The term Narcissism has already been mentioned and some slight indication of its importance in character development has been given. We have also examined the derivation of the term, and found that it implies self-interest, self-importance, self-worship; all of which characteristics are in modified degrees possessed by everybody. There are, however, many other manifestations of Narcissism, many tricks by which it gets past our conscious intentions, many ways in which it associates itself with other instincts, and unknown to us works our undoing. We shall therefore, in this chapter, examine the development of Narcissism from its very earliest stages, and trace out in some detail whither it may lead.
Most people were they asked at what moment the child’s mind first began to register feelings, thoughts, and emotions, wouldprobably at once and without hesitation say, “At the moment of birth.” It seems the obvious thing to say, but like many other obvious things such a statement appears to have but little evidence in support of it and much against it.
The act of birth has performed no sudden or miraculous change upon the growth and tissues of the body. It is true that oxygen is now absorbed through the lungs instead of as originally through the mother’s blood, but the essential tissues, the brain, the muscles and the bones have undergone no sudden change. Before birth, they were living tissues, and we know that the muscles were at work, for we had felt the baby’s movementsin utero; we know that the heart was at work, driving the blood through the child’s arteries. We had learnt this also by means of the stethoscope many weeks before the child was born. Why then should we assume that the brain had registered nothing at birth? We do indeed know that it must have been at work in part, for it was learning to regulate the action of the child’s heart and the child’s secretions, the blood pressure, and the motionsof its limbs. We are therefore justified in assuming that it must be capable of registering impressions, even though it were incapable of reason or thought.
It is true that at birth it commences to undergo many vivid new experiences, but that is no reason for assuming that it has not undergone any experiencesin utero, and that these experiences have not made some impressions on the brain. Let us see for a moment what impressions it is likely to have received and registered. First of all, it would most certainly hear sounds, the sounds of the blood rushing through the mother’s arteries and the sounds from the outer world, muffled and indistinct when they had penetrated the mother’s body. All these sounds would be of a soft crooning nature, and those caused by the blood in the mother’s arteries would be of a rhythmic, humming, rising and falling nature, a kind of rhythmic lullaby very similar in many respects to the lullaby the mother will hum to the child when she wishes to put it to sleep at a later period. We should expect these sounds to be registered on the child’s brain so that if it ever heard their likeagain, some chord offeeling-memorywould be struck, and some emotional association brought to mind. In the second place, external movements would be registered on the child’s mind as the mother walked about. There would be a swaying or swinging movement. Again we should expect that when, in after life, the child experienced a swaying or swinging movement, a chord of memory would be touched again, and these earlier associations would be revived; not as a conscious memory or fact, of course, but as a feeling.
Again, conscious movements of its own limbs might be impressed upon it. It would find, when it tried to move, that its movements were limited, and that it attained more perfect peace by refraining from attempting to struggle and change its position. It would be impressed by the pleasantness of inertia as opposed to the unpleasantness of making an effort. And finally, its general position with the knees drawn up and the chin bent down would be firmly registered, so that when in after-life it again assumed this position, once more the chord of memorywould be struck, and the old feeling of repose would be likely to return.
Now, we cannot assume that the child has any active mental state before its birth, but we know that its condition (taken in conjunction with its extremely limited experience) is one as near omnipotence (from its standpoint) as may be. It breathes, or rather absorbs oxygen without any effort of breathing. It is fed, it is kept warm and comfortable without any effort whatsoever. It lives in a world entirely its own, where everything works together for its comfort and well-being. It has to make no struggle for existence. It has to deal with nothingreal, save perhaps that its voluntary movements are limited, and this perhaps is bad for its education, since at that period of its life it learns that it can be most comfortable by making least effort! And here we see the beginning of that which we all possess in after-life,inertia, the difficulty of making a beginning at anything, the objection which we have to making efforts.
Now let us see what happens to this omnipotent little creature at birth. It goesthrough the probably painful process of having its position roughly changed and being thrust into an atmosphere which is cold and unusual to it. Moreover it has to make its first struggle for breath, its first effort to sustain existence. And in its struggle for breath it utters cries, which by experience it very soon finds to be magic sounds which enable it to fulfil its wishes. But of this, more later.
After its first rude awakening, let us once more see what happens. It is wrapped up in something warm; that is, it is returned to a semblance of the womb, by having something round it which keeps out the cold. It is gently rocked to and fro by the nurse or other attendant, and again the semblance of the previous rocking in the womb is returned to it. Crooning sounds are murmured over it, and the semblance is still more complete. It frequently draws its knees up somewhat if it is placed in such a position that it can do so with ease, and falls asleep. It has attained as nearly as possible once more the semblance of its pre-birth condition, where it has no cares, and is warm and comfortable again. Andthough it has become acquainted with effort, it is quite obvious that its feeling of omnipotence, if we may so term it for the moment, is hardly yet disturbed, and the world it has come into differs but slightly from the world which it has left; it is still a world in which the infant is the centre and ruler, in which its every want is attended to without an effort on its part, save that it may sometimes have to call attention to its wants by means of that magical cry which it soon learns how and when to use, and which acts in a truly magical manner in accomplishing the fulfilment of all its desires.
During the first few weeks of the infant’s life this delusion on the part of the child is largely kept up. Few people think there is any harm in attending to all a baby’s wants in the first month of its life. They do not think it could possibly be wrong to spoil it at that age, because its intellect has not developed. They forget entirely that its mental condition and attitude towards life, apart from actual thought, may inevitably be affected at this period. Hence, whenever the baby cries, it is not uncommonlyrocked to sleep, or fed, or if it holds out its hand and shows its desire to possess anything, it is immediately allowed to possess it, and to play with it. It has to make but the faintest attempts to adjust itself to its environment, it has to face but the slightest reality; all its desires are immediately fulfilled, and kept in a condition of almost continual fulfilment. And it may remain for a considerable period as near being an omnipotent creature as it is possible for any living thing to be. Its omnipotence, however, is really a fallacy, or as I prefer to term it at a slightly later stage, a phantasy, for the world in which it lived before birth, which seemed to it as a world, was not really a world at all, but a very small and a very temporary abode, and the world in which it is living for the first few months after birth is again not really a world but a combination of extremely limited and carefully selected portions of the world, in which every attempt is made to disguise from it the realities of the actual world.
