Chapter 33 Chapter 22 Narcissism

Chapter 22 Narcissism It is sometimes insisted that narcissism is the fundamental attitude of all women; but pushing the concept too broadly undermines its original meaning, as La Rochefoucauld undermined the original meaning of the concept of egoism.In fact narcissism is a given process of identification in which the ego is seen as an absolute end into which the subject escapes from itself.Many other attitudes (credible or not) are encountered in women, some of which we have already studied.But it is true that circumstances make it easier for a woman than for a man to turn to herself, to give her love to herself.

All love requires this duality of subject and object.Women are centrally attracted to narcissism along two lines.She is frustrated as a subject; she lacks an alterego [second self], which in a boy is his penis, from an early age; her aggressive sexuality remains unsatisfied later on.More importantly, she was not allowed to engage in male activities.She is busy and doing nothing; she is not recognized as a person by taking on the functions of wife, mother, and housekeeper.The reality of a man is manifested in the fact that he builds houses, he replaces trees, and he heals diseases; but a woman cannot realize herself through design and goals, and she can only find her reality from the inner nature of her body.Marie Bashkirchev imitates Sieyes and writes:

"What am I? I am nothing. What do I want to be? Everything." Many women frown because they are nothing, and are only interested in their selves, inflated to the point where they are confused with everything else.Mary Bashkirchev also said: "I am my own hero." A man must measure himself in taking action.Woman, because of her impotence and isolation, can neither find her place nor measure herself; she considers herself most important because nothing of importance is within her reach. If she was thus able to give herself to her desires, it was because she felt herself an object from childhood.Her education prompted her to identify herself with her whole body, which adolescence revealed as passive and gratifying; it was as touchable to her as silk or velvet, and she could The gaze of the lover.A woman can divide herself into a masculine subject and a feminine object in the pleasure she obtains alone; so Irene, a patient of Darbitz, would say to herself: "I will love myself," or more passionately: "I will love myself." have sex with myself", or suddenly say, "I'm going to impregnate myself".When Mary Bashkirchev wrote "It's a pity that no one can see my arms and my body, all this freshness and youthfulness," she is both subject and is the object.

In fact, it is impossible for a man's ego to really be the other and for him to consciously recognize himself as an object.This duality is pure dream.The child objectifies this dream in the doll; through the doll she can see herself more concretely than through her own body, because she and the doll are practically separate from each other.This requirement to be two 'Is' for an affectionate dialogue between ego and ego is expressed, for example, by Madame Anne de Noaille in her "My Life": I love dolls, I think they are as alive as I am: unless they are wrapped in wool and velvet, I will never sleep late in bed... I dream that I will really have pure double loneliness... This A need to be whole, to be a double self, I've felt from a very early age... Oh, how I wish I had a Another little Anna put her arms around my neck, comforting me, understanding me! ... In later life, I found her in me, and I held on to her; and, as I wished, she helped me not in comfort, but in courage.

The girl threw away her rag doll.But throughout life a woman finds that the magic of the mirror is a tremendous aid in her efforts first to project herself and then to achieve self-identity.The psychoanalyst Otto Ranke clarifies the relationship of the mirror to the myth, and to the dream-like duoble.The image, especially in women, is identified with the ego.A beautiful appearance means transcendence for men; it means passive inwardness for women; only the latter will want to attract the close attention of others, so they may be caught by the motionless silver trap.A man feels and wishes to be active, a subject, he does not observe himself through a fixed reflection; it has little attraction for him, because his body is not to him an object of desire; whereas a woman knows her own is the object, and makes herself an object, so she believes that through the mirror she can indeed see herself.As a passive given, this reflection is as much a thing as she is herself; when she does desire female body (her body), she, through her admiration and desire, bestows upon her what she sees in the mirror. See the qualities that take life.Madame de Noailles knew herself well in this respect, and she confided to us:

