Until we as a society can wean ourselves from celebrity worship, the Golden Age of Narcissism will continue making the most disadvantaged and disturbed among us feel like social "losers," desperate for some way to escape from shame and achieve a fleeting "winner" status.
Modern day America has been characterized as both a New Gilded Age and a Culture of Narcissism. It is no coincidence that these two critiques have arisen at the same time.
The word "narcissist" has become trivialized, it's become more or less synonymous with vanity or conceit. In connection with the release of his new book — The Narcissist You Know: Defending Yourself Against Extreme Narcissists in an All-About-Me Age — Clinical Psychologist Joseph Burgo describes five of the more serious types of narcissist and how to cope with them.
In this Age of Narcissism, political discourse increasingly rejects rational thought and respectful argument, relying instead on typical defenses against narcissistic injury -- indignation, blame, and contempt -- to turn the opponent into a "loser."
To identify yourself as a Trump supporter -- that is, to identify with the man himself on some level -- helps you to feel like a "winner" when you may unconsciously fear that you're a "loser" in this complex and daunting world.
The ability to grieve for the inevitable loss and disappointments that are part of life, without losing sight of its genuine goodness, is a sign of mental health.
Shame involves feeling about ourselves and who we are. Guilt arises from our actions, real or imaginary; it depends upon empathy for other people and the hurt we may have caused them.
While the current anti-shame zeitgeist encourages the culturally oppressed to rebel against shame, the experience of shame is sometimes appropriate, preserving certain aspects of the human experience from becoming degraded and meaningless.
When we idealize celebrities we often envy them as well: first we take vicarious pleasure in their perfect lives and then enjoy watching them fall apart.
In Part One of his interview with Oprah, Lance Armstrong showed no authentic sense of guilt or remorse but continued to display the characteristic defenses against shame at the heart of narcissism.
Genuine self-respect grows from living up to our own standards. Narcissism is a defensive cover for an underlying sense of shame, the very opposite of authentic self-esteem.
One of the great fallacies that many scientists have is that everything that is before birth is genetic and that everything that is after birth is learned. This is not the case.
New PT blogger Joseph Burgo submits his first blog post exploring the roots of shame in early failures of attunement -- a kind of unrequited love -- between mother and child.