Again let us emphasise the fact that the chief effort that the infant has to make isthe effort of crying. And it may learn very quickly that this is so all-powerful as to practically efface the unpleasant task of having to adjust itself to the realities of life. This process is carried on with slight modifications for many months. The infant has but to wave a magic wand, as it were, has but to emit a little magic noise from its mouth, and all the world it knows is set in motion to give it satisfaction and some semblance of its pre-birth omnipotence.
This cry which brings it gratification, if it has been really effective over a too-prolonged period, will tend to fix permanently in the child’s mind the fact that either weeping or making a magic noise with the mouth will always attain for it gratification. And although at a later stage the conscious mind will be obliged to accept a considerable amount of reality and to reject the idea of omnipotence, yet the unconscious mind will persist in the struggle and will make futile efforts to forget reality, to change reality into phantasy, and to regain its omnipotent state.
When a man uses expletives because some task of his has failed to result in success, heis really repeating the infant’s cry. He is really uttering a magic sound which his unconscious mind hopes may somehow remedy the failure. He has not definitely accepted the reality of failure as a commonplace hard fact of life at the moment at which he utters his expletive.
When a person weeps at some unpleasant happening or in anger at something which has touched his pride, exactly the same is taking place. He, or she, has failed to make a complete adaptation of himself to the facts and realities of life.He has obeyed the law of regression, to which I referred in a previous chapter, and has returned to the infantile method of expression, namely weeping, with the unconscious hope that a magic compensation will result; that instead of his having to adapt himself to the facts of life, the facts of life will somehow adapt themselves to his phantasy.
Hence, the first piece of advice that one must give to parents is that they should, from the earliest possible moment, train the infant to understand that the magic cries will not at once produce their expectedresult; and the first week in the infant’s life is all-important in this matter. The choosing of the nurse who has charge during that period should be done with great care, and what is required of her should be insisted on. Too great emphasis cannot be laid upon these points.
The child should be fed at regular and proper intervals, and should be kept warm. But if it cries, as it will do naturally, it should be left to itself to cry. It should not be picked up, rocked to sleep, given another meal nor petted. If it is left to cry, it will learn very rapidly and at the right period of its life that the sounds which it emits are not magical, and it will begin to adapt itself to the fact that it lives in a real world which has not been built solely and only for its own delight.
It is curious to note how regression, this instinct to return to the earlier mode of expression, to return apparently even to the pre-birth state, persists in the unconscious mind.
During the war, I knew a youth who was intensely agitated by the air-raids. He feltperfectly safe, however, if he could crawl under the bed or table, where he would curl himself into practically the same position as that of a normal baby before birth. When questioned, he had not, of course, the slightest conscious knowledge of why he felt safe in such curious circumstances. But it does not seem improbable that the association of ideas produced by his position and by the confined space created a feeling akin to that feeling of safety which has been his in his pre-birth omnipotent position where nothing could harm him. A similar feeling of security was experienced by many normal persons in cellars and other confined spaces and was probably of the same origin; for there is no doubt that this safety was felt even though their reason told them that a bomb was as likely to reach their confined space as any other place in the neighbourhood.
Again, I know of innumerable cases in which soldiers felt very much safer from bombs which fell at night when they were under cover of a canvas tent. Logically, of course, the thing was absurd; emotionally, it was a fact. And all were equally unconscious ofany possible reasons for the feeling of security produced. An example of this same tendency at an earlier age is seen in children who cover their heads with the bedclothes when they are frightened.
To return to our Narcissistic infant, we are now impressed with the fact that one thing of the utmost importance in the first years of its life is that it shall gradually come into contact with reality, shall discover that all things do not belong to it, that its omnipotent feelings are based purely upon phantasy and not upon reality; and upon the method of its disillusionment and the age at which this begins largely depend the future powers of adaptation of the child to its surroundings. It has now become obvious that the new-born infant lives in a world of phantasy, in which, the relative importance of itself to things outside itself is not merely distorted but is entirely absent. And if we can suppose a child kept artificially in this condition till it reached adult life, every wish satisfied instantaneously, every force it knows directed entirely towards gratifying its immediate desires, we do not require much imaginationto understand how absolutely helpless and lost this omnipotent creature would be if suddenly turned into the world to face life and reality. His one desire would be to return to his omnipotent state, his one effort to keep at bay reality and turn it into the pleasant phantasy of the previous twenty years. For he would surely, before his disillusionment, have really come to believe himself omnipotent, the only real thing in a phantasy world of his own fashioning and dreaming.
An extreme case of this kind is, of course, an impossibility. But there are many and various degrees in which it is approached. Probably the nearest approach to it may be found in cases where some sort of moral or mental conflict has been too much for an extremely Narcissistic mind, which has then completely regressed, refused to recognise the outer world, and developed a certain form of insanity; and from this stage of complete Narcissistic regression all degrees and kinds of manifestations of it may be found, until we reach at the other end of our list a person who expects everyone around to consult his wishes and peculiarities or whois merely somewhat impatient, or inclined to irritability, or merely over-sensitive to either mental or physical pain.
There is no more certain fact than that if an infant be allowed to postpone its acquaintance with reality too long it becomes fixed in a more or less degree in conditions in which phantasy plays too prominent a part, and regression of some kind takes place as it meets with real difficulties.
