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In Defense of Defenselessness: K ierkegaard's Critique of an Accepted Narcissism

2013; Wiley; Volume: 55; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/heyj.12005

1468-2265

David Roberts,

Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

The Heythrop JournalVolume 55, Issue 5 p. 827-844 ARTICLE In Defense of Defenselessness: Kierkegaard's Critique of an Accepted Narcissism David Roberts, David Roberts University of South Carolina, Lancaster, USASearch for more papers by this author David Roberts, David Roberts University of South Carolina, Lancaster, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 19 April 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12005Citations: 2Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Notes 1 Ortega y Gasset, José (1960) The Revolt of the Masses, trans. Anonymous (Authorized Translation from the Spanish) (New York: Norton & Company), p. 157. 2 Kierkegaard, Soren (1980a) The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP), p. 13. 3 Kierkegaard (1980a, p. 13). 4 Becker, Ernest (1973) The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press), p. 69. 5By 'acceptable' I mean acceptable to our culture, though the argument of this paper is that it should not be seen as acceptable. 6 Lasch, Christopher (1979) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Warner Books), p. 171. 7This issue is very dialectical for Kierkegaard, in that, while the more pathological characteristics of narcissism have an intensity that makes them more dangerous to the narcissist and those around him or her, the 'healthy' narcissism that one's culture values is more dangerous in the sense of its having become an acceptable approach to the world, others, and oneself. 8The DSM-IV-TR provides nine characteristics used as diagnostic criteria for 'Narcissistic Personality Disorder.' These include a grandiose sense of self-importance; preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love; the belief that he or she is special and unique and can be understood by other special or high-status people; a need for excessive admiration; a sense of entitlement; interpersonally exploitative; lacking in empathy; envious of others and believes others envy him or her; and shows arrogant behaviors or attitudes. ( American Psychiatric Association [2000] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-IV-TR], Fourth Edition, Text Revision [Washington DC: American Psychiatric Association], p. 365). 9'The essential psycho-pathology in the narcissistic personality disorders is defined by the fact that the self has not been solidly established, that its cohesion and firmness depend on the presence of a self-object … and that it responds to the loss of the self-object with simple enfeeblement, various regressions, and fragmentations' (Kohut, Heinz [1977] The Restoration of the Self [New York: International Universities Press], p. 137). 10 Kohut, p. 5. 11Kohut writes, 'the child's selection of certain functions out of the number of those at his disposal (and his developing them into efficacious talents and skills) and the direction of his major pursuits as ultimately laid down permanently in the psyche as the content of his ambitions and ideals – i.e., the child's acquisition of compensatory structures – are best explained in the context of his having been able to shift from a frustrating self-object to a non-frustrating or less frustrating one' (p. 83). See pages 85–88 for Kohut's explanation of a healthy development of the child, and the need for empathic caregivers in early childhood development. 12Kohut writes, 'If we are dealing with a narcissistic personality or behavior disorder … the success of the analysis is to be measured primarily by evaluating the cohesion and firmness of his self and, above all, by deciding whether one sector of the self has become continuous from one of its poles to the other, or has become the reliable initiator and performer of joyfully undertaken activities. Stated in still different terms, in cases of narcissistic personality disorder, the analytic process brings about the cure by filling in the defects in the structure of the self via self-object transference and transmuting internalization' (p. 134). Kohut's view of the third element of the self is different from Kierkegaard's idea of 'spirit,' but the structure of the self is very much alike. The difference between the two, however, points them in very different directions as to what a 'healthy' or 'unhealthy' person would consist of. Kohut's picture of a healthy self consists of a well socialized individual, who is well-versed in the cultural heroism (which will be explained below), while for Kierkegaard this is often the epitome of spiritlessness. In this formulation, Kierkegaard would say that Kohut's analysis remains within 'aesthetic categories' of what is 'normal,' pleasant, healthy, comfortable, and a socially functional human being. 