The
popular 'ego'... behaves like a stock or a piece
of merchandise endowed with self-awareness; if it is much in demand it
rises, is blown up, feels important; if not, it falls, shrinks, feels
it is nothing.
Ernest G.
Schachtel, "On Alienated Concepts of Identity" [1]
All of us begin life as
a
functionally
differentiated part of nature, governed by the needs that are inherent
in our organismic structure. We must breathe, take in
nourishment, expel wastes, adapt ourselves to our environment, make
sounds, move, sleep, and dream. Our needs change as we mature.
The infant's primary requirements are for warmth, contact with the
mother, a breast to suckle, and protection. The toddler has new
needs, especially the need to venture forth and explore the world in
the context of the safety and support of parental guidance,
supervision, and attention. The young boy or girl
needs unambiguous and consistent acknowledgment and approval in order
to
develop a secure experience of individuality anchored in a firm sense
of gender identity. At each step of the way, developmental tasks
must be accomplished; organic learning must take place.
Organic learning takes place on a bodily
level. The mouth
sucks, the arms reach out, the heart opens, the smile emerges, the eyes
sparkle, the legs jump for joy, the forehead frowns, the voice cries
out and laughs and sings, the fists clench, feelings flow, and the mind
thinks. These are all bodily
phenomena, and what would a
person be without them? These
and countless other bodily states and activities are the essence of
life and the basis upon which we form our self-image. At each
stage of our development, we build upon the secure foundation that has
been laid in the previous stages of our growth. In so doing, we
develop an integrated self-awareness that is firmly rooted in our
somatic experience and clearly reflected in our behavior. Our
sense of being an individual allows us to say "I" confidently, and we
have no need to be "hung up" on our ego, because we are grounded in
our bodily reality. We are free to relate to other human beings
in terms of our genuine needs, and we are not afraid of being alone,
because we feel ourselves to be a part of nature and we are in touch
with our humanity.
Unfortunately, few people in our
culture achieve
such a state of healthy functioning. Most of us have experienced
not only injuries, but insults as well during the formative stages of
our development. Recently, for example, I spoke with an
individual who recounted to me the negative attitudes toward sexuality
that his parents and the teachers at his religious school communicated
to him throughout his childhood. He was made to feel that any
sexual self-expression was wrong and sinful. More than that, he
was made to understand, through many subtle and not-so-subtle messages,
that not only sexual activity but also sexual feelings were to be
condemned. Of course, this person had sexual feelings, as all of
us do, and he could not help, under the circumstances, developing inner
conflicts concerning his sexual drives and their expression. In
order to suppress his feelings, he had to dampen his breathing,
restrict his movements, and rigidify his posture. He had to adopt
a stance of being serious, sensitive, and spiritual in order to avoid
the emergence of unacceptable feelings that were pleasurable, joyful,
and down-to-earth. In order to live with his conflicts, he came
to identify with the saintly mask that he had learned to don under
duress. Behind the mask, however, were guilt and shame.
Fortunately, these feelings of guilt and shame were not completely
buried. They caused discomfort, and this discomfort opened the way for
healthy self-confrontation and working-through of problems. Not
all individuals, however, are so lucky. Their identification with
a glorified self-image may be so strong that they are unwilling to
confront
their inner conflicts and challenge their narcissism.
In modern culture, narcissism is
expressed in the
denial of the body. We speak of the narcissist as one who is
obsessed with the pursuit and cultivation of an idealized
self-image. This idealized self-image serves a defensive function
in that it acts as a protection against underlying painful feelings of
inferiority and worthlessness. The narcissist, however, is
unaware of this
defensive function. He identifies himself with his glorified
self-image. He is prepared to deny reality in
order to protect his inflated ego. He invests his energies
in convincing others - and especially himself - that the mask he wears
is real. To the extent that he is able to sustain his idealized
self-image, he succeeds in keeping underlying painful feelings at
bay. The
price he pays for such a maneuver, however, is the alienation of his
true self. This alienation is rooted in the denial of
feelings. Since feelings exist at the bodily level, the core of
the narcissist's problem is the denial of the reality of the
body. What factors are responsible for bringing about such a
denial?
On an individual level, narcissistic
tendencies
begin during the early stages of personal development, when one's needs
for
unconditional acceptance, nurturance, and understanding are
disregarded. What babies and children so often encounter, instead
of a healthy response to their needs, are demands that they behave
inauthentically as a condition for receiving some degree of love.
