As I have mentioned earlier, the last psychiatrist's bread and butter on his blog at least is societal Narcissism. From what he thinks it is, discussion of all the little pathologies and boomerisms going with it and even why the media and big tech would shove that topic down your throat[3]. I want to post some more articles relevant to Anyon's interests. Like the last articles ever posted that dealt with the prelude to contemporary internet censorship efforts from 2014. However, before I gonna do that, I want his basic Narcissism stuff at least mentioned ITT.
If This Is One of The Sexiest Things You've Ever Seen, You May Be a Narcissist
This is the very article Last Psychiatrist defines his terms in. Not by the old definitions. He tells you from the get go that he considers them useless, because Narcissism had evolved. It isn't necessarily egotism. Its the inability to appreciate that other people who other thoughts and feelings unrelated to you.
You may know this one as main character syndrome. Its precisely what he is describing:
> The narcissist believes he is the main character in his own movie. Everyone else has a supporting role-- everyone around him becomes a "type["]. You know how in every romantic comedy, there's always the funny friend who helpes the main character figure out her relationship? In the movie, her whole existence is to be there fore the main character. But in real life, that funny friend has her own life; she might even be the main character in her own movie, right? Well the narcissist wouldn't be able to grasp that. Her friends are always supporting characters, that can be called at any hour of the night, that will always be interested in what she is wearing, or what she did. That funny friend isn't just being kind, she doesn't just want to help-- she's personally interested in the narcissist's life. Of course she is.
The example most of the post is about, its a fancy for white womens' shoes, wonderfully illustrates it. No, the Narcissist has no white shoe fetish. The type of person he thinks he is is always together with the type of women who wear white shoes. Aesthetics, fashion, practically; All of this irrelevant when it comes to Narcissist's wish that his wife to always wears white shoes. Narcissists use specific things as proxy for their identity[7]. The disappearance fetishized object (or trait) is always seen as personal attack.
Narcissists basically still have the ego of a two year old. The reason why they are like this given in the text is rather speculative. Frankly I don't think it doesn't matter as much as what effects that pathology has on one's morals. Narcissists can be dogmatic and hypocrites at the same time, because there is neither right nor wrong from their point of view. Only right or wrong for them. So they never feel guilt, but only shame.
https://archive.ph/QRr6P
A Generational Pathology: Narcissism Is Not Grandiosity
I see this fascinating article as rather epistomological than psychiatric. The occasion for this must have been corrospondence that went something like this:
< I like your writings about narcissism, but your description seems to differ from the one in the DSM and everywhere else I look.
> Why does that matter if indeed it was true?
< I just want to know where you came up with it.
> You mean, "I just want to make sure you didn't make it up." Because if I made it up, then it stands entirely on my back. Like an American[1], the shortcut you use for difficult issues is to judge their proponent as a proxy. If you don't like some ideas, look for hypocrisy, discredit the speaker. Which will be easy to do with me, I assure you. Heavy drinking, womanizing, misanthropic... maybe not even a psychiatrist. There. Do you win? (Emphasis by me)
The point of this text is reached rather quickly: Psychology didn't start out as a science but as a Philosophical discipline concerning itself with the nature of the human souls. All of this changed when Wilhelm Wundt and his Laboratory for experimental Psychology came along[2]. Now if Psychology ever wanted to break out Philosophy and become more than Elite theory for a handful of people and by a handful of people it needed to look scientific with statistic, a assburger catalog of pathologies and other objective looking measurements. Yet it deals with a matter you can't measure and pathologies that are hard to observe, because your mind may shield you from the truth if you had it.
Add regulations and that cement what criteria drug manufacturers may use to find certain pathologies (here Depression according to the Hamilton scale) and you get really unreliable official definitions of them. So if the DSMnumber whatever has a flawed definition of Narcissism, then what is it?
Well, in shorts its emotional isolation due to the inability to love another Person. Therefor the Narcissist is unhappy, because he thinks his life isn't how he thinks it is supposed to be. So they construct an external idenitity to make other people like him more. But all of this will in vain. Not because people can't be tricked. With some finesse you can do that someone for an enitere life time. All the work on one's external appearance is futile, because it doesn't solve the original problem of emotional isolation. The Last Psychiatrist describes that isolation with an analogy of people trapped into glass boxes unable to connect to other people. What makes it so fascinating to him is his observation that all of America[4] seems to trapped inside such a glass box.
Even more relevant for us is this part about social media
> Each person tries to find ways of affirming themselves; but when it is done through identity and not behavior, it always leads to misery.
> Sure, you can convince 5000 people you're anything. Then what?
> It is self-reinforcing. The type of person who withdraws into [virtual communities] is already stunted in their potential for happiness; and if you're spending all your energy on [them] then you're not spending it in ways that might actually work. The problem isn't [social media], the problem is you.
Figures. Given the rest of the text, psychiatry will do nothing about it, because its practitioner' presuppositions about Narcissism are all ass backwards. They have no criteria to know about Narcissism because inner rage and frustration are still part of the patients' mind. Part of a mind that protects itself from the truth by filtering out those problems. This makes the precise criteria for Narcissism technically transcendentals[5] and totally useless to psychiatry. Therefor societal Narcissism won't be dealt with either. In conclusion
> Narcissism became synonymous with grandiosity because that facilitated its measurement. But in so doing, the most significant social pathology in two generations was rendered undetectable.
https://archive.ph/8smoI
The Other Ego Epidemic
A shorter take on how the flawed definition of Narcissism in Psychiatry made it virtually invisible to it. Occasion this time were some articles sent by the readers. Number one the articles don't warn their readers about whackos but gives them an offramp from the path to the conclusion that they are ones.
< LOL! Look at those flashy morons. There is no way I am like them!
Once again, like a gorillion times on the blog and wherever somebody still memes it:
If you read it, its for you![6]
The actual pathology isn't thinking you are the best kid on the playground. At least this gives you a motivation to improve yourself. Its thinking you are the only kid on the playground as all the others there don't exist as full persons.
Try acting like that in real life. Maybe you end up with your very own embarrassing funny internet videoclip. Maybe somebody whoops your ass.
https://archive.ph/9G19e
[1] i.e. Like an American boomer
[2] Paul and Phillip D. Collins Invoking the Beyond: The Kantian Rift, Mythologized Menaces, and the Quest for the New Man (English Edition) (S.291). iUniverse 2020, Kindle-Version.
May some troll send you the practically unusable physical edition of that Kindle monstrosity if you have had ever believed I've made that up.
[3] Brotipp: Figure out were the majority of revenue for both is coming from. Selling Advertising space, Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp!
[4] at the time. I.e. Mostly genXers, Boomers and way too many Millennials. The oldest Zoomers had just entered puberty back then.
[5] Abstract things that do exist for certain but not in the material world and therefor can't be measured such as the number e, logic, morality, emotions or even the Platonic form of your waifu.
[6] Other example: The endless Ethan Ralph cyclical on /cow/. It doesn't even matter that Ralph is a overindulgent, perverted, impulsive fool with the highest time preference of all Mexico who had aged a thousand years in 10 due to constant stress on his body from all the drugs (Even Alcohol is one). Everyone knows that! What matters is that the participants inside that ,by now extremely boring, cyclical think themselves far superior to Ethan Ralph. If you read that crap, its exactly the thread for you. I bet those people never gave a shit about finding humor in the antics of the internet village idiot.
[7] That make up identity is also known as Narcissistic shell.