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Narcissism

Love and Narcissism?

Relationships may be overshadowed by narcissistic singularity.

Key points

  • The narcissist lives in an armored selfhood avoiding any other who can wound, limit, shame, or reject.
  • The authentic person challenges the tightly defended world of the narcissist.
  • Love brings change due to its matrix of complex bonds for begetting aliveness and expressing connection.

You are a narcissist! This is a common phrase expressed currently and increasingly not only in the psychological and analytical jargon but also in mainstream communication. However, the message of being a narcissist is more than accusatory; it is complex and many-layered. When said as such, it is usually taken as an insult, and the person so accused is interpreted to be self-centered, self-absorbed, and deficient relationally. The accuser is usually someone hurt by the narcissist, a person, like the narcissist, who is damaged in not receiving the love as promised or from early in life unable to garner the attention needed.

Narcissism has been interpreted and reinterpreted numerous times and in myriad ways since the beginning of psychoanalysis with Freud in the early 1900s, and that is more than 100 years ago. To describe narcissism in a person, relationship, and culture, this brief exploration illustrates the singularity of narcissism. No matter how it looks, narcissism is a lonely situation yearning to be compensated with otherness, and not knowing how to do this.

Narcissism denotes an exaggerated focus on oneself, hiding from the shadow in an inflated sense of self-importance and lack of empathy to self or others. These traits often stem from deep-seated insecurities, unresolved emotional wounds, and disconnection from one's authenticity. The narcissistic story is a veiled struggle against meaninglessness and unworthiness. A protective system guards the self from the risk of the anticipated and repeated experiences of rejection, humiliation, and shame. The roots of the negative and internalized self-objects are deeply embedded aspects of the personality. Venturing toward intimacy arouses the doubt and self-hatred lying just at the surface and needing to be hidden from the view of others.

The term narcissism is named after a common flower, the narcissus, whose etymology is reminiscent of the contemporary word "toxic." This flower is poisonous, and its name derives from the Greek referring to deadness or numbness. The verb form of the word means to grow numb, and it is the origin of the word narcotic among other things. The experiences of both numbness and toxicity replicate those of the inner world and self-feeling of the narcissist.

Unseen Love

Love catalyzes the necessary range of elements, unifying what appear as opposites in the personality. However, for the narcissist, love does not come through because it remains unseen. The narcissist is absorbed in their own self-interest, or so it appears. The psychological work comes in opening oneself to be in love and to be loved by someone who can be real with themselves and others. The authentic person, although irritating at some times, marvelous and surprising at others, challenges the tightly defended world of the narcissist. It is these unknown and uncontrolled aspects of others the narcissist rebels against and turns from. The narcissist can be described as one for whom love has become estranged. In love relationships, we discover the otherness within ourselves, yet we must be separate to unite. Both processes challenge and threaten the narcissist. Love and consciousness are material and spiritual endeavors and require the presence of self and the other.

The overt presentation of a narcissist feigns bravado while the covert feelings are deflated, self-critical, and depressed. Both past and present are filled with discomfort and poor self-feelings. The narcissist’s past is fraught with perceived misdeeds and micro-moments of experiences loaded with the residue of debilitating shame, anguish, and despair. To survive requires avoiding this self-knowledge and obstructing integration of the past with the present.

Desire and Rejection

The narcissist lives in an armored selfhood avoiding encountering any other who can possibly wound, limit, shame, or reject. The person who becomes the focus of narcissistic love comes to feel oppressed and enslaved by the continual demands and expectations of perfection. Destabilized by the emotional wounds, an internal confusion plunges the narcissist into a longing for Eros or relatedness and relationship. Yet, this feels impossible as the narcissist is trapped between sets of mutually exclusive alternatives of desire and rejection. The narcissist then exists in a hall of mirrors, a retreat where the self becomes distorted, disguised, or shattered into slivers without a means for reflection. Life is not natural and must be controlled and managed.

“And we could, of course, say that Narcissus [in the myth] was in flight from self-knowledge” as British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (2002) wrote. For the narcissist, self-cohesion is disturbed, driven by vulnerability and fear of others due to the fragility of the self. The narcissist is not just grandiose but has a personality composed of finely tuned projections. These are based on feeling small, inadequate, and unable to let anyone in due to the shaky self-image. This manifests in an unrealistic appraisal of one’s attributes. There exists a limiting and harsh scenario run by internal saboteurs, demonic, operating against love and relationship, keeping singularity as preferable and safer. Jung noted, “But if you hate and despise yourself—if you have not accepted your pattern—then there are hungry animals (prowling cats and other beasts and vermin) in your constitution which get at your neighbours like flies in order to satisfy the appetites which you have failed to satisfy” (Jung, 1998).

Love brings change due to its matrix of complex bonds for begetting aliveness and expressing connection. It is composed of many elements, illusions, limits, disappointments and idealizations, exposure, sufferings, failures, and paradox. Love leads us into the roots of the psyche. The dimensions to otherness are interrelated and constitute the challenge to the narcissist as both the biggest threat and greatest opportunity.

However, for the narcissist, self-representation, who I am, and the definition of one’s being are all unquestioned consciously. The anxiety about being seen heightens as relationships with others are assumed to be precarious and threatening. Underneath is an idealization of others making one feel powerless and unconfident, weak, dependent, and insecure. As Marcel Proust, famous writer of the late 1800s, opined, “The hard and fast lines with which we circumscribe love arise solely from out of complete ignorance of life” (Proust, 1919).

References

Jung, C. (1998). Jung's Seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Princeton University Press.

Proust, M. (1919/1957). Within a Budding Grove. Chatto and Windus.

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