unable to live as a human being and, respectively, with the awareness

of his own ageing and dying, since he is

incapable of being in a relationship.

The narcissistic defensive position is characterized by an addictive yearning

for an experiential quality where feelings of helplessness and despair,

induced by separation or mortification, are to be revoked.

Omnipotent fantasies, actions and reactions are intended

to allow control over an out-of-control situation.

To the gods alone old age and death never come,

but everything else sinks into the chaos of time

which overpowers all.

Earth’s strength decays, and so too the strength of the body.