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My terror is mixed with voyeuristic fascination. Through the writings, through the reconstructed utterances, through a careful study of what that other, previous, "Sam" has done, or said, or written - I come to learn myself. I meet myself on numerous occasions, reflections in the shattered mirrors of my dysfunctional, selective memory. These frequent occurrences of dissociative amnesia - when I repress the painful, the irrelevant, the useless - are the fabric of the punctuated being that is I.
But what are the rules determining this ruthless and automatic censorship? What governs the selection process? What events, people, writings, thoughts, emotions, hopes are cast into my oblivion - and why do others etch themselves indelibly? Is the repository of my discarded reality - my True Self, that dilapidated, immature, scared and atrophied little child inside me? Am I afraid to get in touch with memory itself, spun from the yarn of pains and disappointments? In short: is this an emotional involvement prevention mechanism?
Narcissism is the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.
The name "narcissism" was coined by Freud after a Greek myth about a pathologically self-absorbed young man. Freud believed that some narcissism is an essential part of all of us from birth.[
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who had never seen his reflection. The nymph Echo had been punished by Hera for gossiping by being cursed to forever "have the last word". Echo had seen Narcissus walking through the forest and wanted to talk to him, but because of the curse she wasn't able to speak first. When Narcissus became thirsty and stopped to take a drink, he saw his reflection in the water for the first time. Not knowing any better, he fell in love and started talking to it. Echo had been following him and started repeating the last thing he said. Not yet understanding reflections, Narcissus thought his reflection was speaking to him and became more engaged. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away at the pool and changed into the flower that bears his name, thenarcissus.
History
The concept of excessive selfishness has been recognized throughout history. In ancient Greece the concept was understood as hubris. It is only in recent times that it has been defined in psychological terms.
- In 1898 Havelock Ellis, an English sexologist, used the term "narcissus-like" in reference to excessive masturbation, whereby the person becomes his or her own sex object.[3]
- In 1899, Paul Näche was the first person to use the term "narcissism" in a study of sexual perversions.
- Otto Rank in 1911 published the first psychoanalytical paper specifically concerned with narcissism, linking it to vanity and self-admiration.[3]
- Sigmund Freud published a paper exclusively devoted to narcissism in 1914 called On Narcissism: An Introduction.[1]
- In 1923, Martin Buber published his essay "Ich und Du" (I and Thou), in which he pointed out that our narcissism often leads us to relate to others as objects instead of as equals.
[edit]Healthy narcissism
Healthy narcissism is a structural truthfulness of the self, achievement of self and object constancy, synchronization between the self and thesuperego and a balance between libidinal and aggressive drives (the ability to receive gratification from others and the drive for impulse expression). Healthy narcissism forms a constant, realistic self-interest and mature goals and principles and an ability to form deep object relations.[4] A feature related to healthy narcissism is the feeling of greatness. This is often used to compensate for insecurity or inadequacy.
[edit]A required element within normal development
Healthy narcissism might exist in all individuals. Freud says that this is an original state from the individual from where to develop the love object. Freud argues that healthy narcissism is an essential part in normal development.[1] The love of the parents for their child and their attitude towards their child could be seen as a revival and reproduction of their own narcissism according to Freud.[1] The child has anomnipotence of thought. The parents stimulate that feeling because in their child they see the things that they have never reached themselves. Compared to neutral observations, the parents tend to overvalue the qualities of their child. When parents act in an extreme opposite style and the child is rejected or inconsistently reinforced depending on the mood of the parent, the self-needs of the child are not met.[citation needed]
[edit]In relation to the pathological condition
Healthy narcissism has to do with a strong feeling of "own love" protecting the human being against illness. Eventually, however, the individual must love the other, "the object love to not become ill". The person becomes ill, as a result of a frustration, when he is unable to love the object.[5] In pathological narcissism such as the narcissistic personality disorder and schizophrenia, the person’s libido has been withdrawn from objects in the world and produces megalomania. The clinical theorists Kernberg, Kohut and Millon all see pathological narcissism as a possible outcome in response to unempathic and inconsistent early childhood interactions. They suggested that narcissists try to compensate in adult relationships.[6] The pathological condition of narcissism is, as Freud suggested, a magnified, extreme manifestation of healthy narcissism.
