Also read these - click on the links:

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/trauma.html

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/torturepsychology.html

====================================
http://www.toddlertime.com/general/trauma-triangle.htm

The Victim-Rescuer-Perpetrator Triangle

The Timberlawn Trauma Program
Directed by Colin Ross M.D.
4600 Samuell Blvd. Dallas, TX 75228

Victims of childhood trauma often get locked in a pattern of re-
enactment within their relationships called the victim-rescuer-
perpetrator triangle.  When this logic dominates relationships,
someone has to fill each of the three roles.  Often, the survivor
takes the victim position and perceives the therapist as a rescuer.
Once this pattern is set in place, someone has to be the
perpetrator.  More often then not, the perpetrator role is assigned
to a third party outside the therapy relationship.

"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" (December 2004)

http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?ISBN=8023833847

A problem arises when the therapist agrees to be the rescuer,
because the rescuing behavior of the therapist further locks the
survivor into the victim position.  In turn, this can result in
escalation series of crises and symptoms to stimulate more rescuing
behavior by the therapist.  In conjunction with this escalation the
identified perpetrator may have to be perceived as far more evil
then he or she is in reality.

The triangle is rarely stable.  The triangle may flip such that the
therapist is perceived as the perpetrator, and then some outside
party must be come the rescuer or the survivor may flip into the
perpetrator role and victimize others.



The goal of therapy is for the survivor to step outside the triangle
altogether, so that relationships are no longer dominated by the
patterns and logic of the past.  In order to be of assistance, the
therapist must strive to remain neutral and not get locked into any
position on the triangle.  Part of the work of therapy is analyzing
the way relationships re-enact the victim-rescuer-perpetrator
triangle, then changing the patterns.

NEW!!! "Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath" (December
2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ABUSE

http://www.toddlertime.com/general/trauma-triangle-group.htm

The Trauma Drama Triangle
Krisy's Group in 9/17/02
9/27/02 Revision [N/C]

   Paraphrased by Kathi Stringer
Design concept - C. Ross, Graphics - Kathi Stringer



This idea originated from Colin Ross.  In figure 1, through repeated
reenactment of the original trauma  the victim continues to be re-
victimized. In this triad the victim started out as a victim and is
rescued from the perpetrator. As time moves on, the rescuer may not
be able to satisfy the needs of victim.

Figure 1

"The World of the Narcissist" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ESSAY

After a series of repeated heroic efforts from the rescuer, the
rescuer may become the victim, and now the victim is behaving as the
perpetrator.  In other words the victim is now traumatizing the
rescuer due to escalating demands that can never be met on a
constant and ongoing basis.
The perpetrator could be an individual that is in a relationship
with the victim, and the therapist could be the advisor -- AKA
rescuer.  Or, the perpetrator may be the haunting memories from the
past and continue to cause the victim to be re-victimized from
maladaptive behaviors learned from childhood.

As the arrows in Figure 1 suggest, these positions can be switched
around or reversed at anytime.  The switch may happen several times
in a week, day or hour.  When the victim is caught up in the cycle,
it is difficult for the therapist to contain the situation by
rescuing the victim, since to rescue the victim strengthens and
validates victimized position.


Figure 2 exemplifies that for recovery to begin, the cycle must be
identified and halted.  Through introspection and guidance, the
victim can be empowered to eject from the never-ending cycle of
victim - perpetrator - rescuer.
Figure 2

Dr. Ross writes, "The goal of therapy is for the survivor to step
outside the triangle altogether, so that relationships are no longer
dominated by the patterns and logic of the past. In order to be of
assistance, the therapist must strive to remain neutral and not get
locked into any position on the triangle.  Part of the work of
therapy is analyzing the way current relationships re-enact the
victim - perpetrator -  rescuer."

Kathi's Mental Heath Review
Copyright  �  Kathi Stringer & Respective Authors.

Also read these - click on the links:

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/dream.html

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/case02.html

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/psychoanalysis.html

====================================
http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/budd.htm


The Shark Behind the Sofa:
The Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams
Susan Budd



  This paper was published as part of a recent feature series
on dreams and history in History Workshop Journal, Issue No:48
Autumn 1999.
In allowing us to reproduce the paper we are indebted to the Oxford
University Press
(OUP) and History Workshop Journal. Please note that HWJ retain full
copyright.
The journal's website can be found at www.hwj.oupjournals.org

NB References and Notes can be clicked and treated as links








Fig. 1, Salvador Dali, `The Accommodations of Desire', 1926
(Salvador Dali-Foundation Gala-Salvador Dali/Design and Artists
Copyright
Society 1999)



The Shark Behind the Sofa:
The Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams
Susan Budd

In a sense, psychoanalysis began with dreams. The Interpretation of
Dreams was first published in 1900, followed quickly by two books,
on jokes and on the psychopathology of everyday life, in which Freud
demonstrated how his new theory of the processes of the unconscious
mind could be used to explain a great deal of everyone's everyday
behaviour.

His stress throughout was on the normality and ubiquity of
activities like dreaming, forgetting things, making mistakes,
telling jokes, and so on, which are rooted in the unconscious mind.
We've all got one, and the way it makes us think and behave unites
us with those outsiders, those others, young children, primitive
peoples and the mentally ill, from whom we spend much of our lives
trying to distance ourselves. I often think that much of the
hostility to psychoanalysis expressed by academics and public
figures stems from its anarchic, banana-skin effect on our wish to
be seen as properly grown up, balanced, judicious, full of gravitas;
our dreams especially can be wonderfully debunking productions. A
patient comes in and tells us that they dreamt that we invited them
to tea and then we hadn't got any to offer so they kindly cooked us
a hamburger, or that they arrived in a consulting-room which was
full of our badly-behaved children and turned into a sandpit. We can
enjoy these subversive images together, and also notice the relief
that both analyst and patient feel in being liberated momentarily
from our customary roles in the consulting-room.

It is strange, given the high value that Freud placed upon dreams �
  `the royal highway to knowledge of the unconscious aspect of the
mind', he called them � that a century later many psychoanalysts
take no special interest in dreams, and do not think that they offer
us any special access to the inner world or demand any particular
interpretative technique. This change is not particularly new �
Freud himself was noticing and regretting it by the 1920s.

Vicky Hamilton's recent study of how a group of English and American
analysts of different theoretical persuasions actually put
psychoanalytic theory into practice found that analysts differ
widely in their attitudes to dreams.[1] Some find them not
particularly interesting, and hard to work with. Others find them
enjoyable and fascinating. (Unsurprisingly, the second sort of
analyst is told far more dreams.) But few contemporary
psychoanalysts think that dreams are a uniquely valuable source of
information about the patient's psyche. This is because of the
overwhelming contemporary emphasis on the central role of the
transference interpretation. Hamilton thinks that this is part of
the contemporary restriction of psychoanalysis to a focus on the
patient's present relationships, particularly that with the analyst,
at the expense of the earlier aim to recreate the patient's psychic
history, laid down in sedimentary layers which the dream, like a
geological bore, brings up in condensed and scrambled images the
forgotten and concealed psychic past.

The focus on the here-and-now transference interpretation has
changed analysts' use of dream material. When dreams are interpreted
as manifestations of disguised thoughts and feelings about the
present transference relationship, dreams are understood along a
horizontal as opposed to a vertical dimension. Relational, present-
time interpretations flatten and extend laterally the condensed and
dispersed associations to dream content. The dream, like the mind,
loses depth both historically and as an imaginative elaboration of
everyday experience. And with this loss, the fragility, specificity,
and complexity of dreams disperse into more simple affective and
relational transactions.... If analysts are no longer concerned with
the detailed histories of their patients, the idiosyncratic imagery
of dreams has less to reveal about the mind of one of the two
participants in the analytic relationship. And perhaps that means
that imagination is, after all, less central to the analyst's
creativity than is his capacity for empathic or projective
identification. [2]

Hamilton regrets this change, as I do. How has this situation come
about? Let us begin at the beginning.

The Interpretation of Dreams is a stiff read. When teaching
psychotherapy students, I try to console them with the thought that
it's not only about dreams, it also contains Freud's theory of how
the mind works, but they still find it tough going. Unlike Jung,
Freud did not consider that dreams were in themselves sources of any
unique wisdom or insight inaccessible by other means. He thought
that dreams allow us to sleep by discharging in veiled form
primitive impulses stirred up by the previous day; his attitude to
dreams was more like that of Scrooge, telling Marley's ghost that he
was really caused by a speck of indigestible mustard. But what Freud
was fascinated by was the process of symbolic transformation by
which an unconscious wish is translated into a conscious thought.
The contents of the unconscious, being derived from infantile wishes
and bodily drives, he did not think particularly remarkable. He saw
the dreaming mind as continuous with and working in a very similar
way to the waking mind. Most of our perceptions and mental activity
are not accessible to consciousness whether we are asleep or awake.
Dreams for the psychoanalyst are akin to daydreams, hallucinations,
visions and jokes.

Theoretically speaking, Freud's views on dreams were based on the
topographical model, and never clearly modified to fit in with the
later structural model. His account of the formation of a dream was
that of a lengthy system of transformations and translations
undertaken by the dreaming mind to smuggle forbidden ideas past the
censor. The forbidden wish can appear in consciousness or in the
dream because it is heavily disguised. So the classical technique of
dream interpretation involves putting the process of forming a dream
into reverse.

Classically, the analyst works back from the manifest dream, or more
accurately, the dream as it is remembered and reported in a session,
by gathering the patient's associations to each element of the
dream, putting them together with the events of the previous day and
his or her knowledge of the patient's life, and decoding from its
symbolic language the dream thoughts, the latent dream, which lead
back to the particular infantile wish, generally sexual and often on
one level about the relation with the analyst, which threatened to
disturb sleep and so produced the dream in the first place. The
metaphor that Freud used is that of the archaeologist deciphering
hieroglyphics which refer to events long ago, buried in the mists of
time. He saw the unconscious as striving to speak in a kind of
visual language, full of puns and reversals.

Freud realized that people have generally been interested in dreams
because they wonder if they are significant; in particular, if they
predict the future. He only made one reference to this. The
preconscious mind, he thought, recognizes things that the conscious
mind denies. So if we dream that a friend is dead, and shortly
afterwards discover that he is indeed fatally ill, this is because
the preconscious knows more than we wish to know. We have pushed
away from consciousness all the clues which tell us that there is
something wrong. Since Freud, Jung certainly, and many other
analysts implicitly, have seen the manifest as well as the latent
content of the dream as informing us about the patient. The early
analysts spent a good deal of time on dreams: the impression one
gains from some accounts of sessions is that dreams provided the
most important sort of material.[3]

The surrealist artists and poets who enthusiastically adopted
psychoanalytic ideas in the 1920s and 30s saw the dream as a means
of access to the irrational layers of the mind. They tried to
represent dreams by means of automatic writing and pictorially. They
followed Freud in seeing the dream as reflecting a crazy,
unpredictable world, in which reality is discontinuous. But unlike
him, they thought this world a valuable counterweight to rational
thought. Dali explicitly used Freudian dream symbols in pictures in
which he tried to explore his mental difficulties, and in the recent
exhibition of Dali's work at the Tate in Liverpool, his homage to
Freud was represented at the beginning of the exhibition by Freud's
analytic couch.

In `The Accommodations of Desire' of 1926 (Fig. 1), the thoughts
appearing repeatedly on each of the discrete pebbles remind us of
Freud's principle of over-determination in dreams � the same thought
appears over and over again. Notice the flat, pale-brown background
which many surrealists use to suggest dreams and which I will return
to later. The picture is concerned with the horror of a woman's
genital, which is either swarming with ants, or a lion's mouth. The
lion is derived from Freud's view that wild beasts in dreams
symbolize forbidden desires, and it reappears several times in
various forms, illustrating the mechanisms of displacement and
reversal, together with other vaginal images � the vase � and as
part of the protective father whom the painter is seeking. Dali's
paintings of this period often contain a protective male figure who
is both his father and Sigmund Freud. In 1938, Dali had visited
Freud, who wrote afterwards,

"until now, I have been inclined to regard the surrealists, who have
apparently adopted me as their patron saint, as complete fools (let
us say 95%, as with alcohol). That young Spaniard, with his candid,
fanatical eyes and his undeniable technical mastery has changed my
estimate. It would indeed be interesting to investigate analytically
how he came to create that picture" .. [4]

   But although in the popular mind, psychoanalysts interpret dreams
as one can the painting by playing a game of spot the symbol, in
fact very few analysts now work in this classical way: it's rather
stultifying, it tends to bracket off the dream from the rest of the
analysis, and we often feel it's not the most important thing to
focus on in a session.

    Why is this? Why have we changed? Partly it is the impact of
modern dream research, which has confirmed many of Freud's views,
but not others; we now think the dream is not always based on a
forbidden wish. Dreams stand on the frontier of the mind and the
brain; they have both somatic and ideational roots. This has been
known for a long time; Lucretius commented in De Rerum Naturae that
children who wet their beds often dream of pissing into chamberpots;
the dream protects our sleep from the need to get up and go and find
one. The research undertaken in sleep laboratories on the
relationship between dreams and various kinds of sleep shows the
complexity, and the importance, of the dream in our psychic life.
[5]

    Partly, psychoanalysts have changed their attitude to dreams for
the same reasons which have changed our technique in other areas.
Patients and dreams seem to have changed; we focus now much more on
the interaction between patient and analyst, and the dream, for bad
or good, is the patient's possession. Many of us now see the
manifest content of the dream as significant in its own right, and
not just a clue to hidden wishes. I shall discuss these changes in
turn, but it is worth noting first that many of the changes which we
have made in our ways of seeing and using dreams Freud had made as
well. As so often, it is his early work which is taken as
definitive, but he was to go on writing about dreams and changing
his mind for another forty years.



Changes in Patients and Dreams



    It has often been said that psychoanalysts don't see so many of
the `good neurotic' patients as Freud did � or do we analyze them
differently? Certainly hysterics, of whom Freud saw so many in his
early years, are on the whole good and vivid dreamers, and we now
see more character disorders and schizoid personalities. Modern
patients don't often produce the kinds of dreams that Freud had.

    Modern dreams mostly seem to be shorter and more fragmentary, and
this is because the dream is undoubtedly a cultural as well as a
neuro-biological product. It isn't just a kind of mental garbage.
Dreams are very specific to each individual but they are also
products of the social order; the visions of schizophrenic patients
as recorded by asylum keepers had a predominantly religious quality
until the mid eighteenth century, when they began to be replaced by
images of sexuality and of machines. But the modern world is both
short of time, and pays no official attention to dreams; patients in
treatment tend to find their dreams changing and becoming richer as
someone else takes an interest in them. (It is comforting that Ella
Sharpe (Dream Analysis, 1937) thought that the shortest, fragmentary
dreams are often those which repay attention.)

    Dreams vary in the extent of their cunning disguise. Sandor
Ferenczi was the first to remark on how the forbidden wish is often
extraordinarily transparent in the dreams of the unsuspecting person
who insists, on meeting us at a dinner-party or other social
occasion, that we tell them what their recent dream means.[6] Freud
thought that if an analysis is going well, patients can be
increasingly left to interpret their own dreams. I remember a young
woman, going through a negative patch in analysis, who dreamt of
sitting in the casualty department of the Royal Free Hospital, and
remembered hearing the previous day of a boy who had shot himself in
the eye with an air-rifle. She Then burst out, `If I shot myself in
the tongue, I wouldn't have to talk to you', and this account of her
unconscious wish was entirely convincing to us both.

    Freud took the ability to dream for granted. We now think that to
be able to have a dream, tell it and think together with someone
else about what it shows, is a considerable mental achievement. The
most important thing that we have to be able to do to enable us to
dream successfully is to know the difference between a dream and
reality. This is similar to being able to be in and use an analytic
session by keeping a frame round it. Some authorities believe that
deeply psychotic patients do not dream, because their waking life is
full of hallucinations and dream-like confusion. Young children
confuse the contents of their minds with physical reality; they
wake, and ask indignantly where the sweets are that you had put on
the shelf, or think that the gorilla really is lurking behind the
curtains. The mental world is not yet out there, or
representational; the inner reality of dreams is also part of the
external world. In the same way, very disturbed patients struggle to
separate dreams from reality, and may feel that hallucinations and
dreams are real, and they must act them out. If the analyst appears
as hostile or friendly in the dream, they will find it difficult in
the session not to react as if the analyst really were like that.
Their dreams often seem to reflect their anxieties directly, without
the elaborate symbolic disguise of the dreams of the more normal
person.

The first challenge to Freud's theory that we dream to enable us to
go on sleeping concerned the nightmare or anxiety-dream; the dream
that wakes us so violently that we find it hard to sleep.



Figure 2, `The Nightmare' by Fuseli, painted around 1782



`The Nightmare' by Fuseli, painted around 1782 (Fig. 2), was one of
the early icons of the romantic movement. It is said that Freud had
an engraving hanging in his waiting-room. It depicts the ancient
view that the choking anxiety of a nightmare is caused by a demon
sitting on the chest, which will sexually invade the body of the
dreamer and try to take over her mind. Ernest Jones thought that
these sorts of dreams were caused by a specific kind of homosexual
anxiety which was commoner in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries,[7] but here we seem to be looking at a physiological
universal.

If we look at images of nightmares from other cultures �




Figure 3, a stoneprint of a nightmare made by an Inuit in 1965
(Courtesy of Signum Press, Montreal)


   � we can see the same themes appearing; the pressure on the chest,
the sense of there being other beings inside one's head, the animals
who invade us. Presumably the simi�larity of these images across time
and space stems from the universal human experiences of inhabiting
the same bodies, having the same sorts of experiences in early
childhood, experiencing fear in the same physiological way, and so
on. Even in cultures where dreams are believed to predict the future
rather than revive the past, patients vividly dream of past traumas
as they do in the West. Such dreams are doubly frightening for them,
since they fear that the trauma is not only past but will come again
in the future. The dreams of borderline patients commonly depict the
body or the inner self being invaded by a parasitic being, just as
many horror films do. But to dream even this is an accomplishment;
the worst nightmares are those with imageless sensations of terror;
in them, we experience a horror without being able to symbolize it.

  There was plenty of evidence for this among the shell-shock
patients of the Great War, whose treatment gave such an impetus to
psychoanalysis. Night after night, soldiers would experience again
the horrifying events which had led to their breakdown. Modern
research into traumatic dreams shows that as people begin to recover
from horrifying experiences, images of the terror begin to appear in
their dreams, and finally they begin to dream that they can master
the horror - escape from the burning building, flee from the
assailant - and then they can use the process of symbolization to
begin to sleep. In Hanna Segal's terms, they are moving from a
symbolic equation to a true symbol.[8]


    In the same way, the drawings of sexually-abused children will at
first show broken fragments, or tearing and scratching of paper, and
then begin to show in symbolic form and increasingly directly what
the bodily invasion felt like. Ferenczi, who worked with some very
damaged patients, tells of a woman who every night would experience
imageless sensations related to her early traumas, wake, and then
have a dream in which the sensations were represented in images,
which would allow her a refreshing sleep.[9] Indeed, many of us have
the sense that a good night's sleep involves satisfactory dreams,
even if we do not particularly remember them.[10] We could say that
the dream does indeed represent a wish; but it is a wish to dream,
to represent our psychic life in image or narrative.


The evidence from dream research is equivocal about the merits of
post-traumatic dreams as a method of mourning and coming to terms
with the past. Some studies show that the best way of surviving
horrifying experiences is to repress them so deeply that we never
even dream of them. Others suggest that for the mildly depressed,
dreaming is indeed a way of coming to terms with distressing events,
and their dreams during a single night show progressively more
pleasant themes, and a lighter mood on waking.

It was Jung who pointed out that dreams can be analyzed in series;
he believed that they show the unconscious mind returning over and
over again to a central dilemma or theme in the life of the dreamer,
and some dreams certainly are of this type. I shall return to this
again when I talk about symbolism in dreams. Ronald Fairbairn, who
produced a revised metapsychology for psychoanalysis in a series of
papers in the 1940s and 50s, saw dreams as being like cinema-shorts;
they represent in condensed form our self-narrative.[11] His analogy
is interesting; the cinema has drawn extensively on the
psychoanalytic view of dreams, and perhaps is the medium most
capable of representing the dreaming experience to us.

Freud always implicitly assumed that there is a distinction between
reality-based thinking, located in the ego, and psychotic thinking,
such as dreaming, which is dominated by unconscious processes.
Melanie Klein was less interested in dreams as such because for her,
all thinking was more permeated by unconscious elements. She thought
that we cope with unacceptable ideas less by repression than by
splitting the ego, and in our dreams, our divided minds often
appear, represented by different levels, or different rooms in a
house.

If we seek the distinction in paintings, we can find the distinction
between the interest in dreams of the classical period, where they
are messages, true or false, from the gods, or the underworld, and
in those of the romantic movement, for example Goya's familiar
engraving of `The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters'.

Here the dreamer, slumped forward in sleep, is separate from the
monsters which appear in the background, even though the advance
made by the romantic movement was to intermittently realize that the
monsters come from another part of oneself. But the dreamer will
awake, and they will disappear into the underworld. Melanie Klein
was working in a more modern idiom, in which there is no such
reassuring division between the sane, waking world and the world of
dreams; dream images are part of the divided inner self. For
example, Figure 4, `cerebral palsy', was produced in 1906 by Louis
Umgelter, a mental patient suffering from alcoholism and dementia
praecox. (It forms part of the Prinzhorn collection from Heidelberg
University, of art produced in mental asylums between the turn of
the century and the 1920s, which was on show at the Hayward Gallery,
London, as part of the exhibition of `Art and Psychosis' December
1996�February 1997.) Like many of the other drawings in the
exhibition, it showed the space inside the head as fragmented,
muddled, divided.



Figure 4, Louis Umgelter: `Cerebral Palsy', 1906
(Courtesy of Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg University and Hayward
Gallery, London)



    It is not an unsophisticated production; it reflects the medical
diagrams that the patient must have seen of the inside of the head.
It is rather reminiscent of the 'X-Ray' images of Australian
aboriginal art, produced by a culture in which all reality starts in
dreams; we are literally dreamed into existence. These artists must
be aware that kangaroos and men don't really look like this inside;
these are pictures of psychic space.
Many modernist artists and thinkers in this century have been
excited by the direct access which some mental patients and
primitive peoples apparently have to the unconscious. The Nazis took
the opposite point of view. They condemned modern art precisely
because it resembled either primitive art or that of the insane.
They exhibited some of the Prinzhorn paintings together with modern
art as examples of the degenerate, primitive, and savage in painting
that they were trying to stamp out. Indeed, some of those Heidelberg
artists/patients were to die in the camps.



Dreams and the Transference

    The second major shift in British psychoanalytic thinking which
has affected our attitude to dreams has been the increasing focus
from the 1950s onward on transference-countertransference issues. In
its extreme form, the analyst focuses on the events of the session
as it proceeds, scanning the material for the projections and
introjections that both block and express the interaction between
analyst and patient. Here, the dream is less important for its
content than for its place in the session. Is it seen as a gift? Is
it an escape? Is it a part of the self being evacuated? Is it a
repository for things which can't be talked about otherwise? Why is
it being told at this moment, and in this way? Is the dream the
patient's secret possession to which he or she alone has the key, or
does the patient hand it over passively as something whose meaning
belongs to the analyst? How does the relation between analyst and
patient find reflection in the dream?
At the same time as this change was occurring, because of the
influence of Melanie Klein there was also an increasing focus in
British psychoanalysis on the death instinct and on experience in
very early childhood. This meant that the unconscious content of
dreams came to be seen as very traumatic and overwhelming to the
ego. The early unconscious fantasies which were uncovered were of
being attacked by a cruel and archaic superego, which makes us feel
terribly ashamed of memories of childhood experiences - wetting the
bed, for instance. I think that this situation is well-represented
in medieval paintings of hell - the doom paintings found in so many
churches remind us of the archaic fantasies that Melanie Klein found
to haunt young children. God is the superego dividing us into the
good, who can't do anything except stand around looking relieved,
and the bad, who are punished by cruel demons, a fusion of the
superego and the id. The demons in Bosch Hieronymus are the images
of nightmares; their vividness derives from the energies of the id.
The blessed, cut off from that 'seething cauldron of impulses', seem
lifeless and monotonous by comparison.

Figure 5, for example, is a picture of Lucifer from a fresco in
Collegiata San Gimignano in northern Italy, painted by Taddeodi
Bartolo in about 1396.



Figure 5, Detail of Lucifer from fresco in by Taddeodi Bartolo, c1396

    This nightmarish figure, part man and part animal, seems to be
devouring and shitting out figures through every orifice. The mouth
and the anus are equated, as in the child's earliest oral fantasies
about birth. The internal angry feelings have been externalized into
a multitude of angry persecutors.


    Many analysts came to believe that these unconscious phantasies
are ubiquitous; they underlie all thought and feeling, and therefore
dreams are a less important and special means of communicating them.
Also, if the analysis of the transference is seen as the most
important thing, dreams, which take place outside the session, are
less interesting in themselves than in the way they are used in the
session. Vicky Hamilton, in the passage I cited earlier, thinks that
in this way we flatten the dream out, and lose its capacity to
surprise us, make us see things anew.
Freud emphasized all his life that we don't really know what a dream
means, any more than we can ever know the unconscious mind. The
dream, he said, has a navel which joins it to the underworld; the
most important part of the dream will always be too deep for us to
capture it, because we can never know the unconscious. But if we
focus on the transferential aspect of the dream, we tend to
interpret from a position of the person who knows, rather than being
able to hear about the dream from its author and be surprised by it.
The modern tendency is to focus on the telling of the dream as part
of the relationship between analyst and patient, and not to
systematically ask for associations to the dream. This increases the
likelihood that the analyst will be felt to know about the patient's
mind through empathy rather than through listening to associations,
which remind us that the connections the patient makes to the images
in their dreams are to some extent unique to themselves.
I think that dreams, even fragments of dreams, are valuable in
analysis precisely because they are produced outside the session.
Not only can we notice how the analysis is progressing through
changes in dreams, but also things come to light in dreams which
have been unconsciously censored in the session. This can happen in
surprising ways;

    I remember a patient who had been in analysis with me for some
years, who had recently rather unsuccessfully sold a valuable family
heirloom. His dream was apparently a simple wish-fulfilment; he
dreamt that the sale had been successful instead. But in recounting
it, he was struck by the light in the dream, which reminded him of
the light, soft but brilliant, of the winters in Teheran when he was
a child. As he went on reminiscing, most unexpectedly a girl
appeared with whom he used to play in an overgrown apricot orchard,
and enjoy exploring both sexual and aggressive feelings in a way
that he had until that moment completely forgotten. And this led to
recognition of another aspect
of his transference to me. Would we ever have reached this material
other than via a dream?

    For normal and neurotic people, the dream has an imaginative, 'as
if' sort of quality. By means of it, they can explore areas of
themselves, or feelings about the analyst, which feel hard to
acknowledge. 'It was only a dream', they say, just as people say 'it
was just a joke'. I find myself reminding them that it was they,
after all, who dreamt it, but the untraumatic dream seems a gentle
and convincing way of showing them some of the unconscious aspects
of their minds. Lewin wrote an influential paper in 1946 in which he
compared the dream to the projection of an image on a neutral
surface, a screen like a cinema screen, which was originally the
mother's body.[12] I think that the flat, pale-brown surface found
in many surrealist paintings is alluding to this. If we can view the
dream as something outside ourselves, as if it were happening on a
screen we were watching, we do not feel our egos are disrupted and
invaded by it. It is when the image seems to fragment, or crumple,
or become uncannily still, or when people dream of falling forever,
or disintegrating, liquefying and pouring out of their skin, that
the containment function of the analyst and the maternal presence
seems to fail and the screen, or the skin-ego we imagine round
ourselves, is pierced. Then the dream seems to be less separate from
us, and becomes more frightening.

