Memoir & Motif no.1. "Falling into the Mirror."

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AS I PEN THESE WRITINGS, I OFTEN IMAGINE BEING INTERVIEWED. This is a technique I have learned from many years in motion pictures. Fielding questions aloud and being able to answer them oneself is a great way of drilling down to the core motifs underlying one's own work. A question I have been mulling over is: "This project is supposed to be about cancer, so why write so much about relationships?"

The quest for a cause behind my cancer is essentially an attempt to place the disease in epistemological certainty. Bearing in mind Bronfenbrenner's mecosystemic framework, the microsystem of my household with Justine, combined with the exosystem comprised of the financial and relational challenges we experienced, elevated Allostatic Load was part and parcel of our household in those months leading up to my diagnosis with cancer. There were four key elements of my mindset at the onset of symptoms, wherein (A) I focused entirely on solving our financial problems above all other considerations. (B) downplayed symptoms of potentially serious illness in the face of resource deprivation and perceived inability to solve the health problem without first solving the resource problem. Finally (C) I was caught between the prospect of violating my own principles in order to gain access to medical treatment, in the face of possible of terminal illness and the anxiety that choice provoked in Justine. Peripheral but not unrelated is (D) the cycle of narcissistic gamesmanship and codependency embodied in my four-year long relationship with Justine. All, in my view, are co-morbid with the rapid progression of the disease. What's past is prologue, something my old friend Billy Shakes used to say.

"Narcissism" and "Narcissist" are words casually thrown about in our media saturated society, but what do they really mean? One point of origin is the German word Narzissismus, popularized around the early 20th century in "Die sexuellen Perversitäten", a 1905 work by German psychiatrist Paul Näcke, who drew on Ovid's Narkissos, the beautiful Thespiaean hunter from Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection. What comes down to us from the myth of Narkissos or Narcissus is varied and even contradictory. One version of the story involves Narcissus stalking prey in a wood when he's spotted by Echo, a mountain Nymph so struck by his beauty that she stalks him into a glen. Narcissus, sensing he's being followed, perhaps hunted by some orphic creature, challenges it to reveal itself.

"Who's there? Show yourself!"

The painfully shy Echo prefers to gaze upon Narcissus' beauty from afar. Caught unawares, and needing to think of some quick action, repeats his words, imitating his voice from behind a tree.

"Who's there? Show yourself!" A moment passes between them. Narcissus, taken aback by the effect of his own voice returning to him, drops his guard. Seeing his aggression diminish, Echo chooses to reveal herself. She steps into the sunlight of the grove and approaches. When she tries to embrace him, He recoils.

"Go away! Leave me alone!" Heartbroken, Echo withers away until only her voice remains in the glen. Now and then, she repeats the words of travelers back to them, but she dare not approach for fear of another rejection.

Nemesis, an aspect of the goddess Aphrodite–the most beautiful of all the Gods of Olympus, witnesses Narcissus' cruelty from afar. As he continues on his hunt, she curses him with a terrible thirst, luring him to a pool. When he leans over the pool's edge to take a drink, the reflection staring back at him from within the sublime waters is that of himself as a young man in the full bloom of his youth. Entranced by this otherworldly image, Narcissus loses all sense of time and the urgency of his thirst. His passion for the youth gazing from within the pool crescendos into a blazing fire which consumes him. (1)(2) Out of his remains grows a patch of gold and white flowers known hitherto as Narcissus or daffodils. (3)

Another version holds Narcissus as the hunter who loved all things beautiful, but most of all himself. He shunned all male suitors who worshipped his beauty. Ameinias, a young man from the city and enamored of Narcissus the most, spends day-after-day trying to win the beautiful hunter's affections. Narcissus gives him a Spatha––an exquisite broad shortsword, hoping Ameinias takes the hint and goes away. Devastated by Narcissus' rejection, Ameinias draws the Spatha, marches back to Narcissus' villa and promptly impales himself on the doorstep. With his dying breath he prays to the Gods for Narcissus to pay some price for all the pain he's provoked. One day, while on a great hunt, Narcissus stops for a drink at a pool, becomes enamored of his own reflection staring back at him, draws his own Spatha and opens his veins lamenting that his own desire to acquire the youth in the pool can't be realized. (4)

The ancient Greeks really knew how to spice up a dinner party.

