Documenting Cultural Narcissism

[R.R]

Like the article said Watchdog - 'it depends'. I should have prefaced the article by explaining that it is essentially discussing the potential narcissistic abuse of meditation. Meditation is practice but from what I understand regarding Buddhism is that prior to practice comes motivation which will then affect practice.

I guess I can give an example of somebody I met a few months ago. He was a very optimistic and positive person, a family man and most people would consider him a success in life as his children were going through university and he ran his own accounting firm. He was always quick to deliver motivational spiritual messages but one thing that really bothered me was when he said he believes that anything he puts out, he'll receive more back down the line. So in a way his motive was to get more and more of whatever it was he was after. In hindsight I guess you could say his unwelcome spiritual messages were not for my benefit but for his (as he would get back, with profit, his 'helpful' gestures) especially as it was difficult to get him to stop talking once he started - and he may have mistakenly took peoples' politeness as being genuine interest in his message. It was basically an example of altruistic narcissism although admittedly I didn't know him long enough to form a conclusion on him - but I did ask him some questions and the responses I got told me that he wasn't necessarily someone who had questioned his own belief system.

Meditation for me is simply deeper thinking, looking at your beliefs and seeking the influences or biases behind them, the emotional associations, introspection, retrospection, questioning things and also, as you mentioned, a form of self-healing or emotional regulation that we're not taught to do although it is a learned skill if one has been around people who are good at regulating emotions - the love of a good mother is an example.

Meditation is in some ways an introverted thing and with more people being taught that extraversion is the way to succeed in the world, this nullifies the effect of meditation. Most people only 'meditate' in that small period before they sleep, providing they don't fall asleep while watching TV or during some other activity. In my experience, people are often uncomfortable with their own thoughts and rarely develop them further; they are afraid of solitude - and I don't count social networking or watching TV necessarily as solitude mainly because in Jacques Ellul's book 'Propaganda' he explains how TV, radio or newspapers (we can now add the internet to that list) are designed to target individuals but they are still collectivist forms of communication. Basically they are still being conditioned so to speak - being influenced by the thoughts of others. Meditation should be that time where you can seperate the wheat from the chaff and form your own conclusions.

Unfortunately most that do meditate seem to have to go through a whole ritual complete with poses, dimmed lights or incense. There's nothing wrong with that as it can help concentration and prepare the mind for meditative processes but they are not essential. However for some people this is the appeal of meditating which in some ways has a narcissistic appeal. One can easily meditate anywhere without any external instruments and for those that require the whole pre-meditative process before actually meditating should ask if that process is necessary. It is a similar idea to saying prayer does not have to take place in a church yet there are those who can only do so there.

As for sexual narcissism, the key behind it is within intimacy - to truly know thyself and to share that with another human being. Nothing brings out who you are more than a deep intimate relationship with another - it brings up all those unresolved conflicts and shows you your own toxic emotions. However more often than not most people are not aware of themselves to that degree and the process towards knowing shatters the false self who is still going to fight for its survival.

Early stages of courting are when a person usually presents their best front but as you get to know each other those barriers slowly break down and the imperfections show - the very imperfections most people are ashamed of about themselves and this is when people bail from a potential relationship or the crazy behaviour starts. Some people cannot handle this and run while others get addicted to the feelings of being impressive towards a new object who shows admiration and seek that initial experience over and over again.

In some ways it is similar to people who cannot form longer lasting friendships and prefer meeting new people all the time as they can continually present their egotistical side without having to worry about making relevant changes to themselves as human beings.

People are slowly losing the ability to connect deeply and be legitimately intimate destroying the ability to form bonds and loyalty towards each other. The research on the psychological effects of China's one child policy is interesting food for thought as I personally have rarely come across more consistently cold people than the Chinese and I'd speculate that a lot of that has to do with the fact that that culture hardly has many opportunities to form deeper human relationships which would naturally occur through having brothers, sisters, cousins and extended families.

Finally I'd add that evolutionary psychological theory pretty much leaves out most of what we've just mentioned and essentially promotes the promiscuous nature of modern times - not really surprising in light of understanding wider social manipulation.

[R.R]

Quote:Women's Magazines Downplay Emotional Health Risks Of Cosmetic Surgery, Study Finds

Dec. 13, 2008

While the emotional health implications of cosmetic surgery are still up for scientific debate, articles in women's magazines such as The Oprah Magazine and Cosmopolitan portray cosmetic surgery as a physically risky, but overall worthwhile option for enhancing physical appearance and emotional health, a UBC study has found.

The study, published in Women's Health Issues journal, is the first to examine how women's magazines portray cosmetic surgery to Canadians. It also finds that male opinions on female attractiveness are routinely used to justify cosmetic surgery and that a disproportionate amount of articles are devoted to breast implants and cosmetic surgery among women aged 19-34.

"Alongside beauty, clothing and diet advice, women's magazines present cosmetic surgery as a normal practice for enhancing or maintaining beauty, becoming more attractive to men and improving emotional health," says Andrea Polonijo, who conducted the research at UBC as an undergraduate honours thesis in the Dept. of Sociology.

Polonijo, now a graduate student at University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, examined how Canada's five most popular English-language women's magazines – Chatelaine, Cosmopolitan, O: The Oprah Magazine, Flare and Prevention – portray cosmetic surgery. The study focused on 35 articles published between 2002 and 2006.

"Magazines are communicating the physical risks of cosmetic surgery more than the emotional health risks," says Polonijo, noting that studies have found that emotional health issues such as anxiety and depression may arise or increase in women who undergo physically successful cosmetic surgery, regardless of their preoperative emotional state. Of the articles that mention emotional health, only 18 per cent suggest cosmetic surgery may be detrimental to emotional well-being, the study found.

Magazines routinely present two "ideal" cosmetic surgery candidates, the study found: an unhappy, insecure, lonely woman looking to boost low self-confidence and self-esteem, and a successful, attractive, confident woman with high self-esteem who seeks cosmetic surgery to maintain perfection.

"These two profiles represent extremes of a wide range of attitudes, for which many women may view themselves as being somewhere in-between," says UBC sociology professor Richard Carpiano, a co-author of the study. "This potentially allows for cosmetic surgery to be presented as an option for many women regardless of their preoperative emotional state."

Men's opinions were often considered in these cosmetic surgery articles, with 29 per cent discussing the impact that women's cosmetic surgery has on the male population.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...093548.htm

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Quote:Thirty Percent of Women Would Trade at Least One Year of Their Life to Achieve Their Ideal Body Weight and Shape, UK Study Finds

May 26, 2011

Research conducted for the eating disorder charity The Succeed Foundation, in partnership with the University of the West of England (UWE), has found that 30 percent of women would trade at least one year of their life to achieve their ideal body weight and shape.

Dr Phillippa Diedrichs from the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England, said, "The survey took place on university campuses around the UK. The findings highlight that body image is an issue for all women and not just adolescent girls, as is often thought.

"The other really important finding is that the majority of women surveyed said that more needs to be done to promote positive body image on their university campuses.

"In response to this, this weekend the Succeed Foundation in collaboration with the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England, is launching 'The Succeed Body Image Programme'. The programme is based on over eight years of scientific research. This research has shown that similar programmes overseas are effective in reducing the onset of eating disorders and in promoting positive body image among women at university.

"The Succeed Body Image Programme is designed by experts, but will be run on university campuses throughout the UK by the students themselves. It's an extremely exciting programme that has amazing potential to improve the health of British women."

The research has also found that in order to achieve their ideal body weight and shape:

16% would trade 1 year of their life
10% would trade 2-5 years of their life
2% would trade 6-10 years of their life
1% would trade 21 years or more of their life

The survey conducted at British Universities by Dr Diedrichs also discovered that in order to achieve their ideal body weight and shape, 26% of the women surveyed were willing to sacrifice at least one of the following:

£5000 from their annual salary (13%)
A promotion at work (8%)
Achieving a first class honours degree (6%)
Spending time with their partner (9%)
Spending time with their family (7%)
Spending time with their friends (9%)
Their health (7%)

The survey results suggest that body dissatisfaction was common among the women surveyed, with 1 in 2 women saying that more needs to be done on their university campus to promote healthy body image.

46% of the women surveyed have been ridiculed or bullied because of their appearance.
39% of the women surveyed reported that if money wasn't a concern they would have cosmetic surgery to alter their appearance. Of the 39% who said they would have cosmetic surgery, 76% desired multiple surgical procedures. 5% of the women surveyed have already had cosmetic surgery to alter their appearance.
79% of the women surveyed reported that they would like to lose weight, despite the fact that the majority of the women sampled (78.37%) were actually within the underweight or 'normal' weight ranges. Only 3% said that they would like to gain weight.
93% of the women surveyed reported that they had had negative thoughts about their appearance during the past week. 31% had negative thoughts several times a day
When asked which celebrity has the perfect body Kelly Brook came top of the list.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...110812.htm

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Quote:'Cool' Kids in Middle School Bully More, Psychologists Report

Jan. 24, 2013

Bullying, whether it's physical aggression or spreading rumors, boosts the social status and popularity of middle school students, according to a new UCLA psychology study that has implications for programs aimed at combatting school bullying. In addition, students already considered popular engage in these forms of bullying, the researchers found.