I have often been struck by the importance of the spatial dimension
in
the dream and in the unconscious. Patients seem strongly subliminally
aware of the shape of the analyst's consulting-room and its relation
to other spaces, and in their dreams, they seem very conscious of
the analyst being behind them. Rear-view mirrors in dreams are one
way of showing how they wish to check up on us; and seating
arrangements in dreams often show the associations created by the
unusual situation in which one person lies down and looks at a blank
wall, while the other sits out of sight and sees only the top of
their head. One patient came in with a dream in which I appeared as
the shark behind the sofa.
The final section of my account of how our views on dreams have
changed is the interpretation of symbolism in dreams.




Symbolism in Dreams


Freud sometimes interpreted as if there were a universal symbolism,
and sometimes not. He starts our The Interpretation of Dreams by
saying that he is not thinking in the eastern-european tradition of
the Dream Book, that is, the assumption that you can look up in a
book what a particular dream means because there is a fixed and
universal symbolic language. But in his interpretations of dreams,
he sometimes asserts that a given image has a fixed meaning; boxes
and hollow closed spaces standing for the vagina, and so on. Jung
thought that there was a universal language of mankind revealed in
myths, visions and dreams because dreams were messages, not only
from the self, but also from the collective unconscious. Freud, who
was always anxious after his rift with Jung to dissociate himself
from him, can be seen in the case-history of the Wolf Man veering
back and forth as to whether there was indeed a phylogenetic
inheritance of unconscious fantasy, or whether our dreams refer back
to our specific histories.
In an influential paper, Ernest Jones argued that the situations
which are symbolized in dreams are quite limited; they refer to the
universal human experiences of living in our bodies, birth, death
and procreation, and our earliest family relationships.[13] Energy
flows from these ideas via the channel of symbolism to all other
ideas. But symbolic systems themselves shift and change, moving in
and out of consciousness.

    Figure 6 is 'The Daydream', a beautiful watercolour of William
Morris' wife Janey, painted in 1880 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, by
that stage using laudanum and much obsessed by her.



Figure 6, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, 'The Daydream', 1888
(Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum, Picture Library)

    The painting contains at least two symbolic orders, the first of
which would be more apparent to the Victorians, the second to us.
The first is the language of flowers, or perhaps the Pre-Raphaelite
view of the medieval world, of why it is that the woman is holding
honeysuckle, and what the meaning of the bush is which surrounds
her. This would have been in the conscious mind of the painter and
his contemporaries, but these symbollisms are largely forgotten. I
can only speculate about why he chose these plants. We know that
Rossetti dreamt all his life of a dark-haired beauty in whom he
could bury himself: whose daydream is this? Our post-Freudian eyes
register the sensuous dreaminess in the face - Victorian genre
painters had an extraordinary capacity to render human expression -
and notice the phallic quality of the stick she is caressing.


    It is certainly true that many dreams seem to contain ideas of
the human body. A patient troubled about his potency dreamt of
driving through a dark threatening underground passage to a safe car-
park. Another told her Kleinian analyst of a dream of marching
soldiers; they were marching, she said, 'eight-a-breast'. An analyst
tells of his patient's dream of a multitude of red and soldiers
fighting; quite astonishing because the next day, the patient was
diagnosed as suffering from leukaemia. Patients certainly seem to
recover in analysis images of birth, and the sea does often seem to
stand for the mother in whose amniotic fluid we all swim. These
ideas of the body are subject to different kinds of symbolic
disguise, showing and denying at the same time.


    There is a famous painting by Ren� Magritte, which exists in
various versions, called 'The Treachery of Images'. On a flat, pale-
brown dream-screen floats an image of a pipe, painted in the hyper-
reality of an advertisement, or an illustration in a childrens'
book. Underneath is written, 'This is not a pipe'. Magritte wanted
to use his painting to challenge everyday notions of the solidity
and familiarity of reality. He uses his skill, and every pictorial
device, to make us believe that this is a pipe. But he writes
underneath that it is not a pipe. And of course it isn't, but if it
isn't, what is it? It illustrates Freud's idea of negation - the
thing which is denied is the thing that is. And yet it is not. It
reminds us of the oddity of dream images. Somebody comes in and
says, 'last night I dreamt of a woman who looked like my mother, but
it wasn't her - she was in this room, but it was also the garden
shed at home', and we know what they mean.

    Like other analysts, I have been struck by the importance of the
animals who appear in dreams. People who dream of small smashed
fragments of animals, multitudes of insects, invertebrates who have
a hard shell and a soft inside like snails, seem to be telling us
about their sense of a fragmented self, or one with a tough armour
to protect its lack of internal structure. Wholer patients seem more
likely to dream of vertebrates. I remember a most important, crucial
dream of a patient who dreamt he was inside a gorilla-suit in which
he could act in a freer, more spontaneous way, and this dream was a
turning-point in his ability to come to terms with his animal
nature.

    Hanna Segal tells a story of a psychiatrist interviewing a mental
patient who was a violinist, and asking him why he never played the
violin any more. He replied that he didn't want to masturbate in
public; that is, the analogy between a woman's body and a violin had
become too concrete; he couldn't liberate himself from it. If we
can't know a symbol is not what is symbolized, we can't think.


    Figures 7 and 8 are two levels of symbolism around the same idea.
Figure 7 is a photograph by Man Ray from 1924 called 'Le Violon
d'Ingres'.



Figure 7, Man Ray, 'Le Violon d'Ingres', 1924
(Man ray Trust/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 1999)



It alludes to the wonderful Ingres painting 'La Baigneuse', which
beautifully conjures up a woman's passive flesh, and to the
similarity between the shape of her back and of the violin, both of
which can be brought to life by the fingers. The second image is
another Magritte, 'Le Viol', painted in 1934.





Figure 8, Ren� Magritte, 'Le Viol', 1934
(ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 1999)

    It's an image he drew many times slightly differently, and which
other artists have used as well, It's a much more disturbing
picture; we expect to see a face and see something different. It is
even more perturbing to babies, whom we now know to be pre-wired, so
to speak, to notice and read the human face. Like the picture of
Lucifer earlier, this painting equates bodily orifices with each
other. In this particular version though not in others, the woman's
head and neck also resemble a penis. Magritte maintained he named
his pictures at random, but 'Le Viol' not only sounds like Violin
again, as if that association was in his mind, but it also means The
Rape. It puts the spectator in the position of the rapist, who
obliterates the woman's face beneath his perception of her body, and
may also confuse her body with a penis. It also alludes to the deep
unconscious where the sexes and bodily parts get muddled up, where
women's bodies contain penises anyway.


    In Ella Sharp's book on dreams, based on lectures given to
students at the British Society in the 1930s, she points out that
the mechanisms of transformation of dreams, which are related to the
mechanisms of defence, are akin to literary ideas. Dreams exhibit
synonyms and similes, they pun, they take the part for the whole,
and so on. Charles Rycroft and other authors in the Independent
psychoanalytic tradition such as Marion Milner, valued the dream for
its creativity, its capacity to turn thoughts into narrative and
images. They equated the dream far more to creative play than to a
disguised wish; and indeed Freud, in his paper on the creative
writer and daydreams, speculated that the reason we are so
fascinated by and envious of artists and writers is because they
seem to us to play all day.


    Analysts do not now always look behind the manifest content of
the dream for the hidden symbolism. We now think that the dreamer
may be directly representing his current, adult dilemmas in life.
Freud came round to this view in 1920, when he distinguished dreams
from above from dreams from below, perhaps recalling the classical
distinction between the dreams that come through the gates of ivory
and of horn. Indeed, the manifest content of his own dreams as
recorded in The Interpretation of Dreams are full of his adult
dilemmas; his responsibilities as a doctor, his intellectual and
political ambitions. This brings the psychoanalytic view of dreams
nearer to the romantic view that they are worthwhile in their own
right as part of our creative imagination, our capacity to reflect
and fictionalise. Many dreams seem semi-lucid, scarcely transformed
by the dream-work. Patients report that they edit them; say to
themselves in their sleep -  'It's only a dream, it should end this
way' - and dream again, and so on.

    Recent dream research suggests that we should not abandon the
idea that dreams refer to past memories saturated with powerful
feeling. Dreams seem to appear for the first time in higher mammals,
together with a perceptual code and long-term memory: the ability to
store memories, retrieve them, and thus learn from experience. Their
evolutionary significance may

be as a pre-verbal method of recalling past difficulties to us as we
mull over present dangers. As Freud thought, a dream image is
apparently a layered one, consisting of a day-residue superimposed
on a stored long-term memory, the links between them being made at a
pre-verbal level by auditory, visual or emotional similarities or
puns.
People have always know that there is something very important about
dreams, and will doubtless go on wondering how to interpret them,
inside psychoanalysis and out. There is something inexhaustible
about them, just as Freud said; and doubtless as psychoanalytic
theory and technique change, the way that we are told dreams, and
the way that we interpret them, will change as well. It is
comforting to reflect that dreams themselves are not quite so
plastic. I end with a final reflection from Freud's 1923 remarks on
dream-interpretation: 'I think that in general it is a good plan
occasionally to bear in mind the fact that people were in the habit
of dreaming before there was such a thing as psychoanalysis'.[14]




Notes and References

This paper is the revised version of a lecture given in an
introductory lecture series held annually at the Institute of
Psychoanalysis, London and I am grateful to the convenor of the
series, Antonio Fazio, for giving me the opportunity and incentive
to write it. I am also grateful to Philippa Lewis and Helen Scott
Lidgett for having helped an amateur with the illustrations, and to
the various copyright holders for permission to reproduce the images.



1 Victoria Hamilton, The Analyst's Preconscious, New York, 1996.
2 Hamilton, p. 283.
3 Ella Sharpe, Dream Analysis, London, 1937.
4 Dawn Ades, Dali, London, 1995, p. 82.
5 See, for example, the papers presented to the Ninth International
        Psychoanalytic Conference on Psychoanalytic Research,
         University College, London, March 1999.
6 Sandor Ferenczi, 'Dreams of the Unsuspecting', in Further
Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psychoanalysis, London,
1926. (First published 1916/17.)
7 Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare, London, 1931.
8 Hanna Segal, 'Notes on Symbol Formation', Delusion and Artistic
       Creativity, London, 1986.
9 Sandor Ferenczi, 'On the Revision of The Interpretation of Dreams',
       Part 3 of Notes and Fragments in Final Contributions to the
Theory
       and Technique of Psychoanalysis, London, 1931.
10 Michael Parsons, 'Do We Think Our Dreams? Do We Dream Our
         Thinking?', 1997, unpublished public lecture.
11 Ronald Fairbairn, 'Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of
         Object Relationships', International Journal of the
Psychoanalytic
         Association 25, 1944, reprinted in Psychoanalytic Studies of
the
         Personality, Tavistock, 1952.
12 Bertram Lewin, 'Sleep, the Mouth and the Dream Screen',
        Psychoanalytic Quarterly 15, 1946.
13 Ernest Jones, 'The Theory of Symbolism', Papers on
        Psychoanalysis, London, 1916.
14 Sigmund Freud, 'Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream
         Interpretation', Standard Edition, vol. 19, London, 1961
(first
         publ. 1923).



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Autumn 1999.
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===============================================================

A Dream Interpreted

By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

Background

This dream was related to me by a male, 46 years old, who believes
that he is in the throes of a major personal transformation. Whether
he is a narcissist (as he believes himself to be) or not is quite
irrelevant. Narcissism is a language. A person can choose to express
himself in it, even if he is not possessed by the disorder. The
dreamer made this choice. Henceforth, I will treat him as a
narcissist, though insufficient information renders a "real"
diagnosis impossible. Moreover, the subject feels that he is
confronting his disorder and that this could be a significant
turning point on his way to being healed. It is in this context that
this dream should be interpreted. Evidently, if he chose to write to
me, he is very preoccupied with his internal processes. There is
every reason to believe that such conscious content invaded his
dream.

The Dream

"I was in a run-down restaurant/bar with two friends sitting at a
table in a large open area with a few other tables and a bar. I did
not like the music or the smoky atmosphere or other customers or
greasy food, but we were travelling and were hungry and it was open
and the only place we could find.

There was a woman with other people at a table about 10 feet in
front of me that I found attractive, and noticed she was noticing me
as well. There was also another woman with other people at a table
about 30 feet to my right, old with heavy make-up and poorly dyed
hair, loud, obnoxious, drunk who noticed me. She started saying
negative things to me, and I tried to ignore her. She just got
louder and more derogatory, with horrible rude and jabbing comments.
I tried to ignore her, but my other friends looked at me with raised
eyebrows, as if to ask: 'How much more are you going to take before
you stand up for yourself?' I felt sick to my stomach, and did not
want to confront her, but everyone in the place was now noticing her
confrontation of me, and she was almost screaming at me. I couldn't
believe no one was telling her to stop it, to be civil, to be nice.

I finally looked over at her and raised my voice and told her to
shut up. She looked at me and seemed to get even angrier, and then
looked at her plate and picked up a piece of food and threw it at
me! I couldn't believe it. I told her I wasn't going to take one
more thing, and to stop it now or I would call the police. She got
up, walked towards me, picking up a plate of popcorn from another
table, and upended it flat upon the top of my head. I stood up and
said: 'That's it! That's assault! You're going to jail!', and went
to the cash register area by the door and called the police.

The police instantly appeared and took her away, with her resisting
arrest the whole time. I sat down and someone at the table next to
me said: 'Now you can open up the dam gate.' I said: 'What?', and he
explained how the woman was actually pretty powerful and owned a dam
and had shut the gate down years ago, but that now she was locked up
we could go open it up.

We piled into a truck and I was led into a cavernous room and shown
a small room with a glass wall in it and a big wheel, a control
valve. I was told that I could turn it whenever I wanted. So I
started to turn it and the water started flowing. I could easily see
it through the glass, and the level on the glass rose higher the
more I turned the wheel. Soon there was a torrent, and it was
thrilling. I had never seen such an incredible roar of water. It was
like the Niagara Falls flowing through the huge room. I got
frightened along with being thrilled, but discovered I could lessen
the water with the valve if it got to be too much. It went on for a
long time, and we whooped and laughed and felt so excited. Finally,
the water grew less no matter how wide I opened the valve, and it
reached a steady flow.

I noticed the pretty woman from the grill way across the huge area,
and she seemed to be looking for someone. I hoped it was me. I
opened the door, and went out to go meet her. On the way out, I got
grease on my hand, and picked up a rag on the table to wipe it off.
The rag had even more grease on it, and so now my hands were
completely covered in grease. I picked up another rag on top of a
box, and there were wet spark plugs stuck with globs of grease to
the underside of the rag, lined up in order as if they used to be in
an engine and someone stuck them in this order on purpose, and some
of it got on my clothes. The guys with me laughed and I laughed with
them, but I left without going to meet the woman, and we went back
to the grill.

I found myself in a tiny room with a table in it and a picture
window looking out into the area where everyone was sitting and
eating. The door was open into a back hallway. I started to go out,
but a man was coming into the room. For some reason he frightened
me, and I backed up. However, he was robot-like, and walked to the
window and looked out to the dining area, making no indication that
he even noticed me, and stared blandly at the people having fun. I
left and went out into the dining area. I noticed everyone staring
at me in an unfriendly way. I started for the exit, but one of the
policemen who had arrested the woman from the night before was off-
duty in plain clothes and grabbed my arm and twisted me around and
shoved me face down on a table. He told me that what I did to the
woman was wrong, and that no one liked me because of it. He said
that just because I had the law on my side and was in the right
didn't mean anyone would like me. He said if I was smart I would
leave town. Others were around me and spit on me.

He let me go, and I left. I was driving in a car alone out of town.
I didn't know what became of the friends I was with. I felt both
elated and ashamed at the same time, crying and laughing at the same
time, and had no idea where to go and what I was doing."

The Interpretation

As the dream unfolds, the subject is with two friends. These friends
vanish towards the end of the dream and he doesn't seem to find this
worrisome. "I didn't know what became of the friends I was with."
This is a strange way to treat one's friends. It seems that we are
dealing not with three dimensional, full-blown, flesh and blood
friends but with FRIENDLY MENTAL FUNCTIONS. Indeed, they are the
ones who encourage the subject to react to the old woman's
antics. "How much more are you going to take before you stand up for
yourself?" � they ask him, cunningly. All the other people present
at the bar-restaurant do not even bother to tell the woman "to stop,
to be civil, to be nice". This eerie silence contributes to the
subject's reaction of disbelief that mushrooms throughout this
nightmare. At first, he tries to emulate their behaviour and to
ignore the woman himself. She says negative things about him, goes
louder and more derogatory, horribly rude and jabbing and he still
tries to ignore her. When his friends push him to react: "I felt
sick to my stomach and did not want to confront her." He finally
does confront her because "everyone was noticing" as she was almost
screaming at him.

The subject emerges as the plaything of others. A woman screams at
him and debases him, friends prod him to react, and motivated
by "everyone" he does react. His actions and reactions are
determined by input from the outside. He expects others to do for
him the things that he finds unpleasant to do by himself (to tell
the woman to stop, for instance). His feeling of entitlement ("I
deserve this special treatment, others should take care of my
affairs.") and his magical thinking ("If I want something to happen,
it surely will.") are so strong � that he is stunned when people do
not do his (silent) bidding. This dependence on others is multi-
faceted. They mirror the subject to himself. He modifies his
behaviour, forms expectations, gets disbelievingly disappointed,
punishes and rewards himself and takes behavioural cues from them
("The guys with me laughed and I laughed with them."). When
confronted with someone who does not notice him, he describes him as
robot-like and is frightened by him. The word "look"
disproportionately recurs throughout the text. In one of the main
scenes, his confrontation with the rude, ugly woman, both parties do
not do anything without first "looking" at each other. He looks at
her before he raises his voice and tells her to shut up. She looks
at him and gets angrier.

The dream opens in a "run down" restaurant/bar with the wrong kind
of music and of customers, a smoky atmosphere and greasy food. The
subject and his friends were travelling and hungry and the
restaurant was the only open place. The subject takes great pains to
justify his (lack of) choice. He does not want us to believe that he
is the type of person to willingly patronise such a restaurant. What
we think about him is very important to him. Our look still tends to
define him. Throughout the text, he goes on to explain, justify,
excuse, reason and persuade us. Then, he suddenly stops. This is a
crucial turning point.

It is reasonable to assume that the subject is relating to his
personal Odyssey. At the end of his dream, he continues his travels,
continues his life "ashamed and elated at the same time". We are
ashamed when our sense of propriety is offended and we are elated
when it is reaffirmed. How can these contradictory feelings coexist?
This is what the dream is about: the battle between what the subject
has been taught to regard as true and proper, the "shoulds" and
the "oughts" of his life, usually the result of overly strict
upbringing � and what he feels is good for him. These two do not
overlap and they foster in the subject a sense of escalating
conflict, enacted before us. The first domain is embedded in his
Superego (to borrow Freud's quasi-literary metaphor). Critical
voices constantly resound in his mind, an uproarious opprobrium,
sadistic criticism, destructive chastising, uneven and unfair
comparisons to unattainable ideals and goals. On the other hand, the
powers of life are reawakening in him with the ripening and
maturation of his personality. He vaguely realises what he missed
and misses, he regrets it, and he wants out of his virtual prison.
In response, his disorder feels threatened and flexes its tormenting
muscles, a giant awakened, Atlas shrugged. The subject wants to be
less rigid, more spontaneous, more vivacious, less sad, less defined
by the gaze of others, and more hopeful. His disorder dictates
rigidity, emotional absence, automatism, fear and loathing, self-
flagellation, dependence on Narcissistic Supply, a False Self. The
subject does not like his current locus in life: it is dingy, it is
downtrodden, it is shabby, and inhabited by vulgar, ugly people, the
music is wrong, it is fogged by smoke, polluted. Yet, even while
there, he knows that there are alternatives, that there is hope: a
young, attractive lady, mutual signalling. And she is closer to him
(10 feet) than the old, ugly woman of his past (30 feet). His dream
will not bring them together, but he feels no sorrow. He leaves,
laughing with the guys, to revisit his previous haunt. He owes this
to himself. Then he continues his life.

He finds himself, in the middle of the road of life, in the ugly
place that is his soul. The young woman is only a promise. There is
another woman "old, with heavy make-up, poorly dyed hair, loud,
obnoxious, drunk". This is his mental disorder. It can scarcely
sustain the deception. Its make-up is heavy, its hair dyed poorly,
its mood a result of intoxication. It could well be the False Self
or the Superego, but I rather think it is the whole sick
personality. She notices him, she berates him with derogatory
remarks, she screams at him. The subject realises that his disorder
is not friendly, that it seeks to humiliate him, it is out to
degrade and destroy him. It gets violent, it hurls food at him, it
buries him under a dish of popcorn (a cinema theatre metaphor?). The
war is out in the open. The fake coalition, which glued the shaky
structures of the fragile personality together, exists no longer.
Notice that the subject does not recall what insults and pejorative
remarks were directed at him. He deletes all the expletives because
they really do not matter. The enemy is vile and ignoble and will
make use and excuse of any weakness, mistake and doubt to crack the
defence set up by the subject's budding healthier mental structures
(the young woman). The end justifies all means and it is the
subject's end that is sought. There is no self-hate more insidious
and pernicious than the narcissist's.

But, to fight his illness, the subject still resorts to old
solutions, to old habits and to old behaviour patterns. He calls the
police because they represent the Law and What Is Right. It is
through the rigid, unflinching, framework of a legal system that he
hopes to suppress what he regards as the unruly behaviour of his
disorder. Only at the end of his dream he comes to realise his
mistake: "He said that just because I had the law on my side and I
was in the right didn't mean that anyone would like me." The Police
(who appear instantly because they were always present) arrest the
woman, but their sympathy is with her. His true aides can be found
only among the customers of the restaurant/bar, whom he found not to
his liking ("I did not like � the other customers�"). It is someone
in the next table who tells him about the dam. The way to health is
through enemy territory, information about healing can be gotten
only from the sickness itself. The subject must leverage his own
disorder to disown it.

The dam is a potent symbol in this dream. It represents all the
repressed emotions, the now forgotten traumas, the suppressed drives
and wishes, fears and hopes. It is a natural element, primordial and
powerful. And it is dammed by the disorder (the vulgar, now-
imprisoned, lady). It is up to him to open the dam. No one will do
it for him: "Now YOU can open the dam gate." The powerful woman is
no more, she owned the dam and guarded its gates for many years ago.
This is a sad passage about the subject's inability to communicate
with himself, to experience his feelings unmediated, to let go. When
he does finally encounter the water (his emotions), they are safely
contained behind glass, visible but described in a kind of
scientific manner ("the level on the glass rose higher the more I
turned the wheel") and absolutely controlled by the subject (using a
valve). The language chosen is detached and cold, protective. The
subject must have been emotionally overwhelmed but his sentences are
borrowed from the texts of laboratory reports and travel guides
("Niagara Falls"). The very existence of the dam comes as a surprise
to him. "I said: What?, and he explained."

Still, this is nothing short of a revolution. It is the first time
that the subject acknowledges that there is something hidden behind
a dam in his brain ("cavernous room") and that it is entirely up to
him to release it ("I was told that I could turn it whenever I
wanted."). Instead of turning around and running in panic, the
subject turns the wheel (it is a control valve, he hurries to
explain to us, the dream must be seen to obey the rules of logic and
of nature). He describes the result of his first encounter with his
long repressed emotions as "thrilling", "incredible" "roar
(ing)", "torrent(ial)". It did frighten him but he wisely learned to
make use of the valve and to regulate the flow of his emotions to
accord with his emotional capacity. And what were his
reactions? "Whooped", "laughed", "excited". Finally, the flow became
steady and independent of the valve. There was no need to regulate
the water anymore. There was no threat. The subject learned to live
with his emotions. He even diverted his attention to the attractive,
young woman, who reappeared and seemed to be looking for someone (he
hoped it was for him).

But, the woman belonged to another time, to another place and there
was no turning back. The subject had yet to learn this final lesson.
His past was dead, the old defence mechanisms unable to provide him
with the comfort and illusory protection that he hitherto enjoyed.
He had to move on, to another plane of existence. But it is hard to
bid farewell to part of you, to metamorphesise, to disappear in one
sense and reappear in another. A break in one's consciousness and
existence is traumatic no matter how well controlled, well
intentioned and beneficial.

So, our hero goes back to visit his former self. He is warned: it is
not with clean hands that he proceeds. They get greasier the more he
tries to clean them. Even his clothes are affected. Rags, wet
(useless) spark plugs, the ephemeral images of a former engine all
star in this episode. Those are passages worth quoting (in
parentheses my comments):

"I noticed the pretty woman from the grill (from my past) way across
the huge area (my brain), and she seemed to be looking for someone.
I hoped it was me. I opened the door, and went out to go meet her
(back to my past). On the way out, I got grease on my hand (dirt,
warning), and picked up a rag on the table to wipe it off. The rag
had even more grease on it (no way to disguise the wrong move, the
potentially disastrous decision), and so now my hands were
completely covered in grease (dire warning). I picked up another rag
on top of a box, and there were wet (dead) spark plugs stuck with
globs of grease to the underside of the rag, lined up in order as if
they used to be in an engine (an image of something long gone) and
someone stuck them in this order on purpose, and some of it got on
my clothes. The guys with me laughed and I laughed with them (he
laughed because of peer pressure, not because he really felt like
it), but I left without going to meet the woman, and we went back to
the grill (to the scene of his battle with his mental disorder)."

But, he goes on to the grill, where it all started, this undefined
and untitled chain of events that changed his life. This time, he is
not allowed to enter, only to observe from a tiny room. Actually, he
does not exist there anymore. The man that enters his observation
post, does not even see him or notice him. There are grounds to
believe that the man who thus entered was the previous, sick version
of the subject himself. The subject was frightened and backed up.
The "robot-like" person (?) "looked through the window, stared
blandly at people having fun". The subject then proceeded to commit
the error of revisiting his past, the restaurant. Inevitably, the
very people that he debunked and deserted (the elements of his
mental disorder, the diseased occupants of his mind) were hostile.
The policeman, this time "off-duty" (not representing the Law)
assaults him and advises him to leave. Others "spit" on him. This is
reminiscent of a religious ritual of ex-communication. Spinoza was
spat on in a synagogue, judged to have committed in heresy. This
reveals the religious (or ideological) dimension of mental
disorders. Not unlike religion, they have their own catechism,
compulsive rituals, set of rigid beliefs and "adherents" (mental
constructs) motivated by fear and prejudice. Mental disorders are
churches. They employ institutions of inquisition and punish
heretical views with a severity befitting the darkest ages.

But these people, this setting, exert no more power over him. He is
free to go. There is no turning back now, all bridges burnt, all
doors shut firmly, he is a persona non grata in his former
disordered psyche. The traveller resumes his travels, not knowing
where to go and what he is doing. But he is "crying and laughing"
and "elated and ashamed". In other words, he, finally, after many
years, experiences emotions. On his way to the horizon, the dream
leaves the subject with a promise, veiled as a threat "If you were
smart you would leave town." If you know what is good for you, you
will get healthy. And the subject seems to be doing just that.


==============================================================
AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)


Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served
as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline,
and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business
Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East
Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.


Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

http://www.plebius.org/article.php?article=762

Collective Narcissism - Narcissism, Culture, and Society

Date: Wednesday, March 02 2005 @ 18:41 CST

By: Sam Vaknin

In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon and
Roger Davis state, as a matter of fact, that pathological narcissism was the
preserve of "the royal and the wealthy" and that it "seems to have gained
prominence only in the late twentieth century". Narcissism, according to
them, may be
associated with "higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs ...
Individuals
in less advantaged nations .. are too busy trying (to survive) ... to be
arrogant and grandiose".

They - like Lasch before them - attribute pathological narcissism to "a
society that stresses individualism and self-gratification at the expense of
community, namely the United States." They assert that the disorder is more
prevalent among certain professions with "star power" or respect. "In an
individualistic culture, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the world'. In a
collectivist
society, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the collective'".

Millon quotes Warren and Caponi's "The Role of Culture in the Development of
Narcissistic Personality Disorders in America, Japan and Denmark":

"Individualistic narcissistic structures of self-regard (in individualistic
societies) ... are rather self-contained and independent ... (In
collectivist
cultures) narcissistic configurations of the we-self ... denote self-esteem
derived from strong identification with the reputation and honor of the
family,
groups, and others in hierarchical relationships."

