Narcissism

And that might just be the root of the problem: we’re all afraid of each other ― Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

The fear of otherness lies at the root of our disunity as we continually draw close to people, but draw back as we discover differences. Fear of otherness is the vicious panderer robbing us of reason and goading our hair-trigger responses. It falsifies our relationships and creates shallow patterns of interaction that defy authenticity. As we allow our imagination to fill with stranger anxiety, we are drawn to blind caterwauling, teeth-tearing and fisticuffs. Working toward resilient unity requires the recognition that otherness is not the enemy. The problem is our deep fear. In our Neanderthal emotionalism we have mistakenly thought of what kindles our visceral anxiety as the adversary, but it is our fear itself that we must learn to oppose.

The name of this fear is narcissism. Narcissism is the unchecked tendency to revile any other truth besides its own, engulfing us in a relational arena containing only the self. Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck describes: “Such people literally live ‘in a world of their own’ in which the self reigns supreme.”i Everything folds back to one’s own experience, all actions being judged on the basis of whether or not they conform to one’s own wishes and volition. Philosopher Martin Buber describes this inward captivity:

Some live in a strange world bounded by a path from which countless ways lead inside. If there were road signs, all of them might bear the same inscription: I–I. Those who dwell inside have no consuming interest.…When you speak to men of this type they quite often do not hear you, and they never hear you as another I…. You are accepted, if at all, as one to be spoken at and spoken of; but when you are spoken of, the lord of every story will be I. ii

Choosing a self-exile in the hinterlands of their own emotional terrain, those yielded to narcissism are doomed to wander within, attempting to block out any incoming information.

Narcissism and its punishing behaviors reside in each of our hearts and whenever we allow its thought-threads to inform our actions, we give way it its rise in our world and eventual dominance. Whenever we shun the alternate viewpoint of another person, quickly dismiss instead of giving what credence we can, narcissism has set in. Even when it is proclaiming an interest, narcissism does not truly engage in explorative thoughts or trying to understand the other point of view; instead it listens only enough to dispute. It can not accept the other person’s “no,” hear their truth or understand their boundaries and decisions for themselves.

Narcissism subsumes and effaces otherness to further its own agenda. It exerts an upper hand of power in every relationship to demand conformity. Narcissism does not shy away from force in conning others to adopt its way of thinking, seeks the control of their behavior through any means. When it meets otherness, it will set its face to adamantine opposition, bent on stamping out any individuality that rises up to challenge it. Narcissism is seductive and sly, luring us to greater and greater insularity, to living shallow relational lives that quickly disconnect at the smell of anything foreign. We can obey its mesmerizing voice until we have telescoped down our once wide horizon of relationships to those who will suppress their own truths and hover around us in orbiting affirmation.

The more yielded we are to narcissism’s seductive whisperings, the more we will limit our interactions to those who only reflect back our own emotions and desires, who only carry out what we have expressly approved. Narcissism often embarks on an endless search for someone, friend or lover, who will constantly reflect and validate its own emotions and act to carry out its desires as perseveringly as a second mother-extension of self. Upon finding such an enabler, narcissism will perseveringly demand so much and so often that the enabler will begin to be obliterated, no longer recognizable as an individual self with personality and plans, hopes and dreams that bear the distinct mark of individualism. Those subsumed by enabling narcissism may give up resistance with a longing backward glance at personal freedom from oppression and the once clear vista of their self-possession.

i. M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie, Simon and Schuster, p. 162.

ii. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man