The Age of Narcissism
Narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder — a personality disorder characterized by a belief in one’s own uniqueness, special position, superiority over other people; an inflated opinion of one’s talents and achievements; preoccupation with fantasies about one’s successes; expectation of unconditional good treatment and unquestioning obedience of others; seeking the admiration of others to confirm one’s uniqueness and importance.
Narcissistic trauma is a peculiar trace in the personality of those who were raised by narcissistic people or simply had too many traumatic experiences with them. Represents an increased vulnerability to shame, as well as difficulty in maintaining boundaries between self and others. Most people with narcissistic trauma are either as invested as narcissistic personalities in maintaining a sense of their super-importance, or tend to be complacent in fulfilling the whims of others for fear of facing their anger.
Meanwhile, unlike individuals with pathological narcissism, narcissistically traumatized people retain a sufficient level of reflexivity to be able to recognize their own envy, shame, and guilt.
A narcissistic victim is A person who is in a relationship with a person with pronounced narcissistic traits (narcissistic relationship).
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There is such a notion as “modern neurosis”. This means that in every time, in every century, the history and culture of human civilization are formed in such a way that children born at that time will have common traits, patterns of behavior, which appeared due to a special style of upbringing and conditions of development. Our century is considered the century of narcissism, when the manifestation of narcissistic traits is found in the majority. There is even talk of an “epidemic of narcissism.”
We modern adults who seek and enter into relationships are children of the same era, the same culture. I think this is only true for children of Europeanized countries. The culture of Asia or Africa, the culture of small, detached from the general trends, nationalities have their own specific features. They probably have their own, special neuroses.
The epidemic of narcissism is about civilized society, which can enjoy all modern achievements of science and technology, with blurred boundaries, great freedom, accessibility of the most diverse knowledge. A huge information field, which is available to every modern person, influences him, whether he wants it or not. In this information field there are goals to strive for, values to rely on, patterns of behavior to follow. These are communicated to us by parents, teachers, peers. We take our place in society according to how much we conform to these patterns, and can only claim in the world what we deserve based on our “rightness” or “wrongness”.
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A prime example of the narcissistic claims of the world is the “American Dream.” An American can consider himself successful when he has achieved a certain level of wealth. The US, interestingly enough, is moving away from this stereotype: decades of psychotherapy habits are having an effect. But the message itself is very persistent: you have to go from an ordinary person to the one who decides the fate of the world because he has a lot of money. Neither Steve Jobs nor Henry Ford would have been so popular if the material component had been removed from their stories. They would still be brilliant, colorful personalities, but they would not be as interesting. The modern idols are the rich.
There’s a pretty simple template that offers a blueprint for getting rich: take risks, work hard, do everything perfectly, be a leader. In general, these four pieces of advice are given in most self-development books, further particular. This template is unrealizable because it describes a flat reality, assuming that all a person needs to do is make an effort and they will change. Millions and billions of people blame themselves for laziness, believing it to be the sole cause of their inadequacy.
This pattern is riddled with holes. What to do with fatigue? With negative feelings? With lack of resources? With mistakes and failures? In general, with the whole psychic reality that does not and will never fit into a template that is too small for it?
There is a category of clients who come to psychotherapy not to know themselves, but to force themselves to be someone else. They are often entrepreneurs, high level managers, self-employed professionals. They see themselves as ineffective and need to remove interferences in their personality.
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Denis, for example, comes for coaching: he wants to understand why his goals are not being met or are being met slowly. He is a top manager and works with a lot of stress. He is very thin, you can see that he doesn’t sleep much, he is always taking notes and he always refuses tea. His goals are not being met because they are inadequate: he wants too much, too fast and hates himself too much for slipping up. He has recently had a third child in his marriage, which he doesn’t like. His father is seriously ill. Denis feels very bad and goes into work in part to distract himself. The work tension, the feeling of being a failure, the thoughts that his life should be something else, actually relate not only and not so much to work, but when they are projected onto it, they are easier to bear. The idea of professional success becomes super important because it looks the easiest thing to do. If Denis realizes that this is not possible in the way he envisions it, he will have to rethink other aspects of his life and live through a lot of the pain he is so good at detaching himself from.
