References added: 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 23
Narcissistic mortification is a term first used by Sigmund Freud in his last book, Moses and Monotheism,[1] with respect to early injuries to the ego/self.
It has recently been defined by Mary Libbey as “the primitive terror of self dissolution, triggered by the sudden exposure of one's sense of a defective self...death by embarrassment”.[2] The concept has been widely employed in ego psychology and also contributed to the roots of self psychology.
When narcissistic mortification is experienced for the first time, it may be defined as a sudden loss of control over external or internal reality, or both; producing strong emotions of terror while at the same time a building up of narcissistic libido, also known as ego-libido or destrudo is created.[3] Narcissistic libido or ego-libido is the concentration of libido on the self. According to Freud, the narcissistic libido is redirected to an ego ideal that creates an individual's culture and ethics, these are the means by which he or she measures the self.[4] Destrudo, is the opposite of libido and is the impulse to destroy oneself and everything associated with him or her.[5]
Early developments: Bergler, Anna Freud, and Eidelberg edit
Edmund Bergler developed the concept of narcissistic mortification in connection with early fantasies of omnipotence in the developing child, and with the fury provoked by the confrontations with reality that undermine his or her illusions.[6] For Bergler, “the narcissistic mortification suffered in this very early period continues to act as a stimulus throughout his life”.[7]
Anna Freud used the term in connection with her exploration of the defence mechanism of altruistic surrender, whereby an individual lives only through the lives of others – seeing at the root of such an abrogation of one's own life an early experience of narcissistic mortification at a disappointment with one's self.[8]
Ludwig Eidelberg subsequently expanded on the concept in the fifties and sixties. Eidelberg defined narcissistic mortification as occurring when “a sudden loss of control over external or internal reality...produces the painful emotional experience of terror”.[3] He also stressed that for many patients simply to have to accept themselves as having neurotic symptoms was itself a source of narcissistic mortification.[9]
Psychological and physical sensations edit
Both physical and psychological sensations may play a role in an individual’s experience with mortification. Physical sensations such as: burning, painful tingling over the body, pain in the chest that slowly expands and spreads throughout the torso, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, sweating, blanching, coldness and numbness are experienced by the individual suffering from mortification. The psychological sensations described are shock, exposure, and humiliation. For example explanations such as: “It feels like I won’t survive” and “I have the absolute conviction that he or she hates me and it’s my fault” are sometimes used by sufferers. These sensations are always followed by shock, although they may have happened on various occasions, they also prompt the need for the individual suffering to do something both internally and externally, to effect a positive self-image in the eyes of their narcissistic object. Narcissistic mortification is extreme in its intensity, global nature, and its lack of perspective, causing the anxiety associated with it to become traumatic.[2]
Normal versus pathological narcissistic mortification edit
An individual who upholds normal narcissistic mortification is able to avoid being overwhelmed by internal needs because he recognizes these urges in time to bring about their partial discharge. Many believe there is no such thing as normal narcissistic mortification and all are overcome by their temper and forget things at times. An individual experiencing pathological narcissistic mortification is prone to becoming fixated on infantile objects, resulting in a infantile form of discharge. He or she cannot be satisfied of this energy, which is unconscious, and this in turn interferes with their well-being. According to Ludwig Eidelberg, this denial of an infantile narcissistic mortification can be responsible for many defensive mechanisms. [3]
Internal versus external narcissistic mortification edit
Both internal and external narcissistic mortification are considered pathological, internal narcissistic mortification occurs when an individual is over stimulated by his or her emotions. For example, while debating with fellow classmates on the importance of stem cell research an outspoken student loses his temper causing an uproar. The student has just exhibited an over stimulation of his emotions and used this outburst to relieve internal tension. External narcissistic mortification occurs when something out of ones’ control influences a situation, for example, an individual who is held at gunpoint while having their wallet stolen.[3] This individual does not hold any control over the scenario nor the actions of the gunman, but his reaction to being held at gunpoint influences the next scenario and what the gunman does next.