The field of Psychology defines a Narcissist as a person who suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Tautology aside, Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by grandiosity, a lack of empathy towards others, and overdeveloped desire for admiration. Frequently described as arrogant, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding, they may exhibit grandiosity in their fantasies around their own value or importance. The onset of these traits occurs in early adulthood and must be consistently evident in multiple contexts (such as at work and in relationships). According to the DSM-5, a diagnosis of Narcissism typically requires evidence of five of the following traits–present by early adulthood and across contexts: (5)

  • A grandiose sense of self-importance
  • Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
  • Belief that one is special and can only be understood by or associate with special people or institutions
  • Arrogant, haughty behavior or attitudes
  • Envy of others or the belief that one is the object of envy
  • A need for excessive admiration
  • A sense of entitlement (to special treatment)
  • Exploitation of others
  • A lack of empathy

While genetic and biological factors as well as environment and early life experiences are all correlated with the development of narcissistic personality disorder, its causes are not well-understood. Narcissism is thought to be one half of a binary response to childhood trauma, its counterpart being codependency which is described by Charles Whitfield as "a disease of lost selfhood." While there remains no consensus regarding the definition of codependency within the Psychology community, self-erasure and deferral of one's own needs in an attempt to find self-worth, security or identity are all agreed upon correlates. It is interesting to note that the psychological concepts of narcissism and codependency respectively are parallelled in both myths; embodied by the characters involved: Narcissus and Echo. Narcissus and Ameinias. The key difference between the two versions is that, in the former, Narcissus is cursed by the Gods with excessive self-love, while in the latter, Narcissus exhibits excessive self-love as an intrinsic aspect of his character. Echo and Ameinias rely entirely on Narcissus's love for their sense of self-worth and self-annihilate in the wake of his rejection. Both myths were written roughly around the same time (8 AD) and I am unaware of any evidence that the differences between the two represent a shift in the understanding of what we now know as narcissistic personality disorder within Greek and Roman society; however, both opinons as to the cause and nature of narcissism eluded to by Ovid and Conon respectively are notable.

As I read further into Narcissism and its causes, I stumbled upon the work of Dr. Sam Vaknin, an Israeli psychologist and self-confessed Narcissist, whose seminal work on the proliferation of Narcissism in the social media age (Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited) has spawned hundreds of hours of material on the subject. Vaknin writes:

There are two possible pathological reactions to childhood abuse and trauma: codependence and narcissism. They both involve fantasy as a defense mechanism: the codependent has a pretty realistic assessment of herself, but her view of others is fantastic (6)

I had long identified a brace of codependent traits within myself, which were incorrectly diagnosed as correlates with autism spectrum disorder (e.g. a certain social naïveté and difficulites picking up on nonverbal cues without undue concentration). To manoeuvre the social dance that played out naturally between people, for me required intense concentration; I might miss a joke, fail to detect sarcasm, or misinterpret body language. Eventually I came to understand that what I was experiencing was not based in autism, but rather a guileless assumption that my interactions with other people were were playing out in a field of implicit mutual honesty. I tended to take everyone at face value–a fantastic view of others. I attributed this to lack of social exposure in childhood which marked my upbringing; no siblings, no relationship with extended family, distant parents. I didn't have a cohesive social group with which to bond or learn human metacommunication. These understandings came along much later in life, through trial-and-error and yes, books.

Most of my upbringing had left me with a constant fear of abandonment just under the surface. My familial bonds were thin. I was routinely in the outgroup, ditched by peers, lovers, and colleagues alike. In my twenties, while away at University, I received a thick legal envelope from an aunt enclosed in which was a long letter, photographs and documents wherein she attempted to make the case that I was my Mother's bastard son by another man named Richard. This shocked me to my core, not least because I had no reason to believe any of it to be true, but because she went on to make the case that, in her view, I was to be shunned and exiled from the family. Apart from a rushed phonecall from an uncle when I was diagnosed with Cancer in November of 2018, None of my relatives have spoken to me since I received that envelope 15 years ago. I have always possessed a sense that I was alone against the big bad world, "sans racines"–without a tribe; something I believe to be the ultimate in primal existential terror.

Like sharks sensing blood in the water, narcissists are drawn to those without strong familial bonds; the isolated, the exiled, the outcast. As much as I have tried to cauterize that sense of abandonment, its sanguine traces remain, manifesting in an uncanny ability to romantically attract narcissists. Love-bomb, devaluation, discard ad nauseum. We meet. Initially I am "the best man she'd ever met," "a unicorn." All her hopes and dreams lay in me and my abilities; the golden ticket is firmly in my hands. This is the love-bombing phase (or alternatively idealization), the hook, meant to appeal to someone with a history of unrequited love and rejection. The sex act occurs immediately and continues frequently, out of which arises the oxytocin bond–a feeling of addiction to the narcissist.