I am seldom conceited of my intellectual gifts, whose advantages are unquestionable; but I am vain of my reflection in the usual mirror... Only the pleasures of the body can fully satisfy my soul. The term "physical pleasure" is vague and inappropriate here.What satisfies the soul is the fact that while thought will have to prove its own existence, the existence of the face that is beheld is already a given and therefore beyond doubt.All that is to come is concentrated in that one light, and the whole universe is concentrated in the frame; outside this narrow confines, things are disorderly chaos; the world has become this mirror, and there is a shining image in it , the image of the unique one.Every woman who is obsessed with herself rules over time and space, and is therefore unique and supreme; she has every right to men and luck, fame and pleasure.Mary Bashkirchev was so enamored of her own beauty that she wished to fix it in immortal marble; she wished she were immortal when she wrote:

When I got home and undressed, I was so impressed with my nudity that it was like I had never seen it before.I must make a statue of myself, but how?It's next to impossible unless I get married.It is absolutely necessary to do this before I become ugly and completely defile it... I must find a husband, only then can this statue be made. Cecil Sorrell describes her readiness to go on a date: I stand in front of the mirror.I will be more beautiful.I'm desperately flowing that lion's mane hair.Comb in and out of sparks.My head is the sun surrounded by golden radiance. I also think of a young woman I met one morning in a coffee shop; she held a rose in her hand and looked a little intoxicated; she pressed her lips to the mirror as if drinking her reflection, and she Smiling and murmuring, "Lovely, I'm so cute!" The narcissist is both priest and idol, and she soars in a halo of glory through the eternal kingdom, where under the clouds kneels admiringly; she is God wrapped in self-concern. "I love myself, I am my God!" said Mrs. Mayerowski.To become God, the unattainable synthesis of en-soi and pour-soi must be accomplished; and there is joy, elation, and joy when one thinks one can succeed in doing so. A fulfilling special moment.A girl who sees beauty, desire, love, and happiness in the mirror's five senses, is consciously inspired to believe in them, and pursues throughout her life what that dazzling revelation brings. hope.Even if a woman is not very beautiful, she can see the special wealth of her heart sprinkled over her appearance, which is enough to fascinate her deeply. "She cannot be admired for her beauty, but she has a certain desirable charm..."

Even if the less fortunate sometimes enjoy great pleasure in looking in the mirror, this is not surprising, for simply being a physical being is enough to excite them; It is the voluptuous flesh of young women that is enough to astonish them; and feeling themselves a single subject, they will be able (albeit a little deludedly) to tolerate their own special qualities, their own charisma; A graceful, eccentric, or amusing characteristic.They believe they are beautiful only because they think they are women. And the mirror isn't the only means of achieving a double self, though it's extremely flattering.Everyone can try to create two selves through inner dialogue.A woman spends most of her day alone doing annoying household chores, she has leisure to form a certain image through her imagination; she dreams of the future like a girl; History; the way she revises history turns out to be by introducing aesthetic principles that make her contingent life into a destiny before she dies.

Women linger more than men on childhood memories: "When I was a little girl..." They remember that they were independent, protected by their parents, and that the future lay before them; Trapped in the present; they were meant to conquer the world, and now they are caught in the general, one wife and housewife among millions. The woman regrets who she has become, wants to rediscover in herself the lost child, and even wants that child to be valued.So she tries to keep her tastes, ideas, and emotions fresh for the first time, even with a strange world-defying factor: "You know me"; "I'm so funny"; "There must be flowers"; and so on.She has a special complexion, she has her own favorite musicians, and she has unique beliefs and superstitions, which are quite above ordinary people.Her unique personality is expressed in her clothes and her "inner heart"; her double self is often rough, but sometimes the clear characters she creates can also play the role of a woman's life.Many women see in the heroines of literature that they have been made: "She is so like me!" This identification may be facilitated by a beautiful romantic character, or by a martyred heroine.A woman may obstinately want to be the embodiment of the sentimental lady of our time, or of the unhappy wife: "I am the unluckiest woman in the world," says Stekel of a woman of this type. Patient: "She gets a kick out of playing a tragic role."

A common characteristic of such women is that they feel misunderstood; that their special qualities are not recognized by those around them; There are secrets.In fact, many of them did harbor certain events of childhood or youth that were central to their lives; they knew that their official biographies would not mix with their real life experiences.But the heroine played by the narcissistic woman is often only imaginary, because such a woman lacks self-realization in real life; it is not the concrete world that gives her individuality, but a hidden principle, a kind of The vague "power" or "virtue" of phlogiston.A woman believes that the heroine she plays exists, but if she wants to express herself in front of others, she will confess her invisible sins like a struggling neurotic.Both have "secrets" that boil down to empty beliefs, a key to their hearts that unravels and justifies their emotions and actions.It is their great lack of will, their inertia, that produces the hallucinations that exist in neurotics; and it is precisely because a woman cannot express herself that she thinks that there is an indescribable mystery in her too.Famous myths about mysterious women encouraged and in turn confirmed this belief.

