Narcissism is shameful but useful

when you are showing off in front of the mirror in the bathroom, suddenly an acquaintance passes by, will you be a little embarrassed? Maybe you think you're pretty good, but maybe you've never said to yourself in your life, "I love myself so much!" Maybe deep down in our hearts, we really feel that narcissism is shameful.

narcissism of beautiful teenagers

reviewing the word "narcissism", the most famous allusions and etymologies come from the stories of Narcissus, an American teenager in Greek mythology.

canvas painting Narcissus | after the artist Gyula Bencz ú r

Narcissus was born, his father asked the prophet about his son's fate. The prophet said that as long as his son could not see his face, he would live a long life. So although Narcissus grew up to be the most handsome man in Greece, he never looked in the mirror.

Narcissus's beauty fascinates women all over Greece, but he is indifferent to all the women who come to courtship.

later, a fairy named Echo was also fascinated by his beauty and could not extricate herself from falling in love, but she was also rejected. Echo died of grief, leaving only the sound echoing between the valleys (Echo means echo).

the women he rejected asked the Vengeance to punish Narcissus.

when he came back from a Narcissus hunt, he finally saw his face in the pool. He fell in love with his reflection obsessively. He didn't think about it, thought about it day and night, and finally died by the lake.

Destiny and prophecy are thus fulfilled.

hearing this story, I was surprised: never look in the mirror. However, people really can not fall in love with themselves?

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narcissism of higher mammals

narcissism of advanced mammals

before we understand the complexity of human narcissism, let's take a look at higher mammals.

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gorillas' highly narcissistic hands beat their breasts

memory, gorillas' chest-beating with both hands in anger is a sign of high narcissism. In several modern animal psychology experiments, it is even found that advanced mammals such as dolphins and orangutans show narcissistic attention to their own images.

one of the famous experiments is to set up a big mirror for the pool where dolphins live, and then paint the dolphins' heads with pigments that are different from those of dolphins. When the dolphins swim in front of the mirror, they immediately recognize what is wrong with them. They will be upset about the color on their head and try to rub off these colors with their heads.

it all stems from the desire for biological self-presentation and self-recognition. This is especially true of human beings, and their performance is more complex, such as washing, making up, dressing and so on every day. Fundamentally speaking, this is the explicit effect of everyone's narcissistic energy.

narcissism is not shameful

the word "narcissism" has always had no good reputation in Chinese and Western social and cultural traditions, usually with a derogatory meaning, and is a term for human qualities such as exaggeration, conceit, ego, selfishness and so on.

in the 1970s, Kohut, the founder of autologous psychology, found that narcissism is so common in clinical studies of human narcissism, and its performance is not as negative as we previously assumed. narcissism runs through it from birth to deathbed.

therefore, Kohut states in his work: "now, narcissism is legal." This is an important change in the psychological understanding of human life, which turns narcissism from derogatory words to neutral words.

Kohut defines narcissism as a state of self-worth and self-cherishment.

Kohut stressed that if something goes wrong with human narcissism, it is more due to our past culture's attitude of non-empathy, incomprehension and contempt for individual narcissism experience. If this attitude of non-acceptance lasts for a long time and is strong, it will seriously hurt the individual's sense of self-worth.

for example, in order to promote their children to achieve excellent academic results, parents use the so-called provocative method to belittle their children's current achievements, and their children's grades may be better when they are stimulated, but people's narcissism are often hit, resulting in a lower sense of self-worth and prone to depression.

so when we review the forms of narcissism, we can find that narcissism includes three forms:

the first is healthy narcissism , that is, moderate adaptive narcissism, which is the form of most of us;

the second is extreme narcissism , that is, narcissism that only cares about one's own feelings but cannot empathize with others, is a form of narcissism that will be envied or attacked by others.

the third type is defensive extreme narcissism , which is a self-protective behavior of narcissistic injured individuals in the past. This narcissism is to keep a distance from others, but it can get you into trouble that you can't extricate yourself from.

if the latter two conditions are serious, they should receive professional psychological counseling.

the development of narcissism

narcissism is inherent in human nature, but the growth of human narcissism requires efforts, and the most important and early foundation of comes from the upbringing of parents.

Freud pointed out the development of relationship and narcissism in child psychology.

babies are omnipotent at birth.Narcissism , a baby will not take into account the feelings of others, the caregiver needs to make every effort to meet the baby's needs, but there is always a time when the baby's narcissism will be frustrated. However, as long as this setback is non-traumatic, babies will be able to modify their omnipotent narcissism at a milligram level to adapt to real life, and develop new strategies to deal with society while maintaining narcissism.

there are two extremes in the process of parents' interactive correction of their children's narcissism: underrearing or over-parenting.

parents who cannot raise often use the methods of excessive suppression and strict restraint, which completely ignore their children's narcissistic feelings, resulting in their children's narcissism being suppressed.

the pent-up desire will not disappear, but will be expressed in a more uncontrollable way in future life, which is one of the important reasons for the origin of many mental diseases.

in clinical cases, those children whose childhood was neglected by their parents developed a sense of inferiority in early childhood, which led them to be ashamed to face their injured true self. Later in life, they will subconsciously use narcissism to protect themselves from being hurt.

this subconscious behavior is understandable because they have unspeakable pain in their hearts. On the other hand, this subconscious narcissism can also have destructive consequences for their relationships.

parents who overraise meet almost any of their children's needs in a doting way, which projects their own narcissism to their children, and parents are unable to provide a living environment with slight setbacks to encourage their children to be independent.

this overindulgence in parenting can lead to children being self-willed, unable to understand others, and unable to really face society alone.

my psychological colleagues in Australia and North America have mentioned many times that in foreign Chinese new immigrant communities, it is often found that teenagers who are connived and raised are raised in an excessively superior environment from an early age, so narcissism is inflated. Parents will provide all material conditions, but they lack social adaptability. Once they encounter setbacks, they will immediately suffer narcissistic collapse-like rage or depression. And then fall into problems such as fighting and taking drugs.

this is closely related to parents' failure to provide an environment that happens to be frustrating, which is, in more popular terms, doting parenting.

as for the third way besides excessive and inadequate parenting, the "middle path" expounded by the Buddha is a principle that we can implement in the process of child rearing.

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2017

2017, occasionally narcissism

Let's go back to the story of beautiful teenagers. This story metaphors the relationship between narcissistic (Narcissus) and echo (Echo), and reflects the essence of human spiritual life:

the human soul survives in the relationship and can experience its own value in the relationship.

if we refuse to respond to all others, we will die of narcissism in the relationship. But it also shows the importance of other people's responses to individual narcissism, otherwise we will die of narcissism.

when I was about to finish my article, when I happened to go to the fruit store to buy watermelon, the young man who sold watermelon held a watermelon in his hand and said to me, "medium well, four or five jin, the estimated price is nine to ten yuan. Nine yuan and fifty cents." Then give it to the one who weighed the fruit next to it, and sure enough, the electronic scale came out to be nine yuan and sixty cents.

the young man smiled and said, "I see that my estimate is similar to that of the scale. Now I can be narcissistic." I also smiled and thought to myself that narcissism had become so popular.