Tables shift and I am suddenly, irrevocably, the worst man she'd ever met. "Selfish," "Emotionally unavailable." Nothing I say or do can right things again. Now we are firmly in the devaluation phase, where the lingering addiction to the narcissist is leveraged as a means of manipulation and control; a pipeline to that most coveted psychic resource: Narcissistic supply. A constant icy ridicule settles into the relationship; a miasma of disappointment used to keep the codependent working to correct a superabundance of contrived grievances and thereby regain the golden ticket. In this tango from Hell, reasonable efforts to mitigate grievance only begets more grievance, meeting dismissal and disapproval, relational-aggression provoking self-attack. "Why am I not doing enough to make [my narcissist] happy?" "Why can't I solve these problems?" "I must be complete shit. Utter garbage as a human being. No wonder [my narcissist] is disappointed in me." Insolvency brings on the collapse; the Mel Blanc snowball that becomes the avalanche of self-doubt. It metastasizes beyond the organs of relationship, into career, into resource competition.

One day, out of the blue [my narcissist] simply vanishes. Perhaps leaving behind a long letter listing my faults and placing the onus of the failed relationship squarely on my shoulders, or leaving behind only an eerie silence, lingering over the detritus. Human wreckage drifting in the backwash. Discard complete. [my narcissist] moves on to a new relationship with her next mark, groomed behind the scenes. The cycle begins anew. An Oruboros nightmare of predatory narcissistic behaviour. The genesis of this cycle in my own life may lie in the sexual. My first sexual encounter happened at the age of 13, with a much older and dominant girl. In that instance of penultimate vulnerability the power differential between a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old is enormous. Subsequent encounters would follow a similar pattern. There was no sense of "conquest" or "achievement." Instead a feeling of submission to the dominant feminine countersigned my adolescent intimate collisions. If the Freudian notion that the roots of human reality processing lay in the two-step between sex and power, this abjuration of selfhood manifested in realms of life beyond that amorous realm. Vaknin explains the narcissist's relationship to reality as experienced by others:

The narcissist "knows" that he can do anything he chooses to do and excel in it... He is genuinely surprised and devastated when he fails, when the "universe" does not arrange itself, magically, to accommodate his unbounded fantasies, when it (and people in it) does not comply with his whims and wishes. (7)

He continues:

The narcissist is abjectly and humiliatingly dependent on constant input from people whom he considers vastly inferior to him. He clings to them but hates and resents them and himself for his dependence. (8)

Here Vaknin encapsulates something I was seeking evidence and explanation for. As I explored in "Social Mobility Mazurka," my unending employment struggles and Justine's expressed inability to empathize or even acknowledge my experiences. I remember perplexity that, at least as she expressed to me, she had never met with such trial in a job search. To her mind people just went out and got jobs. Failure in that action meant the fault was entirely theirs; there were no mitigating factors or extenuating circumstances in her calculus. Having placed the attainment of grand desires on my shoulders, knowing that I would willfully accept more of the responsibility than any reasonable person would, It wasn't a lack of empathy. Justine knew exactly what buttons to press to provoke self-attack:

She snatched her little black book from the recesses of a faux crocodile skin workbag. Her whole life was in that book; plans, contingencies, hopes and dreams. Lists of places to visit, restaurants for date nights—a dwindling refuge from the increasing stress of our shared life. At the top of every month she sat at the dinette, drawing out a calendar. Every day had a list, a choreographed plan of steps and milestones. She brought the worry worn book over to me, brandishing it like a police badge.

"This is my five-year plan: Job. Grad school. Married. Babies," Her arm dropped, book in hand. It slapped on her thigh with crisp finality in the live air of the room, "With the way things are going, I don't see how that's going to happen!" I listened, keeping the wolves of my frustration from entering the fray and tearing her to pieces; essential Zen. She became hazy in the mood lighting of our living room, my eyes were misty with tears.

Vaknin argues against the common clinical perception of narcissists as lacking empathy:

The narcissist’s self-image and self-perception are delusional and grandiose, but his penetrating view of others is bloodcurdlingly accurate. (9)

How can a narcissist exhibit such predatory understanding of manipulation? They probe the personal history of the mark, seeking evidence of weak familial bonds, isolation and signs of codependency manifesting as fear of abandonment, or self-erasure. These tells can be so complex and subtle that not only must the narcissist possess a basic human empathy but a hyper empathy where the sense data necessary to identify a codependent is far more obvious to the narcissist than it would be to a neurotypical person.

Empathy is often mischaracterized as an intuitive ability to place one's self in another person's shoes, drawing inferences and anticipating that person's inner workings. It goes much deeper. V.S. Ramachandran, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego makes the case that mirror neurons, the underlying brain structure that enables empathy, is "the basis of civilization" itself.

A subset of [moto-command neurons] also fire when I simply watch another person—watch you reach out and do exactly the same action. So these neurons are performing a virtual reality simulation of your mind, your brain. Therefore, they’re constructing a theory of your mind—of your intention—which is important for all kinds of social interaction. (10)

Narcissists also have these mirror neurons. They are baked-in structures.

