Malignant Narcissism

 

For the past two weeks, my interest has been on the impaired moral development of many Republicans. First with Freud’s superego or conscience and then with research findings from Piaget and Kohlberg on the development of conscience. Today’s essay incorporates a few of Freud’s ideas pertaining to primary narcissism, secondary narcissism, and conscience

In Freud’s model, the newborn is anxious and helpless on arrival and dependent on caretaker for survival. In the beginning, the vulnerable newborn exists in a state of primary narcissism. The infant’s world is self and self only. At about six months or so, the infant becomes able to psychologically separate and experiences separation anxiety. That infant now becomes able to differentiate self from objects in the external world. Freud referred to this development as proceeding to secondary narcissism.

Secondary narcissism is extremely important as the young infant begins to develop the capacity to relate to others in his world. This capacity is based on a plethora of transactional interactions. The young infant initially employs various senses like touch, sound, vision, smell, and taste etc. in his interactions. His behavioral interactions are of various intensities of strength of positive comfort, pleasure or pain and discomfort. It’s true that the young infant has not developed a cognitive memory at this point. Therefore, any memory of an event has an emotional component, not something that can be put into words and not affected by dementia. That does not mean that these events are not significant. It means psychologically they can be traumatic, latent and long-lasting. In essence, they become activated, strengthened and exhibited with the occurrence of a new conflictual, stressful event.

There is an occurrence of harmful, hurtful and painful events. These traumatic experiences add up and are carried, in the mind, like a diseased tumor. They are capable of surfacing anytime during one’s life. Just consider the number of harmful and inappropriate unions that occur over and over again. Despite high and loving expectations, at the beginning, the outcomes of the unions remain the same. The same unfortunate dynamic repeats itself irrespective of the new object. Freud called the same repetitive behavior a “repetition compulsion. “Repetition compulsion includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in the situation where the event is likely to happen again. Interpersonal unions are good examples. Just look at the divorce statistics.

This brings to mind training my border collie to become fearful of rattlesnakes. The training consisted of introducing Sherry to a live rattlesnake. When introduced to the rattlesnake, Sherry was given an electric shock. As a result, when around the snake, she associated the shock with the snake and became fearful. It worked, Sherry was scared by the snake as a result of the electric shock. She had no words for that scary snake, but she did have the hurtful emotional memory stored in her hypothalamus of her mammalian brain. So, if she encountered a rattler on our trail runs, she would not dare to get near and instead avoid that danger. Likewise, we like Sherry, have a mammalian brain that stores our traumatic, fearful and scary emotional memories. This is why we are so fearful and driven by anxiety. We have developed many techniques, irrational and self-defeating choices while attempting to protect ourselves.

In Freud’s model, he and others found and reported on childhood traumas and its effect on character development. With psychoanalysis, they uncovered the trauma of the forgotten memories and its harmful effect on adult personality. Freud found that childhood trauma, more often than not, had a sexual and aggressive component. This non remembered sexual and/ or aggressive trauma resulted in neurosis and later expressed itself as a memory trace in a distorted and altered manner. As a result, much case history research traced obsessive, depressive, paranoid, phobic, mother and father fixations and symptoms to early emotional trauma which later surfaced and expressed by adult behavior. These painful emotional traumas existed latently, were concealed, dormant but later strongly revealed themselves quite clearly. For additional in-depth information, consult Freud’s “Three Case Histories” pertaining to the Wolf Man; the Rat Man and the Psychotic Doctor Schreber.

The consequence of early child trauma interferes with ability to proceed from primary to secondary narcissism. However, early primary narcissistic status is different from an adult primary narcissistic status. Within cortex development, cognition, words, symbols and the like evolve as well as the physiological characteristics and the individual becomes capable of great harm. If there is too much deleterious trauma, the adult individual’s primary narcissism expresses itself in troubled unions. These troubled relationships are characterized with a tendency to either withdraw or avoid others and/ or to interact aggressively toward others. In other words, the individual has not been able to develop a sense of trust when it comes to interpersonal unions. These Impaired relationship with others demonstrate mistrust, suspiciousness and paranoid thinking. These factors result in anxiety and frustration with behaviors associated with sadomasochism, exploitation, domination, taking and controlling. As a result, the adult’s primary narcissism has now become malignant narcissism. With this occurrence, internal controls within conscience become weak, impotent, powerless and ineffective.

Not able to experience internal well-being or external well-being, severely affects moral and ethical development in interacting with others. Being stuck at the primary narcissism or malignant narcissistic status means insecurity, anxiety, egoism, self-centeredness and amoral behavior. However, with a positive development of secondary narcissism, that individual has the capacity to be productive, love self and love others. Being able to love and care for others, is found at the highest levels of moral and ethical development. They have a giving, not a taking, possessing or dominating tendency. Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt reached extraordinary levels of both a humanistic attitude and giving behavior.

Too many current Republicans discriminate against others. Their disdain for others is based on primary levels of narcissism, insecurity, hate and jealousy. The white nationalist march in Charlottesville in 2017, among other despicable acts of violence, was predicated on derogatory anti-Semitic slurs. Yes, the Jews have been scapegoated by Christians over the centuries despite the fact they are the oldest constituents on the planet ; brought laws, ethics , human values and religion  to civilization; resilient against oppression and extermination; raised the moral, ethical, scientific, artistic, technological and educational level to each society; established spirituality, a soul  with an august or abstract  belief in god ;separated from others with a non interest in conversion ; value wisdom, intellectuality and language  over the senses ;have a good opinion of self; and are the favored child of God. Despite being a minority, the contribution of Jewry to humanity has been impressive. Unfortunately, for low self-esteem or being part of a mob, negative emotions and insecurity of envy, jealousy, and anger follow.  

With the arrival of Covid-19, the preponderance of deaths occurred in nursing facilities and the like. These deaths were primarily of old and nonwhite skinned citizens. Who cared? Just give them bleach etc. and let them die. Hey, it’s a hoax anyway. The head Republican and his cronies, criminally downplayed and greatly contributed to the spreading of the pandemic. Even today, a minority of the Republican governors, still act immorally. However, now that everyone, not just black and Brown skinned are at risk, but kids as well, the tune is slowly changing. As far as jealousy and envy goes, highly paid black athletes dominate the college and professional sports world. Their salaries and status are phenomenal. In the entertainment world, black skinned individuals have reached enormous levels of achievement, fame and notoriety.  Just mention MJ, Mr. October, 0J, Beyoncé, Tiger, Michael, Magic, Oprah, Venus, Serena, Barry, Whitney, Aretha, Shaq, Jennifer, Dwayne, Barack, Denzel, Morgan, Rihanna, Halle, Kamala, Steph, LeBron etc. etc. and you know what I mean. These famous challenge the myth about being inferior, blind, deaf and dumb.

In summary, the transition or development from primary to secondary narcissism is a key component in being able to secure a humanistic-caring society. Too many Republicans, are sick and stuck. According to Freud’s model, their inability to separate healthfully from the caretaker or authoritarian leader; their early emotional trauma and being fixated at the primary level of narcissism with malignant narcissism cannot be overstated. Emotional trauma is primarily the result of impaired interpersonal interaction and can be a lifetime threat for mental disease and well-being. Too many Republicans are exhibiting hateful, discriminatory and destructive behavior towards others. Anxiety, hate, jealousy, and envy define their character with an amoral malignant narcissistic conscience. They also expect to be “rewarded or loved” for their despicable actions by the approval, acknowledgment and praise by their despot father figure.

PS

“The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes” the Dalai Lama states.