A little more on narcissism

 

Does an eight-year-old boy need to believe he is the smartest child in his school, or that his father is the greatest genius who ever lived? Very probably not. He can accept reality with buoy­ancy. There is another power in his landscape and infra­struc­ture that has hegem­ony over ego-feeling. This is a “good” force, a blue­print of comple­­tion or “having arrived” (even at that age) that carries him through nicks and dents in his résumé and that obviates the need for compar­ative special­ness. This good feeling is “being loved.”

It’s worth looking at this feeling. Because we see that rather than “separa­tion-individua­tion,” being imbued with love is the one true “psycho­logical birth” (M. Mahler) of the human infant. There is physical birth and there is love. Without it, there must be false and weak girders holding him up every minute of his life, present and future.

Does a seventy-four-year-old man have to believe he is the smartest and most expert person in the room, in the world, in history? Yes: if he is a Narcis­sistic person­ality. His feeling structure, sitting on the absence of love at the start of his life, is an unsus­tain­able empti­ness and alone­ness that brings frus­tration, anger and a sense of aliena­tion. He cannot feel he is “like” other people because other people are his betrayers: He is still, in this present scene, the unloved infant. Add factors such as the parent’s empty idealization, and over time, he comes to feel he is superior. In his empti­ness and anger, there is no other choice.

People are speculating on whether President Trump will have a mental break­down as the day approaches when he must leave the White House a loser, along with related losses that will material­ize: the loss of the pres­tige and the bankers’ toler­ance that allowed him to remain afloat through his career. I believe he won’t break down because anger will keep him sturdy. It is, after all, a very power­ful life force that feeds on a sense of being right and of being wronged. Anger, emptiness, and their most successful offspring, narcis­sism, will main­tain his delusion of being the best. Ultimately, he will not fall as he will not respect the verdicts other people lay upon his life and legacy. They have always been his betrayers.