The narcissistic wound

The narcissistic wound

This post is about borderline personality organization—people whose psychic life balances somewhere between being “too normal to be considered mad and too mad to be called normal,” as Nancy McWilliams put it.

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“The narcissistic wound, which of course originates in childhood, has barely healed. It can reopen for the slightest reason. It seems, quite literally, incurable; any approach that is too direct provokes acute psychic pain. In this context one often refers to a disturbance of ego boundaries, and there is certainly ample evidence that, beneath the appearance of normal social functioning, the ego suffers from a chaotic narcissistic economy of the most dangerous kind, without established boundaries. Hence the sense that these are patients with ‘their skin stripped off.’ Patients speak of their psychic envelope as an outer layer which, when it falls away, leaves the skin unprotected against every kind of aggression. The result of this characteristic feature of the ‘skin-ego’ (Anzieu) is an extraordinarily rigid structure, which can create an impression of solidity where what is actually at stake, as we know, is inflexibility; any conflict can easily turn into a stubbornness that is inexplicable to those around the person (and sometimes even to the analyst). Of course, the lack of flexibility often looks like a virtue: loyalty to moral principles, uncompromising conviction. In reality, anal narcissism forms an inner axis for such subjects, a real invisible prosthesis that keeps them supported…”

— André Green, The Work of the Negative, p. 475

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“Opposition proves vital for such subjects; it allows them to establish the boundaries of an identity that could not otherwise take shape except through this engagement found in struggle 💪… Situations of conflict also provide an opportunity to repeat the parental trauma produced by the belittling gaze directed at them.”

— André Green, The Work of the Negative, p. 476

[And perhaps now there is a chance to come out of it as the winner? The eternal attempt to replay that old “defeat”?]

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“Instead of the support they expected from their parents, when faced with ordinary difficulties they might hear: ‘You are incapable!’ After that, every new confrontation reinforced the psychic support acquired through solving the problem the subject had encountered. One can see that what is taken for willpower or stubbornness is in fact rooted in a sense of inferiority and stands against the temptation of masochistic submission.”

— André Green, The Work of the Negative

[And here, of course, one can start wondering about the origins of willpower. But that is the psychoanalyst’s eternal trick again: trying to find origins when perhaps it makes no difference how it works. If it helps a person live and grow and does not harm others, what difference does it make whether it comes from a sense of inferiority, childhood entrapment, biochemical reactions, genetic chains, or something else—if it works and does not get in the way… But if a person keeps repeating that “it works and does not get in the way,” perhaps it is worth wondering whether this is an affirmation and the thought above a rationalization. 😅🙂‍↕️]

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“Faced with an internal attack from parental imagos and their direct or indirect representatives in the external world, they find one refuge: extreme isolation, an inviolable shelter from the enemy’s intrusions—and that refuge is thought. In fact, these patients say ‘my thought’ and speak of it as though it were a possession in which their individuality takes shelter. It is the last refuge, and if it falls into the hands of others, the subject himself will be made to disappear. Thus the strongly possessive aspect of this intellectual narcissism is necessary as a defense 🛡 against the ‘de-individuation’ caused by the object’s possessiveness. ‘This is what cannot be taken away from me!’ Thought has become a bastion in which subjectivity in its entirety has found its final source of protection before surrender. Without reaching such extremes, one can still recognize in less openly conflictual circumstances an assertion of one’s particularity (even, more strongly, originality): ‘I want to do everything in my own way,’ accompanied by a feeling that other people are obstructing it.”

— André Green, The Work of the Negative, p. 477

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“The aggressive defense of subjective territory may be explained by a constant sense of encroachment by others. So much so that solitude, usually experienced as an uninhabited desert, paradoxically becomes, in the end, a desired state.”

— André Green, The Work of the Negative, p. 478

©️ André Green,

The Work of the Negative

❓What is a “refuge in thought” for you?

❓Can a narcissistic trauma be “outgrown,” or do we only learn to live with it?

❓Is there a boundary between protecting one’s individuality and painful alienation?

There are many such people around us. And they are not always easy to recognize at first.

Soon I will publish a series of posts about narcissism and borderline personality organization—there will be plenty that is useful and unexpected.

#NarcissisticTrauma #BorderlineConsciousness #PsychologicalDefense

Category: Narcissism