Having lived in the last 20 years 12 countries in 4 continents - from the
impoverished to the affluent, with individualistic and collectivist
societies - I
know that Millon and Davis are wrong. Theirs is, indeed, the quintessential
American point of view which lacks an intimate knowledge of other parts of
the
world. Millon even wrongly claims that the DSM's international equivalent,
the
ICD, does not include the narcissistic personality disorder (it does).

Pathological narcissism is a ubiquitous phenomenon because every human being
- regardless of the nature of his society and culture - develops healthy
narcissism early in life. Healthy narcissism is rendered pathological by
abuse -
and abuse, alas, is a universal human behavior. By "abuse" we mean any
refusal
to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of the individual - smothering,
doting,
and excessive expectations - are as abusive as beating and incest.

There are malignant narcissists among subsistence farmers in Africa, nomads
in the Sinai desert, day laborers in east Europe, and intellectuals and
socialites in Manhattan. Malignant narcissism is all-pervasive and
independent of
culture and society.

It is true, though, that the WAY pathological narcissism manifests and is
experienced is dependent on the particulars of societies and cultures. In
some
cultures, it is encouraged, in others suppressed. In some societies it is
channeled against minorities - in others it is tainted with paranoia. In
collectivist societies, it may be projected onto the collective, in
individualistic
societies, it is an individual's trait.

Yet, can families, organizations, ethnic groups, churches, and even whole
nations be safely described as "narcissistic" or "pathologically
self-absorbed"?
Wouldn't such generalizations be a trifle racist and more than a trifle
wrong?
The answer is: it depends.

Human collectives - states, firms, households, institutions, political
parties, cliques, bands - acquire a life and a character all their own. The
longer
the association or affiliation of the members, the more cohesive and
conformist
the inner dynamics of the group, the more persecutory or numerous its
enemies, the more intensive the physical and emotional experiences of the
individuals
it is comprised of, the stronger the bonds of locale, language, and
history -
the more rigorous might an assertion of a common pathology be.

Such an all-pervasive and extensive pathology manifests itself in the
behavior of each and every member. It is a defining - though often implicit
or
underlying - mental structure. It has explanatory and predictive powers. It
is
recurrent and invariable - a pattern of conduct melded with distorted
cognition and
stunted emotions. And it is often vehemently denied.

A possible DSM-like list of criteria for narcissistic organizations or
groups:

An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for
admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning at the
group's
early history and present in various contexts. Persecution and abuse are
often
the causes - or at least the antecedents - of the pathology.

Five (or more) of the following criteria must be met:

# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - feel grandiose
and
self-important (e.g., they exaggerate the group's achievements and talents
to the
point of lying, demand to be recognized as superior - simply for belonging
to
the group and without commensurate achievement).
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are obsessed
with
group fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence,
unequalled brilliance, bodily beauty or performance, or ideal, everlasting,
all-conquering ideals or political theories.
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are firmly
convinced
that the group is unique and, being special, can only be understood by,
should
only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or
high-status
groups (or institutions).
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - require
excessive
admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation - or, failing that, wish to
be
feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply).
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - feel entitled.
They
expect unreasonable or special and favourable priority treatment. They
demand
automatic and full compliance with expectations. They rarely accept
responsibility for their actions ("alloplastic defences"). This often leads
to anti-social
behaviour, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are
"interpersonally
exploitative", i.e., use others to achieve their own ends. This often leads
to
anti-social behaviour, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are devoid of
empathy.
They are unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings
and
needs of other groups. This often leads to anti- social behaviour,
cover-ups,
and criminal activities on a mass scale.
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are constantly
envious
of others or believes that they feel the same about them. This often leads
to
anti-social behaviour, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.
# The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by
virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are arrogant
and sport
haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated,
contradicted, punished, limited, or confronted. This often leads to
anti-social behavior,
cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.

About the author:
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love
- Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He
served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb ,
and
Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business
Correspondent. He is the the editor of mental health and Central East Europe
categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.



This article comes from Plebius Press
http://www.plebius.org/

The URL for this story is:
http://www.plebius.org//article.php?article=762

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-03/cwru-cpe030205.php


Public release date: 2-Mar-2005

Contact: Susan Griffith
susan.griffith@...
216-368-1004
Case Western Reserve University

Case psychologist Exline studies relationship of narcissistic
personality, forgiveness
Forgiveness is hard to do�especially for entitled people
When harsh words or actions tear a relationship apart, forgiveness
can sometimes mend it. Because forgiveness implies letting go of
justified feelings of resentment, it can be costly in terms of
pride. Certain types of people--those with a high sense of
narcissistic entitlement--may be especially reluctant to face the
costs of forgiving others, according to Case Western Reserve
University psychologist Julie Exline. The Case assistant professor
of psychology examines the narcissistic personality in terms of its
ability to forgive, in the article "Too Proud to Let Go:
Narcissistic Entitlement as a Barrier to Forgiveness" in the Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology. According to Exline, the idea
of the narcissist grew out of Greek mythology and the concept of
excessive admiration toward oneself.
"As part of that self-admiration, narcissists typically have a sense
of entitlement in which they feel superior to others and expect
special, preferential treatment," she said. "When social
relationships do not provide the special treatment that is expected,
the entitled person is quickly offended and demands repayment or
revenge to rectify the situation.

"Pathological Narcissism FAQs" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_FAQS

"For people with a sense of entitlement, letting go of justifiable
feelings of resentment may be regarded as too costly or as morally
inappropriate. Exline was the lead author on the Journal article,
with contributing researchers Roy Baumeister from Florida State
University, Brad Bushman from the University of Michigan, W. Keith
Campbell from the University of Georgia, and Eli Finkel from
Northwestern University.

"Because of their inflated sense of entitlement, narcissists will be
easily offended by others and will not readily forgive," write the
researchers. "They will insist that others repay them and will be
reluctant to 'lose face' by forgiving--particularly if justice has
not been restored." The report also states that entitled persons not
only expect special treatment, but also have an overwhelming
preoccupation with defending their rights. This focus on defending
self-interest can get in the way of forgiveness.

The researchers completed six studies that examined people's
willingness to forgive in a variety of situations, including cases
from everyday life in which people were hurt or offended,
hypothetical offense situations, and a laboratory-based game
situation in which one subject was faced with aggressive behavior by
another. Across all six studies, a sense of entitlement was
associated with unforgiving attitudes. The researchers also tracked
forgiveness over time, and again, found that narcissistic
individuals would not let go of their grudges. The studies also
revealed that the effects of entitlement operated independently from
other major predictors of forgiveness, such as religiosity,
relationship closeness, offense severity and the presence of
apologies.

"These studies suggest that a sense of entitlement is a substantial
barrier to forgiveness," stated Exline. "Entitled people are likely
to insist on full repayment before they will consider forgiving. If
they don't receive this payment, they will often hold grudges on
principle. Over time, such unforgiving tendencies may prevent the
healing of wounded relationships and lead to social alienation."

The Cultural Narcissist
Lasch in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

A Reaction to Roger Kimball's

"Christopher Lasch vs. the elites"

"New Criterion", Vol. 13, p.9 (04-01-1995)

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Malignant Self Love - Buy the Book - Click HERE!!!

Relationships with Abusive Narcissists - Buy the e-Books - Click HERE!!!

READ THIS: Scroll down to review a complete list of the articles - Click on the blue-coloured text!
Bookmark this Page - and SHARE IT with Others!

"The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred by a paternalistic state. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."
(Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an age of Diminishing Expectations, 1979)

"A characteristic of our times is the predominance, even in groups traditionally selective, of the mass and the vulgar. Thus, in intellectual life, which of its essence requires and presupposes qualification, one can note the progressive triumph of the pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable..."
(Jose Ortega y Gasset - The Revolt of the Masses, 1932)

Can Science be passionate? This question seems to sum up the life of Christopher Lasch, erstwhile a historian of culture later transmogrified into an ersatz prophet of doom and consolation, a latter day Jeremiah. Judging by his (prolific and eloquent) output, the answer is a resounding no.

There is no single Lasch. This chronicler of culture, did so mainly by chronicling his inner turmoil, conflicting ideas and ideologies, emotional upheavals, and intellectual vicissitudes. In this sense, of (courageous) self-documentation, Mr. Lasch epitomized Narcissism, was the quintessential Narcissist, the better positioned to criticize the phenomenon.

Some "scientific" disciplines (e.g., the history of culture and History in general) are closer to art than to the rigorous (a.k.a. "exact" or "natural" or "physical" sciences). Lasch borrowed heavily from other, more established branches of knowledge without paying tribute to the original, strict meaning of concepts and terms. Such was the use that he made of "Narcissism".

"Narcissism" is a relatively well-defined psychological term. I expound upon it elsewhere ("Malignant self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited"). The Narcissistic Personality Disorder - the acute form of pathological Narcissism - is the name given to a group of 9 symptoms (see: DSM-4). They include: a grandiose Self (illusions of grandeur coupled with an inflated, unrealistic sense of the Self), inability to empathize with the Other, the tendency to exploit and manipulate others, idealization of other people (in cycles of idealization and devaluation), rage attacks and so on. Narcissism, therefore, has a clear clinical definition, etiology and prognosis.

The use that Lasch makes of this word has nothing to do with its usage in psychopathology. True, Lasch did his best to sound "medicinal". He spoke of "(national) malaise" and accused the American society of lack of self-awareness. But choice of words does not a coherence make.

Analytic Summary of Kimball

Lasch was a member, by conviction, of an imaginary "Pure Left". This turned out to be a code for an odd mixture of Marxism, religious fundamentalism, populism, Freudian analysis, conservatism and any other -ism that Lasch happened to come across. Intellectual consistency was not Lasch's strong point, but this is excusable, even commendable in the search for Truth. What is not excusable is the passion and conviction with which Lasch imbued the advocacy of each of these consecutive and mutually exclusive ideas.

"The Culture of Narcissism - American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations" was published in the last year of the unhappy presidency of Jimmy Carter (1979). The latter endorsed the book publicly (in his famous "national malaise" speech).

The main thesis of the book is that the Americans have created a self-absorbed (though not self aware), greedy and frivolous society which depended on consumerism, demographic studies, opinion polls and Government to know and to define itself. What is the solution?

Lasch proposed a "return to basics": self-reliance, the family, nature, the community, and the Protestant work ethic. To those who adhere, he promised an elimination of their feelings of alienation and despair.

The apparent radicalism (the pursuit of social justice and equality) was only that: apparent. The New Left was morally self-indulgent. In an Orwellian manner, liberation became tyranny and transcendence - irresponsibility. The "democratization" of education: "...has neither improved popular understanding of modern society, raised the quality of popular culture, nor reduced the gap between wealth and poverty, which remains as wide as ever. On the other hand, it has contributed to the decline of critical thought and the erosion of intellectual standards, forcing us to consider the possibility that mass education, as conservatives have argued all along, is intrinsically incompatible with the maintenance of educational standards".

Lasch derided capitalism, consumerism and corporate America as much as he loathed the mass media, the government and even the welfare system (intended to deprive its clients of their moral responsibility and indoctrinate them as victims of social circumstance). These always remained the villains. But to this - classically leftist - list he added the New Left. He bundled the two viable alternatives in American life and discarded them both. Anyhow, capitalism's days were numbered, a contradictory system as it was, resting on "imperialism, racism, elitism, and inhuman acts of technological destruction". What was left except God and the Family?

Lasch was deeply anti-capitalist. He rounded up the usual suspects with the prime suspect being multinationals. To him, it wasn't only a question of exploitation of the working masses. Capitalism acted as acid on the social and moral fabrics and made them disintegrate. Lasch adopted, at times, a theological perception of capitalism as an evil, demonic entity. Zeal usually leads to inconsistency of argumentation: Lasch claimed, for instance, that capitalism negated social and moral traditions while pandering to the lowest common denominator. There is a contradiction here: social mores and traditions are, in many cases, THE lowest common denominator. Lasch displayed a total lack of understanding of market mechanisms and the history of markets. True, markets start out as mass-oriented and entrepreneurs tend to mass- produce to cater to the needs of the newfound consumers. However, as markets evolve - they fragment. Individual nuances of tastes and preferences tend to transform the mature market from a cohesive, homogenous entity - to a loose coalition of niches. Computer aided design and production, targeted advertising, custom made products, personal services - are all the outcomes of the maturation of markets. It is where capitalism is absent that uniform mass production of goods of shoddy quality takes over. This may have been Lasch's biggest fault: that he persistently and wrong-headedly ignored reality when it did not serve his pet theorizing. He made up his mind and did not wish to be confused by the facts. The facts are that all the alternatives to the known four models of capitalism (the Anglo-Saxon, the European, the Japanese and the Chinese) have failed miserably and have led to the very consequences that Lasch warned against� in capitalism. It is in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, that social solidarity has evaporated, that traditions were trampled upon, that religion was brutally suppressed, that pandering to the lowest common denominator was official policy, that poverty - material, intellectual and spiritual - became all pervasive, that people lost all self reliance and communities disintegrated.

There is nothing to excuse Lasch: the Wall fell in 1989. An inexpensive trip would have confronted him with the results of the alternatives to capitalism. That he failed to acknowledge his life-long misconceptions and compile the Lasch errata cum mea culpa is the sign of deep-seated intellectual dishonesty. The man was not interested in the truth. In many respects, he was a propagandist. Worse, he combined an amateurish understanding of the Economic Sciences with the fervor of a fundamentalist preacher to produce an absolutely non-scientific discourse.

Let us analyze what he regarded as the basic weakness of capitalism (in "The True and Only Heaven", 1991): its need to increase capacity and production ad infinitum in order to sustain itself. Such a feature would have been destructive if capitalism were to operate in a closed system. The finiteness of the economic sphere would have brought capitalism to ruin. But the world is NOT a closed economic system. 80,000,000 new consumers are added annually, markets globalize, trade barriers are falling, international trade is growing three times faster than the world�s GDP and still accounts for less than 15% of it, not to mention space exploration which is at its inception. The horizon is, for all practical purposes, unlimited. The economic system is, therefore, open. Capitalism will never be defeated because it has an infinite number of consumers and markets to colonize. That is not to say that capitalism will not have its crises, even crises of over-capacity. But such crises are a part of the business cycle not of the underlying market mechanism. They are adjustment pains, the noises of growing up - not the last gasps of dying. To claim otherwise is either to deceive or to be spectacularly ignorant not only of economic fundamentals but of what is happening in the world. It is as intellectually rigorous as the "New Paradigm" which says, in effect, that the business cycle and inflation are both dead and buried.

Lasch's argument: capitalism must forever expand if it is to exist (debatable) - hence the idea of "progress", an ideological corollary of the drive to expand - progress transforms people into insatiable consumers (apparently, a term of abuse).

But this is to ignore the fact that people create economic doctrines (and reality, according to Marx) - not the reverse. In other words, the consumers created capitalism to help them maximize their consumption. History is littered with the remains of economic theories, which did not match the psychological makeup of the human race. There is Marxism, for instance. The best theorized, most intellectually rich and well-substantiated theory must be put to the cruel test of public opinion and of the real conditions of existence. Barbarous amounts of force and coercion need to be applied to keep people functioning under contra-human-nature ideologies such as communism. A horde of what Althusser calls Ideological State Apparatuses must be put to work to preserve the dominion of a religion, ideology, or intellectual theory which do not amply respond to the needs of the individuals that comprise society. The Socialist (more so the Marxist and the malignant version, the Communist) prescriptions were eradicated because they did not correspond to the OBJECTIVE conditions of the world. They were hermetically detached, and existed only in their mythical, contradiction-free realm (to borrow again from Althusser).

Lasch commits the double intellectual crime of disposing of the messenger AND ignoring the message: people are consumers and there is nothing we can do about it but try to present to them as wide an array as possible of goods and services. High brow and low brow have their place in capitalism because of the preservation of the principle of choice, which Lasch abhors. He presents a false predicament: he who elects progress elects meaninglessness and hopelessness. Is it better - asks Lasch sanctimoniously - to consume and live in these psychological conditions of misery and emptiness? The answer is self evident, according to him. Lasch patronizingly prefers the working class undertones commonly found in the petite bourgeois: "its moral realism, its understanding that everything has its price, its respect for limits, its skepticism about progress... sense of unlimited power conferred by science - the intoxicating prospect of man's conquest of the natural world".

The limits that Lasch is talking about are metaphysical, theological. Man's rebellion against God is in question. This, in Lasch's view, is a punishable offence. Both capitalism and science are pushing the limits, infused with the kind of hubris which the mythological Gods always chose to penalize (remember Prometheus?). What more can be said about a man that postulated that "the secret of happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy". Some matters are better left to psychiatrists than to philosophers. There is megalomania, too: Lasch cannot grasp how could people continue to attach importance to money and other worldly goods and pursuits after his seminal works were published, denouncing materialism for what it was - a hollow illusion? The conclusion: people are ill informed, egotistical, stupid (because they succumb to the lure of consumerism offered to them by politicians and corporations).

America is in an "age of diminishing expectations" (Lasch's). Happy people are either weak or hypocritical.

Lasch envisioned a communitarian society, one where men are self made and the State is gradually made redundant. This is a worthy vision and a vision worthy of some other era. Lasch never woke up to the realities of the late 20th century: mass populations concentrated in sprawling metropolitan areas, market failures in the provision of public goods, the gigantic tasks of introducing literacy and good health to vast swathes of the planet, an ever increasing demand for evermore goods and services. Small, self-help communities are not efficient enough to survive - though the ethical aspect is praiseworthy:

"Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state."

"A misplaced compassion degrades both the victims, who are reduced to objects of pity, and their would-be benefactors, who find it easier to pity their fellow citizens than to hold them up to impersonal standards, attainment of which would entitle them to respect. Unfortunately, such statements do not tell the whole."

No wonder that Lasch has been compared to Mathew Arnold who wrote:

"(culture) does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; ...It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere... the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time."
(Culture and Anarchy) � a quite elitist view.

Unfortunately, Lasch, most of the time, was no more original or observant than the average columnist:

"The mounting evidence of widespread inefficiency and corruption, the decline of American productivity, the pursuit of speculative profits at the expense of manufacturing, the deterioration of our country's material infrastructure, the squalid conditions in our crime-rid- den cities, the alarming and disgraceful growth of poverty, and the widening disparity between poverty and wealth � growing contempt for manual labor... growing gulf between wealth and poverty... the growing insularity of the elites... growing impatience with the constraints imposed by long-term responsibilities and commitments."

Paradoxically, Lasch was an elitist. The very person who attacked the "talking classes" (the "symbolic analysts" in Robert Reich's less successful rendition) - freely railed against the "lowest common denominator". True, Lasch tried to reconcile this apparent contradiction by saying that diversity does not entail low standards or selective application of criteria. This, however, tends to undermine his arguments against capitalism. In his typical, anachronistic, language:

"The latest variation on this familiar theme, its reductio ad absurdum, is that a respect for cultural diversity forbids us to impose the standards of privileged groups on the victims of oppression." This leads to "universal incompetence" and a weakness of the spirit:

"Impersonal virtues like fortitude, workmanship, moral courage, honesty, and respect for adversaries (are rejected by the champions of diversity)... Unless we are prepared to make demands on one another, we can enjoy only the most rudimentary kind of common life... (agreed standards) are absolutely indispensable to a democratic society (because) double standards mean second-class citizenship."

This is almost plagiarism. Allan Bloom ("The Closing of the American Mind"):

"(openness became trivial) ...Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason's power. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness � has rendered openness meaningless."

Lasch: "�moral paralysis of those who value 'openness' above all (democracy is more than) openness and toleration... In the absence of common standards... tolerance becomes indifference."

"Open Mind" becomes: "Empty Mind".

Lasch observed that America has become a culture of excuses (for self and the "disadvantaged"), of protected judicial turf conquered through litigation (a.k.a. "rights"), of neglect of responsibilities. Free speech is restricted by fear of offending potential audiences. We confuse respect (which must be earned) with toleration and appreciation, discriminating judgement with indiscriminate acceptance, and turning the blind eye. Fair and well. Political correctness has indeed degenerated into moral incorrectness and plain numbness.

But why is the proper exercise of democracy dependent upon the devaluation of money and markets? Why is luxury "morally repugnant" and how can this be PROVEN rigorously, formal logically? Lasch does not opine - he informs. What he says has immediate truth-value, is non-debatable, and intolerant. Consider this passage, which came out of the pen of an intellectual tyrant:

"...the difficulty of limiting the influence of wealth suggests that wealth itself needs to be limited... a democratic society cannot allow unlimited accumulation... a moral condemnation of great wealth... backed up with effective political action... at least a rough approximation of economic equality... in the old days (Americans agreed that people should not have) far in excess of their needs."

Lasch failed to realize that democracy and wealth formation are two sides of the SAME coin. That democracy is not likely to spring forth, nor is it likely to survive poverty or total economic equality. The confusion of the two ideas (material equality and political equality) is common: it is the result of centuries of plutocracy (only wealthy people had the right to vote, universal suffrage is very recent). The great achievement of democracy in the 20th century was to separate these two aspects: to combine egalitarian political access with an unequal distribution of wealth. Still, the existence of wealth - no matter how distributed - is a pre-condition. Without it there will never be real democracy. Wealth generates the leisure needed to obtain education and to participate in community matters. Put differently, when one is hungry - one is less prone to read Mr. Lasch, less inclined to think about civil rights, let alone exercise them.

Mr. Lasch is authoritarian and patronizing, even when he is strongly trying to convince us otherwise. The use of the phrase: "far in excess of their needs" rings of destructive envy. Worse, it rings of a dictatorship, a negation of individualism, a restriction of civil liberties, an infringement on human rights, anti-liberalism at its worst. Who is to decide what is wealth, how much of it constitutes excess, how much is "far in excess" and, above all, what are the needs of the person deemed to be in excess? Which state commissariat will do the job? Would Mr. Lasch have volunteered to phrase the guidelines and if so, which criteria would he have applied? Eighty percent (80%) of the population of the world would have considered Mr. Lasch's wealth to be far in excess of his needs. Mr. Lasch is prone to inaccuracies. Read Alexis de Tocqueville (1835):

"I know of no country where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property... the passions that agitate the Americans most deeply are not their political but their commercial passions� They prefer the good sense which amasses large fortunes to that enterprising genius which frequently dissipates them."

In his book: "The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy" (published posthumously in 1995) Lasch bemoans a divided society, a degraded public discourse, a social and political crisis, that is really a spiritual crisis.

The book's title is modeled after Jose Ortega y Gasset's "Revolt of the Masses" in which he described the forthcoming political domination of the masses as a major cultural catastrophe. The old ruling elites were the storehouses of all that's good, including all civic virtues, he explained. The masses - warned Ortega y Gasset, prophetically - will act directly and even outside the law in what he called a hyperdemocracy. They will impose themselves on the other classes. The masses harbored a feeling of omnipotence: they had unlimited rights, history was on their side (they were "the spoiled child of human history" in his language), they were exempt from submission to superiors because they regarded themselves as the source of all authority. They faced an unlimited horizon of possibilities and they were entitled to everything at any time. Their whims, wishes and desires constituted the new law of the earth.

Lasch just ingeniously reversed the argument. The same characteristics, he said, are to be found in today's elites, "those who control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate". But they are self appointed, they represent none but themselves. The lower middle classes were much more conservative and stable than their "self appointed spokesmen and would-be liberators". They know the limits and that there are limits, they have sound political instincts:

"�favor limits on abortion, cling to the two-parent family as a source of stability in a turbulent world, resist experiments with 'alternative lifestyles', and harbor deep reservations about affirmative action and other ventures in large- scale social engineering."

And who purports to represent them? The mysterious "elite" which, as we find out, is nothing but a code word for the likes of Lasch. In Lasch's world Armageddon is unleashed between the people and this specific elite. What about the political, military, industrial, business and other elites? Yok. What about conservative intellectuals who support what the middle classes do and "have deep reservations about affirmative action" (to quote him)? Aren't they part of the elite? No answer. So why call it "elite" and not "liberal intellectuals"? A matter of (lack) of integrity.

The members of this fake elite are hypochondriacs, obsessed with death, narcissistic and weaklings. A scientific description based on thorough research, no doubt.

Even if such a horror-movie elite did exist - what would have been its role? Did he suggest an elite-less pluralistic, modern, technology-driven, essentially (for better or for worse) capitalistic democratic society? Others have dealt with this question seriously and sincerely: Arnold, T.S. Elliot ("Notes towards the Definition of Culture"). Reading Lasch is an absolute waste of time when compared to their studies. The man is so devoid of self-awareness (no pun intended) that he calls himself "a stern critic of nostalgia". If there is one word with which it is possible to summarize his life's work it is nostalgia (to a world which never existed: a world of national and local loyalties, almost no materialism, savage nobleness, communal responsibility for the Other). In short, to an Utopia compared to the dystopia that is America. The pursuit of a career and of specialized, narrow, expertise, he called a "cult" and "the antithesis of democracy". Yet, he was a member of the "elite" which he so chastised and the publication of his tirades enlisted the work of hundreds of careerists and experts. He extolled self-reliance - but ignored the fact that it was often employed in the service of wealth formation and material accumulation. Were there two kinds of self-reliance - one to be condemned because of its results? Was there any human activity devoid of a dimension of wealth creation? Therefore, are all human activities (except those required for survival) to cease?

Lasch identified emerging elites of professionals and managers, a cognitive elite, manipulators of symbols, a threat to "real" democracy. Reich described them as trafficking in information, manipulating words and numbers for a living. They live in an abstract world in which information and expertise are valuable commodities in an international market. No wonder the privileged classes are more interested in the fate of the global system than in their neighborhood, country, or region. They are estranged, they "remove themselves from common life". They are heavily invested in social mobility. The new meritocracy made professional advancement and the freedom to make money "the overriding goal of social policy". They are fixated on finding opportunities and they democratize competence. This, said Lasch, betrayed the American dream!?:

"The reign of specialized expertise is the antithesis of democracy as it was understood by those who saw this country as 'The last best hope of Earth'."

For Lasch citizenship did not mean equal access to economic competition. It meant a shared participation in a common political dialogue (in a common life). The goal of escaping the "laboring classes" was deplorable. The real aim should be to ground the values and institutions of democracy in the inventiveness, industry, self-reliance and self-respect of workers. The "talking classes" brought the public discourse into decline. Instead of intelligently debating issues, they engaged in ideological battles, dogmatic quarrels, name-calling. The debate grew less public, more esoteric and insular. There are no "third places", civic institutions which "promote general conversation across class lines". So, social classes are forced to "speak to themselves in a dialect... inaccessible to outsiders". The media establishment is more committed to "a misguided ideal of objectivity" than to context and continuity, which underlie any meaningful public discourse.

The spiritual crisis was another matter altogether. This was simply the result of over-secularization. The secular worldview is devoid of doubts and insecurities, explained Lasch. Thus, single-handedly, he eliminated modern science, which is driven by constant doubts, insecurities and questioning and by an utter lack of respect for authority, transcendental as it may be. With amazing gall, Lasch says that it was religion which provided a home for spiritual uncertainties!!!

Religion - writes Lasch - was a source of higher meaning, a repository of practical moral wisdom. Minor matters such as the suspension of curiosity, doubt and disbelief entailed by religious practice and the blood-saturated history of all religions - these are not mentioned. Why spoil a good argument?

The new elites disdain religion and are hostile to it:

"The culture of criticism is understood to rule out religious commitments... (religion) was something useful for weddings and funerals but otherwise dispensable."

Without the benefit of a higher ethic provided by religion (for which the price of suppression of free thought is paid - SV) - the knowledge elites resort to cynicism and revert to irreverence.

"The collapse of religion, its replacement by the remorselessly critical sensibility exemplified by psychoanalysis and the degeneration of the 'analytic attitude' into an all out assault on ideals of every kind have left our culture in a sorry state."

