narcissism. The denial of the true I author: Alexander Lowen
title: narcissism. The denial of true self.
translated by Peter Kolyszko
Publishing Agency
Jacek Santorski & Co.
Warsaw 1995
"narcissistic personality of our time" - so probably zatytułowałaby Karen Horney his famous book, if pisałaby it fifty years later. Described by Freud and his disciples neuroses disappear today a different kind of personality disorders, which are not being neurotic conflicts, but a crisis of identity, loss of communication with the natural core self, your own self.
Loneliness, self-centeredness and soliciting people in the West today are the first prominent effects of this painful loss of sense of self, which was initiated by the drama of a child carelessly and selfishly treated by their parents, and has consistently focused on the external appearance of the game achievements and culture.
Depression, personality disorder, borderline and clinical manifestations of the narcissism of our existential problems, in which nature takes us step by step, a prominent psychiatrist and psychotherapist American Alexander Lowen already known to Polish readers with the best-selling Love, sex and heart and Spirituality body. (Jacek Santorski)
fragment
Case Sally
[.. .] Sally, a young woman involved in bio-energy workout, described the nightmare he experienced in the last ten years. She married a man who beat her, chased for other women and threatened the withdrawal of children in the event of divorce. She was afraid of him terribly because he was strong, not only in physical terms. But she managed to get a divorce and stop the children. Astonishing was the fact that Sally telling this story to disclose very little emotion. I was also amazed at the shallowness of its oddechu.Chociaż her body showed no stiffness, had clinched the throat. To understand the reasons for the tightening, I asked her about childhood.
Sally replied immediately that she had a happy childhood. So far, not yet worked with anyone who has had a happy childhood. I've heard such statements, many patients with paragraphs, but it turned out that behind them, the denial of reality. If Sally was a happy childhood, not zaciskałaby throat to block the feelings and would not have married her husband as a man, who it maltretował. As pointed out in another book *, most men married to women similar to their mothers, while women marry men like their fathers. I asked Sally, so she told me something about his father.
Sally used the same words in describing his father, at the description of her husband. She stated that he was strong. In her childhood there was a closeness between them. But my father drank, what their relationship suffered. He became erratic. Since men tend to be violent drinker, I asked Sally whether her father ever hit. Despite my suspicions I was surprised at her response: "Sometimes he beat me with his fist, he struck in the face sometimes. I did not know when the blow will fall on me." I realized that Sally's father feared a panic, as her husband later. But since she was a child and could not leave the house, put down terror and denied him. This denial of feelings of fear blinded her so that she could not see the potential violence in a future husband.
[...] Parents beating their children were probably beaten as a child. Denied because the feelings associated with that experience, do not feed any feelings for the child. Despite this, I can not understand how parents can justify beating children. I see it as a sign of cruelty. I always feel dread when I hear stories about patients, as has been requested to bring their own tools flogging. Similarly, I can not also understand animal cruelty. They are sentient beings capable of feeling pain and pleasure, sorrow and joy, fear and anger. People are deprived of these feelings stand in some way inferior to the animals ...
* Alexander Lowen Fear of Life, New York, Macmillan 1980.
