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Thoughts On Being A Narcissist

Sep 10, 2014
by Caroline Miller
Elizabeth Lunbeck, narcissiism part of American selfhood, self-love, The Americanization of Narcissism
6 Comments

Elizabeth Lunbeck’s new book The Americanization of Narcissism, explores the fault line between healthy and unhealthy narcissism.  (Me, Myself, and ID,” by Laura Kipnis, Harper’s Magazine, pgs. 80)  In it she explores the question of narcissism’s origin.  Is it nurtured by indulgent parents who insist their children are special or is it a defensive response to a “thin sense of self”?  (Ibid pg. 77.)  Either way, Lunbeck senses so much self-love abounds in the United States, it might be considered part of modern selfhood.

For my part, I cast a soft eye on narcissism.  After all, the ego gives us our survival instinct and is the reason we strive to perfect ourselves and seek approval from others. True, some of us may be a little too absorbed in our mirrors.  I know a man whose quest for a companion repeatedly fails because his virtues shine so brightly in his eyes that he’s blind to the virtues in others.    

 But isn’t art a form of self-love?  I confess, I love to be in my head, to think my thoughts, make my observations and see how others react.   When I’m rejected, like Shylock, do I not bleed?  I do.  Then vanity makes me work harder. I am a woman who has struggled 30 years on a single play, for example.

 Simply put, self-love gives me confidence.  It allows me to forgive myself and when I can do that, I can forgive others.  “Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so,”  Hamlet tells his friends Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. (Hamlet II, ii.)  In the case of self-love, I think it is a good trait, in the main.   If I’m in error and someone proves me wrong, then I’ll forgive them and myself, as well. 

Narcissus

Courtesy of www.psychlawjoural.com

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6 Comments
  1. Pete Paradiso September 10, 2014 at 8:16 am Reply
    I'm unable to read Lunbeck's article online, so I don't know whether she recalls Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism (early '80s?), a brave but ultimately futile attempt to link narcissistic America with capitalism ...I read it then but thought that literature had far more to say on the subject ... To paraphrase Freud, the ancient poets got there before us ... Contemporaries haven't done too shabbily either: can you think of a more inflated ego than Mailer's? ... Holden Caulfield has us look into a broken mirror inverted, one reason perhaps why Mailer intensely disliked the novel and its author ...
    • Caroline Miller September 10, 2014 at 9:41 am Reply
      Had forgotten about "Culture of Narcissism." Haven't read it but may put it on my reading list. As for Mailer, maybe he represents the outer limits of a healthy ego. A number of artists take it to the max.
  2. Pete Paradiso September 10, 2014 at 3:58 pm Reply
    Suzuki "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" I read it in the '70s -- this paragraph has stayed with me through the years: "Ancient painters used to practice putting dots on paper in artistic disorder. This is rather difficult. Even though you try to do it, usually what you do is arranged in some order. You think you can control it, but you cannot; it is almost impossible to arrange your dots out of order." This is the painter's version of a verbal koan ... The highest art mimics natural disorder (an ancient Chinese aesthetic principle); a lesser art of decorative patterning emerges when the ego intervenes ... I wonder what you as a writer think of words, sentences, paragraphs -- they can be made to appear to embody artistic disorder closer to the real, but grammar doesn't encourage it, and the reader won't tolerate it ...
    • Caroline Miller September 10, 2014 at 4:08 pm Reply
      Regarding your quote about dots, what an interesting insight. I shall have to try. Fascinating to see how we are programed without realizing it. As for your second observation, maybe Joyce was trying to break the order of grammar in Ulysses. I have a blog coming up in a few weeks about language being natural to humans without any knowledge of grammar or sentence structure. Perhaps, as the ancient painters knew, the highest art mimics natural disorder but its perfection is beyond our reach.
  3. Pete Paradiso September 10, 2014 at 5:24 pm Reply
    Oh, I very much look forward to your blog on natural language, thank you ... Joyce started early, the opening paragraph of Portrait of the Artist imitating baby talk ... Then Finnegans Wake reducing language to dream-babble ... The source may be Rimbaud's relentless "disorientation of the senses" ... By the way, the patchwork of quotations I write in is an attempt to connect the dots in no particular order, to disrupt repetitive patterns of thinking and to escape, paradoxically, the grip of tradition ...
    • Caroline Miller September 10, 2014 at 7:01 pm Reply
      It's been a while since I've read Portrait. I don't recall the baby talk. I'll have to go back and look. This revelation is very interesting.

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Contact Caroline at

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Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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