Lasch was a fanatic religious man. He would have rejected this title with vehemence. But he was the worst type: unable to commit himself to the practice while advocating its employment by others. If you asked him why was religion good, he would have waxed on concerning its good RESULTS. He said nothing about the inherent nature of religion, its tenets, its view of Mankind's destiny, or anything else of substance. Lasch was a social engineer of the derided Marxist type: if it works, if it molds the masses, if it keeps them "in limits", subservient - use it. Religion worked wonders in this respect. But Lasch himself was above his own laws - he even made it a point not to write God with a capital "G", an act of outstanding "courage". Schiller wrote about the "disenchantment of the world", the disillusionment which accompanies secularism - a real sign of true courage, according to Nietzsche. Religion is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of those who want to make people feel good about themselves, their lives and the world, in general. Not so Lasch:

"�the spiritual discipline against self-righteousness is the very essence of religion... (anyone with) a proper understanding of religion� (would not regard it as) a source of intellectual and emotional security (but as) ... a challenge to complacency and pride."

There is no hope or consolation even in religion. It is good only for the purposes of social engineering.

Other Works

In this particular respect, Lasch has undergone a major transformation. In "The New Radicalism in America" (1965), he decried religion as a source of obfuscation.

"The religious roots of the progressive doctrine" - he wrote - were the source of "its main weakness". These roots fostered an anti-intellectual willingness to use education "as a means of social control" rather than as a basis for enlightenment. The solution was to blend Marxism and the analytic method of Psychoanalysis (very much as Herbert Marcuse has done - q.v. "Eros and Civilization" and "One Dimensional Man").

In an earlier work ("American Liberals and the Russian Revolution", 1962) he criticized liberalism for seeking "painless progress towards the celestial city of consumerism". He questioned the assumption that "men and women wish only to enjoy life with minimum effort". The liberal illusions about the Revolution were based on a theological misconception. Communism remained irresistible for "as long as they clung to the dream of an earthly paradise from which doubt was forever banished".

In 1973, a mere decade later, the tone is different ("The World of Nations", 1973). The assimilation of the Mormons, he says, was "achieved by sacrificing whatever features of their doctrine or ritual were demanding or difficult... (like) the conception of a secular community organized in accordance with religious principles".

The wheel turned a full cycle in 1991 ("The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics"). The petite bourgeois at least are "unlikely to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven".

In "Heaven in a Heartless world" (1977) Lasch criticized the "substitution of medical and psychiatric authority for the authority of parents, priests and lawgivers". The Progressives, he complained, identify social control with freedom. It is the traditional family - not the socialist revolution - which provides the best hope to arrest "new forms of domination". There is latent strength in the family and in its "old fashioned middle class morality". Thus, the decline of the family institution meant the decline of romantic love (!?) and of "transcendent ideas in general", a typical Laschian leap of logic.

Even art and religion ("The Culture of Narcissism", 1979), "historically the great emancipators from the prison of the Self... even sex... (lost) the power to provide an imaginative release".

It was Schopenhauer who wrote that art is a liberating force, delivering us from our miserable, decrepit, dilapidated Selves and transforming our conditions of existence. Lasch - forever a melancholy - adopted this view enthusiastically. He supported the suicidal pessimism of Schopenhauer. But he was also wrong. Never before was there an art form more liberating than the cinema, THE art of illusion. The Internet introduced a transcendental dimension into the lives of all its users. Why is it that transcendental entities must be white-bearded, paternal and authoritarian? What is less transcendental in the Global Village, in the Information Highway or, for that matter, in Steven Spielberg?

The Left, thundered Lasch, had "chosen the wrong side in the cultural warfare between 'Middle America' and the educated or half educated classes, which have absorbed avant-garde ideas only to put them at the service of consumer capitalism".

In "The Minimal Self" (1984) the insights of traditional religion remained vital as opposed to the waning moral and intellectual authority of Marx, Freud and the like. The meaningfulness of mere survival is questioned: "Self affirmation remains a possibility precisely to the degree that an older conception of personality, rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions, has persisted alongside a behavioral or therapeutic conception". "Democratic Renewal" will be made possible through this mode of self- affirmation. The world was rendered meaningless by experiences such as Auschwitz, a "survival ethic" was the unwelcome result. But, to Lasch, Auschwitz offered "the need for a renewal of religious faith... for collective commitment to decent social conditions... (the survivors) found strength in the revealed word of an absolute, objective and omnipotent creator... not in personal 'values' meaningful only to themselves". One can't help being fascinated by the total disregard for facts displayed by Lasch, flying in the face of logotherapy and the writings of Victor Frankel, the Auschwitz survivor.

"In the history of civilization... vindictive gods give way to gods who show mercy as well and uphold the morality of loving your enemy. Such a morality has never achieved anything like general popularity, but it lives on, even in our own, enlightened age, as a reminder both of our fallen state and of our surprising capacity for gratitude, remorse and forgiveness by means of which we now and then transcend it."

He goes on to criticize the kind of "progress" whose culmination is a "vision of men and women released from outward constraints". Endorsing the legacies of Jonathan Edwards, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, William James, Reinhold Niebuhr and, above all, Martin Luther King, he postulated an alternative tradition, "The Heroic Conception of Life" (an admixture of Brownson's Catholic Radicalism and early republican lore): "...a suspicion that life was not worth living unless it was lived with ardour, energy and devotion".

A truly democratic society will incorporate diversity and a shared commitment to it - but not as a goal unto itself. Rather as means to a "demanding, morally elevating standard of conduct". In sum: "Political pressure for a more equitable distribution of wealth can come only from movements fired with religious purpose and a lofty conception of life". The alternative, progressive optimism, cannot withstand adversity: "The disposition properly described as hope, trust or wonder... three names for the same state of heart and mind - asserts the goodness of life in the face of its limits. It cannot be deflated by adversity". This disposition is brought about by religious ideas (which the Progressives discarded):

"The power and majesty of the sovereign creator of life, the inescapability of evil in the form of natural limits on human freedom, the sinfulness of man's rebellion against those limits; the moral value of work which once signifies man's submission to necessity and enables him to transcend it..."

Martin Luther King was a great man because "(He) also spoke the language of his own people (in addition to addressing the whole nation - SV), which incorporated their experience of hardship and exploitation, yet affirmed the rightness of a world full of unmerited hardship... (he drew strength from) a popular religious tradition whose mixture of hope and fatalism was quite alien to liberalism".

Lasch said that this was the First deadly Sin of the civil rights movement. It insisted that racial issues be tackled "with arguments drawn from modern sociology and from the scientific refutation of social porejudice" - and not on moral (read: religious) grounds.

So, what is left to provide us with guidance? Opinion polls. Lasch failed to explain to us why he demonized this particular phenomenon. Polls are mirrors and the conduct of polls is an indication that the public (whose opinion is polled) is trying to get to know itself better. Polls are an attempt at quantified, statistical self-awareness (nor are they a modern phenomenon). Lasch should have been happy: at last proof that Americans adopted his views and decided to know themselves. To have criticized this particular instrument of "know thyself" implied that Lasch believed that he had privileged access to more information of superior quality or that he believed that his observations tower over the opinions of thousands of respondents and carry more weight. A trained observer would never have succumbed to such vanity. There is a fine line between vanity and oppression, fanaticism and the grief that is inflicted upon those that are subjected to it.

This is Lasch's greatest error: there is an abyss between narcissism and self love, being interested in oneself and being obsessively preoccupied with oneself. Lasch confuses the two. The price of progress is growing self-awareness and with it growing pains and the pains of growing up. It is not a loss of meaning and hope � it is just that pain has a tendency to push everything to the background. Those are constructive pains, signs of adjustment and adaptation, of evolution. America has no inflated, megalomaniac, grandiose ego. It never built an overseas empire, it is made of dozens of ethnic immigrant groups, it strives to learn, to emulate. Americans do not lack empathy - they are the foremost nation of volunteers and also professes the biggest number of (tax deductible) donation makers. Americans are not exploitative - they are hard workers, fair players, Adam Smith-ian egoists. They believe in Live and Let Live. They are individualists and they believe that the individual is the source of all authority and the universal yardstick and benchmark. This is a positive philosophy. Granted, it led to inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth. But then other ideologies had much worse outcomes. Luckily, they were defeated by the human spirit, the best manifestation of which is still democratic capitalism.

The clinical term "Narcissism" was abused by Lasch in his books. It joined other words mistreated by this social preacher. The respect that this man gained in his lifetime (as a social scientist and historian of culture) makes one wonder whether he was right in criticizing the shallowness and lack of intellectual rigor of American society and of its elites.

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The Cyber Narcissist
By: Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
To the narcissist, the Internet is an alluring and irresistible
combination of playground and hunting grounds, the gathering place
of numerous potential Sources of Narcissistic Supply, a world where
false identities are the norm and mind games the bon ton. And it is
beyond the reach of the law, the pale of social norms, the
strictures of civilized conduct.

The somatic finds cyber-sex and cyber-relationships aplenty. The
cerebral claims false accomplishments, fake skills, erudition and
talents. Both, if minimally communicative, end up at the instantly
gratifying epicenter of a cult of fans, followers, stalkers,
erotomaniacs, denigrators, and plain nuts. The constant attention
and attendant quasi-celebrity feed and sustain their grandiose
fantasies and inflated self-image.

The Internet is an extension of the real-life Narcissistic
Pathological Space but without its risks, injuries, and
disappointments. In the virtual universe of the Web, the narcissist
vanishes and reappears with ease, often adopting a myriad aliases
and nicknames. He (or she) can thus fend off criticism, abuse,
disagreement, and disapproval effectively and in real time � and,
simultaneously, preserve the precarious balance of his infantile
personality. Narcissists are, therefore, prone to Internet addiction.

The positive characteristics of the Net are largely lost on the
narcissist. He is not keen on expanding his horizons, fostering true
relationships, or getting in real contact with other people. The
narcissist is forever the provincial because he filters everything
through the narrow lens of his addiction. He measures others � and
idealizes or devalues them � according to one criterion only: how
useful they might be as Sources of Narcissistic Supply.

The Internet is an egalitarian medium where people are judged by the
consistency and quality of their contributions rather than by the
content or bombast of their claims. But the narcissist is driven to
distracting discomfiture by a lack of clear and commonly accepted
hierarchy (with himself at the pinnacle). He fervently and
aggressively tries to impose the "natural order" � either by
monopolizing the interaction or, if that fails, by becoming a major
disruptive influence.

But the Internet may also be the closest many narcissists get to
psychodynamic therapy. Because it is still largely text-based, the
Web is populated by disembodied entities. By interacting with these
intermittent, unpredictable, ultimately unknowable, ephemeral, and
ethereal voices � the narcissist is compelled to project unto them
his own experiences, fears, hopes, and prejudices.

Transference (and counter-transference) are quite common on the Net
and the narcissist's defence mechanisms � notably projection and
Projective Identification � are frequently aroused. The therapeutic
process is set in motion by the � unbridled, uncensored, and
brutally honest - reactions to the narcissist's repertory of antics,
pretensions, delusions, and fantasies.

The narcissist � ever the intimidating bully � is not accustomed to
such resistance. Initially, it may heighten and sharpen his paranoia
and lead him to compensate by extending and deepening his
grandiosity. Some narcissists withdraw altogether, reverting to the
schizoid posture. Others become openly antisocial and seek to
subvert, sabotage, and destroy the online sources of their
frustration. A few retreat and confine themselves to the company of
adoring sycophants and unquestioning groupies.

But a long exposure to the culture of the Net � irreverent,
skeptical, and populist � usually exerts a beneficial effect even on
the staunchest and most rigid narcissist. Far less convinced of his
own superiority and infallibility, the online narcissist mellows and
begins � hesitantly � to listen to others and to collaborate with
them.

Ultimately, most narcissists - those who are not schizoid and shun
social contact - tire of the virtual reality that is cyberspace. The
typical narcissist needs "tangible" narcissistic supply. He craves
attention from real, live, people, flesh and blood. He strives to
see in their eyes their admiration and adulation, the awe and fear
that he inspires, the approval and affirmation that he elicits.

There is no substitute to human contact, even for the narcissist.
Many narcissists try to carry online relationships they nurtured
into their logical extension and conclusion offline. Other burst
upon the cyber scene intermittently, vanishing for long months, only
to dive back in and reappear, reinvigorated. Reality beckons and few
narcissists resist its siren call.

Interview granted to Misty Harris of CanWest on February 23, 2005

Q. How might technology be enabling narcissism, particularly for the
Internet generation?

A. To believe that the Internet is an unprecedented phenomenon with
unique social implications is, in itself, narcissistic. The Internet
is only the latest in a long series of networking-related
technological developments. By definition, technology is
narcissistic. It seeks to render us omnipotent, omniscient, and
omnipresent - in other words, Godlike.

The Internet allows us to replicate ourselves and our words (through
vanity desktop publishing, blogs, and posting online content on Web
sites), to playact our favorite roles, to communicate instantly with
thousands (narrowcasting), to influence others, and, in general, to
realize some of our narcissistic dreams and tendencies.

Q. Why is it a bad thing to have a high opinion of yourself?

A. It is not a bad thing if it is supported by commensurate
achievements. If the gap between fantasy and reality is too big, a
dysfunction that we call "pathological narcissism" sets in.

Q. What does it say about our culture that we encourage narcissistic
characteristics in people? (example: Paris Hilton - we made her a
star for loving herself)

A. Celebrity culture is not a new thing. It is not a culture-
dependent phenomenon. Celebrities fulfil two emotional functions for
their fans: they provide a mythical narrative (a story that the fan
can follow and identify with) and they function as blank screens
onto which the fans project their dreams, hopes, fears, plans,
values, and desires (wish fulfilment).

Western culture emphasizes ambition, competitiveness, materialism,
and individualism. These admittedly are narcissistic traits and give
the narcissist in our society an opening advantage.

But narcissism exists in a different form in collectivist societies
as well. As Theodore Millon and Roger Davis state in their seminal
tome, "Personality Disorders in Modern Life":

"In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the
world'. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is 'God's gift to
the collective'".
==================================================



AUTHOR BIO:
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served
as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline,
and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business
Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East
Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

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I. "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_MSL-EBOOK

II. NEW!!! "Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath" (December
2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ABUSE

III. "Pathological Narcissism FAQs" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_FAQS

IV. "The World of the Narcissist" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ESSAY

V. "Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List" (May 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_EXCERPTS

VI. "Diary of a Narcissist" (October 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_JOURNAL

VII. "The Narcissism Series" - (December 2004)

Six e-books regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with
abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_SERIES

Malignant Self Love, Toxic Relationships - and MORE!!!

http://www.suite101.com/bulletin.cfm/6514/10182

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/thebook.html

Free excerpts from the book are available here:

http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/MSL2excerpts.rtf

The Narcissism Book of Quotes is available for free download here:

http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/NPDQuotes.rtf

Have a safe and warm week!

Sam

Hi, guys,

Hope you find these of both interest and help:

Abusive Relationships NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES

Complete Archive

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/narcissisticabuse/

The Narcissist and the Internet - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 39

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3574

Are Narcissists Evil? - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number 38

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3558

Manual of Coping with Stalkers - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 37

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3540

Narcissists and Sexual Deviations - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - Number 36

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3520
Narcissistic Leaders and Bosses - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 35

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3507

Female Narcissists - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number 34

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3489

Divorcing the Narcissist/Psychopath - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - Number 33

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3469

The Narcissist's Charm and Aggression - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - Number 32

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3450

Homosexual and Transsexual Narcissists - Number 31

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3438

When Victims Become Narcissists - Number 30

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3424

Codependence and Counterdependence - Number 29

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3405

Closure and Letting Go - Number 28

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3384

Introspection and Self-Awareness - Number 27

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3366

The Narcissist's False self - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 26

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3343

Fame, Celebrity, and Narcissism - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 25

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3333

Narcissism, Medication, and Addiction - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - 24

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3322

The Adolescent Narcissist - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 23

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3302

Narcissists and Emotions - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number
22

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3289

Stalking and Stalkers - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number 21

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3270

Narcissists Have No Friends - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 20

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3251

The Malignant Optimism of the Abused - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - 19

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3235

False Modesty and Feigned Altruism - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - No. 18

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3221

Narcissism Chat Transcript - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - No.
17

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3202

Mental Health Today Chat Transcript - Number 16

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3351

Violent Narcissists - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number 15

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3173

How To Make the System Work for You - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - Number 14

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3149

The System Against the Victims - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 13

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3134

Narcissists Sex and Fidelity - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 12

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3118

Narcissists and God - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number 11

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3101

Narcissism in the Boardroom - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 10

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3089

Can Narcissism Be Cured? - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number
9

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3072

The Victims of the Narcissist - Abusive Relationships Newsletter -
Number 8

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3057

Substance Abuse, Reckless Behaviors and the Narcissist - Newsletter
Number 7

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3037

The Midlife Crisis and Old Age of the Narcissist - Newsletter Number
6

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3024

Divorce and Custody - Working the System - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - Number 5

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3006

Narcissism, Asperger's and Bipolar Disorder - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter 4

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/2994

How to Spot an Abuser on Your First Date - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - Number 3

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/2988

Custody - Leveraging the Children - Abusive Relationships
Newsletter - Number 2

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/2964

Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Issue Number 1

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/2946

DIALOGS

NEW dialogs about pathological narcissism, the malignant narcissist,
and his effects on his victims at home, at work, and elsewhere:

Terrorism as a Psychodynamic Phenomenon

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/terrorism.html

Stephen McDonnell and Sam Vaknin

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues2.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues3.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues4.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues5.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues6.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues7.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues8.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues9.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues10.html

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues11.html

Or here:

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues2.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues3.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues4.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues5.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues6.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues7.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues8.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues9.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues10.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues11.html

Weekly Case Studies

http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER/drvakninsweekly
casestudies.msnw

CHAT TRANSCRIPTS and INTERVIEWS

Celebrities Want to Be Alone - Or Do They?

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20041130/d_bottomstrip30.ar
t.htm

Mirror, Mirror ... (Toronto Sun)

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/Lifestyle/2004/08/30/608650.
html

The Infinite Mind Radio Show - Narcissism

http://www.lcmedia.com/mind333.htm

Articles and interviews in the media

http://www.suite101.com/bulletin.cfm/6514/10621

New Narc City (New York Press)

http://www.nypress.com/16/7/news&columns/feature.cfm

Radio Show regarding Relationships with Abusive Narcissists

http://www.healthyplace.com/Radio/archives/audio_narcissism_02-10-
12.htm

Read the transcript of the CHAT with Sam Vaknin in HealthyPlace -
click on this link:

http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Personality_Disorders/Site/Tr
anscripts/narcissism.htm

Read the transcript of the CHAT with Sam Vaknin regarding abusive
narcissists - click on this link:

http://healthyplace.com/communities/personality_disorders/site/Transc
ripts/abusive_narcissists.htm

Read the transcript of the CHAT with Sam Vaknin regarding
narcissists in the Workplace- click on this link:

http://healthyplace.com/Communities/personality_disorders/site/Transc
ripts/narcissism_workplace.htm

Read the transcript of the WebMD CHAT with Sam Vaknin - click on
this link:

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/71/81306.htm

Read the transcript of the Mental Health Today CHAT with Sam Vaknin -
  click on this link:

http://www.mental-health-today.com/narcissistic/transcripts.htm

Download all chat transcripts and interviews here:

http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/NPDBibliography.zip

Read an extended INTERVIEW with Sam Vaknin in Natterbox - HERE:

http://www.natterbox.com/vaknin/vaknin1.html

Listen to an AUDIO INTERVIEW with Sam Vaknin - HERE:

http://www.ladybuglive.com/acl.htm

Listen to "Psychopaths in Suits" on Australia's ABC Radio

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/mod/bbing_18072004_2856.ram

Or read the transcript here:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s1158704.htm

Interview in "The Idler" - "Narcissism, Group Behaviour, and
Terrorism" - click on this link:

http://www.the-idler.com/IDLER-01/12-20.html

Hi,

A resource regarding the BTK Killer:

http://btk-profiles.blogspot.com/

You may find these of added interest:

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/serialkillers.html

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/objectrealtions.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/faq45.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/faq57.html

http://open-site.org/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Psychiatric_Disorders/Person\
ality/Antisocial/

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/dialogues10.html

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/torturepsychology.html

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/trauma.html

Sam

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/141/story_14161.html


  The Force of the Universe Is With You
'Everything we feel is missing from our life we're already connected
to,' says bestselling author Wayne Dyer.

Interview by Lisa Schneider
If you call Wayne Dyer's cell phone you'll get the message: "Hi,
this is Wayne Dyer and I want to feel good. If your message is
designed to do anything other than that, you've reached the wrong
number." The popular author and speaker in the field of self-
development equates feeling good with "feeling God," and believes
that the key to happiness and success is aligning yourself with the
force in the universe he calls "intention," an idea he explores in
PBS special airing nationwide this month (check local listings here)
and in his latest book, "The Power of Intention."

You say that intention is not something you do, but rather a force
behind everything in the universe, that it's what makes an acorn a
tree, an orange seed an orange. Can you elaborate on what you mean
by "intention"?

Carlos Castenada said there's an immeasurable, indescribable force
which shamans called "intent" and absolutely everything that exists
in the entire cosmos is connected to it. You can call it spirit or
soul or consciousness or universal mind or source. It is the
invisible force that intends everything into the universe. It's
everywhere. This source is always creating, it is kind, it is
loving, it is peaceful. It is non-judgmental, and it excludes no
one.
In the Old Testament it says, "In the beginning God created heaven
and earth and everything that God created was good." That leaves
nothing out. So good and God are what it means to be connected to
our source. If you go to the Gnostic Gospels -- you know, the
gospels that Constantine in the fourth century decided shouldn't be
in the New Testament -- if you study the Gospel of Mary Magdalene
and the Gospel of St. Thomas, they don't refer to God as God, they
refer to God as the "The Good."

Whenever we are in harmony with that source from which we all
emanated, which everything came from, we have the powers of the
source. And when we let go of our connection and rusty up the link
between ourselves and this connection, dirty it up by living at the
lower levels of consciousness, then we create things like illness
and poverty and sadness and fear and hatred.

We have to take a look at every single thought that we have and ask
ourselves, "Is it in harmony with source or isn't it?" Any thought
that isn't loving, any thought that is filled with hatred, is a
thought that is inconsistent with, not in rapport with source.

What role does the ego play in our relationship with intention?

The idea that intention means I have a pit-bull attitude and
nothing's going to stop me and nobody can get in my way, that's
really the ego at work. And the ego is the thing that really
separates our selves from our source.


The ego has six components: It is a belief that we carry around that
says first of all, I am what I have. So I measure my worth on the
basis of my stuff. I am what I do, that is all of my achievements,
that's the second. The third is, I am my reputation. I am what
everybody else thinks of me. So those are three really high
motivating factors of the ego: Get more stuff, do more, and get
people to like you.

=========================================

Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

NEW, SIXTH Revised Impression! "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited"
(December  2004)

PRINT

From Barnes and Noble

http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?ISBN=8023833847

The FIFTH Revised Impression + Bonus Pack EXCLUSIVE From the
Publisher

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ELECTRONIC BOOK - The Sixth, Revised Impression (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_MSL-EBOOK

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/thebook.html

====================================
The fourth is the ego says that who I am is separate from everybody
else instead of connected through this universal source that we all
emanate from. Fifth, the ego says that who I am is separate from
what is missing in my life. And that means that we don't understand
that we're already connected to everything so that in some spiritual
sense, everything that we feel is missing from our life we're
already connected to. And finally it says that who I am is separate
from God. God is something outside of me. Instead of seeing myself
as a piece of God, I see myself as an ego who I separate from God.

When St. Francis was feeling that he didn't have any peace in this
life, he didn't say to God, "I need some peace. Please just bring me
peace." What he asks is "Make me an instrument of your peace. Let me
be like you." That's what called God realization. And that's
something that we can all do at any moment in our life.

So the ego is the bad guy here, it's what causes this separation
from God. Why did God create us with these pesky egos?

Well, I don't think God did create us with these pesky egos. I think
God created us and I think that we all came from this source and
then we separated ourselves. We're the only creatures who are
capable of doing that. Rabbits can't do that, you know, and beavers
can't do that and birds don't do that. None of them go around
believing that there is something other than what they are. They are
just at peace with who they are.

But God created us with a free will � a will to decide whether or
not we're going to stay connected to source or not. And basically
what most of us do is decide not to connect. Because we're raised on
these ideas like, I am my stuff and I am my achievements and all of
that. But that's not God at work, that's us separating ourselves
from God. We make the decision to separate ourselves. It's not a
sin; it's just a mistake. It's an illusion; it's a belief that we're
something that we're not.

I mean, I'm 63-years-old, I look at this body and I watch it go
through its motions and I watch all the stuff that I accumulate and
I watch my reputation, I watch all of this stuff -- but there's a
part of me that knows that this is not who I am. That who I am is
that divine source that I emanated from and that I'm returning to.
And so if you can just keep reminding yourself that you're not here
as a human being having a spiritual experience. All of us are
spiritual beings having a human experience.


How is the failure to make this connection to intention related to
stress in our everyday lives?

One of the beautiful quotes that I put at the top of the chapter on
living a stress-free, tranquil life was from Paramahansa Yogananda.
He said, "So long as we believe in our heart of hearts that our
capacity is limited and we grow anxious and unhappy, we are lacking
in faith. One who truly trusts in God has no right to be anxious
about anything." And Thomas Merton said, "Anxiety is the mark of
spiritual insecurity." You know, it's like once you connect, once
you know that you're connected to source, stress is not a
possibility in our lives.

You say stress is a "desire of the ego." But when I think of the
people around me who are stressed and the things that are concerning
them and giving them anxiety, many of them are just concerned about
providing for their family, which doesn't seem to be ego-based or
self-centered�

But it is. It just sounds more acceptable. If those people were to
say, "I want to feel good in the midst of all of this, I want to
feel connected to God" and did an internal kind of meditation, that
stress would be gone. Now whether or not the mortgage would be paid
and so on, might or might not take place. My suggestion is that the
abundance will begin to flow into your life when you reconnect to an
abundant, providing universe.

But let's just say that it doesn't. The stress isn't from whether
the mortgage gets paid or not. The question is whether or not I'm
going to process it in a way that's going to produce stress for me,
and that's always ego-based.

It just sounds better to say, "Well I'm stressed over the fact that
I want to provide for my family---I want to do nice things." But
it's still an internal decision not to feel good�not to feel God.
And in any moment in our lives we all have the opportunity to match
up with intention and ask ourselves "How does my source think? How
does it feel?" And you just have to practice that. We just have had
tons and tons of practice at doing the opposite and really believing
that those external events are the thing that are causing me to be
unhappy.

You emphasize a lot the Law of Attraction - the psychological theory
that a positive attitude will attract positive experiences. What are
people to think when things go very wrong? For example, cancer,
earthquakes, other natural disasters, etc. -- how could someone
possibly be responsible for those kinds of tragedies?

Swami Paramananda said, 'Self realization means that we've been
consciously connected with our source of being and once we've made
this connection then nothing can go wrong."

So you don't look at those things as "going wrong." Wrong is an
attitude of the ego. How can an earthquake be wrong? An earthquake
is. It just is.

The question is, can you now attract enough well-being from the
source of well-being, from which all things emanate? Because
devastation doesn't come from source. The source just creates. It's
just in a constant state of creation and it's a source of love and
it can't be anything other than what it is.

So that if we could stay in balance and rapport with that, we could
attract whatever it is that we need to make cancer be something that
isn't life threatening. Because I think all of us have cancer. That
some of us just live with it and some of us don't.

Do you mean that metaphorically, on a spiritual level or...?

No, I mean on a physical level. I think that cancer is a life form
that exists out there and it exists in us. I think even the concept
of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at.
I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because
it implies that there is illness--that there is something wrong. And
so you're going to a universal source with something wrong and this
is a universal source that only knows what's right, and you're
asking it to be something that it isn't. Instead we should go to the
universal source when we feel we have something wrong and we should
just be trying to summon more of what is right. Just summon more of
what is right.

http://www.pn-magazine.com/pn/articles/silence.htm

As Seen In March 1999


Breaking the Silence
by Diane Harness-DiGloria, R.N., M.S., C.S., A.N.P.