13 Vaknin, Sam (2003) Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisted (Prague: Narcissus Publications), pp. 320–321 (my emphasis). It is the argument of this paper that, while healthy adults accept some of their limitations, they hide and evade many more in an attempt to appear self-grounding, and as a means of suppressing anxiety. 14 Vaknin, p. 150. 15Kohut writes, 'I have in mind the specific interactions of the child and his self-objects through which, in countless repetitions, the self-objects empathically respond to certain potentialities of the child (aspects of the grandiose self he exhibits, aspects of the idealized image he admires, different innate talents he employs to mediate creatively between ambitions and ideals), but not to others. This is the most important way by which the child's innate potentialities are selectively nourished or thwarted. The nuclear self, in particular, is not formed via conscious encouragement and praise and via conscious discouragement and rebuke, but by the deeply anchored responsiveness of the self-objects, which, in the last analysis, is a function of the self-objects' own anchored nuclear selves' (p. 100). 16 Pascal, Blaise (1984) Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (New York: Penguin), p. 165. 17 Becker, pp. 53–54. 18 Becker, p. 54. 19'[C]haracter is a face that one sets to the world, but it hides an inner defeat. The child emerges with a name, a family, a play-world in a neighborhood, all clearly cut out for him. But his insides are full of nightmarish memories of impossible battles, terrifying anxieties of blood, pain, aloneness, darkness; mixed with limitless desires, sensations of unspeakable beauty, majesty, awe, mystery; and fantasies and hallucinations of mixtures between the two, the impossible attempt to compromise between bodies and symbols. … To grow up at all is to conceal the mass of internal scar tissue that throbs in our dreams' (Becker, p. 29). 20 Becker, p. 55. 21 Becker, p. 23. 22Ecclesiastes 1:14 (all quotes from the Bible are taken from the New American Standard Version). See also Becker, pp. 85–86. The purpose of Kierkegaard's authorship is to bring this whole illusion and evasion down upon the individual, so that he or she can face the anxiety of life in its truth. Ultimately, Kierkegaard wants to give hope, but in order to bring the individual before the choice of this hope, he must bring the reader to the realization of the illusions of the vital lie, and the false hopes it provides. Kierkegaard wants to bring the individual before a choice, but a choice that can only be authentically made when one has come face to face with one's helplessness; the choice concerns what, or whom, one will ultimately surrender one's hopelessness to. The point is to become self-conscious and free enough to authentically make a choice about who one is: is one a created being, dependent and in need of help for significance and meaning in life, or is one an accident in this world, grounded in an indifferent fatalism where one's ultimate end is to fall back into the nothingness out of which one arose? 23Kohut writes, 'Within the framework of the psychology of self, we define mental health not only as freedom from the neurotic symptoms and inhibitions that interfere with the functions of a "mental apparatus" involved in loving and working, but also as the capacity of a firm self to avail itself of the talents and skills at an individual's disposal, enabling him to love and work successfully' (p. 284). To 'work successfully' means to function within what Becker calls the 'cultural heroics' of one's society. Success (which gives a sense of self-sufficiency and being self-grounding) is defined by one's culture. 24 Becker, p. 82. 25 Becker, pp. 4–5. 26 Kierkegaard, Soren (1997) Christian Discourses/The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. Howard V. and Edna. H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP), p. 58. 27Kohut says that psychoanalysis is completed and successful when a functioning self has been established. This is when a 'psychological sector in which ambitions, skills, and ideals form an unbroken continuum that permits joyful creative activity' (p. 63). 28 Tolstoy, Leo (1960) The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Stories, trans. Aylmer Maude (New York: Signet), p. 148. 29 Plato (1961) Apology, in: Hamilton, Edith and Huntington, Cairns (Eds.) The Collected Dialogues of Plato, pp. 3–26, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Princeton: Princeton UP), p. 16. 30 Matthew 16:26. 31 Kierkegaard, Soren (1980b) The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Anderson (Princeton: Princeton UP), p. 95. 32 Camus, Albert (1955) The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O'Brien (New York: Random), p. 10. 33 Kohut, p. 102. 