In the last chapter we emphasised the fact that one of the first products of Narcissism was the infantile difficulty of distinguishing between fact and phantasy, of realising the world outside oneself. This tendency to mix up fact with phantasy is by no means only to be found in an abnormal mind. It is present in some degree in all persons; each one feels himself to be the most real thing present, and in feeling this he has a tendency to believe that others round him are in some way less real, though, fortunately, very few carry it far enough to imagine that all the others are merely part of a dream in which the dreamer is the only real figure, as the Red King in “Alice Through the Looking Glass” is supposed to have done, when the remark is made to Alice, “You’re only a sort of thing in his dream! If that there kingwas to wake you would go out bang—just like a candle!”
And yet quite a large number of people find it difficult to realise firstly, that they must die, and secondly that the rest of the world will not die also when they die. They know, of course, that this latter is not the case, yet they cannot look upon it as a commonplace fact. Their Narcissism refuses to contemplate their own mortality. It represses the fact and leaves the idea vague and unreal to them.
In children, the difficulty of distinguishing between phantasy and reality is quite normally much more accentuated than in adults. And since they start in a world of phantasy and their training is to lead them to a world of reality, it is obvious that the halfway stages will be obscured by a strange mixture of the two. All children go through the stage in which phantasy and reality are by no means clearly differentiated, and most young children succeed, day by day, in fulfilling impossible wishes in phantasies in a manner which a properly developed adult can never do.
A little boy desires to possess a pony; if this be impossible his imagination gives life to a rocking-horse, and failing that he may tie a piece of string to a chair, and with great pleasure and much emotion urge on his fiery untamed steed across mountain and desert. He fulfils his wishes immediately by means of a phantasy, which, for the time being, successfully replaces reality. If this child grows up normally, this possibility of phantastic fulfilment should gradually disappear. How many adults, for instance, could take a bath-tub into their dining-room, sit in it, and with the aid of a vivid imagination thoroughly enjoy a pleasant sail at sea? We trust no one, at any rate of our readers, for they would be of that type which has no perspective, and they would most certainly fail in their vocation as practical men and women. Yet remnants of phantasy thinking remain with everyone, and in a moderate degree, so far as we know, such remnants do but little harm if they are present in small measure only, and kept in water-tight compartments.
Adult phantasy thinking very largelyconsists in what is known as identification, which may be either conscious or unconscious. Of this, we shall have more to say shortly. At the moment let us trace out what should happen to the normal child as it grows older. Education and environment should be gradually convincing the child of the unreality of its phantastic thoughts and of its early world, should be inducing it to think in terms of facts and to adjust himself to these facts, instead of attempting the impossible task of adjusting these facts to suit his own phantastic conceptions of them. The method of thought which he should develop in order thus to fit himself to meet the world adequately has been conveniently termed “directive thinking.” Directive thinking is controlled thought based upon facts seen in their true perspective, and with a purpose in view which is both definite and possible. It is the very opposite of phantasy thinking, which is generally indefinite, based upon a lack of perspective, and attempts continually to obtain the fulfilment of wishes impossible of fulfilment.
In directive thinking, the purpose in viewmust be purposive to the thinker, a change to be produced in the world, either in its happiness, its morals, its commercial prosperity or in other forms of progress or even of deterioration; or the purpose may be to effect changes in the individual’s own happiness or prosperity, or it may be directed towards a mental change in the thinker himself with no immediate idea of changes in his external surroundings.
Thus a man may wish to improve his own character by eradicating a bad habit. He may do this by thinking carefully about it, by analysing the causes of the habit, by giving himself auto-suggestion in opposition to the habit. All this, even if the habit may not in the end be eradicated must be classed as directive thinking.Directive thinking is thus obviously, controlled thinking requiring an effort of attention and concentration as opposed to phantasy thinking which knows but little control save that of desire, and little effort or concentration.
In all the business of everyday life, directive thinking must be employed; whether we are merely using our minds to decide the mosttrivial problem, such as the best way of eradicating weeds from the garden, or whether we are deciding upon a policy to be pursued in some great commercial or political enterprise. Every time we use our brains in directive thinking we are establishing a habit which gradually gives us power to produce changes in our environment and in the world in general. Every time we indulge in phantasy thinking we encourage the habit of living in a world of our own ideas, and we are destroying the habit which enables us to create in reality.
The two forms of thinking may, of course, overlap considerably. The novelist or playwright, for instance, is very largely a phantasy thinker. He may feel the emotions of the various phantasy characters which he evolves, but in order to arrange the words and sentences, and furthermore in having an idea to portray or in drawing attention to evils which he thinks should be remedied, he is using considerable energy in directive thought. So that it becomes obvious that directive thought need not merely apply to the things of the immediate present nor even the nearfuture, and in trying to draw distinction between the two, one is often confronted with a superficial criticism, that certain ideas must pertain to phantasy thinking, because they can never come to pass. That, however, is quite incorrect. The possibility that an idea may come to fruition in two or three hundred years time, and that the thoughts which have been given to the idea must assist its growth and ripening, is sufficient to constitute these thoughts as directive.
We must now look at the second important element in the child’s early education, which would follow logically upon the first one that it should be made to face the facts around it; and that is, that in its games and occupations it should be encouraged, as far as possible, to take lines of directive thought, and not obtain its pleasures through phantasies only.
Thus, it would be much better to give him bricks to play with, so that he may use directive thought in designing and building a house, than to give him a ready-made toy, such as an engine wherewith he will merely carry out the phantasy of being a driver or a passenger and of travelling wheresoever hewishes. A toy wheel-barrow which he can take into the garden and fill with real stones and earth is far better than a doll which he will merely imagine to be something to be brought up like himself, which he will endow with phantastic life and feelings which are quite unreal. In fact, as far as possible, the child’s games and occupations should involve hisdoingsomething, rather than merely imagining something. Of course, imagination and phantasy will come into its games, and are bound to do so, but as much directive thought as possible should be added.