Women with disabilities often tolerate violence because they depend
on their abusers for basic personal care. Why do they live in limbo-
and what should they do about it?
Violence against women is a major public health problem in the
United States: One woman is battered every nine seconds.

An estimated one in three women will experience domestic violence in
her lifetime. According to one study, in more than 30% of spinal-
cord-injured (SCI) women the cause of injury was violence.

More than half of all women do not discuss this health problem with
anyone. Domestic violence is one of the best-kept secrets in America.

Violence is endemic in our society; more than 50% of murders in this
country occur within the family. America's media are saturated with
violent news, films, and music lyrics. Graphic images and words
bombard us on a daily basis. Our society is desensitized to abuse's
horrific effects.

What is Domestic Violence?
Domestic violence is "intentional abusive behaviors by a spouse or
intimate partner." These behaviors may include physical injury,
threats, sexual abuse, emotional and psychological torment,
controlling access to money, and progressive social isolation.
Violence against a partner or child is a crime in all states. Women
at highest risk for domestic violence are young (age 18�24 years),
pregnant, or those with mental or physical disabilities.

====================================

Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

NEW!!! "Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath" (December
2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ABUSE

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/thebook.html

====================================
Why Don't Women Leave?
Fear for their own physical safety and that of the family is a major
obstacle for women trying to leave abusive relationships. The most
dangerous time for battered women is when they are attempting to
leave an abusive relationship. Because partners may stalk women and
know their every move, it may seem that the women just have to
disappear in order to be safe.

Economic issues may include being denied access to cash, bank
accounts, or credit cards in order to establish a new living
arrangement or even afford bus or taxi fare to leave.

Victims may be socially isolated from friends, family, and the
community as the batterer restricts access to social support
systems. Loving the abuser is confusing, as the cycle of violence
consists of periodic violent episodes followed by "honeymoon"
periods containing promises to change and the batterer's appearing
to be loving and charming. Many battered women begin to believe the
abusive treatment is their own fault and that they deserve a beating.

Violence and Women
With Disabilities
Increasing research and documentation points to a higher incidence
of physical and sexual abuse of women with disabilities than those
in the general population. Abuse has only recently begun to surface
and needs to be studied more extensively in the future.

In her study ("Sexual Abuse of Women With Physical Disabilities,"
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, [9]2, 1995), Margaret A.
Nosek, Ph.D., unexpectedly found that one third of women with
physical disabilities experienced sexual abuse. According to another
study, relatives or caregivers have abused the majority of victims.
Women often express feelings of helplessness and disempowerment.

Society's negativity toward women with disabilities often triggers
their vulnerability to abuse. Assumptions and perceptions toward
this population often include viewing women as asexual, child-like,
and promiscuous-and as unfit mothers and troublemakers if they
complain.

Outcomes that may increase the risk of violence for women with
disabilities include the following:

Learned passivity is a behavior that is reinforced in both
institutional and residential settings.
Dependency on the abuser for basic care is a frightening experience
that may prevent women with disabilities from filing complaints due
to feeling even more helpless.
Living in institutional or residential settings can increase the
risk of abuse because many settings are away from public scrutiny
and offer little or no access to police, support services, lawyers,
or advocates.
Abuse may have caused the disability.
Exposure to a large number of staff or personal-care assistants and
support workers makes women with disabilities more vulnerable to
abusers.
Limited escape options are obvious, as women with disabilities are
unable to run away, call out, or sometimes not understand what is
happening. Their partners may even take away their wheelchairs.
A lack of community and legal resources is problematic for women
with disabilities in abusive relationships.
Many local shelters are inaccessible  and do not know how to
respond. According to one study, more than half of domestic-violence
shelters in a large metropolitan city were inaccessible to women in
wheelchairs.

Factors That Increase Risk for Disabled Women
Learned passivity
Dependency on abuser for care
Living in institutional or residential settings
Possible abuse-caused disability
Exposure to large number of staff
Limited escape options
Lack of community and legal resources


Treatment and Supportive Services
The first step in seeking help is telling someone about the problem.
Talking to a healthcare professional, family member, close friend,
or clergyperson is an important action. Healthcare professionals are
receiving training to become more sensitive to battered women,
assure confidentiality, and provide medical treatment and resources
to assist women with disabilities.

It is important for women to receive medical attention as soon as
possible after being battered. Photographs (with permission) and
documentation of the assault can be valuable resources for future
legal proceedings against the abuser.

It is critical for battered women to locate community resources.
These may include safe houses, shelters, support groups,
organizations, and legal services. An individualized safety plan is
also important to develop when a dangerous situation arises and
should include the following:

Establish emergency procedures, including safety during an accident
and avoiding the bedroom and kitchen, where weapons may be
available. It is important to develop a rapid exit and a secret code
or signal for neighbors to call police. Also, having a list of
numbers to call in case of an emergency is critical.
Ensure home safety: change door locks, use caller identification,
have an unlisted phone number, and let children know not to unlock
the door for the batterer.
Prevent abuse by either obtaining a restraining order or alerting
neighbors.
Increase workplace safety by obtaining a restraining order to cover
the workplace and by alerting coworkers.
Find a safe place that is unknown to the batterer. Know how to get
there, what to pack (money, keys, medications, insurance and cards,
and changes of clothing), and keep a list of shelter phone numbers.
The most important thing for all women to remember is that no one
deserves to be abused. A relationship is not worth preserving if it
involves battering or abuse. There are no excuses for domestic
violence.

Breaking the Cycle
Domestic violence affects every demographic group in America,
including people with disabilities. In addition, violence may result
in temporary or permanent disabilities.

In 1996, approximately 840,000 women were victimized by violence
perpetrated by intimates (Bureau of Justice statistics, 1998).
Approximately 30% of female murder victims are killed by current or
former partners (Bureau of Justice
statistics, 1998).
Companies lose 1.75 million days a year due to violence in the
workplace. Ten percent of this absenteeism, or 175,000 days, is due
to domestic violence ("Workplace Violence," Department of Justice,
1994).
From 1987 to 1992, workers were the victims of nearly a million
crimes a year, on average, at a variety of public and private
workplaces. When the victim was a woman, she was much more likely
than a man to know the attacker (Department of Justice, March 10,
1996).
As part of the 1994 Crime Act, President Bill Clinton signed the
Violence Against Women Act. For the first time, the federal
government adopted a comprehensive approach to fighting domestic
violence and violence against women. The result? Tough new penalties
and programs to prosecute offenders and help women victims.

In March 1995, President Clinton named Bonnie Campbell, former Iowa
attorney general, director of the Department of Justice's Violence
Against Women Office, a resource for all individuals involved in
this national problem. Contact: (202) 616-8894.

A 24-hour domestic violence hotline ([800] 799-SAFE / 787-3224
[TDD]) provides immediate crisis intervention, counseling, and local-
shelter referral. Since its launching on February 21, 1996, the
hotline has received more than 225,000 calls from all over the
country.

Established on July 13, 1995, and co-chaired by U.S. Attorney
General Janet Reno and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna
Shalala, the Advisory Council on Violence Against Women consists of
47 experts - representatives from law enforcement, media, business,
sports, health and social services, and victim advocacy - working
together to prevent violence and raise awareness of this pressing
problem.


About the Author
Diane Harness-DiGloria, nurse practitioner, is women veterans
coordinator at the Brockton/West Roxbury, Mass., VA Medical Center.
The information in this article is part of the paper she presented
at the 15th Annual American Association of Spinal Cord Injury Nurses
(AASCIN) Conference, in Las Vegas, Nev., in September 1998.

Contact: (508) 583-4500, ext. 1435.


The above article appeared in the March 1999 issue of PN/Paraplegia
News, �1999 Paralyzed Veterans of America.

The Hatred in Her Eyes

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/19542/114570

Additional stories (new ones added daily):

http://www.suite101.com/articles.cfm/19542

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====================================

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7115340/

� Toxic relationships
March 7: "Today" relationship contributor Dr. Gail Saltz and
psychologist Jeffrey Bernstein talk with "Today" host Katie Couric
about how to identify emotional abuse in a relationship, and how to
escape it.
Today show


Today show Find your way out of
a toxic marriage
Is your partner controlling? `Today' relationship expert Dr. Gail
Saltz explains how to identify and get out of this abusive situation
Today show
Updated: 9:54 a.m. ET March 7, 2005If there's someone in your life
who drains, criticizes or judges you, chances are you're involved in
a toxic relationship. Part of a weeklong series, the "Today" show
examines how to identify these harmful relationships and free
yourself from them. "Today" relationship contributor Gail Saltz was
invited to share her advice for women who find their spouse to be
controlling and emotionally abusive.

"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" (December 2004)

http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?ISBN=8023833847


Unfortunately, many women find themselves in an emotionally abusive
or controlling relationship for quite some time before they are able
to figure out what is happening. This is because the signs are very
difficult for the person being controlled to spot. The manipulator
will often choose someone who is susceptible to being controlled and
undermined due to their own lack of confidence, dependent needs and
desire for someone who will appear to protect them, care for them,
give approval and make them feel needed.

Why and how do they do it?
The controller's purpose is to gain power and get what they want by
undermining their partner's sense of who they are, thereby getting
them to constantly submit.

They use tactics such as:

Intimidation � Using implied or veiled threats about withholding
their love or leaving.
Guilt-tripping � Implying the partner is not caring enough or is too
self-centered. This works especially well with more conscientious
people.
Shaming � Putting down, insulting and using sarcasm to make the
other person feel inadequate. This way they stay in power as the
other person weakens.
Charm � A good controller is always seductive and knows how to be
flattering at times in order to reel in their partner and bind her
more tightly to him.
Turning the tables � They will claim that they in fact are the
victim and are being put upon, to deflect any blame or confrontation
and further induce guilt in their partner.
As you can see, these covert methods of undermining a person's
confidence and ability to see what is really going on can be very
effective. So effective that signs you might see in yourself (if you
are the one being controlled) are:

"Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ABUSE

Who am I? � A feeling that you don't really know who you are
anymore. You start to believe you are all these shameful, terrible
things or are becoming someone you don't even recognize.
Chronic fear � For reasons you can't quite name, you feel afraid all
the time. It is the fear that you are losing yourself and that you
are powerless.
Fantasies of escape � Whether they are thoughts of fleeing the
relationship or even thoughts that you or your partner will die so
you will be free, these kinds of frightening thoughts will come to
you.
Questioning reality � The controller is so busy changing the reality
of what he is doing by denying, lying, rationalizing and beating up
on you that you really no longer trust your sense of what's really
happening anywhere and with everyone.
Isolation � Controllers work to isolate you from anyone else in your
life who may support you and make their work more difficult. They
may be intensely jealous and keep you from both friends and family.
Eventually you find yourself isolated from everyone but him.
Lying � You will start lying to others in order to collude with him
that nothing is going on. You will defend him despite your own panic
and this will require distorting the truth to anyone that asks.
This controller convinces you that you cannot live without him, and
because he has undermined your confidence and feelings of self-
worth, you believe it. This is why many women can't seem to break
free, or leave but end up back in the relationship. When a person
first leaves the controller they have these horrible feelings of not
knowing who they are at all, and this terror will make them return
to being the abused and submissive person who thinks they will at
least be taken care of and have some identity. The role of victim
and martyr can be a draw for some women, particularly those who have
carried around guilt of their own for some past issue. Women who
grew up in a home where their father was controlling and abusive to
their mother will often repeat the same thing with a partner and
feel that, like their mother, somehow they deserve it.

"The Narcissism Series" - (December 2004)

Six e-books regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with
abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_SERIES


Is change possible?
Some women think they can get their partner to change, but in fact
no one changes who doesn't want to themselves. Unless he can see
that his behavior is destructive and he wants to get help for his
problem, he will not change. He would need to address why he feels
so angrily powerless inside that he needs to push you into
submission to feel validated. Frankly, this is a long shot at best.

The effects of such a relationship can undermine a woman's self-
esteem and her ability to be intimate and trust. Lasting fears of
being taken advantage of, being hurt and being unable to give and
take in a relationship can take time to overcome. Similarly, there
are lasting effects on the children of such a couple. A child may
suffer lots of guilt, feeling that they should be able to protect
Mom yet also being very angry with and even wanting to hurt Dad.
They have trouble trusting a relationship and fear losing control or
being controlled. They may be doomed to repeat either being a victim
or a perpetrator in the future.

In order to get out of such a relationship, the person being
controlled needs to gather supporters who will help her feel safe
and secure, and who will reinforce her ability to take care of
herself and know who she is and what she wants. She will need a safe
haven, because when she leaves he may try very hard to get her back
by notching up the threats. Some people do become truly violent in
this circumstance, and the woman should take seriously any threat
made to her or her loved ones. If such a threat is made she should
go to the police and seek a place to stay that the partner will not
find. Once a woman has decided to end a controlling relationship, it
is better to have a clean break. Trying to go bit by bit will only
result in coercion from her partner and her inability to leave.

� 2005 MSNBC Interactive



  MORE FROM RELATIONSHIPS
Relationships Section Front
� Relationship issues? May be biology's fault� Find your way out of
a toxic marriage� My girlfriend has sex � but she won't kiss� My
mother-in-law hit my kid!� Dating after 50 is easier than you think�
We're talking marriage; she won't relocate� How well do you travel
together?� He gave me a flashlight for Valentine's!� Avoid the six
top grandparenting mistakes� I want kids � and my husband is
waffling� Relationships Section Front



   � 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/suicide.html

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====================================



http://www.newsfox.com/pte.mc?pte=050121015

             pte050121015
             Health/Medicine
             Intelligent people less likely to commit suicide
             Childhood problems also a cause

             Bristol/Stockholm (pte, Jan 21, 2005 10:45) -
Intelligent young men are less likely to commit suicide than others,
researchers say. As the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk reports, a Swedish-
UK team of scientists has found that young men who scored low on
intelligence tests are two to three times more likely to take their
own life. According to the researchers, problems in childhood might
be an underlying cause. The team of scientists followed nearly a
million 18-year-old men serving in the military for up to 26 years.

"Pathological Narcissism FAQs" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_FAQS

             According to the lead author of the study, David Gunnell
from the University of Bristol http://www.bristol.ac.uk , who worked
with colleagues from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden
http://www.ki.se , there was evidence suggesting intellectual
performance is associated with psychiatric disorders such as
schizophrenia and depression. "But there have been few studies
looking at intelligence and suicide," he said. "This is the largest
study to examine the issue. We found quite strong evidence of an
association between performance on intelligence and subsequent
suicide risk," he added.

"The World of the Narcissist" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ESSAY

             People that did better on tests of logic, language,
spatial and technical skills were less likely to commit suicide, the
researchers found. The risk of suicide with the logic test score was
three times higher in the lowest compared with the highest scorers.
They also found that army recruits who performed poorly on the
intelligence tests and had well-educated parents appeared to be at a
higher suicide risk. According to the researchers, influences on
brain development during childhood might increase a person's risk of
mental illness and hence suicide. It could also be that children who
experience crisis and are less able to adapt to it grow up to be at
an increased risk of suicide they said. "Intelligence may impact on
their chances in life, such as the job they get, their financial
security and their prospects of getting married. All of these
factors could be important in suicide risk," said Gunnell.

             According to the Samaritans organisation, suicide
accounts for a fifth of all deaths amongst young people aged 15-24
and is the second most common cause of death amongst young people
after accidental death. Although young women aged 15-19 are the
group most likely to attempt suicide, young men are much more likely
to die as a result of their suicide attempt, organisation Mind said.

             (end)



             Submitter: newsfox
             Editor: Julian Mattocks
             E-Mail: mattocks@...
             Phone: +43-1-81140-308

http://www.eagletribune.com/news/stories/19991024/BU_002.htm




Sunday, October 24, 1999
Here are tips on how to become a good boss



Kate M. Gilligan, a personal coach and trained psychotherapist with
EXL Group in Andover, spends her days coaching bosses on how to
change for the better.

Often her work begins with an evaluation in which the boss examines
anonymous reviews from peers and employees, an eye opener for most
managers.

"I wouldn't be in business if people could open their mouths and
speak the truth," she said.

Being a "good" boss involves figuring out what values motivate their
employees. Ms. Gilligan said there are six values that have an
impact in the workplace. They include money; having control over
one's destiny; harmony; knowledge; traditionalism, or having a
system in place to work with; and social, meaning having empathy and
putting people first.

If an employee and boss tend to overlap in those areas, chances are
they will be compatible. It is when they don't that employees -- and
bosses -- can get frustrated.

"The only people who are considered bad bosses are those with a
personality disorder. The ones you hear the most about are
narcissistic bosses," Ms. Gilligan said.

Other labels include passive aggressive, when people do not openly
express their feelings but exact revenge in other ways, and bosses
who hate confrontation, she added.

But unless the boss is truly psychotic, he or she generally is open
to suggestions.

"I haven't run across many bosses who aren't willing to look at
themselves and make changes," Ms. Gilligan said.

Her tips to keep bosses out of the "bad" category include:

Respect an individual's perspective on situations

Share success with underlings

Respond positively to feedback

Show integrity by meeting promises

Look at employee mistakes as learning opportunities, thus
encouraging employees to take risks

When an employee approaches a boss with suggestions, Ms. Gilligan
said, it helps to figure out the boss's personality profile and use
techniques and a style that fit that personality for the best
results.


Copyright� 1999 Eagle-Tribune Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

==================

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discussion and mailing groups!

Narcissistic abuse in the workplace and narcissism of authority
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http://healthyplace.com/Communities/personality_disorders/site/Transc
ripts/narcissism_workplace.htm

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http://open-site.org/Society/Issues/Violence_and_Abuse/Workplace/

http://www.nypress.com/16/7/news&columns/feature.cfm

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/npd.htm

http://www.freepint.com/issues/240703.htm

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/journal45.html

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/mod/bbin

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http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php/type/doc/id/419

====================================


http://mmi.edu/narcissism.htm

Narcissism and the Narcissistic Defense

by Dr. Deborah Bershatsky

We use the term "narcissism" to describe an inability to love caused
by two things.

The first is an infant's failure to develop past the point when it
first begins to perceive its mother as separate from itself. Unlike
Narcissus of the myth, our narcissist loathes himself. His rage has
nowhere to go. It has no outlet because he and his frustrating
mother are one. His internal reality and the world around him are
one and the same.

The second is that to the extent he has differentiated from his
mother, he fears that his omnipotent rage will destroy her, and
himself. In an effort to protect his own life, he turns his fury on
himself, thus preserving his mother, who keeps him alive, from
destruction. This is called "the narcissistic defense."

Dr. Hyman Spotnitz stresses the part of the Narcissus myth which
shows that Narcissus's preoccupation with himself destroys him, even
though it is described more as self-love than self-hatred. The
Narcissus myth, though, presumes a more evolved patient than the one
we treat. To our thinking, Narcissus is not curable through
enlightenment. He is not a fool; he is a victim.

====================================

Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

NEW!!! "Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath" (December
2004)

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====================================

Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

"Pathological Narcissism FAQs" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_FAQS

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/thebook.html

=====================================
We cure him by insinuating ourselves into his objectless world and
becoming a part of him, thus sharing with him the burden of his
hatred. We then begin to facilitate the process of differentiation,
helping him to be angry at us for our failure�as surrogates for the
inadequate mother. At the same time we prove to him that we are not
destroyed by his hatred, nor do we seek retribution. Now he realizes
that he is safe in hating us. Merely tolerating the patient's hatred
is an act of love of which the original mother was incapable.
Through being loved in this way the patient develops self-esteem,
and also learns to love.




---------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------
Copyright � 2000, Mid-Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Also read these - click on the links:

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====================================


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7125126/



� Toxic relationship
March 8: Radio's "Love Lines" host Dr. Drew Pinsky and "Today"
relationship contributor Dr. Gail Saltz talk with "Today" host Katie
Couric about narcissistic and commitment-phobic partners.

Today show Relationship issues? It may be biology's fault

Commitment and communication problems could be more about hard-
wiring than the man himself. Relationships experts weigh in
Today show
Updated: 11:59 a.m. ET March 8, 2005Is your relationship on a crash
course? If your partner criticizes or judges you excessively,
chances are you're involved in a "toxic" relationship. In a three-
part series, the "Today" show examines how to identify these harmful
relationships and free yourself from them. In this segment, "Today"
relationships contributor Gail Saltz and the host of radio's "Love
Lines," Dr. Drew Pinsky, talked with show host Katie Couric. Here
are some of their responses to some of the most common questions
about this suject.

advertisement

When men and women complain their partners are narcissistic,
noncommittal or uncommunicative, does this necessarily mean they're
in an unhealthy relationship?

Dr. Gail Saltz: It doesn't. Just because you have a husband who
tunes you out while he's watching football or a wife who reads
catalogs while she listens to you, doesn't mean you should run to
the divorce lawyer. It depends on the degree.

Drew, one of the biggest problems you hear from both men and women
is that they're miserable in their relationship because they can't
get a commitment. Are certain people just unable to commit?

Dr. Drew Pinsky: It's different for young men as opposed to older
men. Young men aren't ready to commit until they have staked out
their territory in life. They need to find out who they are in the
world before they make a commitment to someone. A guy who says he
let "the one" get away truly means it, except there was nothing he
can do about it. No matter how much he loves someone, if he's not
ready, he's not ready.

When he's 40, it's a different story. He's either a jerk or he's not
that into you. Or chances are, he's getting over something too
painful and he needs to work through that.

Gail, another big complaint we heard when talking to men and women
was how difficult it is to be with someone who is extremely self-
absorbed. How serious is narcissism?

=========================================

Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

NEW, SIXTH Revised Impression! "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited"
(December  2004)

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====================================
Saltz: Very serious. It's also another trait of a commitment-phobe.
Narcissists do not feel good about themselves so they need a perfect
person to bring them to a higher level. They're terribly insecure
and they cover it up with these grandiose fantasies. These are
relationships that break up before marriage because the narcissistic
one is afraid of making a commitment because the grass may be
greener somewhere else. This is the person who comes on really
strong, and then once you warm up they become all cool and critical
and they have this unrealistic idea of how perfect someone has to be
for them. They're so consumed with themselves that they're not
loving anyone else.


Is there anything you can do about a person like that?

Saltz: True narcissism is difficult to treat, but intense therapy
can help. What can hurt is pointing out to your spouse just how self-
absorbed he or she really is.

Drew, we often hear women complaining of being with men who don't
communicate. You say women should accept this because it's the way
men and women are hardwired. Is that just an excuse?

Pinsky: No. Testosterone makes people quiet, which makes intimate
conversation not very appealing to men. Because of our biological
make-up, different things turn men and women off. It's normal for a
man to not want to talk � unless this happens all the time. There
are certain times when they are forced to, but it's not abnormal for
a guy to shy away from deep conversations.

Gail, one of the men we spoke with said that he keeps going back to
his girlfriend even though he knows better. He's not alone � why do
people stay with someone if they're not getting what they want from
the relationship?


Saltz: It's due to a few reasons. Once we've made an investment into
the relationship, we don't want to give up. Two, some people are
afraid of being alone or they have kids to care for. More seriously,
some people feel it's their role to be the victim. We think we can
get them to love us, but can we really?

Drew, you say it's because we have some unfinished business. Explain
that.

Pinsky: We're subconsciously trying to fix things from the past.
Look at your past, did you come from a father like that? In many
cases, you did. That's where you're comfortable, and terrors of the
past is something you seek. There's a reason you're attracted to
that kind of person.

Bottom line: Change is something that a person has to want to do
themselves. But if the person you're with changes, you may not be
attracted to him anymore, since what initially attracted you will be
different, says Pinsky. Therefore, you have to change as well. A
relationship is like a lock and key � when one part changes, the
other must also in order for it to fit.

� 2005 MSNBC Interactive



  MORE FROM RELATIONSHIPS
Relationships Section Front
� Relationship issues? It may be biology's fault� Find your way out
of a 'toxic' relationship� My girlfriend has sex � but she won't
kiss� My mother-in-law hit my kid!� Dating after 50 is easier than
you think� We're talking marriage; she won't relocate� How well do
you travel together?� He gave me a flashlight for Valentine's!�
Avoid the six top grandparenting mistakes� Thursday Relationships,
with Gail Saltz: Front Page� Relationships Section Front



   � 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story2&cid=570&ncid=753&e=4&u=/nm/20030421/sc_nm/health_mental_d
c

Science - Reuters

Families Give Up Kids to Get Treatment, Study Says
Mon Apr 21, 4:35 PM ET  Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of U.S. parents are being forced to
give up their mentally ill children to foster care or even the
juvenile justice system because they cannot otherwise pay for
treatment, a report said on Monday.



The report by the General Accounting Office (news - web sites) has
probably found only the tip of the iceberg, mental health groups
said, as only a few states cooperated with the investigation.


But they said the implications are clear. "Families across America
are being ripped apart because they can't find the help their
children with mental and emotional disorders need," Laurel Stine of
the nonprofit Bazelton Center for Mental Health Law said in a
statement.

"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" (December 2004)

PRINT

From Barnes and Noble (sixth edition)

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The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, was asked to write the
report by U.S. Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and
Democratic House of Representatives members Pete Stark of California
and Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island after a series of media reports
on the issue.


Child welfare directors in 19 states, and juvenile justice officials
in 19 counties answered survey questions for the report. They said
more than 12,700 children were placed into some kind of care so they
could get needed treatment.


"Nationwide, this number is likely higher because many state child
welfare directors did not provide data," the GAO report said.


"Although no agency tracks these children or maintains data on their
characteristics, officials said most are male, adolescent, often
have multiple problems and many exhibit behaviors that threaten the
safety of themselves and others."


But the children had not committed crimes, nor had they been abused
or neglected, said Elizabeth Adams, a spokeswoman for the National
Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" (December 2004)

ELECTRONIC

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_MSL-EBOOK

"When children have mental health problems, they are often demanding
on the family and family structure," Adams said in a telephone
interview. "Sometimes they have outbursts and rage and behavior that
is destructive to the child and others."


This requires care -- expensive care that can include intensive
counseling for the patient and the family, respite care to give
parents a break, and drug treatment.


But many insurance plans will only pay for such treatment for a
limited time, said Ralph Ibson of the National Mental Health
Association.


And states cannot pay unless the child is in their physical custody.


"In extreme cases, as this report documents, they literally give up
custody to meet the requirements as a last-chance opportunity for
their children, give up custody to a system that will place the kids
in mental health services. That's how desperate they are," Ibson
said.


"You have to ask yourself why they can supply money for child mental
health services in a foster care home and you won't give the same
money to a parent?" asked Adams.

http://primate_behaviour.homestead.com/

Evolution of Social Behavior in Primates:  Personality Traits


A Genetic Approach to Behavior in Ancestral Hominids


~ Book Still Available ~




"Toward Self & Sanity:  On the Genetic Origins of the Human
Character",
Psychological Dimensions Press, New York, 1985,
504 pages, 16 figures, 48 plates.






(c) A.M. Benis, Sc.D., M.D.






  Illustrations are from On the Genetic Origins of the Human
Character


  Why is this gorilla smiling?


(a) He is happy.


(b) He has just witnessed an amusing event, or


(c) He has the genetic character trait of narcissism.


[answer below]


  Aggression, Perfectionism and Narcissism
As Mendelian Genetic Traits in Primates


Summary


           Our premise is that biologists and anthropologists whose
main interest is human behavioral evolution, evolutionary psychology
or "sociobiology", have been insulated from ideas emanating from the
medical community, in particular from genetic theory in the area of
psychiatry.  Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the
human personality is determined primarily by a limited number of
genetic traits.

           We identify three traits that are transmitted in humans in
a Mendelian fashion:  Aggression (A), Perfectionism (P) and
Narcissism (N).  We believe that the genetic loci corresponding to
these traits will soon be identified.  Thus, DNA analyses in the
near future will allow one to trace personality traits -- and even
personality types -- in ancestral hominid lineages.


           In addition, we show that the traits A, P and N can be
identified in non-human primates.  The evolutionary implications of
this theory are evident.


