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Originally Posted by Xynesthesia2
. . .I have been struck by Marty's own involvement as well. It is hard for me to comprehend how someone can get so enmeshed for so long but I guess it's only me as I fail to relate to many other types of long-term interpersonal enmeshment and dependency also reported on this forum. I've grown to accept that it is just something I will probably never fully comprehend but can be very real/serious for many people (just like my substance addiction was for me).
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Originally Posted by Xynesthesia2
I personally never sought or accepted any kind of guru, the only way I could see young myself getting enmeshed would be a romantic affair and perhaps mixed with some work collaboration. I did that several times in my youth with teachers/mentors and all of them were decent people and good relationships, no harm whatsoever and quite a bit of mutual gain. We treated each-other as equals. With a narcissistic/guru-like therapist it would never last long though, I disliked those kinds of people even when I was very young, so I can't see myself with someone like Ike... my "weakness" used to be smart, accomplished, creative and often quite enigmatic people. But with decent morals. Usually with quite some similar personality traits and interests to myself, which typically comes with a need for independence and not desiring authorities/followers/dependency, more equal but sufficiently autonomous collaborators, friends, advisors, mentees etc. I can imagine mistaking the enigmatic nature of an introverted, somewhat eccentric creative person with unique charisma who is not averse to risks with a paranoid, secretive, purposefully manipulative and only superficially accomplished person who would take unethical risks but no responsibility, for a while when I was very young though. I definitely had an issue with sometimes confusing/separating my professional and romantic interests when I was younger and needed quite a few rounds of trial and error to learn to identify these different things. I imagine someone who has people-pleasing, serving tendencies and a strong desire to join/belong to some powerful bigger structure can end up in a version of that confusion as well quite easily. We definitely bring these patterns from early life and it usually takes quite some experience to change them, if ever.
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The similarities you note between substance addiction and romantic/sexual affairs and cult-like following and dependency on therapists, and similar gurus, is important, I think, to a better understanding of the Marty-like phenomena.
About 12 years ago I was having terrible difficulty with what seemed then, and still seems, an internal addiction to beating myself up emotionally. Shame, contempt, an almost sadistic haughtiness directed at myself. It served to numb out the shame and contempt I was feeling from other sources in my life at the time, perhaps imaginary, perhaps memories, but still present. I hadn't gotten any help with this from therapy, therapists didn't even seem to see this as the big problem that, to me, it was -- perhaps I didn't emphasize it in my therapy, so perhaps it was hard for them to comprehend. AND perhaps they had never been taught about it?
I consciously, therefore, chose to start drinking before I went to sleep, to numb out the incessant self-directed aggression since there was nothing I could do internally to turn it off. I didn't become addicted although I did overuse alcohol for some years. And I have overcome, finally, a lot of my original addiction to self-directed emotional aggression.
I got the idea, frankly, from reading something in one of Heinz Kohut's books about the difference between narcissistic behavior disorders, like substance addiction, and narcissistic personality disorders. I was never diagnosed with, and don't think I have/had, a narcissistic personality disorder as currently defined by the DSM. But I do think there are things that got cross-wired or stymied in my personality development, probably due to trauma, one of which occurred in a hospital when I was 3. (That one for sure, not my parents' fault.)
As you wrote in another post:
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I think many of these dictator-like Ts are deeply insecure deep down and often are drawn to the profession because they learn they would be able to manipulate and take advantage of confused and vulnerable clients. I am pretty convinced that anyone who want to be cult leaders and dictators fall either in that category or have psychopathic tendencies.
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there is something about narcissism, maybe idealism, that seems to me involved in situations like Marty and Ike that could be interesting and possibly helpful to people, eventually, to investigate further.