The ordinary fairy-tale should be swept from the nursery; here the child does nothing but identify himself with the hero or heroine in the most impossible of situations of a purely phantastic type. There is plenty of scope for giving a child an interest in stories from the fairy-land of science, or from the lives of famous persons in the centuries that have passed; all of which, if properly selected and dressed up, will assist the child’s directive thought. For though the facts with which the stories may deal are as wonderful as any of Grimm’s fairy-tales,they are facts of whichthe child will never have to be undeceived, and he will never have to have his faith shaken in the stories which he has learnt; thus the child will learn from the outset to think directively.
I know that many mothers, when they read this, will be inclined to shake their heads and say to themselves, “Poor little darling, I could never treat it so.” And that they will be inclined, as is shown very early in this book, to say “These things cannot be true,” for they are not the ideas they are accustomed to. Yet I can assure them that by means of carrying out many of those actions and teachings which they think are pleasant and harmless, they are really damning the child, while many of these ideas which they might term cruel are really of the greatest value and kindness to it. Moreover, experience has shown that if diplomacy be used, the child will be as equally interested in wonderful facts as in wonderful phantasies. The only difference is that it is more trouble to the parent or educator to search out and deal with facts himself. It is quite true that the child’s imagination requires training, as part of its intellectual education. But there isvast difference between encouraging it to imagine the possibility of impossible things, and encouraging it to exercise its imagination in realisation of facts, however far they may be removed from the experience of everyday life. Many people have the idea that a child should be encouraged to use its imagination; whereas in fact the child’s imagination requires curbing, training, sublimating. Such people do not realise that the early life of a child is lived almost entirely in imagination, that it has no difficulty whatsoever in using its imagination, and that the real difficulty is in preventing it from using too much imagination directed into false channels and by-paths of permanent unreality.
We must now traverse another path through which Narcissism wanders. We have emphasised the fact that when a child comes into the world, he is to himself the only real thing; the rest of the world is merely seen from his phantastic view point, and at this stage he accepts himself as the one all-powerful centre of everything. Another important fact which arises from this, however, we have not dealt with, and that is, that he does not separate the outer world from himself as a separate entity. His unconscious view point is that the world is subordinate to himself, beneath his omnipotent control, if you like, that it is a dream of his own imagining, that it is something which belongs to him in every sense of the word. This, summed up, means that it is part of himself, that his identity and the identity of the dream-world around him are part of the same thing.
Thus, the infant does not at first distinguish between himself and his mother. When he is hungry, he cries, and he probably has almost as ready access to his mother’s breasts as if they were part of his own body. And such imagination is more than encouraged when he is allowed the use of a rubber teat to suck in the intervals between his meals.
It is generally a comparatively slow process through which the infant passes, this one of separating himself in thought and feeling from objects surrounding him. It is one which is hardly ever completely accomplished. We have already mentioned the fairy-tale which encourages the child’s phantasy thought. Let us now see how he really obtains pleasure from that fairy-tale. It is by identification. In imagination he is a fairy prince or princess, as the case may be; his pleasure in the triumphs and progress of the central figure of the story is that of performing his prodigious deeds by proxy; and if he thus identifies himself with the hero of the story, he is also encouraged to believe that he possesses the power and qualities of that hero. He is less able to realise that he,unlike the hero, cannot perform magic deeds with a mere wave of a wand. Indeed, when the story is over, he will probably play at being a fairy, and in phantasy perform the magic deeds again.
This demonstrates the force of his identification with the hero of the story.And it must be remembered that sooner or later the child will have to wake up, will have to realise that it possesses no magic power, and the struggle within it will be great.It is obviously a mistaken form of kindness to enhance such pleasures of the moment, when you are merely accentuating the struggle which the child will have to make at a later period to overcome his Narcissism. In passing, I may mention that you have probably already done the child considerable damage by allowing him to have his rubber teat at the beginning of this period of identification, since he identifies it with the mother’s breast, and is thus encouraged to think that the breast is always with him.
Let us now see where this Narcissistic identification may come out later in life.
First of all, it is this which enables us toenjoy novels, just as we enjoyed fairy-tales as children. We identify ourselves with the hero or heroine of the book, and in phantasy perform their various wonderful feats. Thus we satisfy our Narcissistic desire to be great and powerful. If we lack cleverness, and the hero is clever, by identification and imputation we may attain the pleasures of feeling clever and superior. If the heroine is beautiful and everyone falls in love with her, we may by proxy be the same. If the hero is a sailor, and we have always desired to sail, yet have never been on the sea, our ambition is now attained—and see how easily attained—in a truly omnipotent fashion, without effort on our part, just by reading about it. Exactly the same thing takes place at theatres, where the Narcissist identifies himself with the actors on the stage. So far so good; if a person can content himself with an occasional theatre or occasional novel, wherewith to take a restful regression to an infantile outlet of energy, no harm is done. There are times when we must rest, and there are times when we must sleep, which also appears to be Narcissistic regression to acondition somewhat resembling our pre-birth state. But there are many who cannot control their identification in this way, who cannot confine it to the stage and the novel, who bring it into the affairs of life continuously. They may unconsciously identify themselves with their father or mother, their relations or friends, or even their enemies, and perhaps, in turn, with everyone with whom they come into contact. Like a looking-glass, they reflect everything that goes on around them. They feel the pleasures of their friends, they also feel their pains. They are called sympathetic, they are often ultra-sympathetic—they are a nuisance.
I remember on one occasion I had asked a woman of strong Narcissistic temperament to take a fly out of the corner of my eye. She absolutely refused to do so under any consideration, as she was sure she would hurt me too much. Inquiry showed that Narcissism had exaggerated her own feelings, so that a speck of dust in her own eye was torture. Yet her eye was so tender and important to herself that she could not bear anyone to touch it even in order to get something out.And she could not imagine that anybody else could have feelings that differed from hers; and since she identified herself so much with other people, I have no doubt it would have been a real agony to her, had she attempted to extract the fly from my eye.
