Flowers and roots of narcissism

I’m talking to a child about one of his buddies. “You know, he is so evil…” – a five-year-old boy hardly opens his soul to me. I clarify: “Why is he evil?” – “Because he doesn’t want to play with me …” Then, barely holding back tears, he adds: “But I gave him all my cars …”

To an adult, this story is unlikely to seem serious – and in vain. After all, it contains a description of the upcoming drama – one of those that we later find when we come to a psychotherapist in search of an answer to the question: “Why can’t I believe that I’m really worth something?”

If a child gives out his toys to friends so that they want to play with him, this is not so harmless and perhaps speaks of his unconscious feeling that I am not valuable enough to interest others. It’s not just kids who think this way.

“When my friends and I go out of town, I organize everything myself – both transport and a feast,” says 40-year-old Alexander. “If we go to a bowling alley, I pay for everyone … I just can’t help it.” Where does this desire to “buy” a good attitude towards yourself from others come from? The roots of the problem, says psychoanalysis, lie in the very early childhood, when the phenomenon of so-called “narcissism” is formed in each of us.

Self attraction

In general, “narcissism” is a complex and negative concept. This word is pronounced when a person has “too” much attention to himself, painfully “too”. Let us recall the myth of Narcissus: the young man did not love anyone, considering only himself worthy of this feeling.

Between the certainty that you are the center of the universe, and the feeling that you are worth nothing, there is a golden mean – this is a natural feeling of good attitude towards yourself. Psychoanalysts call it “normal (necessary) narcissism”: it’s impossible to live if you don’t love yourself a little.

How does it arise?

At the beginning of life, a baby cannot love himself or anyone else – simply because he does not have a whole sense of himself. Each part of his body is separate impulses, unrelated to each other: his mouth screams, his stomach gurgles. Even his mother he perceives only as a part of himself. She comes running to his every cry, and the child is sure that he has as much power over her as, for example, over his arm or leg.

Thanks to the space that the mother creates around him with her presence, care, tenderness, the child has a “euphoric” state of satisfaction and security, a sense of his own existence is born. They smile at me when I eat, they pick me up when I cry. All these experiences crystallize into one thing: I am loved.

This period of early infancy – when feelings and thoughts are directed only at oneself – Sigmund Freud called “primary narcissism.” And this time is a natural and necessary stage in the development of each person.

find balance

Over time, the child gets acquainted with the outside world, over which his desires have no power. He learns the properties and meaning of objects, begins to become attached to people, learns to enter into relationships with them.

Now his life energy, which Sigmund Freud called “libido”, is not only directed inward, but also spreads to the outside world. It is divided into two streams. One is necessary in order to love oneself, the other is necessary in order to establish relations with the outside world.

Each of us has his own supply of psychic energy, which means that in order to love others, we are forced to choose where to direct most of it – to others or to ourselves. When all love is spent on self, psychoanalysts talk about “secondary narcissism”, the same one that is associated with problems or “narcissistic” personality disorders.

In a sense, every person has a narcissistic part of the “I”: in order to maintain the stability of our self-image, we need to remember that golden time when we felt with our whole being boundless love directed at us and a constant readiness to respond to our desires. Coming from early childhood, images of loving parents help us in difficult times.

“Dangerous” secondary…

This type of narcissism is characteristic of those whom the parents did not love, with whom they were cruel. Karina, who had a difficult parental divorce, had to become independent too early. Until the age of 32, she was never able to start a family: “No man is able to take care of me better than myself!”

Secondary narcissism also occurs in those who have been adored and patronized too much. Sergey is 35 years old, he is a successful businessman, he tries to achieve the best in life. But his marriage (the third in a row) is on the verge of breaking. The essence of his claims to his wife: “She does not care enough about me, does not want to change at all and all the time demands something for herself.”

Childhood leaves narcissistic wounds for adults: when there is nothing to rely on, we become selfish – otherwise we cannot keep faith in ourselves. And therefore, often under the guise of narcissism, a fragile and lonely person is hiding, feeling deceived and unloved.

The balance between self-love and love for others is not easy to find. Why do some people succeed and others don’t? A person is not born with the ability to love himself, with a sense of his own importance. This attitude towards oneself develops over the years of growing up in relationships with other people. And above all, with the parents.

It’s not enough to just tell your child how wonderful they are. It is important to actually accept it for what it is and recognize a few key things:

• His gender. The feeling that your parents are unhappy because your gender does not match their desire creates extremely low self-esteem.
• His body. The child needs to feel that adults respect his intimacy and nature, know about the stages of his development. For example, if a mother is still diligently bathing her seven or eight-year-old child, he will think of himself as a “baby.” And that lowers self-esteem.
• His personality. Explaining how harmful it is for a child to see parents walking around naked in front of him, the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Francoise Dolto insisted: you need to respect the child in everything, “up to his look”, treat him as if he were an honored guest in the house.
• His wishes and words. A child who is not told what concerns him, whose desires and opinions are not taken seriously, believes that he has no value …

To this we add: how much depends in the development of the child on the opinion of the parents about themselves! It’s hard to think you’re a “good kid” if your parents think they’re “bad”…

The roots of narcissism run deeper than you think. For all people, regardless of age, it is the key to life itself. In all her forms, but especially in relationships with other people.