The psychologists studied 1,895 ethnically diverse students from 99 classes at 11 Los Angeles middle schools. They conducted surveys at three points: during the spring of seventh grade, the fall of eighth grade and the spring of eighth grade. Each time, students were asked to name the students who were considered the "coolest," the students who "start fights or push other kids around" and the ones who "spread nasty rumors about other kids."

Those students who were named the coolest at one time were largely named the most aggressive the next time, and those considered the most aggressive were significantly more likely to be named the coolest the next time. The results indicate that both physical aggression and spreading rumors are rewarded by middle school peers.

"The ones who are cool bully more, and the ones who bully more are seen as cool," said Jaana Juvonen, a UCLA professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "What was particularly interesting was that the form of aggression, whether highly visible and clearly confrontational or not, did not matter. Pushing or shoving and gossiping worked the same for boys and girls.

"The impetus for the study was to figure out whether aggression promotes social status, or whether those who are perceived as popular abuse their social power and prestige by putting other kids down," she said. "We found it works both ways for both 'male-typed' and 'female-typed' forms of aggression."

The research is published online in the prominent Journal of Youth and Adolescence and will be appear in an upcoming print edition of the journal.

The study implies that anti-bullying programs have to be sophisticated and subtle to succeed.

"A simple message, such as 'Bullying is not tolerated,' is not likely to be very effective," Juvonen said, when bullying often increases social status and respect.

Effective anti-bullying programs need to focus on the bystanders, who play a critical role and can either encourage or discourage bullying, said Juvonen, who has conducted research on bullying since the mid-1990s and serves as a consultant to schools on anti-bullying programs. Bystanders should be made aware of the consequences of spreading rumors and encouraging aggression and the damage bullying creates, she said.

Juvonen's current research is federally supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Juvonen and her colleagues reported in 2003 that bullies are popular and respected and are considered the "cool" kids.

The rumors middle school students spread often involve sexuality (saying a student is gay or sexually promiscuous) and family insults, she said.

Like middle school students, Juvonen noted, non-human primates also use aggression to promote social rank (although gossiping is obviously limited to humans).

Co-authors of the new study are former UCLA psychology graduate student Yueyan Wang and UCLA psychology doctoral student Guadalupe Espinoza.

In previous research, Juvonen and her colleagues have reported that nearly three in four teenagers say they were bullied online at least once during a recent 12-month period, and only one in 10 reported such cyber-bullying to parents or other adults; that nearly half of the sixth graders at two Los Angeles-area public schools said they were bullied by classmates during a five-day period; that middle school students who are bullied in school are likely to feel depressed, lonely and miserable, which in turn makes them more vulnerable to further bullying incidents; and that bullying is pervasive.

"Bullying is a problem that large numbers of kids confront on a daily basis at school; it's not just an issue for the few unfortunate ones," Juvonen has said. "Students reported feeling humiliated, anxious or disliking school on days when they reported incidents, which shows there is no such thing as 'harmless' name-calling or an 'innocent' punch.'"

Juvonen advises parents to talk with their children about bullying before it ever happens, to pay attention to changes in their children's behavior and to take their concerns seriously.

Students who get bullied often have headaches, colds and other physical illnesses, as well as psychological problems.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...140729.htm

[Watchdog]

So... Besides for emotional wounds at a young age, can something else cause narcissism (and other personality disorders)?

The answer may be vaccination!

(note: interestingly enough if you google vaccines and narcissism you'll find that scientists (sic) have actually flipped the issue around and are asking "can we create a vaccine against narcissism?" How bat shit crazy is that!!! Meanwhile the real question should be "have vaccines amplified narcissism"! This scientific idiocy supports my hypothesis that most everything in this god forsaken world has been flipped upside down to deceive us...As if it is easier for the human mind to accept the 100% total inverse of the truth, rather than half a lie... Consequently, if you're searching for the truth, it may be wise to search for the total inverse of what authorities are saying, and then you may be on the right track, more or less.)

******
VACCINATION, SOCIAL VIOLENCE, AND CRIMINALITY
Reviewed by Ann Jerome Croce, Ph.D.
Vaccination, Social Violence, and Criminality The Medical Assault on the American Brain
by Harris L. Coulter

http://www.minimum.com/reviews/vaccinati...lences.htm

and

http://www.whale.to/vaccines/coulter5.html

and

http://books.google.ca/books?id=6jRwZflz...&q&f=false



"This book advances the perhaps startling thesis that childhood vaccination programs cause a wide range of neurologic disabilities, and that these disabilities yield the bulk of the autistics, minimally brain damaged, and sociopaths who have undermined the American educational system and American society, giving this country during the past two decades the highest crime rate in its history (249)."

He suggests that there are "symptomatic parallels" linking vaccine damage with autism, minimal brain damage, and sociopathic behaviors. All of these conditions, he shows, have much in common with post-encephalitic syndrome. He notes that the "manifestations of a vaccination reaction" that are described in his earlier book, DPT: A Shot in the Dark (written with Barbara Loe Fisher, published by Harcourt Brace jovanovich, NY, in 1985) as well as by vaccine manufacturers in package inserts "are identical to the symptoms of acute encephalitis from any other cause" (103). Perhaps not coincidentally, post-encephalitic syndrome has long been known to follow in some cases from the very childhood diseases for which we now vaccinate, particularly whooping cough.

One important observation on which Coulter rests his argument is that "serious long-term sequelae can develop in the absence of an acute reaction" (120). He notes that every disease exhibits itself with varying degrees of severity in different people, and he asserts that "autism, minimal brain damage [conventionally called minimal brain dysfunction], and the sociopathic personality ... represent a continuum of neurologic damage due to encephalitis which in the overwhelming majority of cases is from vaccination." (250). In many cases, he reasons, the immediate reaction to a vaccination can be so subtle as to go unnoticed, so that the long term effects are not attributed to the vaccine. Moreover, since post- encephalitic syndrome can be quite mild in its effects, many of its victims are never identified as such.

This leads to Coulter's most devastating charge against compulsory vaccination: that it has not only victimized individuals but also changed the profile of our entire society. Citing crime rates, standardized test scores, literacy data, and a wide variety of other cultural signposts, Coulter suggests that compulsory vaccination in the United States has created a new generation of citizens whose potential for learning and productivity is less than that of their forebears. People damaged most heavily are prone to violence, depression, and suicide as well as to learning disabilities and other neurological disorders. Those affected only mildly may simply be considered "peculiar or idiosyncratic" (250), or, Coulter implies rather chillingly, they may begin to seem normal, especially when an entire society is made up of those who have been heavily vaccinated.

The evidence which Coulter offers is gathered from extensive individual interviews and from prominent conventional medical journals, a research choice that bolsters his credibility considerably. As he acknowledges, though, "no unambiguous anatomical, physiological, or biochemical indicator of vaccine damage exists," so his approach is "essentially symptomatic" (250). He builds his argument by systematically demonstrating the parallels among the neurological syndromes he discusses and by citing the chronological historical parallels among vaccine use, the rising incidence of these syndromes, and the social trends which he links with them. While the evidence is necessarily circumstantial, Coulter amasses such an overwhelming amount of it that even the most skeptical reader must find it difficult to dismiss.

For example, Coulter forges a strong link among autism, minimal brain damage, sociopathic behaviors, and post-encephalitic syndrome by detailing a pattern he calls "ego weakness" and demonstrating how it is manifested in each of these disorders. For autistic children, he explains, ego weakness blurs the boundaries between the child and his or her surroundings "Lacking any sense of self, the autistic child identifies with the whole world" (3); the autistic "cannot receive sensory information in an orderly fashion. He cannot distinguish impulses, sensations, and other mental contents which originate inside from those which originate outside the self" (25). In order to assuage the anxiety which arises from living in this state, autistics may develop compulsive or ritualized behaviors, aggressive outbursts, or hypersexuality (38-47). People afflicted with minimal brain damage, Coulter suggests, exhibit the same ego disintegration with its attendant anxiety and coping mechanisms (80-92).

Forging the final link between these disorders and post-encephalitic syndrome, he uses clinical accounts to demonstrate that in the latter "even the mildly affected individual often shows such symptoms as egotism, narcissism, ego weakness, alienation, impulsiveness, emotional lability, flat affect, anxiety, paranoia, impatience with criticism, rage, depression, and suicidal impulses" (144). In a graphic and often chilling chapter on sociopathic criminals, Coulter shows how this same cluster of mental and emotional symptoms can produce violent and amoral behavior in some individuals. As one of the symptomatic parallels on which Coulter bases his argument, "ego weakness" demonstrates compellingly his contention that vaccination damage goes far beyond what is currently documented. "The mere recognition that autism and minimal brain damage are consequences of encephalitis should be convincing evidence that the childhood vaccination program is responsible. Vaccination, after all, is known to cause encephalitis, and no other candidate is in sight" (252).

