Narcissism, Hate, and Aggression:
Psychoanalysts as mental health professionals
are oriented toward judging psychical manifestations in terms of
psychopathology, first. Freud’s identification of narcissism in several
psychological events (SE, Vol 14, 19140 , and also because he knew its implication
from the start, he included it in the ledger of psychopathology. It was first thought
of as a withdrawal of the libido from the external world (objects) and reinvesting
it in the ego (the subject) where he was supposed to have been its origin.
Then, it was seen as investment of the libido in only objects that are similar or made to be similar to the ego. A third
modification was the basis of object relations theory which came much later as
a reaction to the Ego psychology. But in all cases, narcissism implied and stated
the duality of the human subject: awareness of the world\awareness of the self,
thinking\thinking of that thinking, being\being the being that is identified:
the split between self and its signifiers was (almost unconsciously) Freud’s intuition
of Narcissism as the precondition of the psychical life of the human subject.
……………………………………………
Lately, something unethical, if not criminal, is
happening in the Ukrainian situation. It
started by some politicians (two in particular) suggesting for people who were safe,
prosperous, and content in their country that they should get membership in The
European Union. Getting that membership demand requesting to join NATO. The Ukrainians were not told
about the risk and the complications that would come with that membership.
This membership would constitute a threat to the safety of Russia. Thus,
Russian moved some army near the border and threatened that membership in NATO
we be resisted by Russia. This crime is not mentioned in the media of the west;
on the contrary the media is now promoting continuing and expanding the war and
encouraging the request for more Weapons, Weapons, Weapons. Ukraine that has a small
army (does not need and could not have had
a larger had an army), is encouraged now to wage war against Russia under the
slogans of patriotism, principles, and honor. Those slogans promoted by some
members of NATO are exploiting narcissistic sentiments in immoral, foolish,
etc. ways to keep a peaceful and unwary nation in a state of ignorance and
absence of political malice, and self-deception. Ukraine has no chance to win a
war against Russia even with the best patriotic army it could build, but the
devious way of keep the Ukrainians feeling humiliated is giving the West a
chance to defeat Russia without war. After fifty years away from media that is
paid to lie, I find myself living that humiliation again, here in North
America. But this time by leading people blindly to their misery.
Mixing patriotism with honor, courage, and with making
comparisons of no substantive basis to the threat of being abused or cheated could
take hold of any groups’ minds. When Mussolini made comparison between Italy
and other European countries that had Imperial colonies in Africa, he motivated
his prosperous Italy to get equal to France and Britain. The result was a
disaster in trying to subjugate Ethiopia and Libya. His attempt at creating Italian Narcissism of
false comparisons backfired. Narcissism for the individual is his pot of misery,
and for nations is the pot of criminality and disaster. We should really
question the mental condition or the moral standards of the European leaders, along
with the emotional balance of the Ukrainian excitable politician. They look at
the other European countries with envy that is stemming from a sick narcissistic
immature Western Political conviction of superiority. One of the most popular
and also revealing items in Western media is of a young woman who is crying
because she lost a job, a nice place she was living, and left her country to become
a refugee for “a president whom she does not know what he wanted”…..yes because
she hasn’t been told what why the war of the narcissism some political
adolecents. Maybe she would have said yes, I do not want the narcissistic
membership in NATO to pay for by all those losses and miseries that transpired.
There are some serious psychological issues that are distorting
mental functions -of ordinary people- to cover up the original mistakes of misleading
them into the present predicament. The persons who created this political tragedy
did that for personal reasons and the media is not exposing that fact. I have
no other means to understanding this political crime but by only resorting to
examining the link between narcissism, hate, and aggression.
