Dimensions of Narcissism

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creativity

Show up and “do your dance”:

Self Portrait

Shaun Tan illustration from “The Red Tree”

Women In Love

An excerpt from Women In Love, by D.H. Lawrence:

“Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the social equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she was likely to meet in Willey Green.  She knew she was accepted in the world of culture and intellect.  She was a Kulturtrager, a medium for the culture of ideas.  With all that was the highest, whether in society or in thought or in public action, or even in art, she was at one, she moved among the foremost, at home with them.  No one could put her down, no one could make moke of her, because she stood among the first, and those that were against her were below her, either in rank, or in wealth, or in high association of thought and progress and understanding.  So, she was invulnerable.  All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable, unassailable, beyond reach of the world’s judgment.

And yet her soul was tortured, exposed.  Even walking up the path to the church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and to despite.  She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour.  She did not know herself what it was.  It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within her.

And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for ever.  She craved for Rupert Birkin.  When he was there, she felt complete, she was sufficient, whole.  For the rest of time she was established on the sand, built over a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities, any common maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling her down this bottomless pit of insufficiency, by the slightest movement of jeering or contempt.  And all the while the pensive, tortured woman piled up her own defenses of aesthetic knowledge, and culture, world-visions, and disinterestedness.  Yet she could never stop up the terrible gap of insufficiency.

If only Birkin would form a close and abiding connection with her, she would be safe during this fretful voyage of life.  He could make her sound and triumphant, triumphant over the very angels of heaven.  If only he would do it!  But she was tortured with fear, with misgiving.  She made herself beautiful, she stroved so hard to come to that degree of beauty and advantage, when he should be convinced.  But always there was a deficiency.”

You can view the passage online or purchase Women In Love here.

And there’s a movie:

You can watch a clip from the film here.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses, And all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again!

The Ugly Duckling

The Ugly Duckling

Hans Christian Anderson.  A clip from the film:

Sound and Fury

Sound and Fury

This is a documentary about a little girl who can get cochlear implants to hear again, but her deaf parents are against it.  It goes beyond the issue of hearing.  It’s about identity.  Here’s the trailer:

Also, the Oliver Sacks PBS series, The Mind Traveler, doesn’t appear to be available anywhere.  One episode took place in Seattle.  The community is Cajun and they’re all suffering from Usher’s Syndrome (blind and deaf), and the whole community adamantly wants to be blind and deaf.  It is who they are and they don’t like their community identity to be threatened.

“The Country of the Blind,” by H.G. Wells

You may also want to take a look at of H.G. Wells’s “The Country of the Blind.”  In the country of the blind, the man who can see is treated with hostility.  He threatens the community and the collective identity.  Click here to read the entire story.

Dad

“Knock Knock” from Def Poetry Jam

A son without a dad:

The Bicycle Thief

The boy is right in that Oedipal Phase (about 4 yrs-old maybe?) when he’s splitting up with mom to pal around with dad.  And it must be so much worse, considering the Italian culture and the machismo that is so valued there, for a boy to witness his father in such a helpless position.  He sees the desperation in his dad’s face and the tears in his dad’s eyes and the kid just looks like he’s going to crumble:

“This is the Brain Without Dad”

A single parent household physically changes the way the brain develops.  Click here to read the article.

Mom

Ponette

The film’s plot might have something to do with mirroring or about losing a self object before it completely becomes a self object.  A little girl of around 4 loses her mother and she’s devastated.  She doesn’t know who to be and is constantly trying to find her mother, to talk to her.  She looks in mirrors to find an image of who she is, or an image of her mother within her (this is a very literal symbol of ‘lost mirroring’?).  She says she is her “mommy’s daughter” but she can’t seem to find her mother (and in turn she can’t seem to find herself).  She tries to find her mother externally and her aunt says that her mother is living in her, but the girl is too young to grasp the concept.  You see the girl with her father, her aunt, her cousin.. all trying to help her cope with the loss of her mother:

Free To Be You and Me

Free To Be You and Me

Oedipal Narcissism.  The little boys (around 5 years-old) in these clips are not being masculine, and this is socially unacceptable, but they have positive mirroring in their lives and they find positive ways to ‘deviate’ from what is ‘socially acceptable’ (and perhaps peers are the most difficult to deal with at this age when you’re first separating from your parents and you want so much to belong and be accepted by the other children, to blend in).  Clips:

“William Wants a Doll”  (funny that the father has to be convinced that dolls are masculine somehow):

“Dudley Pippin” (the school principal makes the little boy feel okay when he cries and this makes the world seem full of life and color for the little boy. ‘It’s okay to feel’).  Unfortunately, this clip has been removed…. 

“When We Grow Up” (It’s okay to be who we are):

This is how pre-formed kids perceptions of themselves are at such a young age:

Ambition

Hal Hartley’s short film, “Ambition”

Dr. Simko, this was your response to the film:

Hartley really seems to get narcissism, how the depleted self is just full of defensive dreams and unattainable ambitions, how structures of archaic idealization lead to warfare defending “ideas not territory” and how those two concepts can go together. I wonder if he knows the theory of what he so interestingly put together here.  (Unfortunately, Ambition was removed from the Internet.)

The Big Empty

The Big Empty

It’s interesting to look at this short film in terms of the narcissistic wound, and the defeated depression.  This ‘depletion’ leads the main character on this journey of self-discovery.  Her “big empty” makes her a celebrity and no one cares that it “aches” or that it’s not really her.  It’s a shell:

Twitter

“The Psychology of Twitter”

Click here for an article about Social media/Twitter and Narcissism.

Adaptation

Adaptation

“You are what you love, not what loves you.”  Two twins, one happy, one not; one constantly needing narcissistic supplies, the other not needing anything because he operates from a sturdier “house.”:

The Cruise

The Cruise

Speed Levitch talks about narcissism here.