[R.R]

Very interesting post Watchdog - I'll have to look into that vaccine connection at some point.

Quote:On Being Perfect

The narcissist's guerrilla war against reality

Copyright © 2006, P. Lutus

Revised 07/25/2007

Introduction

Over the past few years I've met a lot of people online, people posing questions and opinions about programming, science, and diverse other topics. Before the Internet, in spite of my age, I hadn't met even a tenth of the people I've met online. And, as has been said by many, Internet communications aren't remotely like face-to-face encounters. In online communications people tend to be much more reckless, aggressive and candid, shielded as they believe themselves to be from any immediate consequences of misbehavior, also because they can (at least temporarily) assume any identity they want.

The anonymity and power of Internet communications has two immediate effects:

A personality disorder that might remain hidden in perpetuity is instead displayed openly, usually with some precautions about anonymity or at least geographical separation from the audience.
The impression created by Internet communications is that people are more pathological than the impression created by similar face-to-face communications. I say "impression" because the Internet doesn't create the pathology exhibited by the participants, it only reveals what is there already.
By adopting a make-believe online persona, Internet participants can pretend to be anyone they please, with scant probability of exposure. Famous scientist, military hero, demigod.
Because of these factors, a certain personality type is attracted to the Internet like moths to a candle.

I decided to research and write this article because over the past five years I have met a lot of people online with traits in common, to the degree that I started recognizing similarities. So I decided to find out what that similarity was — did it have a name?

First, the traits. Someone would write me to discuss ... something: one of my articles, or a topic they believed I might be interested in based on the content of my site, or something out of the blue. Then this would happen:

I would disagree with some part of the writer's presentation, based on the fact that it lacked plausibility (the New Age factor), or it contradicted well-established facts, or, if the issue was more technical or scientific, the presentation lacked any supporting evidence.
On receiving my reply, instead of looking for supporting evidence to defend their claims, the writers would quickly abandon the original discussion and launch a personal attack.
Hoping to rescue the original discussion, I would then either present evidence for my position, or ask for evidence for the writers' position, or both.
At this point the writers would diverge like holiday fireworks, exploding in a hundred directions — every direction except that of debating the original issue using evidence.

Over time I have entertained a number of ideas about this behavior — people aren't trained to think in school, so they enter adulthood thinking issues are resolved by shouting, a viewpoint imperfectly expressed in this article. Or perhaps the people I've been talking with are all male twenty-somethings, saturated with testosterone and therefore hostages to their emotions, so that there is no chance for reasoned discussion. There's some evidence for the latter view, but it doesn't explain the sheer number of people who simply cannot stand to be told there is any defect in their views.

I have lately realized that psychologists have a name and a description for the behavior I've been witnessing. To those familiar with psychology, it will come as no surprise that it has a description — it seems that clinical psychology's primary goal is to describe everything, while explaining nothing.

The name for the condition is narcissism, and the description is of someone permanently stuck in a six-year-old's view of reality. Not to oversimplify a complex condition, but narcissists (by which I mean the severe, clinical kind, not everyday narcissism) replace both the real person they are, and their real relationship with the world, with fantasies. For a six-year-old this is a normal stage of development, and normal children later figure out that they are not perfect or omnipotent, but that life is interesting and worthwhile anyway.

Narcissists, by contrast, and for reasons no one has sorted out, get stuck in a post-infant, pre-adult stage of development, usually forever. For their entire lives the typical narcissist exhibits some traits that are normal for a six-year-old, like a naïve reliance on the views of authority figures, while secretly resenting the power of those authorities. But adult narcissists show behaviors that are brought on by their having gotten stuck in infantile behavior while simultaneously being pushed into adulthood.

Adults are expected to possess some resilience toward reasoned disagreement, and by so doing derive benefit from the knowledge and experience of other adults. Unfortunately, people discover about adult narcissists that they can't lift themselves above a deadly cycle of fantastic claims and a pathological inability to listen, followed by rage, over and over, forever.

To summarize, narcissists are people who have not grown up, and who will probably never grow up. They only appear to be adults. Adults welcome the chance to learn something new, to correct mistaken beliefs, while narcissists, when confronted by the report of any personal shortcoming, would prefer killing the reporter to accepting the report.

I sort narcissists into two varieties, overt and covert. Overt narcissists proclaim their wildly distorted view of the world and face the consequences, a recipe for one personal disaster after another. Most of us know the names of a few overt narcissists — Charlie Manson (California, 1969), Jim Jones (French Guiana, 1978), David Koresh (Waco, Texas, 1993). These are people who would rather kill everyone in sight (including themselves) than acknowledge any personal shortcoming. Covert narcissists are equally handicapped, but they use a strategy that conceals their pathology in the short term: instead of asserting personal authority, they choose authority figures whose views roughly correspond to their own.

By adopting the protective coloration of the True Believer, covert narcissists fit into everyday society better than the overt variety. By carefully selecting authority figures, the covert narcissist can lead a seemingly normal life, until and unless someone doubts the authority of their authorities, at which point they revert to a classic narcissistic rage, followed by the selection of a new authority. All this posturing is meant to avoid the circumstance that all varieties of narcissist deeply dread — having to acknowledge that they are wrong, and that there is something they haven't yet learned. For a narcissist, that is an occasion for panic and rage, not reflection and study.

Modern society offers all sorts of havens for the covert narcissist: religion, some parts of academia, even clinical psychology. Each of these shelters offers an association with seemingly unimpeachable authority, therefore it meets the narcissist's need to be thought correct without the drudgery of learning anything difficult or engaging in the high-wire act of original thought.

Traits

To expand a bit on the above points, narcissists are typically rather shallow people, forever stuck in a preliminary stage of intellectual evolution. In the normal course of individual development, one goes through a phase of acquiring established facts from what seem to be sources of unimpeachable authority, followed by a much more creative phase in which one may make a personal contribution to the store of human knowledge by assembling known facts and ideas into something new. In a narcissist, the second of these phases of personal development never takes place. Instead, the narcissist gets stuck in phase one, complete reliance on external authority, and may never realize the second, more risky stage, that of personal creativity, even exists.

As usual in psychology, no one knows why a narcissist's personal development is arrested in just this way. Obviously attaching oneself to an external source of authority offers a shallow kind of absolute certainty, and there are a number of ready sources for such authority — religion, law, and a naïve perception of science as a collection of laws or facts (see below for why this is a wrongheaded perception of science).

Narcissists typically attach themselves to the more dogmatic and less flexible sources of authority, sources unlikely to undergo modification, because the entire point is to be absolutely certain — more certain than life really is — and be beyond the possibility of refutation or criticism. This means narcissists find themselves attracted to such callings as religion, law enforcement, and, ironically, clinical psychology, because these fields contain a very high percentage of inflexible content, and little possibility for challenge or refutation of their principles.

The basic idea is that a narcissist wants to secure himself against the need to say, "Okay, I made a mistake, I was wrong." To a narcissist, this is a fate worse than death, and many narcissists quite literally suffer death to avoid the possibility.

Normal people are willing to be found wrong, over and over again, because this is in the nature of life. Such people expect their personal creative process to eventually bear fruit, and are willing to experiment with reality, walk paths not yet explored, sometimes stumble and fall, in the hope of contributing something new to the store of human knowledge.

At some risk of oversimplification, a normal person is willing to be wrong 100 times in order to create something uniquely new and useful, while a narcissist sacrifices this opportunity, this stage of personal evolution, in order to be secure against the possibility of being found wrong. For a normal person, being wrong is the price we pay for the creative process. For a narcissist, being wrong is too high a price to pay — better to label other people as wrong, from within an impregnable fortress of mediocrity. Unfortunately, in exchange for an infantile kind of security, narcissists sacrifice any chance to positively influence the world.

The entire modern world, all of science, medicine, and technology, represents the harvest of people willing to make mistakes and acknowledge their errors. Narcissists cannot contribute to this process, because it involves risk, and narcissists won't take risks. A narcissist will typically be found standing, arms folded, in the middle of the path to the future, insisting they are right, and they often are right — about something that doesn't matter any more.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." — Albert Einstein.

Science

By giving evidence the highest standing, and by dismissing all authority out of hand, at first glance science seems to represent the antithesis of the narcissist's game plan. In a pure, abstract sense this is true, and if science were entirely uniform and separate from the world, narcissists would avoid science at all costs. But the reality is more complex.

This may surprise some who have learned the basics of science and the scientific method, but some covert narcissists actually become scientists, publish papers, and win wide recognition. This is deplorable but true, but it is never true for long, because ... well, to put it simply, truth has a persistence that falsehood can't bear.

A case in point is the recently exposed South Korean scientist Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, who had previously been lauded as a pioneer in the new field of stem-cell research. This is a particularly egregious example of scientific fraud, because recent investigations show that nearly all of Dr. Hwang's most important work was faked. And, true to the credo of the narcissist, in the midst of his public humiliation, while apologizing for his fakery, Dr. Hwang brightened up and proceeded to place blame on his coworkers for misleading him (avoidance of personal responsibility is a litmus test for narcissism).

