On the Borders of Personal and Political Narcissism

A. The Core of the subject’s Sense of Being.

Listening to Trump-the other day- delivering the State of the Union (The annual report regarding the current and the proposed plans of the government for the future) brought to my memory Nasser’s speeches to the Egyptian people. In the fifties and the sixties of last century (Nasser was an army colonel who led a military coup, in 1952, to end monarchy in Egypt. He evolved to become a political idol for the Egyptians and the Arabs in the middle East from 1956-1970. He was also considered in the Western Hemisphere the main political villain). Nasser's speeches were always a puzzle to me: what makes millions of  Egyptians, and tens of millions of Arabs in other countries, of all walks of life, adore and idealize that man!! (It also puzzles me that millions of Americans tolerate Trump's shenanigans and still give him some notice, and elect him as president).

The answer came to me listening to Trump the other day: create an imaginary adversary, say that his attempts to misguide have failed, and that he has been defeated or in the way to defeat. Any lies, misrepresentations, claims of victories even if defeated, and demeaning the adversary whatever the situation is will be accepted by the masses. From previous experiences, the masses do not deny facts but negate them: “it is true that we lost but it was because of the referee". Trump’s State of the Union Speech was exemplary of that mass deception. He set up several imaginary enemies of the US and bragged about his administration dealings with them, claiming his success in defeating them all. The ridiculous popularity of that man does not come from fooling people, but from making them fool themselves. However, Americans were waiting for sometime for someone to make them fool themselves and there comes Trump!!!!!!!

(Matter of fact, Nasser never lied to people but by making that imaginary adversaries the focus of their attention people did not pay attention to the narcissistic trap set up for them to fool themselves. This is the invisible barrier built by leaders between the masses and reality.

Reaching this point in my thinking led me to formulate a question that was always central in my efforts to understand Narcissism: Why do we need some one or something to Hate (liberals, socialists,  Nato members, Mexicans, etc.) in order to be able to Love ourselves (the strongest, the most democratic, etc.). Sometimes even out of the same narcissistic demand we create an ideal image of the adversary to debase ourselves (China is outsmarting us, the Mexicans are abusing our laws, etc ). I just want to underline the point that the existence of individuals, families, nations, sport fans, etc., is always based on an I and an adversary, opponent, enemy, or just a reactive "not me". The core of our sense of being is a duality or the duality of me and the not me. I does not exist on its own. Put it in another way: any sense of identity requires finding or creating an anti- me or anti-us.

The duality of the subject and his anti is normal and the natural way of acquiring an identity. But most of the times it goes astray resulting in problems. Trump, with his personal difficulties, creates that confusion in his base. He tells them that they are idiots and the laugh of the world, but that they are also the greatest and the envy of everyone else. He does not do that intentionally or by design; he is not that smart or a thinking person to have defined intentions. He does that as a reflection of his own image as an envied idiot.

Explaining the duality of the subject’s identity is the most central issue in our work that we pay less attention to it that it demands.

The Duality of the Subject’s Identity:

The duality of the subject is part of acquiring an identity. In a better wat to put it we should realize that our identity is a dual entity. The subject cannot get a sense of identity unless he also senses that he is not someone else. The subject is identified-in part- by the other, but that should not preclude- in the heathy person- the presence of a core of subjectivity that responds to the demands of the other without loosing its uniqueness.  This nature of the subject’s identity is not due to the coexistence of the conscious and the unconscious systems; it is due consciousness of consciousness. The stability of that consciousness of consciousness affects the kind and degree of psychopathology.

The duality of the subject’s sense of being is there from birth. At birth, the infant has no sense of being (existence) but he senses the being of the care-giver. So, the first consciousness is consciousness of the other; not about the self. The other’s reactions to the infant builds- in a slow and sometimes confusing way- the infant’s sense being, or his consciousness of his being. The initial step in developing an identity or a sense of being becomes the work of the care-giver (s) and his or her’s psychodynamics. The psychodynamics of that process and its results is and still is “our” field of interest and expertise. We all know the possibilities and different opportunities in what the infant will end up acquiring as an identity: is it his free choice or what he was told to be, and with what kinds and degrees of distortions.

The innate gap in the duality of the infant’s identity “demands” an anti-me for the sense of I-ness gets established. Thus, it is obvious that being told who he is (good\bad, stubborn\obedient, etc.) will ultimately clash with his own sense of himself. Even if the child accepts what he was given as an identity it will always be an image of himself, and not he himself. Thus, duality is the nature of the human subject: he is the I that he senses and a me that was given to him. In better words: to own an I that speaks for the subject a none I has to subside and not annul completely the I (Trump’s base is people who are unable to shed off the me he has given them to know their other and get in touch with their true selves).

Psychoanalysis looks as if it is the birthplace of these findings. It is not. Duality was born with the homosapiens’ consciousness of consciousness, which was first a duality of I and religious feelings (animism, spirituality, deities, organised religions, etc.). Philosophers -particularly the Greeks- tried to understand what is the subject that is defined by the ‘other’, but were not very successful. Then came Descartes in the seventeen century to reveal that duality is within the subject and not between the subject and something else that defines him: The Cogito is the declaration of the inherent gap in existence: I the thinker affirm the presence the I that exists (both are the subject). The rest of the matter is what led French psychiatry to notice the division of consciousness and for Freud to discover the nature of that separation.

What we deal with in psychoanalysis relates to the nature of the duality of the subject and what happens within that gap.  The most central is the relationship between I-Me and the kind of the link between them.  

Politicians of the kind of Trump and Nasser play with that natural duality. First, they chose a false “other’ who defines a false I for the mass. Once this is achieved, they make the false I defines itself the way the politician wants it to be. The whole political scene looks as if the masses are in possession of their will and they support leader because of his ideology. The fact of the matter is that leader shifted their narcissism from the real Me to a false I.