Such people are by no means uncommon. We all know the person who cannot bear to hurt us, even for our good. For instance, some cannot bear to bandage a wound for us since they cannot bear to see pain in any form. They state that it is almost as if they felt it themselves, and they call themselves “sympathetic.” But in spite of popular belief to the contrary, such sympathy is not a virtue, there is nothing altruistic about it; it is an inconvenient fault of an entirely selfish kind. In order to help one’s friend, one does not need to feel his feelings and suffer his pains, one wants to understand them; the more one enters into his feelings, the more one’s judgment is biased, and the less one is able, as a rule, to be of assistance. Worse still, in connection with these people, they not only pour out sympathy in this way, but attribute it to themselves as a virtue, and they cannotbring themselves to believe their friends to be really good, unless their friends also can react in a similar way towards them. They call a normal person unsympathetic, perhaps exaggerate the term and call him brutal, wishing indeed that their friends who have climbed higher from Narcissism should regress to their lower stand-point.
I have given here but one type of Narcissistic identification with other persons; it seems to me unnecessary to carry it further since any reader who chooses to think the matter out for himself will find endless modifications of such identifications. We all possess it in part, and on the whole women are more Narcissistic than men. Let it not be thought, however, that this is a reflection on women; it is a reflection on the way they have been brought up, for from the earliest times environment impresses them with the idea that “little boys are made of slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails, and little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice!” And hence on such lines as these, their Narcissism is encouraged, and their capabilities of facing fact and realitydiscouraged from the very outset, until differences of temperament are produced in the adults of the two sexes, which in no way belong to Nature, but purely to our conventional and somewhat barbaric stand-point.
There are yet more important results of Narcissistic identification than those already mentioned; Narcissism leads, in many instances, to the choice of a particular love-object. Narcissism is, of course, by no means the only or chief factor in the choice of love-objects, as anyone who has studied psycho-analysis will at once realise. It is, however, the only one I intend to touch on in this particular work.
Just as the mythical Narcissus himself fell in love with his reflection, so does his prototype of to-day. An infant is not only the omnipotent centre of all, he is also the only interesting portion of the universe in his early days. His interests are entirely self-centred, and his joys and pleasures belong to himself alone; and as he grows older, everything that is like him is identified with himself. In the worst form of Narcissism in the adult, the individual remains entirely selfish, and isincapable of loving anybody outside himself at all.
By identification, however, he can love in a sense those attributes of his own personality which he sees in other persons.Thus, he may love somebody for a facial similarity, for a voice which is like his, or for tastes which are like his own, but most commonly he loves them for a body like his own. And from this we see that he may fall in love with somebody of his own sex. Hence, homo-sexuality,[5]as it is called, is frequently one of the distressing results of an early Narcissistic upbringing. But it need not be necessary for such homo-sexuality to be of a grossly erotic type; such desires may be for the most part repressed in the unconscious, or appear only in minor ways such as the desire to kiss, fondle or touch favoured persons of the same sex. On the other hand, frequently the early education and environment of the Narcissistic person has been such as to leave him quite incapable of complete repression; and we then have expressed more or less open eroticdesires and actions for persons of the same sex. Such persons, however, should not be treated as criminals in this particular matter; they are by this time as hopelessly incompetent to deal with themselves, as is the kleptomaniac or a person having any other form of so-called degenerate mentality. Here again, we see the reason why homo-sexuality is so much more rife amongst women than amongst men. The minor details of their early environment tend so much more to confirm them in Narcissism. It is partially repressed and partially displaced homo-sexuality which causes some women to kiss one another, to call one another by affectionate names and so forth, to delight in taking hold of one another’s hands on occasion; actions which normally, between persons of opposite sex, would at once be taken to indicate some sort of erotic affection, but which we are so used to seeing amongst women that we do not realise their repressed and unconscious significance.
Let it not be thought, however, that this subject of homo-sexuality is based on this one simple problem; there are many other early infantile fixations, which play a very largepart in causing persons to become homo-sexual. I only mention this one Narcissistic complex as being another example of how identification takes place as one of the chief results of the Narcissistic temperament, and to what lengths such identification may, on occasion, lead. Of course, all degrees of such identifications may be met with, and it is quite common to find persons who can love hetero-sexually as well as homo-sexually; that is to say, who can love persons of the opposite sex in the usual way, as well as persons of their own sex. But such people, even in their hetero-sexual love, tend to choose a love-object which resembles themselves in some manner or the other. However, a certain amount of Narcissism (which fortunately everyone still possesses), may be of value in this way, for it is certainly good for a man and woman to have similar interests when they marry; it is excessive Narcissism, excessive identification, excessive sympathy, which is deleterious, just as in other manifestations of Narcissism, with which we are going to deal shortly, it is excessive impatience, excessive anger, excessive tears which arereally harmful, and lead to the greatest unhappiness. Although perhaps in these latter instances, to be without impatience, anger, or tears would be better still.
Thirdly, there is yet another method of Narcissistic identification. Just as a child identifies itself with its living surroundings, so does it identify itself with its inanimate surroundings. As its mother and nurse are treated as part of it in the early stages, so also are its rubber teat, feeding bottle and toys treated. If you take away the baby’s rattle, it will cry or stamp or weep with as much vigour and display of emotion as if you had caused it bodily pain by means of rigorous physical punishment. You have in fact taken away part of itself from the little omnipotent person. In later stages in his career, if his Narcissism has been allowed to remain, the adult will still identify himself with his belongings. He will be absurdly upset at the breaking of a tea-cup which belongs to him, at the theft of some jewelry, at damage done to his clothing or property in some way, however trifling. He cannot realise that these things which belong to him are moreor less unimportant trifles, which can be replaced, or if they cannot be replaced, can be equally well done without, if he has attained that philosophical attitude of mind which belongs to the person who has thrown off this uncomfortable spirit of Narcissistic identification. Moreover, the Narcissist who thinks himself to be the best and most important of beings, will attach similar importance to his property. If he drives an inferior motor-car, which breaks down on every journey he makes, he will excuse it in all sorts of irrational ways, he will praise it on every possible occasion as “the best car on the market,” and what seems more absurd still, he will very likely think it the best car on the market. It is the same with his house, his books, with his relations, with everything that is even distantly connected with him. He will speak in high praise of them all, and be anxious, at all times, to show them off, and to uphold their virtues to all comers. The Narcissist, indeed, rationalises about things in general considerably more than most people. The fuller meaning of rationalization and its methods of working, however, we shall leave till later on.