This fraud will be examined for a long time, because Dr. Hwang wasn't toiling in darkness and secrecy, but in a very public forum, and he published a number of claims over a period of years that could have been checked out by other scientists in a more timely way. He was named "Researcher of the Year" by the prestigious journal Scientific American, while Time Magazine proclaimed that "the quality of Hwang's science is unimpeachable." The latter claim is typical of journalists, who never seem to grasp that all scientific theories and evidence are by definition impeachable, and for all time.

What is interesting about this case is the sort of "science" that narcissists do. To a scientist, all that matters is testing theories against reality: does nature support my theory? Consequently, putting forth a theory is only the beginning of a process that ends with either confirming evidence gleaned from direct observation of nature, or the discarding of the theory. By contrast, to a narcissist, evidence is an adversary, therefore once a theory is uttered, the process grinds to a halt and someone uncorks the champagne. To understand why this is true, one must remember that a narcissist is in essence a child, not an adult, and when deciding how to cope, reality testing can't compare to magical thinking.

Notwithstanding this and other examples of scientific fraud, over the long term science really is antithetical to narcissism. The simplest way of saying it is that in the spotlight of reality, a scientist presents evidence, while a narcissist lapses into denial and rage. At their respective best, the scientist might create a vaccine, while the narcissist will likely create an embarrassing spectacle.

New Age Thinking and Postmodernism

The so-called New Age movement, and New Age thinking, at least to the degree that the latter expression isn't an oxymoron, turns out to be an ideal playground for narcissism. New Age believers proclaim their independence from the boring, excessively strict ideas of their forebears, their fixation on evidence, their silly assertion that effects arise from causes for other than magical reasons, and the idea that science is a legitimate way to evaluate reality. Such silly, old-fashioned ideas.

Most New Age believers are too poorly educated to recognize what they are giving up along with intellectual rigor. But many in academia, people who in principle should know better, have adopted a notion that is the cerebral equivalent of the distinctly blue-collar New Age agenda, something called "postmodernism." At some small risk of oversimplification, postmodernism is the idea that there are no shared truths, that all experience is subjective. Therefore (just an example of something a postmodernist might say) science and logic, by proclaiming the legitimacy of shared experience and observation, are just ways to enslave otherwise free spirits.

The intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of postmodernism seems to be lost on most of its advocates (except, of course, for the nihilists, who don't care). Put simply, if the postmodernist thesis is true, then it's pointless to say so, because there is no legitimacy to shared ideas, including the shared idea of postmodernism. Or, as Cedric Watts of the University of Sussex put it, very clearly reveling in the irony: "Postmodernism: the Grande Narrative that denies Grande Narrative."

But to narcissists, in their special, twisted relationship with reality, postmodernism and New Age ideas merely affirm the behaviors they have already adopted (or, in truth, been forced into by circumstances). Another litmus test for narcissism is pathological lying, but by adopting a postmodernist outlook, the narcissist can rationalize lying on the ground that there aren't any real truths anyway. Postmodernism being what it is, the narcissist can't persuade anyone else of this notion, but that is not important, because a narcissist's thought processes are for internal consumption — narcissists don't ordinarily care how other people react to what they think or do until it's too late, just like the six-year-old they really are.

But there is a sad fact at the core of narcissists' personalities, one that explains their preference for lies over truth. It is that the most absurd falsehood they might craft is more attractive overall than any truth about themselves or their circumstances. A narcissist's life is a beauty contest where a dark pond's false reflection struggles against daylight's ugly truth.

Encountering the Perfect

Psychologists are perfectly competent to describe mental conditions, but are unable to explain them. The latter fact stands in the way of anything resembling an overarching theory of mental conditions, which is why clinical psychology is not a science, a topic I address in this article. Meanwhile, psychologists, doing what they do best, estimate that narcissists, by which I mean serious, clinical narcissists, make up 0.5 to 1% of the U.S. general population. That is a staggering number of narcissists, as in three million, if one grants credence to the estimate's high side.

But, sheer numbers aside, the ratio of narcissists to normal people in my online encounters is much higher than 0.5-1% overall. Some of this arises from the moth and candle effect I describe above, where narcissists see the Internet as a safe playground. Another factor is that I post a lot of articles on my site, articles that lead to dialogues, dialogues that preferentially attract narcissists.

All fine, except for the practical difficulty that narcissists don't have dialogues. A dialogue is by definition a communication between equals, either of whom might adjust his thinking when confronted by some new useful fact or avenue for research. Narcissists can't engage in dialogues because, in a free exchange of ideas, they might turn out to be wrong, and that is unthinkable.

The Psychology Experts

Don't make the mistake of thinking that psychologists typically enter the field to share their remarkably well-adjusted personalities with the rest of humanity. It is more likely, based both on personal observation and a certain amount of evidence in the field, that being a clinical psychologist is more like being in Alcoholics Anonymous — you can help other alcoholics because you have credibility with them, because you are one yourself.

What I have found in writing about psychology, in particular when saying that clinical psychology isn't a science, is that when psychologists write to argue against my thesis, they are very likely to abandon any pretense of reason. Because their capacity to reason boarded the last bus out of town, which is just now a small dust spot on a very large horizon, they fail to grasp that by arguing emotionally for one viewpoint and refusing to evaluate any contrary evidence, they are only confirming my original point.

Case in point. A psychology professor replied to my article "Is Psychology a Science?" by arguing rather half-heartedly that it is, but in a fashion that undercut his own position.....

In his response, this psychology professor's position consisted largely of ad hominem and ad verecundiam arguments, arguing against the person rather than the position, and arguing from authority respectively; both fatal logical errors.

But to get back to our topic. This was a covert narcissist, positioned in academia in such a fashion that he is permanently shielded from any challenge to his ideas (e.g. tenured), possessed little grasp of how science works, and showed little awareness of the kinds of arguments that are universally recognized as logical errors.

I pointed this out to him, and in his reply he described science as a "preference," saying several times "If you prefer to use scientific reasoning to argue then use the methods of science," as though science were a optional component in sorting out reality. Apparently a postmodernist as well as a narcissist.

In another, very similar correspondence, a psychology professor responded to the issue of whether psychology is a science by criticizing science. This was very clearly a narcissist, entirely unaware of how he sounded, and one who persisted in writing me long after I had abandoned the correspondence as pointless, and I finally had to blacklist him from my site.

But neither of these examples was a severe narcissist. Debilitating in both cases to be sure, but not incapacitating. On the other hand, having a razor-sharp intellect and a thorough grasp of scientific reasoning are not prerequisites for their positions. In fact, such qualifications might work against them.

Blind Fury

I've noticed something about women — when they take up something that men are known for, often as not they do it better (while getting paid half as much). But the meaning of "better" can depend on circumstances — if the thing men are doing is bad, when women do it, it's better ... meaning it's worse.

As it happens, most narcissists are men, about 75% overall. But women can be narcissists too, and for those who are, consistent with my theory, they put the male version to shame.....

Conclusion

According to many mental health professionals, the biggest single mistake people make in dealing with narcissists is to underestimate how dangerous they are. A good percentage of prison inmates are narcissists whose impulses got out of control, and the only thing separating a typical clinical narcissist from iron bars is a fortuitous mixture of circumstances. Narcissists live in a perpetual state of barely suppressed rage, are frequently unbelievably reckless, and appear to be oblivious to the risk their behavior poses to themselves and to others.....

This is all trivial to see from an adult perspective, but the point is narcissists don't have an adult perspective. They have the outlook and instincts of a six-year-old child, forever. It is this hard-wired intellectual and emotional limitation that motivates mental health professionals to almost universally offer this advice: the best way to deal with narcissists is to get away from them, as soon as possible, before they destroy you. That is a lesson I am still learning.

*Full Article*

http://arachnoid.com/psychology/narcissism.php

[R.R]

Quote:Rude Behavior at Work Is Increasing and Affects the Bottom Line

Jan. 30, 2013

Rudeness at work is rampant, and it's on the rise. In 2011, half of the workers surveyed by Professors Christine Porath of Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and Christine Pearson of Thunderbird School of Global Management said they were treated rudely at least once a week -- up from a quarter in 1998. New research from Porath and Pearson shows the tangible cost of this bad behavior.

Through a poll of 800 managers and employees in 17 industries, Porath and Pearson discovered just how people's reactions play out. Among workers who've been on the receiving end of incivility:

• 48% intentionally decreased their work effort • 47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work • 38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work • 80% lost work time worrying about the incident • 63% lost work time avoiding the offender • 66% said that their performance declined • 78% said that their commitment to the organization declined • 12% said that they left their job because of the uncivil treatment • 25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers

Experiments and other reports offer additional insights about the effects of incivility. Here are some examples of what can happen.

1) Creativity suffers -- In an experiment conducted with Amir Erez, a professor of management at the University of Florida, participants who were treated rudely by other subjects were 30% less creative than others in the study.

2) Performance and team spirit deteriorate -- Survey results and interviews indicate that simply witnessing incivility has negative consequences. In one experiment, witnesses to incivility were less likely than others to help out, even when the person they'd be helping had no apparent connection to the uncivil person.