With incomprehensible wealth, woman thinks that she, like the tragic hero, needs a dominant destiny.Her whole life is glorified and turned into a divine drama.Standing in her carefully chosen robes, she is both a priest in vestments and an idol adorned by faithful hands and offered for the worship of her devotees.Her home became a shrine to her.The narcissistic woman will care as much about the furniture and decorations that complement her as her clothes. When a woman reveals herself to her fellows or indulges in the arms of her lover, she fulfills her mission: she is the Venus who bestows beauty as wealth to the world.This is not herself, but beauty incarnate, and it is this beauty incarnate that Cecil Sorrell was defending when she shattered the glass covering the Bieber caricature; as we see in her memoirs , her whole life has been calling on mortals to advocate art.The same was the case with Isadora Duncan, who wrote of herself in "My Life": How cute I was after the show in the bodysuit and the roses on my head.Why shouldn't there be such cuteness! ...a man who works with his brain all day...why shouldn't he throw himself into the embrace of these beautiful arms, to soothe his pain, to pursue beauty and forget everything? The narcissist's generosity works to her advantage because she sees her double-me surrounded by a halo of glory more through other people's eyes than in a mirror.When she couldn't find a courteous audience, she opened up to confessors, doctors, and psychoanalysts; she also consulted palm readers and fortune-tellers. "Not because I believe them," said a starlet, "but because I like to be told about myself!" She told her friends all about herself; she wanted her lover to become The audience, the desire is more urgent than the desire to have anyone else be an audience.It is true that a woman quickly forgets her self when she is in love; but many women are unable to truly love precisely because they have not forgotten themselves at all. They would rather have a big stage than a small room of their own.So society is important to them; they need eyes looking at them and ears listening to them; as characters, they need the maximum audience.Mary Bashkirchev stated publicly when describing her room: "When people walk in and find me writing, that's how I am on the stage." She went on to write: "I have decided to set the stage well. Fan. I'm going to build a better house than Sarah's, and a bigger studio." As for Madame de Noailles, she wrote: "I liked it then, and I still like it when it's spacious and lively. . . . And I often do forgive my friends because I can have many guests, they worry that so many people will disturb me, and I sincerely say: I don't like to perform to empty seats. " Clothes and conversation will satisfy a woman's penchant for acting, but the aspiring narcissist also wants her self-expression to be unusual and varied.In particular, she tends to make her life a crowd-pleasing show, taking the stage seriously.In Corina, Madame de Stael recounts at length how she captivated a large crowd of Italians when she recited poetry to her harp.One of her favorite pastimes at the Copit villa in Switzerland was reading the dialogue of tragic characters; she, like Phaedra, loved making passionate statements to one lover after another, dressed as Hippolyte.There is nothing so satisfying to the narcissist, given circumstances, as a public devotion to the theatre. "Theatre," said Georgette LeBlanc, "brought me what I had long sought: grounds for admiration. It seems to me today as a parody of action; of." Her delivery is amazing.For lack of action, woman invents a substitute for action; for some, the theater is a favorable substitute, and actresses, moreover, can be directed to various ends.For some, acting is a means of earning a living, nothing more than a profession; victory.The greater actresses—Ricky, Deoss—are true artists who outdo themselves through the characters they create; To be concerned with the glory reflected in her; she wants to emphasize her own importance above all.The obsessive narcissist, lacking the capacity for devotion, will be as limited by art as he will be by love. This shortcoming will have a major impact on all her activities.Any path that leads to fame is alluring to her, but she can never devote herself wholeheartedly to any one path.Painting, sculpture, and literature, are all disciplines that require hard elementary training and personal effort; many women try them, but soon give them up unless driven by some active creative desire; and many can persist The people who came down were actually just pretending. They spend hours at the easel, but they love themselves too much to have a real love for painting, and so they end up being losers.When a woman, like Madame de Stael and Madame de Noailles, succeeds in producing good works, she is not really preoccupied with self-admiration; but the plague that afflicts most One of the shortcomings of women writers is to poison their sincere self-love, which limits and weakens their status. Yet many women, convinced of their superiority, are unable to make it manifest to the