It turns out these anterior cingulate neurons that respond to my thumb being poked will also fire when I watch you being poked—but only a subset of them... So these [mirror] neurons are probably involved in empathy for pain. If I really and truly empathize with your pain, I need to experience it myself. (11)

Any person, having experienced the effects of a specific stimulus (e.g. pain) is able to replicate that pain in others by repeating the stimulus. The choice to use specific stimuli to cause an effect requires the ability to predict the effect of a given stimulus. The choice to use a stimulus to manipulate implies premeditation. It follows that these understandings, employed by the narcissist, demonstrates a conscious choice. What drives a narcissist to employ this as a method of relating to others? Why do narcissists narc?

While the roots of narcissism in childhood trauma have yet to be conclusively proven in a clinical setting, co-morbidity of narcissistic personality disorder and childhood trauma has been demonstrated. Psychologist David Hosier argues Narcissistic personality disorder arises out of arrested development. A host of psychological defence mechanisms are employed to insulate the narcissist from emotional pain.(12) While for the sake of brevity I won't publish the entire list here, I do want to draw attention to two of Hosier's mechanisms that are of note.

8) Avoidance: also sometimes referred to as ‘escape coping’ – making efforts to evade dealing with particular stressors. (13)

Justine's bedroom brooding and alcohol abuse could be interpreted as signs of 'escape coping.' The stressor being my demonstrated inability to satisfy her idealization of status and life goals. There was no teamwork or cooperation regarding my tumultuous business reality and my difficulties securing employment. I was left to simply "figure it out," while she withdrew and drank.

6) Projective Identification: this is when the person (unconsciously) projects onto another (imagines the other to possess) parts of their own ego and then expects the other to become identified with whatever has been projected. (14)

If I was to state, in a moment of verbal conflict, the experience of a harmful feeling related to our relationship, Justine would immediately riposte, “that’s exactly how I feel!” However legitimate the criticism, I was also accused of it. This was a subtle way of negating the impact of her actions, shifting the conversation away from the issue at hand. When a relationship between equals degenerates into a power struggle, nothing can be resolved. A tennis match with grenades ensues. I stopped engaging. Vaknin lends credence to this idea of projective identification:

Coextensivity (the “ventriloquist defense”: insisting that the partner mind-reads her and acts in ways that reflect her inner psychological states and moods); and shifting boundaries (using behavioural unpredictability and ambient uncertainty to induce paralysing dependence in the partner). (15)

In our current culture we live by one axiom: whomever holds the mantle of victim, to them goeth the power. Rather than accept a mantle of power conferred upon me by others, I'd rather take back that agency on my own terms–a process that starts by seeing things as they are in reality. I am as much the "victim" of my own choices as I am the victim of illness. The escalating stressors of those fateful pre-diagnosis months gave rise to folie a deux, a shared psychosis manifested by the psychic combat between narcissist and codependent. Justine and I were both casualties of childhood upsets, developing a set of coping mechanisms enabling us to navigate our respective environments. Hers was to avoid the unprocessed pain of her parents' divorce by manipulating men. Mine was to place my sense of selfhood in the validation of others–particularly in the approval of women. We wear scars all over. Most have healed over well enough as to go unnoticed as we move through the world. There are those who can see past our defences, into our hearts. What they do with what they find there tells us everything we ever need to know about them and who they should be to us.

~

Warning & Disclaimer: The contents of this article are not meant to substitute for professional counseling. The author is neither a psychologist, nor should any information included herein be construed as clinical advice. The diagnosis and treatment of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder can only be done by a professional specifically trained and qualified to do so - which the author is not.

FOOTNOTES & REFERENCES

1. It's interesting to note the fire consuming him could also be read as his body dying of thirst.

2. Ovid. Metamorphoses, III 474-510.

3. Pliny the Elder attributed the naming of the Narcissus flower from the numbing effects of its scent.

4. Conon. Narrations, 24

5. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Personality disorders. In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing Inc.

6. Vaknin, Sam. "Codependence and Dependent Personality Disorder.", http://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders22.html

7. Vaknin, Sam. "The Narcissist's Grandiose Fantasies," http://samvak.tripod.com/faq3.html

8. Ibid.

9. Vaknin, Sam. "Codependence and Dependent Personality Disorder.", http://www.samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders22.html

10. Marsh, Jason. "Do Mirror Neurons Give Us Empathy?" Greater Good Magazine, http://www.greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/do_mirror_neurons_give_empathy

11. Ibid

12. Hosier, David. "Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Its link to Childhood Trauma." Childhood Trauma Recovery, https://childhoodtraumarecovery.com/narcissism/childhood-trauma-its-link-to-narcissistic-disorder/

13. Ibid

14. Ibid

15. Marsh, Jason. "Do Mirror Neurons Give Us Empathy?" Greater Good Magazine, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/do_mirror_neurons_give_empathy