I have an admittedly “bad you” attitude toward psychology after more than 50 years of assuming that my problems were “all me”. It wasn’t so much a “poor me” attitude as an “I can do this. . . I can find (with help) and admit my faults and fix them”. A kind of grandiosity, it seems now, but a defensive “control” attitude at the time.
I modestly posted what I (grandiosely) think is an answer to this question, at least theoretically. I’m pissed that the psychotherapy profession isn’t looking into what I think was some good to decent theorizing 20 and more years ago. The concept of narcissism came out of theory, though, and it wasn’t conceived of the way it’s used now, to attack the narcissists rather than try to help them. Here is a quote from my earlier link that I think is particularly relevant.
Quote:
From the root of the word narcissism, it might at first appear that the problem is excessive “self-love,“ yet not all narcissism is “disordered:”
“We commonly recognize the value of narcissism, as well as the vital role it plays in creative activity. If we regard sleep as the quintessence of absorption in the self, we agree that narcissism is essential for self-preservation.
Need I point out that ‘narcissistic defense’ does not involve these kinds of normal activity? What we are concerned with is narcissism in a pathological sense, with self-love that serves as a cloak for self-hatred. The polarities of self-hatred and self-love are linked together in the defensive system, but the nuclear problem is the self-hatred.” (Spotnitz, 1976a, p. 104).
How might an individual develop the narcissistic defense? According to Spotnitz, the foundation is likely to be found in early childhood and:
“… is not total emotional deprivation... The defense seems to originate in a relationship which was gratifying to the infant in some respects, especially in meeting his biological needs for the intake of stimuli, but failed to meet the need of his mental apparatus for cooperation in discharging destructive energy. Nevertheless, he was not totally abandoned; he was sufficiently gratified to develop a strong craving for more gratification and, consequently, to place an unduly high value on the source of this bounty.” (Spotnitz, 1976a, p. 104).
Could it be that for the infant it is a question of survival? In the minds of very young children thoughts may have magical properties. If we have horrible thoughts; i.e., that mother frustrates us, or that we hate her, or worse; even for an instant – mother might leave us forever. Or, our violent thoughts might actually kill her; or maybe if we’re so monstrous as to think those thoughts, she might actually die, as punishment for our bad thoughts. We need to protect her at all costs.
Spotnitz hypothesizes that…
“(t)he infant got to understand that his mother might be damaged by his rage; perhaps she discouraged such reactions by withholding her favors. At any rate, the infantile ego which was not trained to release mobilized aggressive energy towards its object in feelings and language responded to prolonged periods of frustration by internalizing its destructive impulses. Much of the energy that would otherwise have been available for maturational processes was expended to bottle up this impulsivity…
The child who started out to console himself with self-love thus compensates for a specific type of damage incurred in the course of maturation by becoming the object of his own hatred. Sacrificially, he attacks his ego to preserve his external object.” (1976a, pp.104-05).
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