Narcissistic mortification in cult leadership edit
According to the psychoanalytic perspective, cult leaders unconsciously experience dependency needs as shameful and ward them off by developing delusions of omnipotence.[10] This fantasy of omnipotence, however, can never truly be fulfilled, what remains of the delusion, consciously, is shame and guilt.[11] Dependency is shameful to the cult leader, because, based on aspects of his or her own development that may have been traumatic, it has come to mean despicable weakness and humiliation.[12] For the pathological narcissist who knows unconsciously that they are susceptible to extreme mortification it is imperative that the delusion is maintained. To maintain the delusion, cult leaders use manic defenses, seduction, and control to externalize and locate dependency needs in others, thus making them controllable. Once made controllable the leader expresses his unconscious self-loathing through his or her compassion (which is often disguised contempt) for their followers’ weaknesses. To declare their own sense of perfection, the leader creates programs of purification for the followers. Shamelessness is achieved when the leader projects and vacates shame from his or her own psyche onto the psyche of those who follow.[10] The leader of the cult is the only one who may have this feeling of shamelessness; he or she deceives their followers by giving them a false sense of security in which they can reach perfection, when in reality inducing shame. By inducing shame the leader maintains dominance and control over his or her followers. Cult leaders never get rid of their embarrassment over dependency and by initiating followers they are simply displacing onto another.
Examples of cult leaders edit
Some of the world's most dangerous cult leaders are pathological narcissist who demanded strict loyalty from followers. Some examples are; Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Karesh,Stewart Traill and Shoko Asahara.[13]
Death anxiety and narcissistic mortification edit
For many death is a natural life process that all must go through but for some, especially in western cultures,death is seen as the ultimate loss of control. This loss of control may, in some individuals, turn into death anxiety. Death anxiety is seen as a specific form of shame anxiety or narcissistic mortification. The shame in this context is produced by the loss of stoicism, productivity, and control, aspects that are highly valued by society and aspects that are taken away as one ages. Death according to Darcy Harris, 'is the ultimate narcissistic wound, bringing about not just the annihilation of self, but the annihilation of one's entire existence, resulting in a form of existential shame for human beings, who possess the ability to ponder this dilemma with their higher functioning cognitive abilities.' Individuals who hold this anxiety are ashamed of mortality and the frailty that comes along with it. These individuals attempt to overcome this reality through diversions and accomplishments, this is similar to how those with narcissistic personality traits attempt to overcome their feelings of inferiority and shame. This attempt at overcoming one's feelings of inferiority and shame is accomplished through grandiosity and other strategies that deflect the pain. [14]
Narcissistic mortification and suicide edit
There are many reasons for an individual to partake in suicidal activities, whether resulting in death or not. Research states that the underlying motives for suicide are: revenge, impairment of physical integrity (illness, disfigurement, torture, etc.), guilt, shame, loss of honor, altruism, narcissistic mortification, menace to economic existence, personal conflicts and religious reasons. [15] Those who suffer from narcissistic mortification are more likely to participate in suicidal behaviors and those who do not receive the proper help more often than not succeed. Suicide related to narcissistic mortification is different from normal sorrow in that it is associated with deep rooted self-contempt and self-hatred.[16]
Treatment edit
A long-term goal of psychoanalytic treatment for those who suffer from narcissistic mortification is to transform the mortification into shame. By transforming it into shame it enables the sufferer to tolerate and use it as a signal. The process of transforming mortification into shame entails working through both the early mortifying traumas as well as the defenses, often unstable, related to them. If an individual sufferer does not go through this transformation, he or she is left with two unstable narcissistic defenses. These defenses are: self-damning, deflated states designed to appease and hold on to self-objects, and narcissistic conceit, which is designed to project the defective self experiences onto self-objects. Both of these defensive styles require a continuation of dependence on the self-object. Transforming the mortification into shame makes it possible for self-appraisal and self-tolerance, this ultimately leads to psychic separation and self-reliance without the need to sustain one's mortification.[2]
Kohut and self psychology edit
For Kohut, narcissistic injury - the root cause of what he termed narcissistic personality disorder – was broadly equivalent to the humiliation of mortification.[17] Kohut considered that “if the grandiosity of the narcissistic self has been insufficiently modified...then the adult ego will tend to vacillate between an irrational overestimation of the self and feelings of inferiority and will react with narcissistic mortification to the thwarting of its ambitions”.[18]
Object relations theory edit
Unlike ego psychologists, object relations theorists have traditionally used a rather different, post-Kleinian vocabulary to describe the early woundings of narcissistic mortification. Recently however such theorists have found analogies between Freud's emphasis on the sensitivity of the ego to narcissistic humiliation and mortification, and the views of Bion on 'nameless dread' or Winnicott's on the original agonies of the breakdown of childhood consciousness.[19] At the same time ego psychologists have been increasingly prepared to see narcissistic mortification as occurring in the context of early relations to objects.