world; So they can only use a man who is touched by their merits as an intermediary to realize their ambitions.Such a woman will not aim at her own values ​​by means of free design; she wishes to attach ready-made values ​​to herself, so she turns to men of influence and fame, hoping to identify with them and become inspiration, poet, and Egyptian. Gillia.Mabel Dodge Luhan's relationship with Lawrence is an obvious example: she hoped "to induce his mind, to compel his mind to come up with some works"; She needed his insight, his fertile imagination; she felt an initiative in letting him write, a compensation for the sadness of her having nothing to do.She wanted Lawrence to conquer through her, to win her interests in Taos.Likewise, Georgette LeBlanc wanted to be Heitrink's "food and fire"; but she also wanted her name to appear on his book. It is not necessary for us here to discuss how ambitious women use men for their own ends, but how women are motivated by a subjective desire to gain status which has no objective purpose but merely Keen to steal someone else's transcendence.They will never succeed, but are good at hiding their failure from themselves and convincing themselves that they are irresistible.They know they are lovable, desirable, and admirable, so they have the confidence that they will be loved, desired, and admired by others. These hallucinations can lead to real insanity, and Clarembeau rightly believes that nymphomania is an "occupational disease"; To feel a woman is to feel an ideal object, to feel desired and loved.It is intriguing that nine out of ten patients with the illusion of being loved are women.It is quite clear that what they demand in their imaginary lover is the apotheosis of their narcissism.They want to ascribe to narcissism the unquestionable value that can be bestowed by, say, priests, doctors, lawyers, or any gentleman.His actions reveal an absolute truth, which is what he imagines his mistress to be. To surpass all other irresistible women with many excellent qualities. The appearance of nymphomania may be associated with various psychopathies, but its content is always the same.The patient radiates with pride at being loved by a remarkable man who (totally unexpected) is suddenly captivated by her efforts, expressing his affection indirectly and yet urgently.The relationship is sometimes fanciful, sometimes sexual; but its main feature is that this famously powerful demigod was more deeply in love than a woman, and the way he expressed his passion was eccentric. Yes, ambiguous.Among the many instances reported by psychiatrists, the following excerpt is typical.A 48-year-old woman confessed this way: The honorable Mr. Etcher is involved here, a former Member of Parliament and now a member of the Lawyers.I've known him since 1920, but before I knew who he was, I watched him from a distance as a powerful figure; it gave me chills... Yes, it was an emotional affair, we both felt Arrived: our eyes met.I liked him from the beginning, and he was the same... Anyway, it was he who confessed himself first, and this was near the end of 1922; he always wanted to see me alone; one day he got up and walked towards me Come on, continue that conversation.I suddenly realized that wave of emotion... He said he had something to let me know.He was courteous and courteous in every way and made me realize that our feelings were mutual...on one occasion he got rid of a man he was with just to be alone with me.He's always holding my hand tight...he tells me he's single...he's watching from my window.He had the parish band march past my door.I am true or false.I should have responded to his courtship...he figured I would reject him, so he acted; he should have confessed earlier; he retaliated against me.He thinks I'm right B.Feelings, so jealous... He cursed at my picture just to hurt me - so it annoyed me. This insanity, in fact, easily turns into a persecution hallucination, a process which can be seen even under normal circumstances. The narcissist finds it impossible to admit that others do not adore her; if she proves that she is not adored, she immediately considers herself hateful.She attributes all criticism to jealousy or resentment.Her setbacks are all caused by criminal plots, which reinforce her belief that she matters.She slides easily into megalomania, or its opposite, the illusion of persecution.By being the center of her own universe, by being ignorant of other universes, she becomes the absolute center of the world. But the comedy of narcissism can only be played at the expense of reality, imaginary characters adored by imaginary audiences.A woman obsessed with herself has completely lost control of the real world, and she doesn't care about having any real relationships with other people.Madame de Stael would not have read Phaedel so enthusiastically if she had been able to foresee the sneers that her "admirer" wrote in his notebooks at night.But the narcissist refuses to admit that it is possible to see other aspects of her than just her self-expression, and this is why, although she is always self-focused, she lacks self-judgment