A Word on Narcissism:
Psychoanalytically speaking, discovering narcissism in
1914 is astonishing. Narcissism in Freud’s time and many years later was an
issue of an arrested process of
development or regression to an earlier point of development. In other
words, narcissism in traditional psychoanalysis is an earlier point in a
process of evolution. But that did not and does not conceal the fact that narcissism-in
core- is a psychical structure that exists and is subject to possible defects
and inadequacies as well as great achievements. Narcissism is also a very successful metaphor of the subject’s (I, you,
and him) need and must have a reflection of his being to contain and
initiate his psychical life. The subject needs to see himself reflected in external
manifestations outside of his-self (social, relations, achievements, outcomes of
his endeavors, etc. as mirrors reflecting his identity). Those are the surface
of the lake that reflected back to Narcissus his image. However, I still puzzle
to how Freud got the notion of the duality of the subject while he was still
thinking in terms of the Libido as issue in narcissism. I tend to believe that
his intuition came from a preconscious state of mind that narcissism was not
something to fight and make disappear but is in itself a mirror of the psyche
of the subject. My narcissism says things about me, as the narcissism of Ursula
von der Leben says something about her.
In 1968 I published a book in Arabic entitled ( The Psychosocial
Phenomena). The main idea of the book at that time was that the sequence and course
of development in the individual (orality, anality, sexuality… very popular
then) takes the reverse direction of the evolution the social order of humanity
(Family and incest, then Tribes and war , Socialization, and civility). The
idea that comes to me recently is that the conflict between Russia’s concerns regarding
its security (basic) interferes with the European concerns about its narcissism
(the superiority of the Western races).There
is an interesting offshoot of that issue
which will bring into focus this question: does the political issue overrides
the psychology of the politician or is it the opposite when the psychology of
the politician overrides the political issue??
This is not a trivial question. The war in the Ukraine
was initiated by the whims of a personal
idiosyncrasy [the irresponsible suggestion of Mr. Stoltenberg, the General
Director of NATO to give the Ukraine a membership without consulting the membership
states of the treaty]. The dysfunctional link between politics and the
psychology (psychopathology) of the politicians in the European Union in dangerously
is deciding the present risky political conflict. The significance of that
condition is magnified in the media by a deliberate effort to camouflage the
serious breach of NATO treaty by lies and exaggerations. I lived to see after
fifty years in North America the same unethical manipulation of truth in the media that
plagued the Middle East.
Narcissism, Hate, and Aggression:
In the previous post I emphasized the functional link
between those three-condition saying: ‘hate is an
intriguing feeling because it could emerge and take hold of the subject’s mind
without obvious causes; and then drives that subject to discover or find out
reasons for its existence. It is almost a state of mind that occurs before the
subject makes the effort to justify its presence. Hate is a basic element in
the person’s sense of being and identity, i.e., the subject defining himself by
his relation to the object-s. This inherent link with the object via love\hate is very much of a narcissistic core. As I previously
mentioned I believe the social and the individual phenomena are like mirror
images: identical but the reverse of each other. An individual tries to hide
his narcissism as much as he can (not to be named as Narcissistic) while a
group would like to advertise its narcissism as loud as possible to be
recognized as much as it could. So, in every relationship, especially[aF1] between humans, there is degree of narcissism and of love\hate.
The current political conflict in Europe is a great prospect for examining my
hypothesis. Russia’s behavior and actions hurt the west’s narcissism. Hate messages in
the media is a very natural response to hurting European narcissism. But wars
cannot be won by hate alone; you need to build love for you so people could love
you and hate the other. However, hating the Russians is easy to trigger and
maintain but loving the Ukraine is a difficult task. The Ukraine issue was
created to be used as a cause that could stimulate some European narcissistic
ambitions. Europe needed that since Russia, the old nemesis, is no longer
communist and is catching up with the West, causing discouraging narcissistic blows
to six centuries of dominating the world. Moreover, the threat to the West’s narcissism
is coming from the success of China and Japan and several other unexpected
countries that were just colonies few decades ago. As mentioned before the most common and only known reaction to narcissistic
hurt is anger and aggression. And that
is what the world is facing now, in the
reactions of few neurotic immoral individuals who enjoy fictional authority of international
nature.
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