NPA Theory of Discrete Character Traits


           The NPA theory of personality posits three major
behavioral traits underlying personality:  Narcissism (N),
Perfectionism (P) and Aggression (A), leading to the formulation of
a limited number of identifiable discrete "character types".  Each
of the traits is based on a major pleiotropic gene that follows the
rules of Mendelian genetics.  The mode of transmission of the traits
was deduced from human archetypal family pedigrees.  The traits A
and N were found to be high-frequency recessive, with P being
dominant.  The theory proposes that the traits A and N are
indispensable to human development, being related to the sympathetic
and parasympathetic nervous systems, respectively.


           Our interpretation of the three traits in humans is as
follows:


Aggression (A)


           The stereotypic acts associated with aggression involve
body posturing, gestures and eye contact of intimidation and
deference, with individuals having this trait continually competing
with each other on a scale of dominance and submission.  The trait
corresponds to a striving for power over one's environment, hence is
one component of human ambition.  In a psychiatric connotation the
trait may reveal itself in the context of sadism or sadomasochism.
The facial complexion is non-sanguine, i.e., tending toward
sallowness or pallor in individuals of light skin color.  The
hallmark of the trait is the well-known mass discharge of the
sympathetic nervous system:  the "fight or flight" response or the
aggressive-vindictive rage.  During the expression of this rage, the
facial complexion of pallor is accentuated.


Narcissism (N)


           The stereotypic acts associated with the trait of
narcissism include flaunting body posturing, expansive arm gestures,
bowing, colorful self-adornment, and a natural attraction to the
limelight of personal recognition.  Individuals of the N type are
competitive but non-aggressive in their strivings for recognition.
The trait corresponds to a striving for glory in one's environment,
hence is the second main component of human ambition.  In a
psychiatric connotation the unbridled trait of narcissism may reveal
itself in the context of vanity, exhibitionism, and messianism.  An
associated innate facial expression is the radiant gingival smile of
recognition (broadly exposing gums and teeth).  The facial
complexion tends toward blood red or ruddy in individuals of light
skin color.  Hallmarks of the trait include blushing, flushing, and
a mass discharge of the parasympathetic nervous system:  the
narcissistic rage of defense and withdrawal.  During the expression
of this rage the normally sanguine complexion becomes even more
florid.


Perfectionism (P)


           The trait of perfectionism is not a basic drive of
ambition and is not associated with a rage reaction.  Rather it is a
mediator of the unbridled drives of aggression and/or narcissism.
The stereotypic acts associated with the trait of perfectionism are
obsessiveness, compulsiveness, repetition, and the maintenance of
neatness, order and symmetry.  It is concluded that certain autistic
and schizophrenic individuals are those in whom the two components
of ambition, i.e., aggression and narcissism, have been suppressed
by genetic or environmental factors, either congenitally, in
childhood, or after maturity, thus revealing in the individual a
primitive state of perfectionism.


Main Results of the NPA Model


Three Basic Personality Traits


           Identification of only three basic traits is sufficient to
define the genetically determined character type in humans.
Transmission of the character traits from parents to offspring is
predictable on the basis of Mendelian genetics.  The theory clearly
delineates the genetic bases of personality from environmental ones.


Character Traits Identifiable in Non-human Primates


           The traits of narcissism (N)  and perfectionism (P), as
well as the trait of aggression (A), are identifiable in human and
non-human primates.


           Of special interest, the trait of narcissism (N) is
identified in certain non-human primates (e.g., orangutan, gorilla,
chimpanzee) and in widely disparate geographic and ethnic human
populations.  The gingival smile is a behavioral marker of the trait
of narcissism.


Two Rage Reactions of the Autonomic Nervous System


           The aggressive-vindictive rage (A-rage) and the
narcissistic tantrum (N-rage) can both be identified in human and
non-human primates.


Character Types Identified in Non-human Primates


           The behavior of certain well-known non-human primates can
be fruitfully analyzed by the model.  For example, baboons are
primarily PA types (perfectionist-aggressive, non-narcissistic).
Orangutans and gorillas are primarily NP types (narcissistic-
perfectionist, non-aggressive).  Chimpanzees are primarily NPA types
(all three traits).  To wit:


           Baboons (PA types):  They play a vigorous game of
dominance and submission based on the trait of aggression.  The
grooming habits are rooted in the trait of perfectionism.  Baboons
do not exhibit the smile of recognition.


           Orangutans (NP types):  They are non-aggressive,
perfectionistic, aloof.  They exhibit narcissistic tantrums and
display the broad gingival smile.


           Gorillas (NP types):  They also are non-aggressive and can
exhibit the gingival smile.  The chest-slapping ritual is
interpreted to be a narcissistic display of recognition.


           Chimpanzees (primarily NPA types):  Akin to the human, a
spectrum of personality types exists in the chimpanzee community.
Some, but not all, individuals can display the gingival smile of the
trait of narcissism.  Thus, different individuals may have different
combinations of the traits of aggression,  (aggressive fighting),
perfectionism (fishing for termites), and narcissism (gingival
smile).


Schizophrenic-like Syndromes of Withdrawal in Non-human Primates


           In humans, predisposition to the schizophrenias is based
on the lack of expression of two of the genes (determining traits N
and A).  Syndromes of withdrawal in non-human primate individuals --
for example, in rehabilitated apes who were nurtured in stressful
human environments -- may be interpreted in the light of
schizophrenic syndromes elucidated in humans.


Gene Frequencies and Population Genetics


           Distributions of the discrete character types identified
by the model in various populations may be approached on the basis
of gene frequencies and well-known principles of population
genetics.  We use the Hardy-Weinberg approach to delineate
distributions of personality types in widely different geographic
and cultural contexts.


   REFERENCES


Benis A.M. (1985):  "Toward Self & Sanity:  On the Genetic Origins
of the Human Character", Psychological Dimensions Publishers, New
York.


Benis A.M. and Rand J.R. (1986):  A model of human personality
traits based on Mendelian genetics.  American Assn. for the
Advancement of Science, Pub. 86-5, Washington D.C., p.124 (abstract).


Benis A.M. (1990) :  A theory of personality traits leads to a
genetic model for borderline types and schizophrenia.  Speculations
in Science and Technology, Vol. 13, No. 3, 167-175 [Full text now
available on-line: see link directly below].


Interested in a New Approach to Social Behavior in Primates?


NPA Personality Theory
Original Reference Available On-line
[click here]


Inquire by EMail:  Bound Photocopy of Book is Available
EMail


More Illustrations
[click here]


Order Book / Chapter Outlines / Readers' Comments
[click here]


Links
Evolution and Behavior (J. Yin)
Personality in Animals (S.D. Gosling)
Psychology Culture & Evolution (A. Cheyne)
Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology (V. Dusek)

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/s692465.htm

Is Good Therapy only for the Rich?
Sunday 6 October 2002
repeated the following Wednesday at 2.30pm

This week, clinical psychologists on Medicare � why not? Some 20% of
Australians experience disabling anxiety or depression and could
benefit from the services of a good therapist. There's good evidence
that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy works for depression. But who can
afford it? Medicare covers the services of psychiatrists, not
clinical psychologists. But there aren't enough psychiatrists to go
around and some argue this policy prioritises pharmacological
treatment over the talking therapies.

Transcript:
More links and references below

NEW!!! "Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath" (December
2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ABUSE

Natasha Mitchell: Hello, Natasha Mitchell with you and thanks for
joining me for All in the Mind.

Today a slightly different program for us with the question - Is it
only the rich who can afford therapy these days? Mental health
campaigns are certainly encouraging Australians not to suffer in
silence. The message is loud and clear, that feelings of anxiety,
despair and depression are common and treatable.

So you're feeling blue, and you've decided to go and talk about it
with someone other than your nearest and dearest. But where to you
turn to for help? Well, many of us of course will head to our GP
first who might consider referring you onto a psychologist or a
psychiatrist.

But finding a mental health professional that suits your particular
needs is no mean feat. Amongst private practitioners, if you do
manage to find one that you like the sound of, there's a waiting
list, sometimes months long and an hourly rate that just might break
your bank.

"Pathological Narcissism FAQs" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_FAQS

You can however get part of the psychiatrist's fee back under
Medicare but the services of psychologists aren't covered. And our
mission here today is to find out why this is, and what the impact
of that policy is on you, the consumer.

David Stokes is Manager of Professional Issues with the Australian
Psychological Society, the peak body of Australian psychologists.

David Stokes: Well it does mean that some of those very powerful
psychological techniques which have now been well established as
being sound evidenced based techniques such as the cognitive
behavioural and other strategies are denied to many of the patients
who could benefit from them because either they cannot access them
because of costs or the psychiatrist that they are seeing doesn't
have that expertise.

Robyn Vines: The impact on consumers is huge. It means that those
who are not in a position to pay for specialist clinical
psychological services don't gain access to them. They go and see
their GP or they are referred to a psychiatrist and there are very
few psychiatrists on the ground. Many psychiatrists have their books
filled.

Certainly in regional, rural and remote Australia the access to
psychiatry is virtually nil because 4%, only 4% of the 2000
psychiatrists around Australia actually live in regional rural and
remote areas. So access to specialist mental health facilities for
those in regional, rural and remote areas under Medicare is
virtually zilch. It's usually handled by the GP.

Natasha Mitchell: GPs are really at the coal face, most Australians
rock up to their GPs if things aren't feeling quite right. What are
the limitations of a GP in your mind?

Robyn Vines: Many GPs are excellent at treating mental health
difficulties. What is not happening is that they're acquiring skills
for the more in depth specialists, conditions that require
specialist intervention. GPs don't have the time, their training
does not cover complex mental health disorders and essentially they
need support of specialist mental health professionals to deal with
these people.

Collaborative service delivery is the way to go because what's
interesting about the research is that it suggests that if there is
not back up for GPs in this area they tend to under-diagnose because
there's not a lot of point in diagnosing stuff about which one can
do little. However, as backup is available the tendency to
accurately pick up on mental health difficulties and to diagnose
them appropriately increases. So essentially they are gate keepers
at the moment, they do a lot of psychological intervention
themselves but they do need the specialist backup.

Natasha Mitchell: Robyn Vines who's senior lecturer at Newcastle
University's Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at Orange.

And just to remind you psychiatrists are medically trained first and
so as doctors are able to identify and diagnose mental disorders and
describe medications to treat them.

"The World of the Narcissist" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ESSAY


Whereas psychologists do a psychology degree followed by another two
or so years of practical post grad training and their work is more
focussed on counselling and the various psychological therapies to
help identify and deal with people's personal problems. They don't
medicate but they might work alongside a GP who can.

So what are you up for if you are more interested in trying a
talking therapy approach with a psychologist? David Stokes again
from the Australian Psychological Society.

David Stokes: Our current recommended fee is $166 per hour, we
appreciate that that has to be set in the marketplace as a going
rate but for most psychologists in private practice only in certain
circumstances do they charge at that level.

Natasha Mitchell: The reality is that most psychologists use their
own discretion.

David Stokes: Exactly. And the marketplaces determine that and to a
large extent around about $90 to $100 an hour is the sort of going
rate.

Natasha Mitchell: But it seems to me that even $90 to $100 a session
is pretty unaffordable even for your average income earner, even for
your middle class income earner?

David Stokes: Very much appreciated as such and we are very keen to
see that public service facilities continue to exist to meet the
requirements of the range of people out there who can't afford those
sorts of rates.

Natasha Mitchell: So clearly when it comes to seeking a
psychological therapy such as the most popular talking therapy
cognitive behavioural therapy the out of pocket expenses can be a
big put off.

Bernard McNair is President of the Mental Illness Fellowship of
Australia.

Bernard McNair: That can sometimes make people drop out of help. One
would hope that when you went to see a psychologist and said I can't
afford this that that psychologist would refer you on to a community
health centre, to a bulk billing psychiatrist or to somebody else
that they knew because if their referral patterns who could assist
you. That's the perfect picture, some people would walk out and not
seek treatment and then their mental illness and disability would
only deteriorate even further.

Natasha Mitchell: But for the person who does get referred on to the
bulk billing psychiatrist the issue is access and of long queues.

Bernard McNair: The issue is access and a wait of 8 to 12 weeks
isn't uncommon in some areas, in some practices. Now quite clearly
if you are feeling hopeless, helpless and worthless which is the
three prime feelings with depression for example that 8 to 12 weeks
can feel like 12 months. Your mental state can deteriorate even
further, suicidal behaviour might present itself, certainly
generally feeling lousy for three months will happen, that's not a
good thing.

We live in a very technologically advanced society, we live in a
society where to receive treatment and services we can realistically
expect this is not good enough, there is a stigma with mental health
issues and if I had cancer I doubt I'd have to wait three months to
see my doctor. If I had depression I don't believe I should also
have to wait three months to see a doctor.

Natasha Mitchell: So what's the optimum scenario and how does it
compare to the realistic scenario?

Bernard McNair: The optimum scenario is that I go and see my GP and
he or she can do some work to assist me and then refer me on fairly
quickly to a psychiatrist or other mental health care profession.

The real picture is that there are some GPs who are extremely
interested and skilled in mental health issues and have a good
network within mental health where they can make referrals or you
can have a GP who really has no interest in mental health, has a
poor referral and just refers you on to a name they happen to know
and you may have to wait some period of time. The standards are very
variable, the standards between the urban and rural referral
networks are significant.

If I live in Gulargambone and I happen to have a mental illness then
I will wait an awfully long time and perhaps have to travel hundreds
of kilometres to seek help.

"Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List"

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_EXCERPTS


Natasha Mitchell: It's estimated that some 20% of Australians
experience an anxiety or depressive disorder. In other words,
they're pretty common.

And so back to the question of Medicare coverage. Despite the
suggestion that clinical psychologists can have a crucial role to
play in the treatment of anxiety and depression why are they then
ignored under Medicare when psychiatrists aren't?

Dermott Casey is head of the Mental Health and Special Programs
Branch in the Federal Department of Health and Aged Care.

Dermott Casey: Well look the short answer to that is that this issue
has been raised over a number of years with governments of both
political persuasions and I think that the general view is that
extending the Medicare system to other professional groups is not
the appropriate way to go. It's not necessarily the most targeted
way to go and we could only estimate that it may put an increased
burden on our health expenditure. So we've preferred to approach
this in a more targeted way.

Natasha Mitchell: Nevertheless, if we do focus back on mental
health, would you accept though that there is a perceived bias in
the Medicare system when it comes to coverage of mental health
services - and that is towards the services of psychiatrists who
operate within a particular paradigm where pharmacological
treatments are really prioritised?

Dermott Casey: Look I don't know if it's particular bias, I think
you suggest a historical fact when Medicare was created broadly I
think people viewed health provision as something that was delivered
by doctors. And therefore the Medicare system was devised and
developed around doctors.

As we change our views about what are evidence-based interventions
we've started to appreciate that the health system needs a wider
spectrum, a multi-disciplinary spectrum of providers. But that
doesn't necessarily mean that Medicare is the best financing system
for making those available to the public.

Natasha Mitchell: But the suggestion is that Medicare can't flex as
we become more aware of different treatment options for mental
illness?

Dermott Casey: Well look that would be a matter for government
policy. All I can say at the moment is that the consideration of
extending the Medicare system outside of its current provisions to
reimburse people for expenses incurred with medical practitioners
has been considered and is not being seen by any Australian
government as being the appropriate way to go.

Natasha Mitchell: So it sounds like despite plenty of push there's
been very little shove on the Medicare issue.

David Stokes from the Australian Psychological Society.

David Stokes: Well understandably it's been a considerable thorn in
the flesh for many of our members for many years and I can go back
20 years in my mind almost to submissions made by various
psychologists. The sorts of services that psychologists can provide
and other allied health professions are sort of cut off from people
by this sort of funding divide. Traditionally the response has been
there is no way in the world we are going to open those sorts of
pathways for people and that politically I think that they just
decided that it's a closed door and it's for medicos only.

Natasha Mitchell: Because clearly the concern is quite a practical
one in terms of economics. It's potentially simply not affordable to
have psychologist's sessions covered under Medicare given that the
number of claims would explode and people tend to go to a
psychologist for a lot longer than they would to a medical
professional.

David Stokes: Well if you go to the sort of figures that come
through private health for Health Insurance Providers the figures
for psychologists in that context are not enormous by any means so
it isn't an issue I don't think of the psychology costs blowing out
the Medicare bill. In fact it would be a very, very small fraction
of costs and the information we get from the private health insurers
certainly demonstrate that.

Natasha Mitchell: Let's look at the private health insurance options
in Australia, to what extent to private health insurers cover the
services of psychologists for clients?

David Stokes: The services of psychologists are covered under the
ancillary tables, so described, nd they go along with other allied
health services like physiotherapists, speech pathologists, etc.
Unfortunately there are two limitations, one is that they never
cover more than half with a few exceptions of the charged fee and
then they set limits on how much you can have in a calendar year.

Natasha Mitchell: So can you give me an example?

"Diary of a Narcissist" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_JOURNAL


David Stokes: Well for instance I think Medibank Private's commonest
rebate on a psychological service would be around $40 and they would
set a limit of something like $3-500 per year maximum that you can
claim on.

Natasha Mitchell: Right, so that's claiming on perhaps three to six
sessions.

David Stokes: Correct.

Natasha Mitchell: What about psychologists, we're talking
predominately about private practitioners here, what about accessing
psychologists in the public health sectors, so in public hospitals,
in community mental health centres?

David Stokes: Sure, there's a substantial number of psychologists in
both the acute public health sector as well as the community
settings. These services are generally very short term in the
community setting a bit longer but they are once again limited and
capped and people don't normally have access to prolonged services
in that context.

Natasha Mitchell: The impression that I get is that in the public
sector too psychologists are predominately dealing with more
critical care situations, more serious cases of mental illness. So
is there room for the so called "worried well", and I think that's a
derogatory term myself�but the more common old variety of anxiety of
depression that most people in society experience at some point in
their time. Do they have access to the public sector psychologists?

David Stokes: Well the answer in simple is no. Because of the
shortage of acute psychiatric care facilities. These really focus on
the most seriously disturbed cases so the psychotic illnesses of
schizophrenia, paranoia etc. As a consequence this massive bulk if
you like of depressive and anxiety type disorders are treated very
poorly in the public sector.

Natasha Mitchell: More recently the Federal Government has
recognised that most Australians have pretty poor access to the
services of psychologists and more on that in a moment.

But the exclusion of psychologists from Medicare is a point of
considerable frustration amongst many mental health specialists and
consumers alike.

Bernard McNair.

Bernard McNair: I think it's most unfortunate that psychologists
aren't part of the Medicare schedule where clients can get rebates
for seeing them. My own belief is that we have a system which has
been strongly entrenched in the medical model, and if psychologists
are on the Medicare schedule then in some quarters such as the AMA
it might be seen as in competition with psychiatrists.

Natasha Mitchell: So taking from their client base.

Bernard McNair: Essentially taking from their client base. I'd have
to stress that the best model of care is one that has access to the
most appropriate type of care for a consumer. The psychiatrist in
our system takes the medico/legal responsibility and therefore my
belief is that if a person needs to be under the care of a
psychiatrist to meet medical, legal and care requirements. Many,
many psychiatrists want to refer on for other forms of specialist
treatment to clinical psychologists but the client, the consumer
can't afford that so unfortunately that treatment goes by the
wayside. Many psychiatrists do psychotherapy, do cognitive behaviour
therapy, but it is not necessarily their foremost speciality whereas
with psychologists this is their bread and butter work and they do
it extremely well.

Natasha Mitchell: Bernard McNair there, President of the Mental
Health Fellowship of Australia. And your on ABC Radio National, this
is All in the Mind with me, Natasha Mitchell, coming to you
internationally too via Radio Australia and the worldwide web.

Today, is it only the rich who can afford a psychologist these days?

Natasha Mitchell: Of course the question of Medicare extending to
the services of psychologists is a contentious one and a question
understandably from government would be where do you stop. If you're
going to lobby to get psychology covered Medicare then why not
meditation, yoga, Chinese herbal medicine. There's only just so much
public health money to go around so why privilege psychology in this
way?

Robyn Vines: Well I think there are three elements to this. One is
that best practice, the clinical research literature overwhelmingly
indicates that for most depression and anxiety disorders and these
are the high prevalence mental health disorders, evidence-based
psychological treatments are as effective as medications and more
effective in the long term. Individuals receiving medication only
are more like to relapse after the medication is discontinued.

"The Narcissism Series" - (December 2004)

Six e-books regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with
abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_SERIES

So essentially if you want effective treatment of people with these
problems you need to include these evidence-based, focussed,
psychological interventions.

The reality is that people don't have equitable access to these
throughout the country. Most services are fee paying, those who
can't afford the fees, don't get it. So essentially, to provide
public funding for these services is important if you're going to
get people better, and if you're going to value equitability as
important. In terms of the bottom line the reality is that
psychological intervention is incredibly cost effective and more so
than other forms of intervention.

Essentially what happens is that you save ongoing use of Medicare
rebates amongst those patients with these conditions - because use
of medical services is far higher amongst those with psychological
disorders than for those without such problems. So that if you're
not treating them adequately they continue to use Medicare rebates
and the medical services at a very high rate.

Secondly, this group of patients is usually put on long term
medication and that is very expensive. It's also feasible to
conceive that there may be ways of reshuffling expenditure within
the Medicare system to focus on these short term psychological
interventions which get people better very quickly.

Natasha Mitchell: It would appear then that the services of
psychiatrists in a sense are taken more seriously under government
policy.

Robyn Vines: I think that's true, this has historically been the
case, they have been funded, the services of clinical psychologists
have not been funded.

The reality is that we are incredibly short of mental health
specialists in our country particularly in regional rural and remote
areas. We've got a highly skilled workforce in the clinical
psychology workforce which essentially doubles the number of
specialist mental health professionals available if you've got 2000
psychiatrists and approximately the same number of clinical
psychologists you're going a long way towards being able to treat
these problems more effectively. The dilemma is that half of this
workforce is not funded.

Natasha Mitchell: Clinical psychologist Robyn Vines, Senior Lecturer
at Newcastle University's Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health
at Orange.

So if Medicare coverage isn't on the government agenda and
psychologists in the public sector are over-stretched how are we to
get more clinical psychologists servicing more Australians?

The Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care Initiative is one
fledgling approach that for once has all sides applauding.

It's a $120.4 million pot of money that was handed down in last
year's Federal Budget and the target is your local GP - who most
people turn to if they decide to seek help with their mental health.

Robyn Vines is involved with the NSW Central West Division of
general practice who are leading one of the 16 pilot projects under
the initiative. In the Bathurst region of NSW they're two years into
two projects. One has psychology registrars working in GP surgeries
and the other makes the services of a psychologist available to GPs
and their patients in the region.

Dermott Casey from the Federal Department of Health and Aged Care.

Dermott Casey: The scheme comprises changes to the Medicare system
that will give general practitioners an incentive payment for
carrying out with their patient what is called the `three step
mental health process'. That's having a session with the patient
that assesses problems and provides session time to do that,
developing with the patient a mental health plan and then
subsequently reviewing that plan down the track to make sure
everything is happening. And this is to really get away from the
idea that you can help somebody to put in place an effective plan in
a sort of six or ten minute consultation. So we've listened to
General Practitioners, we've listened to the community in this and
have developed a scheme.

The scheme also provides that general practitioners who are
registered will also have access to referring their patients to
allied health professionals including psychologists. And it also
provides a Medicare item for those general practitioners who already
have or are prepared to acquire the necessary mental health skills
to provide counselling directly to their patients.

We know that it's not going to be something that every general
practitioner will want to do but we would like to feel that
initially over the four years of the program that this would expand
so that within practices or within areas there are general
practitioners who will give a greater focus within their practice to
mental health care.

Natasha Mitchell: Now one concern might be there that we are
effectively turning GPs into sort of quasi-mental health
paraprofessionals of sorts when in fact, there are a suite of
professions psychiatrists and psychologists out there who are quite
specifically trained and equipped to help people with mental health
problems.

Dermott Casey: Well I think you said it in your opening that general
practitioners are more available across the country than any other
professional group and that includes psychologists.

Natasha Mitchell: Still though are we then placing a huge burden on
doctors by still requiring them to be the `gatekeepers' if you like?

Dermott Casey: No, I think what this is about is responding to
requests from general practitioners and people who have been
involved in community mental health provision.

This, after all, arose out of discussions with the Australian
Division of General Practitioners, The College of General
Practitioners, The Mental Health Council of Australia who came to
the previous minister so it hasn't been something that is in a sense
imposed its burden but it's been a response to a request.

Natasha Mitchell: This initiative though is only in its pilot stage
so far and the question remains - will it be enough?

Dermott Casey: All I can say is that this is a not an insignificant
contribution to starting to explore a broader way of addressing what
is a very important, serious issue for many people in the community.
It will be evaluated over the next two or three years and clearly,
if we can demonstrate this is contributing to better mental health
in Australia then future governments may wish to consider whether
they are going to expand it and in what ways.

Natasha Mitchell: Dermott Casey, Head of the Mental Health and
Special Programs Branch in the Federal Department of Health and Aged
Care. And that's it for the program this week. If you're after
transcripts, audio on demand, and other gumph about us you'll find
our website at abc.net.au/rn just click on All in the Mind under
programs.

Thanks today to producer David Rutledge and studio producer Jenny
Parsonage. Next week tune in, get wired and meet the very curious
Los Angeles identity bringing mania to the masses. `Electroboy'.
Until then, see you from me Natasha Mitchell.



Guests:
David Stokes
Manager, Professional Issues
Australian Psychological Society

Dr Robyn Vines
Senior lecturer
Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health (at Orange)
University of Newcastle


Bernard McNair
President of the Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia.

Dermott Casey
Head
Mental Health and Special Programs Branch
Australia's Federal Department of Health and Aged Care

More information:
Depression details in the ABC's Health Matters online library
Health Matters, ABC Online's comprehensive health gateway, has a
growing library of fact files and consumer guides on popular health
issues, including mental health.

Mental Health and Special Programs Branch, Commonwealth Department
of Health and Ageing


Australian Psychological Society


The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists


Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia


Royal Australian College of General Practitioners


Information about the "Better Outcomes in Mental Health" program


Information about Medicare in Australia


Depressionet: An Australian online community and resource focused on
depression


Dark Side of the Mood
A comprehensive online feature and consumer guide about depression
from ABC Health Online

Publications:
Clinical Psychology in Rural General Practice: A Pilot of
Collaborative Model of Mental Health Service Delivery
Author: Vines, R.F, Hurley, B.M and Thomson, D.M

Publisher: Clinical Psychologist, Autumn 2002
Corresponding author is Dr Robyn Vines via email: rvines@...


� 2003 ABC

HealthyPlace Narcissistic Personality Disorder Community

http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/personality_disorders/narcissism/index.h\
tml

Narcissistic PD and abuse by narcissists - FAQs, essays, links, and book
excerpts.

Transcript of the CHAT regarding abusive narcissists HERE:

http://healthyplace.com/communities/personality_disorders/site/Transcripts/abusi\
ve_narcissists.htm

Transcript of the CHAT about the Narcissistic Personality Disorder HERE:

http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Personality_Disorders/Site/Transcripts/n\
arcissism.htm

Transcript of the CHAT about narcissists in the workplace HERE:

http://healthyplace.com/Communities/personality_disorders/site/Transcripts/narci\
ssism_workplace.htm

Radio Show regarding Relationships with Abusive Narcissists

http://www.healthyplace.com/Radio/archives/audio_narcissism_02-10-12.htm

====================================================
FROM HEALTHYPLACE.COM MENTAL HEALTH COMMUNITIES ...

