By Shirley Ward [see her web site]
An extract from her recent article in Inside Out:
Introduction
It has taken some years for me personally, to come to terms with the destructive narcissistic people in my own life, and the devastation caused to my own vulnerability and self-esteem. It was a major shock to realise how naively I had allowed this to happen, and to accept my lack of knowledge and understanding of narcissistic behaviour. To look at it in another way is the lamb being led to the slaughter, in a silent and absorbing way by the perpetrator. This ignorance I have found not only in myself, but others, who in discussion, have completely overlooked the element of destructive narcissism and its devastating effect on victims, namely our clients and ourselves. It is a very powerful, silent way of destroying all of the good things around and creating energy of such negativity and destruction, that if not recognised and dealt with it does become a secret, unrecognised weapon of mass destruction in relationships, families, groups, companies, governments and countries.
Destructive narcissists have the ability to make everyone around them feel like needless idiots. A picture jumps to mind of Patricia Routledge playing the part of Mrs Bucket, or as she prefers to be called Mrs Bouquet, in the classic television programme ‘Keeping Up Appearances’. Her narcissistic approaches, sometimes overemphasised, dramatize her comically as the Queen Bee, with all life revolving around her. Her poor demented husband puts up with it all, is sucked dry by his wife, her demands, needs and attention seeking behaviour. Although dramatized in a comedy, she is always right, but however hard he tries, he always gets it wrong. The writers have used comedy to illustrate narcissistic society, whether conscious or unconsciously – but speaking to husbands married to narcissistic wives their lives are far from easy and they may be living their lives in torment, unbeknown to colleagues and friends.
c) Loss of a twin in the womb
In a conversation recently with Althea Hayton (2008) a private researcher exploring the psychological effects on the surviving twin of the death of a co-twin before birth, she put forward the hypothesis that narcissists may be the result of a surviving identical twin. Research carried out in the USA (Boklage, C.E.,1990), has shown that one in eight people is a womb twin survivor, they lost a twin before birth – and many mothers are unaware in many instances that they were carrying twins as this happens at the zygote stage. Medically, one zygote splits and sucks the life out of the other zygote to survive. This is the twin-twin transfusion, where when one twin dies the blood of the dead twin may pass into the body of the survivor, via the shared placenta. Metaphorically speaking, Althea explained that the blood of the twin who didn’t make it, had it sucked out by the survivor, and so is set up the imprint of living like a leech on other people, feeding off their weaknesses in order to survive themselves.
What do you think? Does this seem possible to you?
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| The symbol of narcissus - the divided twin self |
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