With regard to the condition of healthy narcissism, it is suggested that this is correlated with good psychological health. Self-esteem works as a mediator between narcissism and psychological health. Therefore, because of their elevated self-esteem, deriving from self-perceptions of competence and likability, high narcissists are relatively free of worry and gloom.[7] Other researchers suggested that healthy narcissism cannot be seen as ‘good’ or ‘bad’; however, it depends on the contexts and outcomes being measured. In certain social contexts such as initiating social relationships, and with certain outcome variables, such as feeling good about oneself, healthy narcissism can be helpful. In other contexts, such as maintaining long-term relationships and with other outcome variables, such as accurate self-knowledge, healthy narcissism can be unhelpful.[8]
[edit]Solan's healthy narcissism
In Ronnie Solan's view, healthy narcissism represents the functioning of narcissism as an emotional-immune system for safeguarding thefamiliarity and the well-being of the individual against invasion by foreign sensations (1998).
[edit]Empirical studies
Within psychology, there are two main branches of research into narcissism, clinical and social psychology. These approaches differ in their view of narcissism with the former treating it as a disorder, thus as discrete, and the latter treating it as a personality trait, thus as a continuum. These two strands of research tend loosely to stand in a divergent relation to one another, although they converge in places.
Campbell and Foster (2007)[9] review the literature on narcissism. They argue that narcissists possess the following "basic ingredients":
- Positive. Narcissists think they are better than others.[10]
- Inflated. Narcissists' views tend to be contrary to reality. In measures which compare self-report to objective measures, narcissists' self-views tend to be greatly exaggerated.[11]
- Agentic. Narcissists’ views tend to be most exaggerated in the agentic domain, relative to the communion domain.[10][11]
- Special. Narcissists perceive themselves to be unique and special people.[12]
- Selfish. Research upon narcissists’ behaviour in resource dilemmas supports the case for narcissists as being selfish.[13]
- Oriented toward success. Narcissists are oriented towards success by being, for example, approach oriented.[14]
Also, narcissists tend to demonstrate a lack of interest in warm and caring interpersonal relationships. Campbell and Forster (2007)[9] also talk of several ongoing controversies within narcissism literature, namely whether narcissism is healthy or unhealthy, a personality disorder, a discrete or continuous variable, defensive or offensive, the same across genders, the same across cultures, and changeable or unchangeable.
Campbell and Foster (2007) argue that self-regulatory strategies are of paramount importance to understanding narcissism.[9] Self-regulation in narcissists involves such things as striving to make one’s self look and feel positive, special, successful and important. It comes in both intra-psychic, such as blaming a situation rather than self for failure, and interpersonal forms, such as using a relationship to serve one’s own self. Some differences in self-regulation between narcissists and non-narcissists can be seen with Campbell, Reeder, Sedikides & Elliot (2000)[15] who conducted a study with two experiments. In each experiment, participants took part in an achievement task following which they were provided with false feedback; it was either bogus success or failure. It was found that both narcissists and non-narcissists self-enhanced, but non-narcissists showed more flexibility in doing so. Participants were measured on both a comparative and a non-comparative self-enhancement strategy. It was found that both narcissists and non-narcissists employed the non-comparative strategy similarly; however, narcissists were found to be more self-serving with the comparative strategy, employing it far more than non-narcissists, suggesting a greater rigidity in their self-enhancement. When narcissists receive negative feedback which threatens the self, they will self-enhance at all costs whereas non-narcissists tend to have limits.
[edit]Narcissistic personality disorder
Although most individuals have some narcissistic traits, high levels of narcissism can manifest themselves as a
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