3) Customers turn away -- According to a survey of 244 consumers, disrespectful behavior by employees makes people uncomfortable, and they're quick to walk out without making a purchase.

4) Managing incidents is expensive -- According to a study conducted by Accountemps and reported in Fortune, managers and executives at Fortune 1,000 firms spend 13% percent of their work time -- the equivalent of seven weeks a year -- mending employee relationships and otherwise dealing with the aftermath of incivility.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...184048.htm

[youlaffinyet]

i guess this is a good-a subject as any to start with on ConCen. good, and maybe intense, read ahead of me it seems, though. i'll dive back into it after i watch a flick.
dedicated guy huh ? haha this place is puttin the biggest grin on my face. never been apart/seen anythin like this before. cheers bud

[R.R]

Hope you do find it useful, just to reiterate, the thread is a study on the effects of modern culture on everyday people. We all have questions as to why the world is the way it is. Its one thing having manipulation from the rulers but that still requires public acceptance whether real or manufactured.

Enjoy

[Watchdog]

Rude Behavior at Work Is Increasing and Affects the Bottom Line

...

Rude Behavior at Work:

What a surprise to learn that work slaves are rude. Them slaves should be happy slaves.


Bottom Line is affected:

Poor slave master. The rudeness of his work slaves is depriving him...

Punitive measures must be put in place at this instant!

Smiles everyone smiles :-)

[R.R]

An unhappy wage slave shouldn't be making their fellow slaves' lives a misery though. It helps fuel the continuing surge of misanthropy and increases the appeal of escapism and the victim mentality, reducing responsibility and further increasing narcissism.

[R.R]

Quote:Narcissism. The american contribution

A conversation of Raffaele Siniscalco with Otto Kernberg

Raffaele Siniscalco: American psychoanalysis has made an original contribution above all in the definition and study of narcissistic personalities. First of all, what is a narcissistic personality?

Otto Kernberg: Narcissism refers to two kinds of concepts: one at a very theoretical level and one at a very clinical level. At the theoretical level-within psychoanalytic metapsychology-it refers to the libidinal investment of the Self. At the clinical level, it means the normal or pathological regulation of self-esteem. Those two definitions are related in the sense that a normal Self and its normal investment with libido assures the regulation of self-esteem. Normally the regulation of self-esteem is assured by an integrated concept of Self in contrast to a split or disorganized concept of Self that gives a general sense of uncertainty and lack of capacity for internal well-being and safety. So, an integrated sense of Self is a first precondition for normal narcissism.

Second, we normally incorporate the images of those who are close to us, we internalize them, and develop an internal world where we feel surrounded by our friends and the people whom we love and who love us, and who support the representation of our Self that we have. So normal self-esteem is strengthened by an integrated representation of Self and an internal world of significant others whose representations we have internalized. Third, normal self-esteem is also regulated by our internal consciousness: the super-ego and the ego ideal, in psychoanalytic metapsychology, that is to say an internal mental structure which tells us you are doing all right, you deserve to think well about yourself, you can be proud of yourself. Normal self-esteem is also supported by our expressing instinctual needs in an acceptable way, by our sexual and aggressive impulses. Normal self-esteem is finally and obviously supported by our being effective, successful in pursuing our tasks, ambitions and ideals. So, there are many sources that regulate normal self-esteem and protect it.

When everything is in order, we call it normal narcissism. There are many individuals whose internal value system, whose super-ego, has remained at a childlike level. They feel good not because they live up to adult values of maturity, intelligence, depth, compassion, friendliness, tact, and concern invested in others, but they feel good if they are beautiful, admired, have shining clothes, bright cars, in other words, ideals that are normal for a little child, but childish for an adult. We call this normal infantile narcissism, and it only becomes a problem if it persists into adulthood, which is the case when there is a general non-specific personality disorder or character pathology as a by-product of unresolved psyche conflicts causing a fixation at infantile values. For example, it is normal for a little girl to feel that if she is clean and doesn't touch her genitals in public, she is a good girl. But in general, this is not something that any woman of forty does, otherwise it may become a disaster, an unconscious repression of all her sexuality. So the adult's superego creates unconscious conflicts. In other words, the absence of an adult superego and the dominance of infantile superego values creates unconscious conflicts and symptoms, with a by-product being a fixation at infantile narcissistic values. So, I have talked about normal adult and normal infantile narcissism, and a certain infantile narcissistic attitude in individuals who are stuck with unconscious conflicts.

A particular pathology of narcissism is the narcissistic personality disorder, the prototype of pathological narcissism that is a major source of pathology. About 30% of all patients with significant personality disorders have such pathological narcissistic features. And this is an area where we have gained a lot of understanding both in diagnosis and treatment. It is one area where psychoanalysis has made a significant contribution to the understanding of personality disorders and their treatment, because the psychoanalysis of the narcissistic personality is capable of resolving them. Interestingly enough, the narcissistic personality was the only narcissistic pathology that Freud did not describe in his seminal article On Narcissism of 1914, where he initiated the whole study of normal and pathological narcissism. Freud described all other areas in great detail, except for the narcissistic personality.

Abraham, in an article of 1919 on a particular resistance to psychoanalytic treatment, describes the characteristics of these patients, but without being aware that he was describing a major character pathology. It was only in the 1960s and 1970s that psychoanalytic thinking really developed a clear understanding of these disorders and methods for their treatment. What then is pathological narcissism and what are the problems of the narcissistic personality?

Clinically, these individuals show an abnormal self-love and way of loving others, as well as problems with their internal morality system and their superego. What is abnormal self love? Individuals who are over-involved with themselves, who are grandiose, who have excessive ambitions regarding their capabilities, who are exhibitionist, self-centered, selfish, and have great difficulty in depending on other people desperately need the admiration of others. They live on admiration, but not on real dependency. They tend to oscillate between a sense of grandiosity and episodes of severe feelings of inferiority and failure they develop when that grandiosity is punctured. There is a combination of grandiosity, over-involvement with themselves, sometimes to the extent of recklessness, arrogance and simply acting in inappropriate ways, which oscillates with feelings of insecurity. So, while they seem to love themselves excessively, it is in a frail way. With regard to others, perhaps the most important aspect is an inordinate envy of others, both conscious and unconscious. They have a dominance of oral problems from very early stages of development, and particularly intense oral aggression derived from conflicts in the infant-mother and child-mother relationship. And the form that this aggression takes is envy, the hatred of something that another person has: they want what they don't have, and so they try to spoil it, to destroy it in the other person. The envy of others leads to a number of severe problems: first, the need to devalue what others have as a defense against envy. They devalue that which they think is great, what they would like to have but not have. And that devaluation is an unconscious process which interferes with learning. For example, they may want to learn something from another person, but they can't because they envy the knowledge of the other person, so they cannot learn. Their incapacity to depend on others derives from that envy. To depend on somebody else, we have to appreciate that person, that that would generate envy. They cannot depend, they can only accept admiration. They tend to be exploitive of others, they tend to steal others' ideas, they have difficulty in accepting things from others because it gives them a sense of inferiority, and they are always so concerned with who is superior and who is inferior that it rules their significant relationships to others. So their relations with others are superficial, shallow; they lack empathy, and have difficulties in committing themselves. There are practical consequences: they fall in love, but envy the person with whom they fall in love, and so fall out of love as fast as they fall in love. There is a narcissistic form of promiscuity, traditionally seen only in men, but now also in women, as women's liberation facilitates women's imitation of men's behavior. Typically, a man falls in love with a woman, has sex with her, and then devalues her: she is no longer interesting, he has to go on to the next, and so the same process repeats itself endlessly. Their difficulties in appreciating what they get from others because they devalue it, also makes it impossible for them to enjoy what they themselves have, and there is a chronic sense of emptiness that they try to compensate for with exciting experiences, sometimes with drugs or alcohol.

I spoke about abnormal relations to others, to the Self and, thirdly, about abnormal relations to the internal conscious. What in psychoanalysis is called the Ego Ideal-ideals and aspirations incorporated into one's superego-is absorbed into their Self. They don't have a normal Self, they have an abnormal, grandiose Self, constituted by real Self-representations, ideal representations of Self-as they would like to be ideally-and ideal representation of others. They incorporate what they see as ideal in others and see themselves that way. They live on the incorporation of everything that is ideal into a false Self-structure. That, at the same time, implies a devaluation of others, so the internal world of representation of others does not reconfirm them, as happens in normal narcissism. The superego is weak because the ideal part of the superego is incorporated into the Self. What remains are the prohibitive aspects of the superego; and so the superego become so severe that, to protect themselves against their superego, they reproject it onto the environment, by seeing other people as critical and demanding; and they do not make demands on themselves. So, their internal moral structure is weakened. The price they pay is that they lose the normal regulation of self-esteem. The normal superego tells us "you did well" or "you didn't do well", so our self-esteem oscillates. But their weak superego can't perform that function, so they either feel great or, if the superego finally tells them "you made a fool of yourself", their self-esteem collapses totally. Their self-esteem fluctuates widely because they don't have the compensating representation of significant others, nor a good superego. They have a sense of aloneness, they need others, but can't appreciate them.