Lena comes to therapy with a question about knowing herself and her purpose. She feels that she would be more successful, free of doubt and laziness, if she knew exactly what she was meant to do. The search for such a cause is due in no small part to the culture in which she lives: her social circle is “people interested in self-development”, roughly speaking — a psycho-esoteric crowd with average requirements for how to live properly. A lot of books read, a lot of trainings attended, a lot of confidence that she is already realized and developed. But Lena does not have a sense of her purpose, and according to the requirements it should be. For the sake of this very purpose Lena does not sleep enough, because she meditates in the morning, does sports to train willpower and uses all kinds of affirmations. As a result, she goes farther and farther away from hearing her real self, with her real feelings and needs, and the question of her purpose does not move forward.
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And Kostya heard in the company of young entrepreneurs about a business guru who changes consciousness and people become billionaires. Kostya has no money for this guru yet. He tries to maintain and develop his first business while his acquaintance opens branches all over the country after meeting this very guru. Kostya ignores the fact that his acquaintance’s father is a big entrepreneur and they have completely different inputs. It seems to Kostya that if he worked harder (and also, of course, if I worked better), he would be too.
Because the world is narcissistic, it offers competition as the primary form of human interaction. Competition permeates all areas of life, replacing other forms of interaction: intimacy, learning, partnership, joint exploration. In any relationship, it is as if there is always a question of comparison. We compete with friends to see which of us is better at coping, with lovers for power, with strangers for the right to social attention and approval. Parents compete with the help of children. Children compete through toys, clothes, and parents. Later one competes through grades or number of friends, still later through the amount of money and ideal family on Instagram pages. In the absence of explicit competitive qualities, one can compete in the number of problems, in sickness and unhappiness.
The basis of such competition is anxiety, a person worries that there will be no place for him in this life if he does not become the best.
Such a place is guaranteed only by winning by a margin, that is, by winning in such a way that one does not even have to doubt, because everyone else has been left far behind. This makes competition unhealthy: in normal relationships there is competition too, but it does not involve winning in the absence of other participants. The narcissistic experience dictates the need to crush, devalue, destroy rivals in order to win unambiguously. With unstable self-esteem, the presence of a competitor — at least in the zone of visibility — means that victory is doubtful.
Unhealthy, obsessive competition will feature heavily in narcissistic relationships. The prize in this competition is a narcissistic sense of self-righteousness that reduces anxiety.
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Anya is in a relationship with Vlad, and it is a narcissistic relationship. The flamboyant narcissist there is Vlad, Anya perceives herself as a victim of narcissism. She has a lot of things hard in this relationship: putting up with his taunts or temper tantrums, conforming to his demands, enduring his magical thinking. She tries to teach him to be more tolerant and rational. Every time his omens and superstitions don’t work, she points it out and mocks him. Even publicly, she may let go of a comment like, “Well, Vlad is wearing a lucky shirt today, let him negotiate a discount.” Vlad freaks out, of course, and it’s not safe for Anya, but she does it anyway. Anya feels that he treats her like an uneducated simpleton. Vlad feels that he is treated like a fool. They compete with each other over who has the right to be considered a full human being.
And Nastya and Zhenya compete for friends: at meetings of friendly companies between them there are always outbursts of quarrels — Nastya cries, Zhenya leaves in a frenzy. Nastya, left alone with other people, complains a lot about her life and exposes Zhenya’s secrets, exposing him as a rapist and an alfonso. Zhenya acts more directly, at the next meeting obviously controlling Nastya’s alcohol under the sauce of “you’ll get drunk again and act like a fool”. That said, alone with each other, they are quite capable of respect and mutual loyalty. They only become enemies when there is an audience.
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