[5]Homo-sexuality—sensual love for a person of the same sex as oneself.
Irritability is not merely that quality in a person which makes his friends carefully guard their every word, lest inadvertently they should cause an outburst of temper, in its fullest sense it means over-sensitiveness to unpleasant stimuli, followed by over-reaction of any kind whatsoever. Thus, if a person by accident damage his clothing, his over-sensitiveness and over-reaction might result in an oath, in abusing the nail which tore his clothing or in abusing the workman who put the nail in place originally. It might again result in a feeling of depression, with anger displaced on to anyone who was present during the next hour, on the smallest pretext; or in an over-sensitive woman, it might result in an outburst of tears, or perhaps merely in volubly deploring the accident for half-an-hour with the next visitor who called; or she might merely “worry” about it, andkeep turning the memory of it over and over in her mind, refusing to allow the fact to separate itself from her fancy.
All these various results, with many others which may be imagined, can be gathered together under the one term “irritability,” or the term “over-sensitiveness” would do equally well. This irritability or over-sensitiveness may apply to material things or to purely mental ones. Narcissism may lead to an irritability of the body, and again it may lead to irritability merely of the mind. When Narcissism leads to an extremely sensitive body, it reacts to pain of every sort, however mild, as though it were acute. The omnipotent mind cannot bear to have its body disturbed. I gave an example a short while back of the lady who could not take a fly out of my eye, because her own eyes were so sensitive. Not only was this particular lady sensitive as regards her eyes, but at that period she was as afraid of the dentist touching a tooth as if it had been a serious abdominal operation. Pain of any sort or even slight accidents involving practically no pain, were reacted to as though they had beenoverwhelming misfortunes. Here we had an excellent example of one in whom Narcissism had produced extreme irritability of a physical nature.[6]
On the other hand, one finds a mental sensitivity equally pronounced. People who are always in fear lest somebody should find fault with them, with their mode of behaviour, with their manner of dress, even with their habit of thought. Unconsciously, to themselves they are the acme of perfection, they are the centre of importance, and they are inclined to think that people are paying very much more attention to them than is actually the case. They may consciously realise that they are not important at all, that other people do not give them a thought; but their unconscious Narcissism will not accept this slight upon their importance, and they remain miserably self-conscious in all their acts, reacting with exaggerated feeling whenever some slight criticism of their thoughts and actions appear even to be implied.
Pride, vanity, and self importance areother manifestations of this temperament. The person who feels slighted, or whose feelings are hurt when other persons think too little of his opinions, or pay too little attention to his actions, or, in fact, whose feelings are hurt easily by anything whatsoever, is for the most part a Narcissist, in whom once again the infantile omnipotence has been disturbed.
Jealousy very often represents the Narcissistic idea. The “dog-in-the-manger” attitude, which finding it cannot possess for itself, cannot bear anybody else to possess, is largely the attitude of unconscious phantasy, in which the individual cannot relinquish the idea that somehow he will succeed by means of his omnipotent mind in possessing the desired object, and his unconscious mind retains this idea so long as the object has not become the property of somebody else in such a definite and irrefutable manner as to prove in spite of his unconscious phantasy that he cannot possibly possess it himself.
The “dog-in-the-manger” attitude is one which simply refuses to recognise theimpossibility of possessing something, although the desire for possession in any particular case may unconsciously mean nothing except the desire to prove to oneself one’s own omnipotence. And many a case of jealousy in love-affairs is nothing but this unconscious desire to prove to oneself the possession of power; it is the hatred of acknowledging the fact that one has not control where one desires to have it most. Curious as it may seem jealousy is bred mostly out of self-love rather than out of love for the other person, although, of course, except in extreme cases, love for the other person may also exist.
The reaction which takes place whenever the Narcissistic element is hurt, almost always takes the form of a regression. It will be remembered that a regression implies a return to an infantile method of expression. The Narcissist unfailingly hopes, in his unconscious that his omnipotence will enable him to avoid an unpleasant fact, and to controvert it magically. He therefore falls back on those acts of infancy, which he found useful at that early period of his life as magical means of attaining his ends. Let us assume, forexample, that our Narcissist has entered quietly into an argument with a friend, with full faith in himself and his argument that he will convert his friend to his own point of view. He finds, however, that he is getting the worst of the argument. This is unbelievable to him, he cannot realise it; his friend must be pig-headed. Rapidly his unconscious mind says to itself, “What methods did I employ in my childhood, what magic formula did I use then to obtain what I wished?” “Ah!” says the unconscious, “I remember; I used abusive terms to my nurse, and the dear thing did what I wanted at once.” Very soon he is using abusive terms to his friend, who, however does not later on remark, “Oh! that man is a Narcissist.” He merely says, “You know, So-and-So never can keep his temper in an argument.” And the poor Narcissist all the time feels and thinks that he has been hardly dealt with, that people do not understand him, that they deliberately will not follow his arguments.
Of course, the last is very likely to be right, for in argument there is generally morerationalization than there is about most things in life. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is not really important that his friend should understand either him or his argument as a rule, and if he were not Narcissistic he would not over-react to this stimulus.