and why she is very Easy to get ludicrous for a reason.She always talked only to herself, and stopped listening to others; and she always talked about herself when she opened her mouth. Marie Bashkirchev wrote: "It amuses me. I'm not talking to him, I'm acting and I think I'm very good at fucking like a child in front of a discerning audience Strange accents and poses." She is too self-absorbed to see anything; her knowledge of others is limited to seeing in them the resemblance to herself; anything not closely related to her own situation, to her own experience , are beyond the scope of her understanding.She likes to greatly expand her experience; she wants to experience the intoxication and torture of love, of being a mother.Friendship, solitude, the sheer joy of tears and laughter; but because of her impossibility of devotion, her feelings are fictional.No doubt the tears Isadora Duncan shed when her child died were real, but when she wished to throw her child's ashes overboard in a grand and dramatic funeral, she was only an actor; It is impossible to remain indifferent to this passage in My Life that arouses her sorrow: I feel the warmth of my own body.I looked down at my bare legs - stretched them out.My soft breasts, my soft shoulders that were never dead, still heaving in soft waves, I know I've been tired for 12 years, this chest always aching, these hands in front of me bear the mark of sorrow, when I When alone, the eyes are barely dry. From self-worship the maiden can draw the courage to face the worrisome future, but she must get over it quickly, or the future will close to her.A woman who locks her lover in the interiority of two people dooms him to die with herself; a narcissist who identifies with her imaginary double self destroys herself.Her past is unchanging, her actions are stereotyped; her words are filled with empty words, and she repeats actions that gradually lose all content, so that many diaries and autobiographies written by a woman are poor; , a woman who does nothing makes herself worthless and has to worship nothingness. Her misfortune is that, though insincerely, she is aware of this emptiness.There can be no real relationship between the individual and her double self, because this double self does not exist.Narcissists will suffer major setbacks.It is impossible for her to see herself as a whole, to maintain her illusion of pour-soi-en-soi.Like everyone else's isolation, hers seemed accidental and a sad abandonment.And that is why, unless she changes, she can only flee restlessly from herself to the crowd, to the conversation, to others.It would be a great mistake to think that she was freed from dependence, that she chose herself as the highest object considered; on the contrary, she doomed herself to the most complete slavery.Instead of asserting her independence, she turns herself into an object victimized by the world and other conscious beings. The difficulty is not only that her body and face are aging flesh, but that adorning this idol, laying its foundations, and building temples to it, is also, from a practical point of view, an extravagant enterprise.We have seen that in order to have her image immortalized like marble, Marie Bashkirchev had to marry a rich man.A man's wealth would have helped to pay for the gold jewellery, incense, and myrrh that Isadora Duncan and Cecil Sorel placed around their thrones.Since a woman's fate is in the hands of men, she usually measures her success by the number and value of the men she has networked into her ranks.But here reciprocity is still at work; the praying mantis wants to make the man her tool, but she is not freed from him because she must please him in order to hold him firmly.The American woman, though she too wants to be the idol of men, is really the slave of her admirers; she can dress, live, and breathe only through men, and for them only. In fact, the narcissist is just as attached as the high-class whore.If she eschewed the tyranny of a single man, she embraced public opinion.Her relations with others do not involve reciprocity of exchange, because she would cease to be a narcissist if she wanted to recognize the free evaluation of others and at the same time recognize this evaluation as an end to be achieved through activity. By. The paradox of her attitude lies in the fact that she both demands value from the world and at the same time considers it worthless, since she believes that only her own opinion has value.The approval of others is a mysterious and willful inhuman force, and anyone who wants this recognition must pass through magic.Despite her superficial arrogance, the narcissist actually recognizes that her position is not secure; this is why she is restless, hypersensitive, tantrums, and constantly on the alert; her vanity is insatiable.The older she was, the more she sought praise and success, and the more she suspected of intrigue surrounding her; she was insane, obsessed, hid in the darkness of insincerity, and finally built a wall of insanity and paranoia around her.There is a saying that especially applies to her: "He who finds life loses it."