34 Kierkegaard, Soren (1975) Soren Kierkegaard's Journal and Papers: Volume III. Eds. and trans. V. Howard and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana UP), #3558. In another journal entry Kierkegaard writes, 'Wanting to hide in the mass or the crowd, to be a little fraction of the crowd, instead of being an individual, is the most corrupt of all escapes. Even if this makes life easier by making it more thoughtless in the din – this is not the question. The question is that of the responsibility of the individual – that every individual being ought to be a single individual, ought to make up his mind about his conviction' ( Kierkegaard, Soren [1970] Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers: Volume II. Eds. and trans. V. Howard and Edna H. Hong [Bloomington: Indiana UP], #1996). 35 Becker, p. 73. 36 Kierkegaard (1990a, p. 166). 37 Kierkegaard (1980a, p. 69). Terry Eagleton writes, 'Agency, control, and autonomy are admirable virtues, but they are also attempts to master a world now felt to be threateningly alien. Sovereignty proves to be inseparable from solitude. At the peak of his assurance, Enlightenment Man finds himself frighteningly alone in the universe, with nothing to authenticate himself but himself. His dominion is accordingly shot through with a sickening sense of arbitrariness and contingency, which will grow more acute as the modern age unfolds. What is the point of extracting from the world with one hand values which the other hand has just put in? What is it for the human subject to stand on a foundation which is itself' ( Eagleton, Terry [2009] Reason, Faith, & Revolution [New Haven: Yale UP], pp. 82–83). 38 Lasch, p. 101. Earlier Lasch writes, 'New social forms require new forms of personality, new modes of socialization, new ways of organizing experience. The concept of narcissism provides us not with a ready-made psychological determinism but with a way of understanding the psychological impact of recent social changes – assuming that we bear in mind not only its clinical origins but the continuum between pathology and normality' (p. 101). Lasch is not alone in his assessment of our culture as being narcissistic in nature. Erich Fromm has made the argument in (1964) The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (New York: Harper Books), p. 64; Lowen implies it in (1983) Narcissism: Denial of the True Self (New York: MacMillian Publishing), pp. ix–xi; and Becker himself also points to the narcissistic tendencies of our cultural heroics (pp. 4–5). 39Becker writes, 'It doesn't matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feeling by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a sky-scraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count' (p. 5). 40 Becker, p. 87. 41 Morf, Carolyn C. and Rhodewalt, Frederick (2001) 'Unraveling the Paradoxes of Narcissism: A Dynamic Self-Regulatory Processing Model,' Psychological Inquiry, 12:4, 177–196, p. 182. 42 Savitz, Carol (1986) 'Healing and Wounding: The Collision of the Sacred and the Profane in Narcissism,' Journal of Analytic Psychology, 31, 319–340, p. 323. 43 Becker, pp. 85–86. 44 Vaknin, 177. 45 Morf and Rhodewalt, p. 184. 46 Morf and Rhodewalt, p. 185. 47 Morf and Rhodewalt, p. 185. 48 Morf and Rhodewalt, p. 185. 49 Kierkegaard, Soren (1990b) For Self-Examination/Judge for Yourself!. Eds. and trans. V. Howard and Edna H. Hong, 89–215 (Princeton: Princeton UP), p. 199 (my emphasis). 50 Lowen, p. xi (my emphasis). 51Kierkegaard believes that people choose against this leap because of various ways of being 'offended' (as he calls it) by the idea of the existence of God. One may be offended at the requirement of faith (i.e., that it is not rationally verifiable); one may be offended by the whole 'set up,' which includes suffering and pain (the problem of evil); one may be offended by the very thought of one's helplessness and dependence, and the requirement of surrendering one's life into the hands of an 'alien' power. 52 Kierkegaard writes, 'One fears that one's knowing, turned inward toward oneself, will expose the state of intoxication there, will expose that one prefers to remain in this state, will wrench one out of this state and as a result of such a setup will make it impossible for one to slip back again into the adored state, into intoxication' (1990b, p. 118). 53 Kierkegaard (1997, pp. 244–245). 54 Plato (1961) Symposium, in: Hamilton, Edith and Huntington, Cairns (Eds.) The Collected Dialogues of Plato, 526–574, trans. Michael Joyce (Princeton: Princeton UP), pp. 555–556. 55As just one example of what such a community might look like I would direct the reader to the final few chapters of Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans ( Barth, Karl [1968] The Epistle to the Romans, Sixth Edition, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns [Oxford: Oxford UP], pp. 502–537.). Although this has a specifically Christian context, the important issue, in my view, is Barth's emphasis on krisis, and the continual 'disturbance' such a community works toward (the disturbance of any new cultural heroism), all within the context of grace and love. Citing Literature Volume55, Issue5September 2014Pages 827-844 ReferencesRelatedInformation