Other methods of reaction in a like manner are all regressions to infancy. Some Narcissists, when they ask their unconscious memory, “What magic did I employ as a child?” find that it was the magic of words, and they use expletives of various kinds, which correspond in every way to the magic words which a conjuror whispers over his tricks when he performs the apparently impossible. Others remember in their unconscious mind that they wept copiously, that when they wept the feeding bottle was returned to their lips, or the toy to their hands. Others go back a stage further. They withdraw in to themselves, they refuse to speak, or they say, “I am so upset, I must go and lie down.” They attempt to return, in fact, to the condition of isolation and rest, if not of pre-birth, at least of that period immediately following birth, when if theycried, they were rocked and crooned over and put to sleep.
Another form of regression largely due to Narcissism is that of alcoholism. Here again, there are other causes at work in the unconscious, but Narcissism is one of the most important of them. The Narcissist does not like real responsibility; he certainly thinks that he is always desiring responsible posts and positions, but this is merely because to hold a responsible position or to have responsibility signifies importance and power. As a matter of fact, when responsibility is thrust upon him, he often has a strong tendency to avoid it, because responsibility entails dealing with facts as they are, and not with phantasies; and the responsibility which the Narcissist seeks is largely that of phantasy. In spite, therefore, of his statements to the contrary, we know that he wishes to run away from responsible positions, and alcohol has a peculiar power of enabling one to forget the responsibilities of the moment, and at the same time to give one a feeling of potency and well-being. Consequently, when the Narcissist comes up against an unpleasant fact,a responsibility which he does not wish to take, anything in fact which disturbs his sense of well-being, alcohol serves the purpose of allowing regression to infancy. It returns him very swiftly to that early period when he had no responsibility, when he need take no thought of the facts around him, when he had a sense of well-being and omnipotence. This potency is increased by the fact that it also removes, simultaneously, other repressions, that is, it allows other forms of infantile energy to be expressed without conscious criticism or hindrance.
Exactly the same thing may be said of drug-taking. The drug-taker is simply habitually seeking something to remove his responsibilities, to lead him away from his conflicts which he does not wish to face, away from the world of reality into an infantile world, where whatever his surroundings, whatever the facts that exist, he is able to ignore them, and feel himself in phantasy their master.
But the curious thing about all these regressions is that, in a sense, they serve to satisfy the individual. They comfort himwith the unconscious assurance at the moment they are performed, that all will, somehow, be well, that these reactions will somehow bring about the desired end, that the abuse will succeed where the argument did not, that the tears will somehow perform their magic act, that a rest in bed will bring about new life, and that the new life will succeed where the old life failed.
Never does the Narcissist realise facts as they are, deal with them as facts, see them in their proper proportions, and leave them alone when he cannot use them.
Impatience of a different kind is also one of the common reactions. A man may go into a restaurant; he finds it is full, and quite naturally he is kept waiting a few minutes before the busy waiter can bring him the menu. He refuses to recognise the fact that he is only one of a hundred persons present, that the restaurant has to be run at a profit to the proprietor, that innumerable waiters cannot therefore be kept to serve his high omnipotence; he frets with impatience and he cannot resign himself to the inevitable waiting. He will not understand thattimeis one of the factors over which he has no power. In fact, this difficulty to realise thefactor of timeis an extremely common one with Narcissists. No sooner has a project entered their heads than they expect to see it fulfilled. Such fulfilment can only take place in phantasy, just as they did indeed attain their wishes in childhood. As children they could instantaneously create a chariot and horses from an arm-chair with complete neglect of the time-factor, and now as adults, they hope instantaneously to create an omelet without waiting for it to be cooked, to create a business or a character, or fame or happiness in the same instantaneous way, without reference to time. They are quite unable to see, completely and wholly, any difference between the phantasy of childhood and facts of adult life; and one of the most essential differences between the two is thistime factor.
It takes minutes for an omelet to be cooked, it takes years for a business to be created, it takes a lifetime for a character to be formed, fame they may never attain, but happiness lies within their grasp at once, if only they could relinquish their Narcissism.
[6]It may be of interest to readers to know that this physical over-sensitiveness has very largely disappeared from this particular lady as the result of partial psycho-analysis.
Having now briefly sketched the birth and some of the possible developments of Narcissism, it may be well to revert to the subject of rationalization, on which I have already touched briefly, before I deal with some of the methods with which we may combat our Narcissistic tendencies. The reason for reverting here to rationalization is this. Already I know that there are few readers who will not have discovered some material in this book which will have touched a tender spot in themselves. And since we know that the great effort of Narcissism is to cover up those tender spots, and to deceive ourselves in thinking that either they are not there, or better still, that they are virtues and really particularly healthy spots, it is as well to examine these tendencies and observe one of the chief methods by which we do produce such disguises successfully. Of these methods of disguise, our greatest comforter, yet ourworst enemy, is rationalization. The term means “finding apparently adequate reasons for things.”
One of the qualities which we highly cultured animals possess is that of reason. We have discovered that logic is one of the essential factors of law and order, and that the highest form of intellect possesses reason in a large measure. Among our gods, the god of reason and logic stands high, and our very Narcissism will not permit us to do and accept things which are contrary to logical reasoning. For that means in the first place, that they are contrary to what we have been taught to revere highly as a good quality, and yet more still it means that they are contrary to the magic of WORDS, for logic means words; logic is words which follow one another in irrefutable sequence. And we have already learnt thatthe infant has early associated words and sounds with magic, since by the persistent use of these he has got what he wanted. So that doubly are logic and reason revered.