In the 21st century edit
Mary Libbey has recently highlighted anew how intolerable mortification underpins narcissistic defences and narcissistic character structure.[20]
She also sees change in the analytic encounter as deriving from the mortifying re-experience of overwhelming object loss.[21]
Literary uses edit
Narcissistic mortification at injuries to self-esteem has been seen as pervading Captain Ahab's motivations in his confrontation with Moby-Dick.[22]
Mortification at one's self is seen in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein when the Creature stares at his reflection in a pool of water. This is where he becomes convinced that he is in fact the Creature and becomes filled with despondence and mortification. [23]
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (Standard Ed., 23) p. 74 and p. 76
- ^ a b c "On Narcissistic Mortification" (PDF).
- ^ a b c d Ludwig Eidelberg. "An introduction to the study of the narcissistic mortification". Psychiatric Quarterly 31.
- ^ Edward Erwin, ed. (2002). Freud Encyclopaedia. New York, NY: Routledge. p. 356. ISBN 0-415-93677-2. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
- ^ "Destrudo". Retrieved 2 April 2013.
- ^ Edmund Bergler, "The Psychology of Gambling", Jon Halliday/Peter Fuller eds., The Psychology of Gambling (London 1974) p. 182-3
- ^ Edmund Bergler, The Basic Neurosis (1975)
- ^ Lisa Appignanesi/John Forrester, Freud's Women (2004) p. 294
- ^ The Concept of Narcissistic Mortification
- ^ a b Shaw, Daniel. "The pathological narcissist". Retrieved 31 March 2013.
- ^ Daniel Shaw (22). "The dark side of enlightenment: sadomasochistic aspects of the quest for perfection". Retrieved 31 March 2013.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Shaw, Daniel (2003). "Traumatic abuse in cults: A psychoanalytic perspective" (PDF). Cultic Studies Review. 2. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
- ^ Navarro, Joe. "Dangerous Cult Leaders". Psychology Today. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
- ^ Jeffrey Kauffman, ed. (2010). The shame of death, grief, and trauma. ISBN 0-203-88360-8. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
- ^ Ritter, Kristina (2008). "Suicide motives and culture" (PDF). Official Journal of World Association of Cultural Psychiatry. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ Woolf, M. M. (1958). Zur Psychologie des Selbstmordes. Acta Psychotherapeutica, Psychosomatica Et Orthopaedagogica, 6317-326. doi:10.1159/000285354
- ^ Joseph Adamson/Hilary Anne Clark, Scenes of Shame (1999) p. 21
- ^ Quoted in Steven J. Ellman, When Theories Touch (London 2009) p. 464
- ^ Michael Eigen, The Sensitive Self (2004) p. 10, 20, and 25
- ^ Libbey M On Narcissistic Mortification
- ^ Andrew Druck, A Freudian Synthesis (London 2010) p. 254
- ^ Joseph Adamson, Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye (1997) p. 74-6
- ^ Berman, Jeffrey. "Frankenstein; or, the Modern Narcissus". New York University. Retrieved 16 April 2013.
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Category:Narcissism
Category:Psychoanalytic terminology
Category:Psychoanalysis