Newsletter for the week of March 7, 2005
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Deep brain stimulation for the severely depressed
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Black box warnings for antidepressants start this month
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Prison officials missing prisoner suicide signals
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New treatment guidelines for bipolar children
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Do you have "Achiever's Disease" aka obsessive-compulsive bipolar
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#ocb

Comparing addiction treatment vs support
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#addiction

How shy is too shy?
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Eating disorders bracelets - secret signals
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What happens after anorexia?
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#ed

Eating disorders not limited to anorexia nervosa and bulimia
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abuse, Rader Programs is here to help. Call us now at 1-800-841-1515. We'll
be happy to answer your questions or visit our site:
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Does Ritalin increase cancer risk in children?
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#ritalin

Doctors get conflicting advice on ADHD drug Adderall
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#adderall

The hidden world of psychopaths
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#psychopaths

Self-mutilation, its reasons and what should be done on discovery
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#mutilation

From our emotional abuse bulletin board: I Hate My Mother
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#bbs

Predicting Schizophrenia years before severe symptoms
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#schizo

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Nicotine could have a beneficial effect on the symptoms of Schizophrenia
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#snews

Beyond Warehousing: Can the mental health system be reformed?
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#snews

Mental health courts help afflicted
http://www.healthyplace.com/newsletters/3.07.05.asp#snews


All of us at HealthyPlace.com wish you a pleasant week.

If you know of anyone who can benefit from this newsletter
or the HealthyPlace.com site, I'll hope you'll pass this onto them.

Sincerely,
Deborah

Community Partner Team
HealthyPlace.com - Mental Health Communities
"When you're at HealthyPlace.com, you're never alone."
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(You are on the personality disorders mail list. To unsubscribe:
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http://www.psychiatrymatters.md/International/News/2005/Week_10/Day_1
/Social_functioning__an_enduring_PD_impairment_.asp?
C=14351384226350694444




Social functioning 'an enduring PD impairment'

  Impairments in functioning, particularly social functioning, appear
to be an enduring component of personality disorders (PDs), suggests
research from the USA.

Based on the expectation that "personality disorders... would
disrupt normative experiences, such as establishing a career or
intimate relationships outside the family of origin," Andrew Skodol
(Columbia University, New York) and colleagues explored which
aspects of PD psychopathology endure.

The researchers studied change in psychosocial functioning, as
measured on the Longitudinal Interval Follow-up Evaluation, in 600
treatment-seeking or treated patients over a 2-year period. Among
the participants, 81 had schizotypal PD, 155 had borderline PD, 137
avoidant PD, and 142 had obsessive-compulsive PD. The remaining 85
patients had major depressive disorder (MDD) without PD.

They found that significant improvement occurred in only three of
seven domains, and this was largely attributable to improvements in
patients with MDD and no PD.

"Pathological Narcissism FAQs" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_FAQS

Specifically, significant improvements were seen for relationships
with spouse or mate - although the researchers acknowledge that only
about 20% of the participants had such a relationship - recreation,
and global social adjustment.

The team notes that patients with borderline PD or obsessive-
compulsive PD showed no overall improvement over time in these
measures.

"Compared with the degree that PD psychopathology improves, the
results of the present study are consistent with the hypothesis that
functional impairment improves less than psychopathology over a 2-
year period in patients with PDs," Skodol and co-workers comment in
the journal Psychological Medicine.

Interestingly, the results indicated that improvement in PD
psychopathology had a greater effect on functioning for patients
with severe PDs, such as schizotypal PD and borderline PD, than for
the less severe forms.

"The World of the Narcissist" (December 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ESSAY

Skodol et al conclude that, because personality psychopathology
usually begins in adolescence or early adulthood, "the potential for
derailments in occupational trajectories and in the development of
mature interpersonal relationships is great."

They add: "Even after symptomatic improvement, it might be expected
to take some time to overcome these deficits and to make up the
ground necessary to achieve 'normal' functioning."


Psychol Med 2005; 35: 443-451

http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/bladerunner?
REQUNIQ=1109595842&REQSESS=1214632&118000REQEVENT=&REQINT1=283274&REQ
AUTH=0

Dialog 11 is online!

http://www.narcissism101.com/Narcissism_101/SamDialogues11.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues11.html

And so is Dialog 12

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/dialogues12.html

A resource regarding the BTK Killer

http://btk-profiles.blogspot.com/
===================================================

Please FORWARD this message to interested parties and relevant
discussion lists and groups

Phone and Email consultations with Sam Vaknin - write for details:

palma@...

Previous issues of this newsletter are available here:

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Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?
Click on these links!

NEW, December 2004, EDITIONS of "Malignant Self Love - Narcisssm
Revisited"
And NEW, December 2004 EDITIONS of all our e-books JUST RELEASED!

Click on this link:

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NEW!!! Updated DAILY!!!

http://spaces.msn.com/members/narcissist/

http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/being_kafka

==================================================

Beware the Children

By: Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
I see in children feigned innocence, relentless and ruthless
manipulation, the cunning of the weak. They are ageless. Their
narcissism is disarming in its directness, in its cruel and absolute
lack of empathy. They demand with insistence, punish absent-
mindedly, idealize and devalue capriciously. They have no loyalty.
They do not love, they cling. Their dependence is a mighty weapon
and their neediness - a drug. They have no time, neither before, nor
after. To them, existence is a play, they are the actors, and we
all - are but the props. They raise and drop the curtain of their
mock emotions at will. The bells of their laughter often
tintinnabulate. They are the fresh abode of good and evil pure and
pure they are.

Children, to me, are both mirrors and competitors. They reflect
authentically my constant need for adulation and attention. Their
grandiose fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience are crass
caricatures of my internal world. The way they abuse others and
mistreat them hits close to home. Their innocuous charm, their
endless curiosity, their fount of energy, their sulking, nagging,
boasting, bragging, lying, and manipulating are mutations of my own
behaviour. I recognize my thwarted self in them. When they make
their entrance, all attention is diverted. Their fantasies endear
them to their listeners. Their vainglorious swagger often causes
smiles. Their trite stupidities are invariably treated as pearls of
wisdom. Their nagging is yielded to, their threats provoke to
action, their needs accommodated urgently. I stand aside, an
abandoned centre of attention, the dormant eye of an intellectual
storm, all but ignored and neglected. I watch the child with envy,
with rage, with wrath. I hate its effortless ability to defeat me.

Children are loved by mothers, as I was not. They are bundled
emotions, and happiness and hope. I am jealous of them, I am
infuriated by my deprivation, I am fearful of the sadness and
hopelessness that they provoke in me. Like music, they reify a
threat to the precariously balanced emotional black hole that is
myself. They are my past, my dilapidated and petrified True Self, my
wasted potentials, my self-loathing and my defences. They are my
pathology projected. I revel in my Orwellian narcissistic newspeak.
Love is weakness, happiness is a psychosis, hope is malignant
optimism. Children defy all this. They are proof positive of how
different it could all have been.

But what I consciously experience is disbelief. I cannot understand
how anyone can love these thuggish brats, their dripping noses,
gelatinous fat bodies, whitish sweat, and bad breath. How can anyone
stand their cruelty and vanity, their sadistic insistence and
blackmail, their prevarication and deceit? In truth, no one except
their parents can.

Children are always derided by everyone except their parents. There
is something sick and sickening in a mother's affections. There is a
maddening blindness involved, an addiction, a psychotic episode,
it's sick, this bond, it's nauseous. I hate children. I hate them
for being me.

(continued below)

==================================================

Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

"The Narcissism Series" - (December 2004)

Six e-books regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with
abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_SERIES

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====================================================

Narcissists and Women

Question:

Do narcissists hate women?

Answer:

To re-iterate, Primary Narcissistic Supply (PNS) is any kind of NS
provided by people who are not "meaningful" or "significant" others.
Adulation, attention, affirmation, fame, notoriety, sexual
conquests � are all forms of PNS.

Secondary NS (SNS) emanates from people who are in repetitive or
continuous touch with the narcissist. It includes the important
roles of narcissistic accumulation and narcissistic regulation,
among others.

Narcissists abhor and dread getting emotionally intimate. The
cerebral ones regard sex as a maintenance chore, something they have
to do in order to keep their Source of Secondary Supply. The somatic
narcissist treats women as objects and sex as a means to obtaining
Narcissistic Supply.

Moreover, many narcissists tend to frustrate women. They refrain
from having sex with them, tease them and then leave them, resist
flirtatious and seductive behaviours and so on. Often, they invoke
the existence of a girlfriend/fianc�e/spouse as the "reason" why
they cannot have sex or develop a relationship. But this is not out
of loyalty and fidelity in the empathic and loving sense. This is
because they wish (and often succeed) to sadistically frustrate the
interested party.

But, this pertains only to cerebral narcissists - not to somatic
narcissists and to Histrionics (Histrionic Personality Disorder -
HPD) who use their body, sexuality, and seduction/flirtation to
extract Narcissistic Supply from others.

Narcissists are misogynists. They team up with women who serve as
Sources of SNS (Secondary Narcissistic Supply). The woman's chores
are to accumulate past Narcissistic Supply (by witnessing the
narcissist's "moments of glory") and release it in an orderly manner
to regulate the fluctuating flow of primary supply and compensate in
times of deficient supply.

Otherwise, cerebral narcissists are not interested in women.

Most of them are asexual (desire sex very rarely, if at all). They
hold women in contempt and abhor the thought of being really
intimate with them. Usually, they choose for partners submissive
women whom they disdain for being well below their intellectual
level.

This leads to a vicious cycle of neediness and self-contempt ("How
come I am dependent on this inferior woman"). Hence the abuse. When
Primary NS is available, the woman is hardly tolerated, as one would
reluctantly pay the premium of an insurance policy.

Narcissists of all stripes do regard the "subjugation" of an
attractive woman to be a Source of Narcissistic Supply, though.

Such conquests are status symbols, proofs of virility, and they
allow the narcissist to engage in "vicarious" narcissistic
behaviours, to express his narcissism through the "conquered" women,
transforming them into instruments at the service of his narcissism,
into his extensions. This is done by employing defence mechanisms
such as projective identification.

The narcissist believes that being in love is actually merely going
through the motions. To him, emotions are mimicry and pretence.

He says: "I am a conscious misogynist. I fear and loathe women and
tend to ignore them to the best of my ability. To me they are a
mixture of hunter and parasite."

Most male narcissists are misogynists. After all, they are the
warped creations of women. Women gave birth to them and moulded them
into what they are: dysfunctional, maladaptive, and emotionally
dead. They are angry at their mothers and, by extension at all women.

The narcissist's attitude to women is, naturally, complex and multi-
layered but it can be described using four axes:

The Holy Whore
The Hunter Parasite
The Frustrating Object of Desire
Uniqueness Roles
The narcissist divides all women to saints and whores. He finds it
difficult to have sex
("dirty", "forbidden", "punishable", "degrading") with feminine
significant others (spouse, intimate girlfriend). To him, sex and
intimacy are mutually exclusive rather than mutually expressive
propositions.

Sex is reserved to "whores" (all other women in the world). This
division resolves the narcissist's constant cognitive dissonance ("I
want her but �", "I don't need anyone but �"). It also legitimises
his sadistic urges (abstaining from sex is a major and recurrent
narcissistic "penalty" inflicted on female "transgressors"). It
tallies well with the frequent idealisation-devaluation cycles the
narcissist goes through. The idealised females are sexless, the
devalued ones � "deserving" of their degradation (sex) and the
contempt that, inevitably, follows thereafter.

The narcissist believes firmly that women are out to "hunt" men by
genetic predisposition. As a result, he feels threatened (as any
prey would). This, of course, is an intellectualisation of the real
state of affairs: the narcissist feels threatened by women and tries
to justify this irrational fear by imbuing them with "objective",
menacing qualities. This is a small detail in a larger canvass. The
narcissist "pathologises" others in order to control them.

The narcissist believes that, once their prey is secured, women
assume the role of "body snatchers". They abscond with the male's
sperm, generate an endless stream of demanding and nose dripping
children, financially bleed the men in their lives to cater to their
needs and to the needs of their dependants.

Put differently, women are parasites, leeches, whose sole function
is to suck dry every man they find and tarantula-like decapitate him
once no longer useful. This, of course, is exactly what the
narcissist does to people. Thus, his view of women is a projection.

Heterosexual narcissists desire women as any other red-blooded male
does or even more so due to their special symbolic nature in the
narcissist's life. Humbling a woman in acts of faintly sado-
masochistic sex is a way of getting back at mother. But the
narcissist is frustrated by his inability to meaningfully interact
with women, by their apparent emotional depth and powers of
psychological penetration (real or attributed) and by their
sexuality.

Women's incessant demands for intimacy are perceived by the
narcissist as a threat. He recoils instead of getting closer. The
cerebral narcissist also despises and derides sex, as we said
before. Thus, caught in a seemingly intractable repetition complex,
in approach-avoidance cycles, the narcissist becomes furious at the
source of his frustration. Some narcissists set out to do some
frustrating of their own. They tease (passively or actively), or
they pretend to be asexual and, in any case, they turn down, rather
cruelly, any feminine attempt to court them and to get closer.

Sadistically, they tremendously enjoy their ability to frustrate the
desires, passions and sexual wishes of women. It makes them feel
omnipotent and self-righteous. Narcissists regularly frustrate all
women sexually � and significant women in their lives both sexually
and emotionally.

Somatic narcissists simply use women as objects and then discard
them. They masturbate, using women as "flesh and blood aides". The
emotional background is identical. While the cerebral narcissist
punishes through abstention � the somatic narcissist penalises
through excess.

The narcissist's mother kept behaving as though the narcissist was
and is not special (to her). The narcissist's whole life is a
pathetic and pitiful effort to prove her wrong. The narcissist
constantly seeks confirmation from others that he is special � in
other words that he is, that he actually exists.

Women threaten this quest. Sex is "bestial" and "common". There is
nothing "special or unique" about sex. Women's sexual needs threaten
to reduce the narcissist to the lowest common denominator: intimacy,
sex and human emotions. Everybody and anybody can feel, copulate and
breed. There is nothing in these activities to set the narcissist
apart and above others. And yet women seem to be interested only in
these pursuits. Thus, the narcissist emotionally believes that women
are the continuation of his mother by other means and in different
guises.

The narcissist hates women virulently, passionately and
uncompromisingly. His hate is primal, irrational, the progeny of
mortal fear and sustained abuse. Granted, most narcissists learn how
to disguise, even repress these untoward feelings. But their hatred
does swing out of control and erupt from time to time.

To live with a narcissist is an arduous and eroding task.
Narcissists are infinitely pessimistic, bad-tempered, paranoid and
sadistic in an absent-minded and indifferent manner. Their daily
routine is a rigmarole of threats, complaints, hurts, eruptions,
moodiness and rage.

The narcissist rails against slights true and imagined. He alienates
people. He humiliates them because this is his only weapon against
his own humiliation wrought by their indifference. Gradually,
wherever he is, the narcissist's social circle dwindles and then
vanishes. Every narcissist is also a schizoid, to some extent. A
schizoid is not a misanthrope. The narcissist does not necessarily
hate people � he simply does not need them. He regards social
interactions as a nuisance to be minimised.

The narcissist is torn between his need to obtain Narcissistic
Supply (from human beings) � and his fervent wish to be left alone.
This wish springs from contempt and overwhelming feelings of
superiority.

There are fundamental conflicts between dependence, counter-
dependence and contempt, neediness and devaluation, seeking and
avoiding, turning on the charm to attract adulation and reacting
wrathfully to the minutest "provocations". These conflicts lead to
rapid cycling between gregariousness and self-imposed ascetic
seclusion.

Such an unpredictable but always bilious and festering ambience,
typical of the narcissist's "romantic" liaisons is hardly conducive
to love or sex. Gradually, both become extinct. Relationships are
hollowed out. Imperceptibly, the narcissist switches to asexual co-
habitation.

But the vitriolic environment that the narcissist creates is only
one hand of the equation. The other hand involves the woman herself.

As we said, heterosexual narcissists are attracted to women, but
simultaneously repelled, horrified, bewitched and provoked by them.
They seek to frustrate and humiliate them. Psychodynamically, the
narcissist probably visits upon them his mother's sins � but such
simplistic explanation does the subject great injustice.

Most narcissists are misogynists. Their sexual and emotional lives
are perturbed and chaotic. They are unable to love in any true sense
of the word � nor are they capable of developing any measure of
intimacy. Lacking empathy, they are unable to offer to their
partners emotional sustenance.

Do narcissists miss loving, would they have liked to love and are
they angry with their parents for crippling them in this respect?

To the narcissist, these questions are incomprehensible. There is no
way they can answer them. Narcissists have never loved. They do not
know what is it that they are supposedly missing. Observing it from
the outside, love seems to them to be a risible pathology.

Narcissists equate love with weakness. They hate being weak and they
hate and despise weak people (and, therefore, the sick, the old and
the young). They do not tolerate what they consider to be stupidity,
disease and dependence � and love seems to consist of all three.
These are not sour grapes. They really feel this way.

Narcissists are angry men � but not because they never experienced
love and probably never will. They are angry because they are not as
powerful, awe inspiring and successful as they wish they were and,
to their mind, deserve to be. Because their daydreams refuse so
stubbornly to come true. Because they are their worst enemy. And
because, in their unmitigated paranoia, they see adversaries
plotting everywhere and feel discriminated against and
contemptuously ignored.

Many of them (the borderline narcissists) cannot conceive of life in
one place with one set of people, doing the same thing, in the same
field with one goal within a decades-old game plan. To them, this is
the equivalent of death. They are most terrified of boredom and
whenever faced with its daunting prospect, they inject drama or even
danger into their lives. This way they feel alive.

The narcissist is a lonely wolf. He is a shaky platform, indeed, on
which to base a family, or plans for the future.

The Narcissist and the Opposite Sex

This chapter deals with the male narcissist and with
his "relationships" with women.

It would be correct to substitute one gender for another. Female
narcissists treat the men in their lives in a manner
indistinguishable from the way male narcissists treat "their" women.
I believe that this is the case with same sex narcissist partners.

A good point of departure would be jealousy, or rather, its
pathological form, envy.

The narcissist becomes anxious when he grows aware of how
romantically jealous (possessive) he is. This is a peculiar
response. Normally, anxiety is characteristic of other kinds of
interactions with the opposite sex where the possibility of
rejection exists. Most men, for instance, feel anxious before they
ask a woman to have sex with them.

The narcissist, in contrast, has a limited and underdeveloped
spectrum of emotional reactions. Anxiety characterizes all his
interactions with the opposite sex and any situation in which there
is a remote possibility that he be rejected or abandoned.

Anxiety is an adaptive mechanism. It is the internal reaction to
conflict. When the narcissist envies his female mate he is
experiencing precisely such an unconscious conflict.

Jealousy is (justly) perceived as a form of transformed aggression.
To direct it at the narcissist's female partner (who stands in for
the primary object, his Mother) is to direct it at a forbidden
object. It triggers a strong feeling of imminent punishment - a
likely abandonment (physical or emotional).

But this is merely the "surface" conflict. There is yet another
layer, much harder to reach and to decipher.

To feed his envy, the narcissist exercises his imagination. He
imagines situations, which justify his negative emotions. If his
mate is sexually promiscuous this justifies romantic jealousy � he
unconsciously "thinks".

The narcissist is a con artist. He easily substitutes fiction for
truth. What commences as an elaborate daydream ends up in the
narcissist's mind as a plausible scenario. But, then, if his
suspicions are true (they are bound to be - otherwise, why is he
jealous?), there is no way he can accept his partner back, says the
narcissist to himself. If she is unfaithful - how could the
relationship continue?

Infidelity and lack of exclusivity violate the first and last
commandment of narcissism: uniqueness.

The narcissist tends to regard his partner's cheating in absolute
terms. The "other" guy must be better and more special than he is.
Since the narcissist is nothing but a reflection, a glint in the
eyes of others, when cast aside by his spouse or mate, he feels
annulled and wrecked.

His partner, in this single (real or imagined) act of adultery, is
perceived by the narcissist to have passed judgment upon him as a
whole - not merely upon this or that aspect of his personality and
not merely in connection with the issue of sexual or emotional
compatibility.

This perceived negation of his uniqueness makes it impossible for
the narcissist to survive in a relationship tainted by jealousy.
Yet, there is nothing more dreadful to a narcissist than the ending
of a relationship, or abandonment.

Many narcissists strike an unhealthy balance. Being emotionally (and
physically or sexually) absent, they drive the partner to find
emotional and physical gratification outside the bond. This
achieved, they feel vindicated - they are proven right in being
jealous.

The narcissist is then able to accept the partner back and to
forgive her. After all � he argues - her two-timing was precipitated
by the narcissist's own absence and was always under his control.
The narcissist experiences a kind of sadistic satisfaction that he
possesses such power over his partner.

In provoking the partner to adopt a socially aberrant behavior he
sees proof of his mastery. He reads into the subsequent scene of
forgiveness and reconciliation the same meaning. It proves both his
magnanimity and how addicted to him his partner has become.

The more severe the extramarital affair, the more it provides the
narcissist with the means to control his partner through her guilt.
His ability to manipulate his partner increases the more forgiving
and magnanimous he is. He never forgets to mention to her (or, at
least, to himself) how wonderful he is for having thus sacrificed
himself.

Here he is - with his unique, superior traits - willing to accept
back a disloyal, inconsiderate, disinterested, self centred,
sadistic (and, entre nous, most ordinary) partner back. True,
henceforth he is likely to invest less in the relationship, to
become non-committal, and, probably, to be full of rage and hatred.
Still, she is the narcissist's one and only. The more voluptuous,
tumultuous, inane the relationship, the better it suits the
narcissist's self image.

After all, aren't such tortuous relationships the stuff Oscar
winning movies are made of? Shouldn't the narcissist's life be
special in this sense, too? Aren't the biographies of great men
adorned with such abysses of emotions?

If an emotional or sexual infidelity does occur (and very often it
does), it is usually a cry for help by the narcissist's mate. A
forlorn cause: this rigidly deformed personality structure is
incapable of change.

Usually, the partner is the dependent or avoidant type and is
equally inherently incapable of changing anything in her life. Such
couples have no common narrative or agenda and only their
psychopathologies are compatible. They hold each other hostage and
vie for the ransom.

The dependent partner can determine for the narcissist what is right
and virtuous and what is wrong and evil as well as enhance and
maintain his feeling of uniqueness (by wanting him). She, therefore,
possesses the power to manipulate him. Sometimes she does so because
years of emotional deprivation and humiliation by the narcissist
have made her hate him.

The narcissist - forever "rational", forever afraid to get in touch
with his emotions � often divides his relationships with humans
to "contractual" and "non contractual", multiplying the former at
the expense of the latter. By doing so he drowns the immediate,
identifiable, emotional problems (with his partner) in a torrent of
irrelevant frivolities (his obligation within numerous
other "contractual" "relationships").

The narcissist likes to believe that he is the maker of the decision
which type of relationship he establishes with whom. He doesn't even
bother to be explicit about it. Sometimes people believe that they
have a "contractual" (binding and long-term) relationship with the
narcissist, while he entertains an entirely different notion without
informing them. These, naturally, are grounds for innumerable
disappointments and misunderstandings.

The narcissist often says that he has a contract with his
girlfriend/spouse. This contract has emotional articles and
administrative-economic articles.

One of the substantive clauses of this contract is emotional and
sexual exclusivity.

But the narcissist feels that the fulfillment of his contracts -
especially with his female partner - is asymmetrical. He is firmly
convinced that he gives and contributes to his relationships more
than he receives from them. The narcissist needs to feel deprived
and punished, thus upholding the guilty verdict rendered by the
primary and all important object in his life (usually, his mother).

The narcissist, though highly amoral (and at times, immoral), holds
himself, morally, in high regard. He describes contracts as "sacred"
and feels averse to canceling or violating them even if they had
expired or are invalidated by the behavior of the other parties.

But the narcissist is not constant and predictable in his judgments.
Thus, a violation of the contract by his romantic partner is deemed
to be either trivial or nothing less than earth-shattering. If a
contract is violated by the narcissist he is invariably tormented by
his conscience to the extent of calling the contract (the
relationship) off even if the partner judges the violation to be
trivial or explicitly forgives the narcissist.

In other words, sometimes the narcissist feels compelled to cancel a
contract just because he violated it and in order not to be
tormented by his conscience (by his Superego, the internalized
voices of his parents and other meaningful adults in his childhood).

But things get even more complex.

The narcissist acts asymmetrically as long as he feels bound by the
contract. He tends to judge himself more severely than he judges the
other parties to the contract. He forces himself to comply more
strenuously than his partners do with the terms of the contract.

But this is because he needs the contract - the relationship - more
than the others do.

The annulment or the termination of a contract represent rejection
and abandonment, which the narcissist fears most. The narcissist
would rather pretend that a contract is still valid than admit to
the demise of a relationship. He never violates contracts because he
is afraid of the reprisals and of the emotional consequences. But
this is not to be confused with developed morals. When confronted
with better alternatives - which more efficiently cater to his
needs - the narcissist annuls or violates his contracts without
thinking twice.

Moreover, not all contracts were created equal in the narcissistic
twilight zone. It is the narcissist who retains the power to decide
which contracts are to be scrupulously observed and which
offhandedly ignored. The narcissist determines which laws (social
contracts) to obey and which to break.

He expects society, his partners, his colleagues, his spouse, his
children, his parents, his students, his teachers � in short:
absolutely everyone � to abide by his rulebook. White collar
narcissist criminals, for instance, see nothing wrong with their
misconduct. They regard themselves as law-abiding, God-fearing,
community-members. Their acts are committed in a mental enclave, a
psychological no man's land, where no laws or contracts are binding.

The narcissist is sometimes perceived as whimsical, traitorous,
posing and double crossing. The truth is that he is predictable and
consistent. He follows one over-riding principle: the principle of
Narcissistic Supply.

The narcissist had internalized a bad object. He feels corrupt,
deserving to fail, to be disgraced and punished. He is forever
surprised and thankful when good things happen to him. Out of touch
with his own emotions and with his capabilities, he either
exaggerates them or underestimates them.

He is likely to be grateful to his partner - and berate her! - for
having chosen him to be her mate. Deep inside, he thinks that no one
else would have been (or will be) as foolish, blind, or ignorant to
have made this choice. The purported stupidity and blindness of his
mate or spouse is substantiated by the very fact that she is his
mate or spouse. Only a stupid and blind person would have preferred
the narcissist, with his myriad deficiencies, to others.

This feeling of a "lucky break" is the true source of the asymmetry
in the narcissist's relationships. The partner, having made this
incredible choice to live with the narcissist (to bear this cross)
is worthy of special consideration in compensation. The narcissist's
willing partner - a rarity - warrants special treatment and a
special (double) standard. The partner can be unfaithful,
withholding (emotionally, financially), be dependent, be abusive,
critical and so on - and, yet, be forgiven unconditionally.

This, no doubt, is the direct result of the narcissist's very flawed
sense of self worth and of an overpowering sense of inferiority.

This asymmetry is also an effective barrier against the expression
of anger, even legitimate anger.

Instead, the narcissist accumulates his grievances every time that
the partner takes advantage of the asymmetry (or is perceived by the
narcissist to be doing so). The narcissist tries to convince himself
that such abuse is an expected result of the daily friction of
cohabitation, especially by partners with radically different
personalities.

Some of the anger is passively-aggressively expressed. The frequency
of sexual relations is reduced. Less sex, less talk, less touch.
Sometimes the pent-up aggression erupts explosively in the form of
rage attacks. These are usually followed by panicky reactions
intended to restore the balance and to reassure the narcissist that
he is not about to be abandoned.

Following such rage attacks, the narcissist regresses to
passiveness, maudlin tenderness, appeasing gestures, or to wimpish,
saccharine, and infantile behavior. The narcissist does not expect
or accept same behavior from his partner. She is allowed to be
cantankerous to her heart's content without as much as apologizing.

Another hurdle on the narcissist's way to establishing lasting (if
not healthy) relationships is his excess rationality and, chiefly,
his tendency to generalize on the basis of tenuous and flimsy
evidence (hyper-inductiviteness).

The narcissist regards abandonment or rejection by his emotional-
sexual partners as a final verdict concerning his very ability to
have such relationships in the future. Because of the mechanisms of
self-denigration I have described, the narcissist is likely to
idealize his mate and believe that she must have been uniquely
predisposed and "equipped" to cope with him.

He "remembers" the way his partner sacrificed herself on the altar
of the relationship. The more convinced the narcissist is that his
partner invested extraordinarily in the relationship and the more
assured he is that she was uniquely equipped to succeed in it - the
more frightened he becomes.

