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From the collection, 1001 Windmills of the Mind
Loving acts cannot be motivated by narcissism because they require both a consciousness of objects and a concern for the needs of others. The foundation of a capacity to love is a deep sense of personal integrity, that I, as a person, am basically all right and worthy of love. This sense of self-worth is the residue of our earliest relationship with our mother when she gave us the idea that our [trusting] need for her would not ..make her withhold the milk we needed for survival. Maternal acceptance of the infantile delusion that mother and child exist in a bubble of symbiotic oneness and the mirroring she provides in her loving gaze at the infant, establish neural pathways in the brain of the developing infant that make the child perceive the idea that he is good and worthy of love as reality. When narcissistic [clients] enter psychoanalysis, the initial task of the analyst is to try to lay this basic foundation, literally create new neural pathways, by replicating and repairing the original symbiosis between mother and child. Early in treatment, narcissism must be joined. The analyst attempts to function like the pre-Oedipal mother, using techniques like mirroring and joining. Interventions which reflect back to the [client] what he has just said or give him the idea that the analyst has the same feelings he has, symbolize the mirroring gaze of the mother looking into her newborn’s eyes. The contact function, speaking only when spoken to by the [client], recreates the earliest relationship in which the good-enough mother fed on demand and otherwise protected her infant from too much stimulation. In this symbiotic and nurturing environment, the narcissistic [client] relives and reworks all the important developmental tasks of the pre-Oedipal period, gradually deactivating neural pathways that have held him back and activating new neural pathways of healthy functioning. He experiences a healthy omnipotence and safety which gradually establishes the basis of a feeling of basic integrity and acceptability without which, the object world would be intolerable. Inevitably, the analyst, like the mother, will disrupt this omnipotence by frustrating or disappointing the [client] in some way .. sooner or later the analyst will make a mistake which disrupts the symbiosis .. this rupture will probably make the [client] frustrated and angry .. but the good analyst, like the good mother, will offer herself as an object for discharge of his aggression. When the [client] says he is worthless, the analyst will reply, 'The problem is you have a worthless analyst.' In this maturational moment, the [client] confronts the idea that objects are there & that they are useful for the discharge and projection of feelings. In this first disagreement with the [client], which is not really a disagreement, but an invitation, the [client] is given the enticing suggestion that objects exist and can provide a helpful port for the all the uncomfortable and overstimulating feelings that he would rather not feel. The sense that the analyst can act as a container for the [client's infantile needs and feelings], can accept, tolerate and process hate and aggression, is the first step on the road to developing a capacity to love .. When the [client] is ready to perceive the analyst as a separate object who may be useful to him, he is ready to practice his first attempts at object relations with the analyst. He can begin to risk giving the analyst all his feelings, both positive and negative; and when he is accepted and understood by the analyst, he begins to realize that the analyst and the analysis have value to him. This is the precursor of a capacity to love.
.. reducing birth to predictable patterns by using forceps and episiotomy routinely and prophylactically in normal delivery. Despite the fact that neither of these interventions had been subjected to scientific research to prove their benefit, they both became standard obstetrical practice. The drugs needed to mask the pain of these procedures and the requirement that women labor flat on their backs, slowed the process of birth and spurred the development of labor inducing medication. These new drugs sped things up, but made labor so painful so quickly that more anesthesia was administered. This 'cascade of intervention' became the rule rather than the exception after birth moved to the hospital .. The spiritual, the emotional, the intuitive, in short, everything feminine about birth, had been obliterated ..
In allowing themselves to be drugged, cut and hurried, women are losing something they can never have back: the freedom to experience their bodies accomplishing the creative ..mysterious event which is the highlight of feminine life.
L Holmes
Personality types (here called cognitive styles)..-D Carlson
TQ 2849
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