Now, the unhappy thing about life is that we are continually wishing to do things orfeel things or believe things which do not follow logically upon other things which we have also had to feel or think or believe at some time. Some of our wishes are logically incompatible with other of our wishes. More over, we very often do not wish to believe or think things which do follow logically on actual facts which have gone before. How are we then, as reasonable people, to deal with the situation? By rationalization, by finding a reason which suits our purpose; and this can only be done, as a rule, by leaving out some important factor, by ignoring some truth, and by arguing from false premises. We do not do this consciously, that would be unworthy. Our unconscious censor manages to delete from consciousness the unpleasant truth, as we have already pointed out, and brings forth an array of facts which appear irrefutable, and he succeeds in giving us most plausible reasons so that we may believe that which is most convenient to us.
Let us consider for a moment such a subject as religion. The Roman Catholic will adduce evidences of various kinds to show that his is the only right and proper form of religion tobe accepted by any intellectual person. The Baptist will likewise do the same, and will probably hold that Papal institutions, in many instances, spring not from Heaven but from Hell. If you discuss it with either of them, you may be flooded with reasons, logical evidences of the correctness of their views. Obviously, they cannot both be right in so exclusive a manner, and a very little insight will show that the reasons they adduce have really very little to do with their beliefs, although they think they have. Reverence for their parents, early environment, and other factors of this kind, have really induced their present beliefs, but these would not appear to them as logical reasons and so they select others.
So it is with any unpleasant theory which comes into being. At the time of Darwin, a large number of facts were discovered which led unbiassed persons to believe in the theory of evolution. This appeared contrary to many religious beliefs, and the general public did not want to accept such a theory. They could not, however, shut their eyes to facts; what were they to do? By carefully leaving out some of the facts, and introducingspeculative material, which they called facts, but which were not facts, they succeeded in producing excellent reasons, or what seemed excellent reasons to them, for refuting the theory of evolution and retaining their old beliefs. In other words, they went through a process of rationalization.
The same thing was taking place a few years ago with reference to psycho-analysis. People did not like their omnipotent feelings disturbed, did not like to find that the superior bricks of which their edifice had been built were originally made from clay, and they found excellent reasons for not believing it. This, fortunately for progress, is gradually passing away, just as the opposition to the idea of the evolution of the body passed away. But rationalization is a process which has been and is still going on continuously. When Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, when Galileo discovered that the earth went round the sun, when psycho-analysts discovered that much which mothers thought kind was really cruel, and when you read a book which tends to point out that some of your cherished virtues may possiblybe faults, the same tendency is at work. Your mind sorts out some of the reasons, refuses to look at others of them, and by such careful selection, by this unconscious process of rationalization, supports your belief in yourself, holds fast to that which has been, and attempts continuously to prevent further changes and disturbances. This rationalization, however, is much more widely distributed than I have so far indicated; in order that one fact may be justified by reason, all the lesser facts which come before it must be similarly justified, until even into the trivial details of everyday life the leaven of rationalization has penetrated. Examples of it may be seen every day in the newspapers, in politics, in even trifling arguments. Take for instance the subject of woman’s suffrage. One half of the country produced irrefutable arguments to prove how bad it was, the other half to prove how good it was. In both cases, the arguments were but straws in the wind, they were quite unnecessary, they were only rationalization. Long before the argument on either side came into being, the feelings were there, the desires were there;and desires must somehow be proved right with the magic of words, before we feel at liberty to fulfil them. In neither case in this argument was the root of the matter touched. If some philosopher had come forward and said, “The first question we have to ask before thinking about suffrage, is should a woman wear a skirt?” or some such similar fundamental question, it would probably have been said that it had nothing to do with matter, and yet this question ofartificialdifference between the sexes is really fundamental to the whole subject. But the rationalist will find that he will not meet me in this statement. The woman who wishes to retain certain privileges, and yet accept certain other privileges, will at once find reasons why she should wear a skirt and yet have the vote. She will tell me all sorts of things about her physical disabilities, things which she believes to be fundamental truths, many of which, in fact, are fundamentally wrong, but accepted as truths because they lead to rationalization being able to support her wishes.
In a similar way, on the much discussed subject of “prohibition” the prohibitionist willrationalise on a certain few facts, in order to support his emotions and desires. A moderate drinker will do exactly the same, in the opposite direction. Neither of them will have the courage to ignore his personal feelings, nor may he have the power to do so, and to take all the facts into consideration and come to a conclusion, irrespective of his wishes on the subject.[7]
Of course, one of the other difficulties in the way of coming to correct conclusions in all these things is that people will insist on arguing upon subjects, when the amount of real scientific knowledge they have on the subjects is extremely small. The newspaper editor will quote a few popular facts, in order to support some theory of his own, having but a limited knowledge of psychology, physiology, anatomy, or of some other science which has considerable bearing on the subject, he will end by producing a series of conclusions probably entirely wrong. This, of course, is inevitable in our limitedcircumstances; but it should not be equally inevitable that we should hold firmly to our beliefs, when we realise how limited is our knowledge of any one subject. And in order to examine facts and to get rid of rationalization as far as possible, we must try, with the utmost power at our command to refuse that reaction of self-defence and self-pride, which prevents us from looking at ourselves and from realising that most of our opinions about ourselves may be completely erroneous. We must be prepared to accept temporary, not fixed, judgments, based upon the evidence which we have. We must be prepared to reverse those judgments in the light of new evidence. We must be careful not to reject this evidence merely because we do not like it.
It will now be seen how very necessary it is, in dealing with Narcissism in particular, to understand something of rationalization, so that we may be on our guard in examining ourselves, against allowing this to play too great a part in our conclusions. Otherwise, with all the goodwill in the world, we may never succeed in making any improvement whatsoever, in ourselves. The greatestscientists themselves have been amongst those who realised this.
It was Darwin who wrote, as we have quoted in the earlier part of this book, “I had, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once, for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.”
And it was the great scientist, Helmholtz, who said, “It is better to be in actual doubt, than to rock oneself in dogmatic ignorance.”
[7]Of course this does not imply that no one is ever capable of putting his conscious feelings on one side, and examining a subject in spite of pre-conceived ideas and desires, but that this is the exception rather than the rule.