Under mild circumstances this means severe mood swings, and a tendency to depression. They have a shame morality, not a guilt morality: this means that they don't do things they shouldn't do just because they are terribly afraid of getting caught and of being humiliated. They don't do bad things not out of a sense of guilt and morality, but out of a sense of shame. These are relatively mild phenomena, but severe cases have a severe deterioration of the superego, where you find a combination of severe narcissism: anti-social behavior, ego-symptomatic aggression, and severe paranoid features, suspiciousness and distrust of others. This is called the syndrome of malignant narcissism. And there is still the most severe form of narcissism, wherein there is a total destruction of the superego, that constitutes the anti-social personality or the psychopathic personality.

Severe criminals, whether aggressive or passive-stealing, murdering, exploiting-have a total incapacity for any guilt feelings or concern for others, and are practically and unfortunately untreatable. So, the narcissistic personality operates on a broad spectrum. The typical case has an excellent prognosis for treatment, the most serious cases, with severe anti-social behavior, a bad one.

Now, in their psyche's structure, instead of a normal Self they have an abnormal grandiose one with a projection outside of all undesired, unacceptable parts of the Self, a weakening of the superego, and the absence of an internal world of object relations. It is a serious pathology of the psyche's structures. How does that look during the treatment? First of all, why do these patients come to treatment? Normally they feel great, but if they have any symptom or difficulty, they feel like collapsing, because they have to be perfect to feel well, they cannot tolerate the normal weaknesses of life. The most severe cases appear already in childhood between ages five and ten; these are children who become very dominant and controlling, who have to be number one among their friends whom they treat as slaves, who have difficulty at school, who don't have mutuality, who do not show gratitude, and who have difficulty with learning because of this process of unconscious envy for knowledge, so they have learning difficulties.

Later on, you find some cases in early adolescence, because of their arrogance, grandiosity and inter-personal difficulties. A very typical syndrome is that they are either the best students or the worst. If they are intelligent they are great because, when something comes easy, they love it because they are on top and they learn very easily. But they reject anything that is more difficult, because it would generate envy, so they never learn it. All the brothers of a patient of mine learned to ski, but my patient never learned to ski because he couldn't do it immediately as well as his brothers, so he stopped. He became an excellent swimmer, since nobody in his family swam, but he could never learn skiing. This illustrates that many school failures are derived from narcissistic pathology. During adolescence, they may have many friends at school. But, as an adult, your friends depend on your personality, so they have more serious difficulties at work and with others, and come to treatment because they don't understand why others don't love them. They don't see that their arrogance, grandiosity and lack of consideration puts others off. Other patients come because in intimate relations they are terribly selfish. For example, a narcissistic man marries a beautiful woman because she is so stunning that everybody will envy him. But once married, because of his unconscious envy, he loses all interest in her and can't appreciate her. He feels her demands as terrible, and treats her as if she were willing to be a slave. If she is not, there is a terrible marital conflict. So, they come because of difficulties with others. Later in life, those who have done well in the past come for treatment because with age they have lost their beauty, their attractiveness, their power, their health, and they have great difficulties in accepting these normal losses in life because their self-esteem is so frail.

What happens in treatment? The psychoanalytic treatment of these patients first of all permits us to see their incapacity to depend on the analyst. They treat the analyst either as if the analyst were the greatest man in the world and they depend on him, or as if they were the greatest patients and the analyst were their admirer. There is always a one-sided great admiration rather than any mutuality, and that has to be analyzed. These patients tend to exert omnipotent control on the analyst, the analyst must be as good as they, because if he is not, they feel depreciated. But he can't be better than them, because they would become envious, so he has to be as good as them. So, they tend to be very controlling, and cannot imagine that the analyst might be interested in treating them for themselves, instead of for their prestige or the money. They project onto the analyst their own difficulty in investing in others. So in the transference, you analyze all these aspects and gradually undo the pathological grandiose Self, decomposing it into its component internal relationships that can be worked through in the transference. As you do that, these patients develop intense envy, all the unconscious comes out into the open, and they become-as they must-aware of their aggression and exploitiveness. They experience great suffering. But, as they learn to tolerate those feelings, they can gradually see the infantile origin of this, free themselves from it, and eventually establish an in-depth relationship, developing feelings of gratitude, and of guilt for their own aggression, which permits them gradually to incorporate what they receive from others, to not feel envious any more, and to be able to establish in-depth relationships and resolve their pathological narcissism.

Raffaele Siniscalco: What insights can an analysis of narcissism give to understanding syndromes like psychosis, criminal behavior, borderline pathologies and perversions?

Otto Kernberg: I have already mentioned how criminal behavior may reflect the most severe types of narcissism with the most severe deterioration of the superego, so that the theory of narcissism opens out to an understanding of anti-social behavior and to the understanding of the psychopath. When Freud described narcissism, he also thought that psychosis developed from narcissistic conditions, because the libido was withdrawn from the environment. We don't think in that simple way any more. We think that psychotic patients are much more invested in their surroundings and that their conflicts have more to do with primitive aggression than with a pathology of the libido. And so the term narcissism is more and more used for narcissistic personalities, and less and less to talk about psychosis.

Regarding borderline pathology, when you analyze the pathological grandiose Self, you find underneath a lack of integration of the concept of Self, and of the concept of the significance of others. This is characteristic of borderline personality organization, and common to all severe personality disorders. In other words, underneath the pathological grandiose Self is a lack of integration of a normal Self, which is called identity's diffusion. And when you dissolve the pathological grandiose Self in the treatment, the identity's diffusion comes to the surface. So, in the middle of the treatment, narcissistic patients look like borderline patients, already on the road to improvement. So, pathological narcissism is a secondary complication to borderline personality organization. Narcissistic patients may look better on the surface, because the pathological grandiose Self helps them to adjust better superficially, but paradoxically they are sick because there is a greater destruction of the world of internalized object relations than in the ordinary borderline case. The ordinary borderline case is more like impulse, control, anxiety intolerance, and chaos, yet it is better able to relate to people and to be clingingly dependent, in contrast to the narcissistic personality. Thus, the narcissistic personality is a secondary development out of borderline personality organization, and in the course of treatment, the borderline pathology emerges in the transference and can then be treated like any borderline pathology....

Raffaele Siniscalco: Why do you think that American psychoanalysis has focused especially on narcissism? Is it perhaps because it is the most prevalent type of pathology in the United States?

Otto Kernberg: It is quite prevalent, although I don't know whether it is more prevalent in the United States than in other countries. We don't have sufficient studies to really answer that. It has been studied here because ego psychology was very interested in character pathology, so that from an ego-psychological viewpoint, to study pathological character-i.e., personality disorders-was a natural development and, with all due modesty, I have contributed a little with my work in this direction. But there have also been important contributions from other ego psychological authors-Anne Rich, Edith Jacobson, Ellen Tartackov, Peter Wannerwaltz, etc.

The fact that Christopher Lash, a social psychologist, used the psychoanalytic theory of narcissism to explain aspects of American culture contributed enormously to generalize the concept. But what the relationship between a narcissistic culture and a narcissistic individual pathology consists of, this is not clear. It is tempting to describe certain cultures in terms of certain pathologies of character. But one has to keep in mind that while character is influenced by culture, those relationships are more indirect and complex than meets the eye. For example, to say that the Victorian age with its sexual repression produced an hysterical culture and the age of hysteria is fine as a first approach, but misses the complexity of sexuality during the Victorian era. Or to say that Czarist Russia had a culture of depressive personalities because of Russian psyche misses the complexity, just like saying that American culture is narcissistic. Certainly narcissism is exploited by a consumer society that appeals to the consumers' narcissistic wishes, but from there to describe the culture as narcissistic is a big step. So, there are connections, but they are more indirect and complex than simply the prevalence of the narcissistic personality in this culture.

*Full Article*

http://www.psychomedia.it/jep/number12-13/kernberg.htm

[R.R]

In the consumer behaviour thread, we covered how the psychology industry manufactures a victim mentality. Here is the narcissistic appeal of the victim mentality:

Quote:Narcissists Who Cry: The Other Side of the Ego

By Samuel López De Victoria, Ph.D.

Have you ever noticed that when you have gotten very sick or hospitalized, the person you thought was your friend never asked or called? When the same situation had previously happened to them, you were there for them.

Many of you have been in a relationship or been a friend with someone who was an extreme narcissist. These types of relationships are filled with drama unless you totally please the narcissist, which is impossible. The typical extreme narcissists are full of themselves and are overtly pompous. I would like to focus on a kind of extreme narcissist that most people fail to recognize. First, let me explain what extreme narcissism is all about.

Extreme narcissism is an egotistical preoccupation with self. It focuses on personal preferences, aspirations, needs, success, and how one’s self is perceived by others. Some basic narcissism is healthy. This kind of narcissism is better termed as responsibly taking care of oneself, or what I would call “normal” or “healthy” narcissism.