The basic anxiety that emerges in such a situation can be described
as a fear of abandonment. In attempting to ward off the prospect
of abandonment, the infant or child strives to conform to the dictates
of his or her caregivers. Many authors
have commented on this process. [2] For the sake of clarity, it
is
necessary to make several observations. First, abandonment,
properly considered, is a very active process; it includes all those
behaviors that impinge upon and threaten the basic security of the
child. Letting an infant "cry itself out," for example,
represents not simply a failure of adults to be available when needed;
it is an active assault on the young human being, who naturally expects
to be cared for. In the second place, it makes a great deal of
difference at what stage of the young person's development unnecessary
frustrations and anxieties occur. Obviously, the younger and more
immature the organism is, the weaker its self-protective capabilities
will be. A third consideration is the intensity, frequency, and
duration of the abandoning behavior with which the child must
contend. The less severe such behavior is, the less damage there
will be to the development of the growing person. The fourth
point to make is that no child faces the prospect of abandonment
without protesting. The nature and the degree of the protest will vary,
depending on many factors. How the young person protests - what
manner of protest is possible under the circumstances - will, in any
case, be a major determining factor in the development of his or her
adult personality. Whether a person becomes basically withdrawn,
clinging, compliant, stubborn, vindictive, or manipulative, for
example, will depend upon the protest he or she has learned to
employ during early life. It is in this sense that character
structure can be understood to be a response to unresolved childhood
conflicts.
I believe that few, if any of us, in
today's
world
are completely free of narcissistic elements in our personality.
The reason for the prevalence of narcissism at the personal level is
that the culture in which we live fosters and supports such a
condition. The pervasiveness of seductive images in advertising,
for example, is apparent to all who care to take notice. The
extent and intensity of such images have increased greatly in recent
decades. There has been an explosion of pornography, and there
has been a mounting obsession with the mindless pursuit of superficial
fun and entertainment. It has become fashionable to be
cynical. The goal for many people has come to be the avoidance of
the unpleasantness associated with self-confrontation. It is the
prospect of avoiding such unpleasantness that makes the narcissistic
lifestyle seem so attractive. In the pursuit of avoidance,
reasonable limits dictated by propriety and personal integrity are
discarded. In their place emerges a set of values cut off from
the deeper realities of human experience rooted in the true needs of
the organism.
In spite of the fact that we live in
a narcissistic
culture, not all people are affected to the same degree by the
pressures to conform which such a situation exerts. It is
important, therefore, to distinguish between narcissistic personality
traits and a narcissistic character structure.
As I have suggested, few of us are entirely free of narcissistic
tendencies in our make-up. Nonetheless, such tendencies do not
necessarily dominate who we are, and we may view them as a challenge to
be confronted in the process of our growth and development. On
the other hand, it cannot be denied that some individuals have great
difficulty ever seeing beyond - or seeing through - a glorified image
of themselves. Their entire personality seems to be caught up in
an elaborate fantasy of self-aggrandizement, and they seek to elicit
the confirmation of their fantasy in the mirroring behavior of
others. This is the picture of the narcissistic personality type
of our time, who is hung up on success, obsessed with power, addicted
to cheap thrills and over-stimulation, and committed to winning at
virtually any cost. For such an individual, sexual promiscuity
and acting out are the norm. In everyday language, a person of
this type used to be described as "stuck on himself" or "in love with
himself." Today such behavior is considered "cool." The
problem with all of this self-glorification is that - regardless of how
successful it appears - it remains a defense against an inner
experience of
impotence and helplessness, and it represents an abandonment of the
deep human feelings that are the only basis for real meaning and
personal
fulfillment in life.
The reality of
the
body is a feeling
reality. It is
rooted in autonomic processes, such as deep breathing, spontaneous
movement, and emotional expressiveness. These processes are
natural elements of the human condition. The body which is open
and alive is characterized by spontaneity and
meaningfulness. It is a thinking
body which places a high value on personal integrity, because
personal integrity is based upon the functional integration of one's
body and mind. Such integration is the basis of personal
authenticity and genuineness. Because our current narcissistic
culture fosters impulsiveness and self-abandonment - qualities
which are destructive of healthy functioning - it is important
that we develop the capacity to resist being overwhelmed by that
culture. Questioning the validity of such a culture is a
necessary step in reorienting our thinking in a constructive
direction. Such a
reorientation involves recognizing the importance of the life of the
body. Getting to the bottom of our problems, getting our feet on
the ground, and identifying ourselves with life are part of a process
that serves to break the spell of the seductive images
that might otherwise lead us away from ourselves. Our ego then becomes
a valued part of ourselves, engaged in the struggle for personal
authenticity, a struggle that leads toward self-acceptance and
self-expression and to the lessening of that alienation which, as
Ernest Schachtel suggests in the passage quoted at the beginning of the
present discussion, is a defining feature of our age.
[1]
In Man Alone: Alienation in
Modern Society (New
York: Dell Publishing Co., 1962), eds. Eric and Mary Josephson.
[2] See, for example, James F. Masterson and Ralph Klein, eds.
Psychotherapy
of
the Disorders of the Self (New York:
Brunner/Mazel,
1989). Also, see Karen Horney. Neurosis
and Human Growth (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1950).
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