Why the fear?

Because if this partner, as qualified as she was, as desirous of him
as she was, failed to sustain the relationship - surely, no one else
is likely to succeed. The narcissist believes that he is doomed to
an existence of loneliness and destitution. He stands no chance of
ever having a resilient, healthy relationship with another partner.

The narcissist would do anything to avoid this conclusion. He begs
his partner to return and re-establish the relationship, no matter
what transpired. Her very return proves to him that he is worthy,
the preferred alternative, someone with whom maintaining a
relationship is possible.

The partner, in other words, is the narcissist's equivalent of
market research. That he was chosen by the partner is tantamount to
receiving a quality award.

This dyad comprised of a "quality inspector" and a "chosen product"
is only one of the pairs of roles adopted by the narcissist and his
partner. Others include: "the sick" and "the healthy", "the
doctor/psychologist" and "the patient", "the poor, underprivileged
girl" and "the white knight in shining armor" dyads.

Both roles - the narcissist's and the one willingly (or unwillingly)
adopted by the partner - are facets of the narcissist's personality.
Through complex projective identification processes and other
projective defence mechanisms the narcissist fosters a dialogue
between parts of his self, using his partner as a mirror and a
communication conduit.

Thus, by fostering such dialogs, the narcissist's relationships have
a highly therapeutic value on the one hand. On the other hand they
suffer from all the problems of a regime of psychotherapy:
transference, counter-transference and the like.

Let us briefly study the pair of roles "sick-healthy" or "patient-
doctor". The narcissist can assume either role in this pair.

If the narcissist is the "healthy" one, he attributes to his "sick"
partner his own inability to form long-standing, emotion-infused
couple relationships. This would be because she is "sick" (sexually
hyperactive, "Nymphomaniac", frigid, unable to commit, to be
intimate, unjust, moody, or traumatized by events in her past).

The narcissist, on the other hand, judges himself to be homely and
striving to establish a "healthy" couple. He interprets the behavior
of his partner to support this "theory". His partner displays
emergent behaviors, which conform with her role. Sometimes, the
narcissist invests less in such a relationship because he regards
his mere existence - sane, strong, omnipotent, and omniscient - to
be a sufficient investment (a gift, really), voiding the need to
add "maintenance efforts" to it.

In the other, converse case, the narcissist labels many of his
behavior patterns as "sick". This usually coincides with latent or
open hypochondriasis. The partner's health is idealized to form the
background with which the narcissist's purported sickness is
contrasted. This is a responsibility shifting mechanism. If the
narcissist's pathology is deep seated and irreversible - then he
cannot be held responsible for his actions, past and future.

This role playing is the narcissist's ways of coping with an
insoluble dilemma.

The narcissist is mortally terrified of being abandoned by his
partner. This fear drives him to minimize his interactions with his
partner to avoid the inevitable pain of rejection. This, in turn,
leads exactly to the feared abandonment. The narcissist knows that
his behavior instigates that which he is so afraid of.

In a way he is happy about it, because it gives him the illusion
that he is in exclusive control of the relationship and of his own
fate. His alleged "sickness" helps to explain his unusual conduct.

Ultimately, the narcissist loses his partners in all his
relationships. He hates himself for it and is enraged. It is because
of the life-threatening magnitude of these negative emotions that
they are repressed. Every conceivable psychological defence
mechanism is employed to sublimate, transform (through cognitive
dissonance), dissociate or re-direct this self-mutilating wrath.

This constant inner turmoil generates unremitting fear manifested in
the form of anxiety attacks, or an Anxiety Disorder. In the course
of such life crises, the narcissist briefly believes that he is
intrinsically deformed and defective and that he is irreparably
dysfunctional when it comes to establishing and to maintaining
relationships (which is true!).

The narcissist - especially during a life crisis - loses touch with
reality. Defective reality tests and even psychotic micro-episodes
are common. Narcissists interpret the (fairly common) mismatch
between personalities that doomed the relationships in an
apocalyptic manner. Dependence, a symbiotic interaction, raises
doubts regarding the narcissist's very ability to form relationships.

But throughout all this, the narcissist needs a collaborative
partner. He needs someone to serve as a sounding board, a mirror,
and a victim. In other words, he needs a Polyandric woman.

The narcissist thinks of all women as either Monoandric or
Polyandric.

The Monoandric woman is psychologically mature. She is usually older
and sexually sated. She prefers intimacy and companionship to sexual
satisfaction. She is in possession of a mental blueprint, which
dictates her short-term goals. In her relationships, she emphasizes
compatibility and is predominantly verbal.

The narcissist reacts with fear and repulsion (mixed with rage and
the wish to frustrate) to the Monoandric woman. Consciously, though,
he realizes that intimacy can be created only with this kind of
woman.

The Polyandric woman is young (if not of age, then at heart). She is
still sexually curious and varies her sexual partners. She is not
adept at creating intimacy and emotional rapport. Because she is
more interested in the accumulation of experiences - her life is not
guided by a "master plan", or even by medium-term goals.

The narcissist is aware of the transience of his relationship with
the Polyandric woman. So, he is attracted to her while being
devoured by his fear of abandonment.

The narcissist, almost always, finds himself paired with Polyandric
women. They pose no threat of getting emotionally close to him (of
being intimate). The incompatibility between the narcissist and
Polyandric women is so high and the probability of abandonment and
rejection so great - that intimacy is all but excluded.

Moreover, this consuming fear of being left behind leads to a re-
enactment of the primordial Oedipal conflict and to a whole set of
transference relations with the Polyandric woman. This inevitably
results in the very abandonment the narcissist so dreads. Serious
psychological crises follow such relationships (narcissistic trauma
or injury).

The narcissist knows (or, if less self-aware, feels) all this. He is
not as much attracted to the Polyandric woman as he is repelled by
the Monoandric variety. Monoandric women threaten him with two
things deemed by the narcissist to be even worse than abandonment:
intimacy and a loss of uniqueness. Monoandric women are the venue
through which the narcissist can communicate with his very
threatening inner world. Last but not least, they want him to settle
into a molded non-unique way of life common to virtually all
humanity: marriage, children, a career.

On the one hand, there is nothing like children to make the
narcissist feel threatened. They are the embodiment of commonness, a
reminder of his own, dark, childhood, and an infringement upon his
privileges. They compete with him for scarce Narcissistic Supply.

On the other hand, there is nothing like children to boost an
habitually flagging ego. In short, nothing like children to create
conflict in the tormented soul of the narcissist.

The narcissist does not react to people (or interact with them) as
individuals. Rather, he generalizes and tends to treat people as
symbols or "classes". This is also true in his relationships
with "his" women. Women resent this kind of treatment and,
gradually, the narcissist finds it more and more difficult to be
himself with them.

Women analyze his body language, his verbal and non-verbal
communication and compare their own pathologies to his. They study
his behavior patterns and his interactions with his (human) milieu
and (non-human) environment. They test their sexual compatibility by
having sex with him.

They examine other types of compatibility by cohabiting or by
prolonged dating. Their mating decision is based on the data they
thus glean plus some "evolutionary survival parameters": the
narcissist's genotype (genetic and chemical makeup), his phenotype
(his looks and constitution), as well as his access to economic
resources.

This is a standard mating procedure with standard mating checklists.
The narcissist usually passes the genotype and phenotype reviews.
Many narcissists, however, fail the third test: their ability to
support themselves and their dependants economically. Narcissism is
a very unstable mental condition and it complicates the narcissist's
functioning in daily life.

Most narcissists tend to move between numerous positions and jobs,
to gamble away their savings, and to become heavily indebted. The
narcissist rarely accumulates wealth, property, assets, or
possessions. The narcissist prefers to fake knowledge rather than to
acquire it and to compromise rather to fight.

He usually finds himself engaged in capacities far below his
intellectual ability. Women notice this as well as his pompous,
inflated body language, haughtiness, rage attacks and severe acting
out. Finally, the closer they get to the narcissist, the more they
are be able to discern antisocial, abnormal, and a-normative
behaviors.

The narcissist turns out to be a crook, an adventurer, a crisis-
prone, danger seeking, emotionally cold, sexually abstaining or
hyperactive individual. He might be self-destructive, self-
defeating, success-fearing, and media-addicted. His turbulent
biography is likely to include abnormal sexual and emotional
relationships, prison terms, bankruptcies and divorces. Hardly the
ideal partner.

Even worse, the narcissist is likely to be a misogynist. He regards
women as a direct threat to his uniqueness, and a potential for
degradation. To him, they are the conformity agents of society, the
domesticating whips. By forcing him into homemaking, child rearing
and the assumption of long term consumer credits (and mortgages),
women are likely to reduce the narcissist to a Common Man, an
anathema. Women represent an invasion of the narcissist's privacy,
unmasking his defence mechanisms by "X-raying" his soul (the
narcissist attributes paranormal powers of penetration to women).

They possess the ability to hurt him through abandonment and
rejection. The narcissist feels that women are very "business-like,
use and discard" type of people. They exploit their capacities for
deep psychological insight to further their goals. In other words,
they are sinister and are not to be trusted. Their motives should
always be questioned.

This is the old fear of intimacy disguised. These are the old
phobias: of being controlled, of being assimilated, of losing
control, of being hurt, of being vulnerable. This is the deep-rooted
feeling of emotional inadequacy. The narcissist believes that, upon
closer scrutiny, he will be found lacking emotionally and, thus,
unlovable.

It is part of the narcissist's "Con-Artist Effect". The narcissist
feels an objective and thorough scrutiny is bound to expose him for
what he is: a fake, an impostor, a con man. The narcissist is the
chameleon-like "Zelig" - everything to everyone, no one to himself.

Narcissists interact with women emotionally (and later, sexually),
or only physically.

When the interaction is emotional, the narcissist feels that he is
risking the loss of his uniqueness, that his privacy is invaded,
that his defence mechanisms are being unraveled, and that
information divulged by him (following the collapse of his defenses)
might be abused through destructive criticism or extortion.

The narcissist constantly feels that he is rejected. Even if such
rejection is the normal outcome of incompatibility, without any
comparative judgment and "rating" � the feeling persists. The
narcissist just "knows" that she is not sexually or emotionally
exclusive (others preceded him and others will succeed him).

During the initial phases of emotional involvement the narcissist is
likely to be told that there was no one like him in the partner's
life before. He judges this to be a false and hypocritical statement
simply because it is likely to have been uttered before, to others.
This prevailing sense of falsity permeates the relationship from the
very start.

In the back of his mind the narcissist always remembers that he
is "different" (sick). He recognizes that this deformity is likely
to thwart any relationship and to lead to abandonment, or at lease
to rejection. The seeds of abandonment are embedded in every nascent
interaction with a woman. The narcissist has to cope with his
special predicament as well as with social changes and the
disintegration of the social fabric, which anyhow make sustaining
relationship an ever more difficult achievement in today's world.

The alternative, mere corporeal contact, the narcissist finds
repellant. There, uniqueness and exclusivity � what the narcissist
relishes most - are definitely absent.

This is especially true if an emotional dimension does exist in the
relationship. Whereas the narcissist can always convince himself
that both his emotions and their background are unique and
unprecedented - he is hard pressed to do so concerning the sexual
aspect of the relationship. Surely, he hasn't been his lover's first
sexual partner and sex is a common and vulgar pursuit.

Still, some narcissists prefer less complicated and less threatening
sex: devoid of all emotion, anonymous (group sex, prostitution) or
autoerotic (homosexual or masturbation). The sexual partner, in
these conditions, lacks identity, is objectified and dehumanized.
Exclusivity cannot be demanded of objects and the potential risk of
unfaithfulness is happily allayed.

An example that I always use: a narcissist, eating in a restaurant,
would rarely feel that his uniqueness is threatened by the fact that
thousands of people ate there before him and are likely to do so
after his departure. Eating in a restaurant is an impersonal,
objectified, routine.

The notion of his own uniqueness is so fragile that the narcissist
requires "total compliance" in order to be able to maintain it.

Thus, the emotional and sexual exclusivity of his partner (a pillar
in the temple of his uniqueness) must be both spatial and temporal.
To satisfy the narcissist, the partner must be sexually and
emotionally exclusive in both her past and her present. This sounds
highly possessive - and it is. The narcissist shivers at the thought
of his partner's past lovers and her exploits with them. He is even
jealous of movie actors, whom his partner finds appealing.

This need not deteriorate into active, violent jealousy. In most
cases, it is an insidious form of envy, which poisons the
relationship through mutated forms of aggression.

The narcissist's possessiveness is geared to safeguard his self-
imputed uniqueness. The partner's exclusivity enhances the
narcissist's sensation of uniqueness. But why can't the narcissist
be unique to his partner today as others have been to her in the
past?

Because serial uniqueness is a contradiction in terms, uniqueness
means ultimate compatibility, enzyme and substrate, protein and
receptor, antigen and antibody, almost immunological specificity.
The likelihood of serially enjoying precisely such compatibility
with successive partners is very low.

For serial compatibility to occur the following conditions have to
be met (believes the narcissist):

That one (or both) of the partners will have changed so radically
that the former specifications of compatibility are replaced by new
ones. This radical change can come from the inside (endogenous) or
from the outside (exogenous).
Such a dramatic shift must, therefore, occur with every new partner.
Or that each partner is even more specifically compatible than its
predecessor � a highly unlikely occurrence.
Or that compatibility is never achieved and one (or both) partners
react badly to some of the specifications and initiates separation
in order to move on to a more suitable partner
Or that compatibility is never achieved and any claim to the
contrary (especially the sentence "I love you") is false. The
relationship, in this case, is contaminated by major hypocrisy.
Yet, narcissists do get married. They do try to have lifetime
partners. This is because they distinguish "their" women from all
other. The narcissist's occasional girlfriend (however "permanent")
and his permanent partner (however randomly chosen) must satisfy
different requirements .

The permanent partner (wife, usually) must meet four conditions:

She must act as the narcissist's companion but on highly unequal
terms. She must be submissive and motherly, sufficiently intelligent
to admire and admiring enough never to criticize, critical enough to
assist him and helpful enough to make a good friend. This
contradictory equation can never be solved and leads to bouts of
frustration and rage staged by the narcissist if any of his demands
or expectations goes unheeded.

The narcissist's partner has to share quarters with him. But the
narcissist, with an inflated sense of privacy and what can be best
described as spatial paranoia, is very hard to live with. He regards
her presence in his space as intrusion. The fragile or non-existent
boundaries of his ego force him to define rigid outer boundaries for
fear of being "invaded".

He enforces his brand of compulsive orderliness and his code of
conduct on his entire physical space in the most tyrannical manner.

It is a hybrid, almost transcendental existence led by the
narcissist's mate or spouse. There when required by him, making
herself absent at all other times. Rarely can she define her own
space or impress her personal preferences and tastes upon it.

The cerebral narcissist's partner is usually his only sexual mate.
Cerebral narcissists are normally very faithful because they are
mortally afraid of the repercussions if found out cheating. But,
being purely Sexual Communicators, they get bored very easily and
find it ever more taxing to maintain regular (let alone exciting)
sexual relations with the same partner.

They are under-stimulated and for want of alternatives, they develop
a vicious frustration-aggression cycle, leading to emotional absence
and coldness and to sexual intercourse decreasing in both quality
and quantity. This could drive the partner to having extramarital
sexual (or, even emotional) affairs.

It provides the narcissist with the justification that he needs to
do the same. However, the narcissist rarely uses this license.
Instead he leverages the partner's inevitable guilt feelings to
deepen his control over her and to place himself in a morally
superior position.

Often, the narcissist destabilizes the relationship and keeps his
partner off-balance, in constant uncertainty and insecurity by
suggesting an open marriage, possible participation in group sex and
so on. Or, he constantly alludes to sexual opportunities available
to him. This he might do jokingly but he ignores his partner's avid
protestations. By provoking her jealousy, the narcissist believes
that he endears himself to her and furthers his control.

Last - but definitely not least - is the issue of procreation and of
having offspring.

Narcissists like children only as unlimited sources of Narcissistic
Supply. Put simply: children unconditionally admire the father-
narcissist, they succumb to his every wish, submit to his every
whim, obey his every command, and are deliciously malleable.

All other aspects of child-rearing are considered by the narcissist
to be repulsive: the noises, the smells, the invasion of his space,
the nuisance, the dangers, the long term commitment and, above all,
the diversion of attention and admiration from the narcissist to his
offspring. The narcissist envies his successful offspring as he
would any other competitor for adulation and attention.

A profile of the narcissist's spouse emerges:

She must value the narcissist's companionship sufficiently to
sacrifice any independent expression of her personality. She must
usually endure confinement in her own home. She either refrains from
bringing children to the world altogether or sacrifices them to the
narcissist as instruments of his gratification. She must endure long
spells of sexual abstinence or be sexually molested by the
narcissist.

This is a vicious cycle. The narcissist is likely to devalue such a
submissive partner. The narcissist detests self-sacrifice and self-
effacement. He scorns such behavior in others. He humiliates his
partner until she leaves him and, thus, proves that she is assertive
and autonomous. Then, of course, he idealizes her and wants her back.

The narcissist is interested in the kind of woman that he is able to
drive to abandon him by sadistically berating and humiliating her
(on what could be regarded as justified grounds).

In his internal dialogues, the narcissist mulls over his problematic
experience with the opposite sex.

A far as he is concerned, women are emotional objects, instant
narcissistic solutions. As long as they are indiscriminately
supportive, adoring and admiring they fulfill the critical role of
source of narcissistic supply.

We are on safe ground, therefore, when we say that mentally stable
and healthy women refrain from having relationships with
narcissists.

The narcissist's lifestyle, his reactions, in short: his disorder,
prevent the development of a mature love, of real sharing, of
empathy. The narcissist's mate, spouse, or partner is treated as an
object. She is the subject of projections, projective
identifications and a source of adulation.

Moreover, the narcissist himself is unlikely to cultivate a long-
term relationship with a psychologically healthy, independent, and
mature woman. He seeks her dependence within a relationship of
superiority and inferiority (teacher-student, guru-disciple, idol-
admirer, therapist-patient, doctor-patient, father-daughter, adult-
adolescent or young girl, etc.).

The narcissist is an anachronism. He is a Victorian arch
conservative, even if he denies it vehemently. He rejects feminism.
He feels ill at ease in today's modern world and is seldom self-
conscious enough to understand why. He pretends to be a liberal. But
this conviction does not sit well with his envy, an integral element
of his narcissistic personality.

His conservatism and jealousy combine to yield extreme
possessiveness and a powerful fear of abandonment. The latter can
(and does) bring about self-defeating and self-destructive
behaviors. These, in turn, encourage the partner to abandon the
narcissist. The narcissist, thus, feels that he has aided and
abetted the process, that he facilitated his own abandonment.

This is all part of a facade whose genesis can only be partially
attributed to repression or denial mechanisms. This fake front is
coherent, consistent, ubiquitous and completely misleading. The
narcissist uses it to project both his cognition (the results of
conscious thought processes) and his affect (emotions).

The narcissist, for instance, would adopt the role of a warm,
sensitive, considerate and empathic person - while, in truth, he is
likely to be emotionally shallow, to have attention deficits, to be
inordinately self centred, insensitive and unaware of what is
happening around him and to other people.

He makes promises casually, plagiarizes with abandon, and
pathologically (compulsively and unnecessarily) lies - all part of
the same phenomenon: a promising, impressive front behind, which are
concealed psychical "Potemkin Villages". This makes him the target
of strong frustration, hate, hostility and even verbal, physical or
legal violence.

The same scenario applies to matters of the heart. The narcissist
employs the same tactics with women.

The narcissist lies because he thinks his reality is too "grey" and
unattractive. He feels that his skills, traits, and experience are
lacking, that his biography is boring, that many aspects of his life
call for improvement. The narcissist desperately wants to be loved -
and modifies and mends himself to render himself loveable.

To this there is only one exception.

The Sociologist Erving Goffman coined the phrase "Total
Institutions". He was referring to institutions with total
regulation of the totality of life within them. The army is such an
institution and so is a hospital, or a prison. To some extent, any
alien environment is total. Living outside one's country, in a
foreign, somewhat xenophobic and hostile, society, is reminiscent of
living in a Total Institution ("Total Situation").

The mental health problems of some narcissists grow worse in such
institutions - and this is understandable. There is nothing like a
total institution to negate uniqueness.

But others feel relaxed and secure. How come?

This is an enigma the solution to which provides us with important
insights regarding the codes, which control the narcissist's
attitudes towards women.

Total Institutions and Total Situations have a few common
denominators:

They eliminate the individual's idiosyncratic identity through
external measures such as donning uniforms, sleeping in dormitories,
using numbers instead of names. In hospitals the patients are
identified by their organs or conditions, for instance. But this is
counterweighed by a sense of emerging, compensatory uniqueness, the
result of belonging to a mysterious select few, an order of
suffering or guilt, a brotherhood of endurance.
People in these places have no past or future. They live in an
infinite present.
The starting conditions of all the inmates are identical. There are
no relative or absolute advantages, no value judgments, no rating of
worthiness, no competition, no inferiority or superiority complexes
induced from the outside. This, naturally, is a gross
oversimplification, even, to some extent, a misstatement of the
facts - but we need to idealize in order to analyze.
The Total Institution offers no frame of reference or of comparison
which might foster feelings of failure or of inferiority.
The constant threat of sanctions restrains and constrains
destructive behaviors.
A heightened awareness of reality is necessary for survival. Any
self-injury or sabotage is punished more severely than in the
outside, "relative", world.
Thus, the narcissist can attribute any failure to his new
environment.

If his new environment is the outcome of a voluntary choice (for
instance, emigration) the narcissist can say that it was he who
chose failure over success - a choice that indeed he made.

Otherwise, the failure is ascribed to overriding external
imperatives ("force majeure"). The narcissist has an alternative in
this case. He doesn't have to identify with his failures or to
internalize them because he can convincingly argue (mainly to
himself) that they are not his, that success was impossible under
the objective circumstances.

Coping with recurrent failure is a figment of the narcissist's inner
life. The narcissist would tend to regard himself as a failure. He
doesn't say: "I failed" - but "I am a failure". Whenever he fails -
and he is predisposed to fail - he "assimilates" the failure and
identifies with it in an act of transubstantiation.

Narcissists are more prone to failure because of their built-in
precariousness, instability and their tendency for brinkmanship. The
schism between their rational apparatus and their emotional one
doesn't help, either. While, usually, highly talented and
intelligent - narcissists are emotionally immature and pathological.

Narcissists know that they are inferior to other people in that they
are self-defeating and self-destructive. They solve this gap between
their grandiose fantasies and their sordid and drab reality (the
Grandiosity Gap) by manufacturing and designing their own failures.
This way they feel that they control their misfortune.

Obviously, this apparently ingenious mechanism is, in itself,
destructive.

On the one hand, it succeeds to make the narcissist feel that he is
in control of his failures (if not of his life). On the other hand,
the fact that the failure directly and unequivocally emanates from
the narcissist - makes it an inseparable part of him. Thus, the
narcissist feels not only that he is the author of his own failures
(which, in some cases, he, indeed, is) - but that failure forms an
integral part of himself (which, gradually, becomes true).

It is due to this identification with his failures, defeats and
mishaps, that the narcissist finds it hard to "market" himself, be
it to a potential employer or to a woman he desires. T

The narcissist holds himself to be a total (systemic) failure. His
self-esteem and self-image are always crippled. He feels that he
doesn't have "anything to offer". When he tries to derive
consolation from the memory of past successes - the comparison
depresses him even further, making him feel that he is in at a
nadir.

As it is, the narcissist regards any need to promote himself as
demeaning. One promotes oneself because one needs others, because
one is inferior (however temporarily). This reliance on others is
both external (economic, for example) and internal (emotional). The
narcissist is also afraid of the possibility of being rejected, of
failing at his self-promotion. This kind of failure may have the
worst effect, compounding the narcissist's feeling of worthlessness.

No wonder that the narcissist regards any necessity to self-promote
as humiliating, as negating his self-respect in a cold, alienated,
transactional universe. The narcissist fails to understand why he
needs to promote himself when his uniqueness is so self-evident. He
envies the successes and the happiness of others (their successful
self-promotion).

None of these problems arises in a Total Institution or outside the
narcissist's natural milieu (abroad, for instance), or in a Total
Situation.

In these settings, failure can be explained away by being attributed
to poor starting conditions inherent in a new envirnment. The
narcissist does not have to internalize the failure or to identify
with it. The act of self-promotion is also made much easier. It is
understandable why one has to promote oneself if one is rendered
inferior or unknown by circumstances of one's choice.

In total situations, the need to market oneself is understandable,
external, and objective, a force majeure, really, though brought
about by the narcissist himself. The narcissist compares the
situation to a game of chess: you select which game to play but once
you have done so, you have to abide by the rules, however
disadvantageous.

In these circumstances failure can be attributed to outside forces -
including the failure to promote oneself. The act of self-promotion
cannot, by definition, dehumanize the narcissist or humiliate him.
In a Total Institution (or in a Total Situation) the narcissist is
no longer a human being - he has nothing.

The positive aspect of total situations is that the narcissist is
rendered special and mysterious by virtue of being a stranger and
even by the enigma of his prior identity. The narcissist cannot envy
the natives' successes and happiness - clearly they had a head
start. They belong, they control, they dictate, they are supported
by social networks and codes.

The narcissist cannot accept that anyone is more knowledgeable than
he is. He is likely to argue vehemently with the medical staff
attending him over his treatment, for instance. But he succumbs to
force (the more brutal and explicit - the better). And while doing
so, the narcissist feels a great relief: the race is over and
responsibility has been shifted to the outside. He is almost
euphoric when relieved of the need to make decisions, or when he
finds himself in a bad spot because this vindicates his internal
voices, which keep telling him that he is bad and should be punished.

It is this fear of failure - especially the fear of failing to
promote himself - that thwarts the narcissist's relationships with
women and with other figures of authority or of import in his life.

It is really the old fear of being abandoned in one of its endless
guises. The narcissist envies his deserting partner. He knows how
difficult and emotionally wrenching it is to live with him. He
realizes that his partner will be much better off without him - and
this makes him sad (that he was unable to offer her an acceptable
alternative) and envious (that her lot is likely to be better than
his.) Of course, he displaces some of his emotions, blaming his
partner, then blaming himself, angry at her and afraid to feel this
(forbidden) anger (at his mother's substitute).

The narcissist does not feel sorry because a specific individual -
his partner - abandoned him. He feels sorry because he was
abandoned. It is the act of abandonment, which matters - the
abandoning figures (his mother, his partners) are interchangeable.

The narcissist always shares his life with a fantasy, an
idealization, with an ideal phantasm he imposes upon his real life
partner. Abandonment is only the rebellion of the real life partner
against this fiction invented and compulsively enforced by the
narcissist, against the humiliation thus suffered - verbal and
behavioral.

For the narcissist, to be abandoned means to be judged and found
wanting. To be deserted means to be deemed replaceable. At its
extreme, it can come to mean the emotional annihilation of the
narcissist. He feels that when a woman leaves him she does so
because there it is emotionally easy to get away from him and never
to see him again. There is no problem to bid farewell to someone who
just is not there (at least emotionally). The narcissist feels
annulled, rendered transparent, abused, exploited, and objectified.

Put differently, the narcissist experiences through abandonment
(even through the mere risk of abandonment) a re-enactment of the
very mistreatment and abuses, which, earlier in his life,
transformed him into the deformed creature that he is. He gets a
taste of the medicine (rather poison) that he often ruthlessly
administers to others. At the same time he relives his harrowing
childhood experiences.

This mirror matrix of forces is too much for the narcissist to bear.
He begins to disintegrate and veers into utter and complete
dysfunction. At this late stage, he is likely to entertain suicidal
ideation. An encounter with the opposite sex holds mortal risks for
the narcissist - more ominous than the risks normally associated
with it.

=======================================================
AUTHOR BIO:

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served
as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline,
and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business
Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East
Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

============================================================

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Links of Interest

Suite101 Women Abuse

http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/women_abuse

Survivor Quotes

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Servants to the False Self

http://robin_rustad.tripod.com/servants_to_the_falseself/
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