The egotistical narcissists are typically created in one of two ways. One way is through excessive pampering on the part of the parents. Parents create an attitude in the child that he/she is better than others and entitled to special privileges. This creates an arrogant child who lacks a healthy dose of gratitude and humility. It describes the proverbial brat that no one likes.

Another way that extreme narcissists are created is when a child receives a significant emotional wound or a series of them culminating in a major trauma of separation/attachment. This can happen when the parents, as narcissists themselves, are emotionally disconnected from their child. It creates a dysfunction in the ability for the narcissist to connect emotionally to others. No matter how socially skilled an extreme narcissist is, he/she has a major attachment dysfunction and wound. This wounded person constructs one or more false fronts in order to survive and insulate themselves from people because of distrust and fear.

A narcissist is a completely self-absorbed person. There can be no other gods in an extreme narcissist’s world, regardless if they say they believe in God or not. In practical terms, a narcissist is God in his/her own imagination. Ego rules supremely in the narcissist’s life. In light of this, what energizes a narcissist is whatever fuels the ego. Ego loves pleasure and gain. In most cases, these can come from one of two ways of feeding the ego. One way is through aggrandizement, which means “to make bigger.” Ultimately, the extreme narcissist feels he/she is most special and, therefore, entitled. To the extreme narcissist, people are actually things to use.

Another way that the narcissist’s ego gets special attention is through the role of being a victim. Welcome to the victimized extreme narcissist. Most persons recognize ego as arrogance. At the same time they fail to see the subtle deception of ego when it takes the role of a being a victim. As kind and compassion-driven human beings, we easily are fooled by this form of extreme ego. We are constantly hearing the voices of the needy in the media through a variety of forms. The disenfranchised, the poor, the homeless, the hurting, the refugees, the abused, and the list goes on. What we often do not see is that we are many times shamed by these voices for not doing enough for them. All along it is easy to be manipulated as we respond from our hearts. The deception of the ego is that the narcissist can hide behind misfortune and victimization in order to shame you into feeling and believing that they suffer more than you do. They will say that you don’t care enough for them. They will make you feel that you have not done enough to help them. The ego wants attention, control, gain, and power over others by positioning itself as a “poor and helpless” victim. It does this; all the while it soaks up the attention and control over others. In the eyes of an extreme narcissist, their situation is always right and totally justified. Instead of taking responsibility for self and consequences, the extreme narcissist tries to make others feel responsible for their plight. Because extreme narcissists are incredibly adept at the game of manipulation, they will always find a way to turn the tables on you. They will try to make you responsible and feel guilty for not helping them or taking their side and cause.

Extreme narcissists often shift gears from visible grandiosity to acting that they are better than others because they suffer more than others. You can see an extreme narcissist who hogs the limelight and credit from achievements and self-praise also getting similar recognition from milking an injury or a seeming misfortune that has occurred to them. Victimized extreme narcissists are on the constant prowl looking for any gullible soul that will believe their version of calamity whether it is real, exaggerated, or fictitious. What they claim that makes their calamity different is that it is worse for them. Beware of this kind of extreme narcissism. It is just as selfish and manipulating as that of a pompous egotist. The moment they see that you don’t “fully” cooperate and act with extreme concern for them, serving and pampering them, they will eliminate you from their list of “loving” folks. They may even badmouth you and gossip or slander you as being selfish and uncaring. Imagine that! I have seen these types over and over again in work I have done in the field of pain medicine management. It is usually the individuals who are humble, full of gratitude, and joyful who are the ones most capable of coping with their injuries and pain. Those who are selfish, moaning, and full of self-pity take much longer to heal or sometimes never heal but go further downhill in their health. My recommendation is to avoid treating this person’s misfortune as the ultimate suffering of all humans. Be polite. Recognize their pain and no more. Don’t be pulled into their web of emotional manipulation. Stay away from extreme narcissists.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/20...f-the-ego/

[R.R]

Quote:Totalitarianism and the Empty Self

By J.R. Nyquist

In the concluding chapter of The Black Book of Communism Stéphane Courtois asks, "Why did modern Communism, when it appeared in 1917, almost immediately turn into a system of bloody dictatorship and into a criminal regime?" Going through the details of Lenin's career, Courtois fails to notice the obvious. One may set aside Lenin's theories as so much erroneous rubbish. One may set aside every detail of his career. The cause of Communism's bloodthirsty history may be found in the grandiosity of Communism as an idea, and the grandiose self-conception of the Communist as an agent of that idea. The successful strata of Communist revolutionaries suffer from an enormous, bloated egotism. One has merely to examine the psychology of a Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. Such are the special pampered children of history, magnificent in their own eyes, epic heroes, supreme and god-like agents of history's splendid drama. Here one finds no sense of self-limitation. There is only self-expansion. Unlike the well-adjusted human being, the aspiring Communist dictator is soaked in arrogance. From all of this flows the bloodthirstiness of the mass murderer. Identifying himself with the forces of history, the Communist leader puts himself in God's shoes. Here is a narcissism so pathological, an emptiness so profound, that nothing may come of it except monstrous crime.

It is erroneous to think of Communism as an idealistic, altruistic dogma. The Communist, as an individual, assigns himself a role of exaggerated importance. He is bringing about the great liberation of man. So important is this task that nothing should be allowed to stand in its way. Everything must be sacrificed to the revolutionary ideal. And power, as the means by which the Great End can be realized, becomes the primary goal of the revolutionary individual. "I am not accumulating power for myself," says the Communist leader. "I am bringing freedom to the masses."

When asked whether Communists really worked for the abolition of state power, Chinese Dictator Mao Zedong wrote: "Yes, we do, but not right now; we cannot do it yet. Why? Because imperialism still exists, because domestic reaction still exists, because classes still exist in our country. Our present task is to strengthen the people's state apparatus - mainly the people's army, the people's police and the people's courts - in order to consolidate national defense and protect the people's interests." But what does this answer actually amount to? In essence, Mao could never give up power. His grandiosity sets him against the real forces of history. After all, you cannot become an historical force in your own right without waging war against all other historical forces. Imagine, if you can, how crazy such a self-estimation actually is.

While Courtois is surprised that Communist regimes invariably devolve into criminal regimes, the student of human nature feels no surprise whatsoever. The grandiose idealist is, by necessity, a monstrous egotist. "Our state is a people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class," said Mao. Here the dictator's grandiosity leads him to identify with the entire working class. Louis XIV supposedly said, "I am the state." Such grandiosity (if Louis actually said it) pales by comparison with the grandiosity of a party leader who says, "We are the working class, and the working class is the moving force in modern history." The psychological viciousness of those who impersonate the "forces of history" should not be underestimated. For that matter, those who pretend to speak for history, and who climb into power on the basis of that pretense, are necessarily the most dangerous individuals imaginable. It may also be said that grandiosity is the essence of totalitarian madness (exemplified by the selfish misfit who is void of common decency).

In his book, Psychology as Religion: the Cult of Self-Worship, Paul C. Vitz describes what psychologists must now contend with: "the empty self." When Christian belief prevailed, and culture was anchored to morality, the self was imbued with moral character. Now that nihilism prevails, the self has lost all pretense to solidity. Moral character is a relic. The individual has now become a nullity, though he thinks of himself as the end-all and be-all. From this observation it follows that the self, weakened by the collapse of morality and the rise of nihilistic forms of thought, now sustains itself from outside sources; namely, from the pursuit of pleasure and/or power. The inner resources needed for self-reliance and genuine confidence are now missing. Having lost its moral anchor, and any sense of community with forebears, the self drifts with the currents of consumer society. In making his argument, Vitz refers to an article titled Why the Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology. The author of this piece, Philip Cushman, clearly sounds an alarm. He describes psychotherapy and advertising as the "two professions most responsible for healing the empty self." Yet these professions offer a false set of solutions. "Both circumvent the bind by employing the life-style solution," explains Cushman, "a strategy that attempts to heal by covertly filling the empty self with accoutrements, values, and mannerisms of idealized figures [i.e., celebrities]. This strategy solves an old problem but creates new ones, including an opportunity for abuse by exploitive therapists, cult leaders, and politicians."

The empty self therefore becomes a political problem. An empty politician has a great deal to make up for. How will he compensate for his emptiness? The empty politician is easily drawn into a grandiose self assignment. And this must prove disastrous for society, as the promises of an empty politician are themselves empty. In fact, he brings about the opposite of what he promises. This has long been true of the totalitarian dictators. Increasingly it is true of democratically elected leaders in the West. It seems, as well, that the conflict between the totalitarian East and the consumerist West may, in the last analysis, devolve into a conflict between two types of emptiness: in the first instance, the emptiness of the characters in a Woody Allen film; in the second, the emptiness of "a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

"Inner emptiness may be expressed in many ways," noted Cushman, "such as low self-esteem, values confusion, eating disorders, drug abuse, and chronic consumerism. It may also take the form of an absence of personal meaning. This can manifest as a hunger for ... a leader or guru." The solution of the grandiose is to fill up their own emptiness by identifying themselves with the forces of destiny, with the working class, or the downtrodden masses. Here, the empty leader meets the empty follower, and the dynamic of the totalitarian state takes shape. It may be said, therefore: Beware the grandiose politician; and beware the breathless follower of the grandiose politician. We are bound to see more of both in the coming days. "The construction of the empty self is, in fact," wrote Cushman, "a product of a central cultural paradox. The self of our time is expected to function in a highly autonomous , isolated way. To accomplish this it is thought that the individual must develop an ability to be self-soothing, self-loving, and self-sufficient. And yet in order to develop this type of self, many psychologists argue that one must have a nurturing early environment that provides a great deal of empathy, attention, and mirroring. Who is to provide this environment? If adults are self-serving, highly ambitious, heavily bounded individuals, why would they choose to undergo the self-sacrifice and suffering necessary to be nurturing parents? Even with the best of intentions, empathic parenting is difficult to accomplish because many of the requisite traits have been constructed [i.e., taken] out of the self."

In his discussion of the isolated individual, Vitz says it is "no accident that many case histories in the selfist literature are people in conflict with their spouses or parents over some self-defined goal. With monotonous regularity, the selfist literature sides with those values that encourage divorce, breaking up, dissolution of marital and family ties. All of this is done in the name of growth...." In other words, the new therapeutic ethic is destructive of the fundamental building block of society - the family. The resulting atomization paves the way for totalitarianism; for if no cohesive structure in society remains except the state, then the state will become all-pervasive and all-powerful. And the state, developing into an enormous and parasitic bureaucracy, inevitably undermines the health of a national economy already under attack from abroad (see Kevin Freeman interview on Web page).

It is unlikely, therefore, that our current form of society is sustainable. A terrible hour of truth is on its way. An overwhelmingly large section of society has wandered off into narcissism, and there is no easy path of return. The crisis may even bring totalitarianism in its wake, though other outcomes are possible. The fundamentals of healthy social formation have broken down.

http://www.jrnyquist.com/Totalitarianism..._Self.html

[R.R]

Will Wright's Secret to Game Design: Narcissism

[R.R]

Quote:Doctor At Eating Disorder Clinic Claims Modeling Scouts Wait Outside To Recruit Patients

Ashley Lutz Apr. 19, 2013, 3:58 PM

A Swedish doctor at an eating disorder clinic has made the explosive claim that modeling scouts wait outside to recruit anorexic patients.

“We find this absolutely reprehensible. They [talent scouts] have been standing outside our clinic and trying to pick up our girls because they know that they are skinny,” Anna-Maria af Sandeberg, chief doctor at the Stockholm Center for Eating Disorders told British newspaper Metro.

The patients who are allegedly being targeted are 14- and 15-year-old girls, Sandeberg told the paper.

The report doesn't specify what agencies the scouts were working for.

She said that as a result of the modeling scouts, the clinic had to change its policy that patients could walk outside.

The clinic has about 1,700 patients, according to Metro.

The story is the latest critique of the fashion industry, which is often accused of promoting unhealthy body image.

"Indeed it seems highly unlikely that an agency would have to waste its time 'urging' a girl to lose weight when she is already anorexic to the point of hospitalization," writes Jenna Sauers at Jezebel. "Just pick her up out of that wheelchair, get that girl some five-inch heels, and stick her on the next flight to Paris."

http://www.businessinsider.com/model-sco...z2WUlQJTzI

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Quote:The narcissism of consumer society has left women unhappier than ever

Madeleine Bunting

The Guardian, Sunday 26 July 2009 20.00 BST

The standard assumption is that women's lives have dramatically improved over the last 50 years. They have considerably more personal freedom; and opportunities for education and employment have been transformed. As a result they have much greater financial independence, which has given them more power to shape their lives. So far, so easy.

But something odd is going on that no one can explain. These huge social changes are not making women happier, and, according to several significant studies, women's happiness relative to men's has declined in the last 25 years. This includes women of all age groups, and it is evident in many countries, particularly in the US and the UK.

Let's start with the most alarming evidence. It comes from the West and Sweeting study of 15-year-olds conducted in exactly the same place in Scotland in 1987, 1999 and 2006. When the 1999 results were published, there was concern that the incidence of common mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks and anhedonia (loss of capacity to experience pleasure) had significantly increased for girls from 19% to 32%. The increase for boys was much smaller, at only 2%. But the latest set of results are even more dramatic. There has been an increase for both sexes: boys are now on 21%, and girls are at a staggering rate of 44%.

The rate of increase is appalling. Over a third of girls agreed "they felt constantly under strain"; those who "felt they could not overcome their difficulties" had more than doubled to 26%. The number who agreed with "thinking of yourself as a worthless person" had trebled between 1987 and 2006. These findings could partly explain the recent reports of sharp rises in girls' binge drinking and aggressive behaviour.

The first thought is that perhaps this gender gap is a teenage thing. Other studies showing a marked increase in mental ill-health of teenagers have prompted speculation that the transition to adulthood now is much more difficult and demanding. But the gap in mental ill-health between men and women is just as striking in other age groups; an NHS study published this year showed that between 1993 and 2007 common mental disorders had risen by a fifth for women aged between 45 and 64 (there had been no change in men), and among the over-75s, they were twice as likely in women as men.

Various explanations are put forward. Women's levels of serotonin are more vulnerable, it has been suggested, but that doesn't explain the change over time. Women are struggling with work and family, looking after their elderly parents, or coping with empty nest after children have left. Two American academics checked all the data from the US and the European Union to try to hunt down the explanation.

Stevenson and Wolfers found that American women – of all social classes, ages and whether they worked, stayed home, had kids or did not – had seen a decline in happiness since the early 70s. Thirty years ago, women reported higher rates of subjective wellbeing than men in the US. This advantage has been entirely eroded, and in many instances it is now men who are happier than women. So how did women manage to end up, after a generation of advances in gender equality, less happy typically than their mothers at their age?

There are no easy answers, conclude Stevenson and Wolfers. They pose the extraordinary question: "Did men garner a disproportionate share of the benefits of the women's movement?" They suggest "perhaps the wellbeing data point to differential impacts of social changes on men and women, with women being particularly hurt by declines in family life, rises in inequality or reductions in social cohesion". One finding they highlight is that women's satisfaction with their financial situation has declined while men's has remained stable – one possibility is that there has been a change "in the reference group" or expectations for women so that their lives are more likely to come up short.

This latter is key to the work of another American psychologist, Jean Twenge, whose most recent work has been to analyse what she describes as a "narcissism epidemic" in the US that is disproportionately affecting women. Her meta-analysis covered 37,000 college students. It found that in 1982, 15% got high scores on a narcissism personality index; by 2006 it was 25% – and the largest share of this increase was women.

The narcissist has huge expectations of themselves and their lives. Typically, they make predictions about what they can achieve that are unrealistic, for example in terms of academic grades and employment. They seek fame and status, and the achievement of the latter leads to materialism – money enables the brand labels and lavish lifestyle that are status symbols. It is the Paris Hilton syndrome across millions of lives.

Twenge points to the fact that in the 1950s only 12% of college students agreed that "I am an important person", but by the late 80s it was 80%. In 1967, only 45% agreed that "being well-off is an important life goal", but by 2004 the figure was 74%.

The problem, Twenge believes, derives in part from a generation of indulgent parents who have told their children how special they are. An individualistic culture has, in turn, reinforced a preoccupation with the self and its promotion. The narcissist is often rewarded – they tend to be outgoing, good at selling themselves, and very competitive: they are the types who will end up as Sir Alan's apprentice. But their success is shortlived; the downside is that they have a tendency to risky behaviour, addictive disorders, have difficulties sustaining intimate relationships, and are more prone to aggressive behaviour when rejected.

The narcissism of young women could just be a phase they will grow out of, admits Twenge, but she is concerned that the evidence of narcissism is present throughout highly consumerist, individualistic societies – and women suffer disproportionately from the depression and anxiety linked to it.

This is what alarms psychologist Oliver James. He is working on an updated version of his pioneering Britain on the Couch, which first argued that mental ill-health had increased despite more wealth. He worries that the Scottish teenage girls are the "canaries" down the mines, giving powerful indications of a set of social influences that are deeply damaging their wellbeing. He points to the pressures of a "consumerised, commercially driven version of femininity" that puts huge emphasis on girls' appearance.

Girls are more compliant and eager to please – that is how they have always been socialised – but now the dominant social expectations of them are deeply destructive of their happiness. Breast augmentation quintupled in 2006 in the US, Twenge points out. The expectations of girls and women have multiplied and intensified – on every front, from passing exams to looking good and having more friends and better photos on Facebook. Technology proliferates the places in which one is required to self-promote.

One possibility is that women's identity has always been framed around relationships – as mothers, daughters, wives, friends and sisters. "Relationality" is still central to how women see their lives, and yet it is entirely at odds with an individualistic, intensely competitive, narcissistic culture. Women, brought up to seek social approval, battle between competing frames of reference, and many end up feeling failure and inadequacy on multiple fronts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...nhappiness