The Fear of Seeming Narcissistic

Joseph Burgoin
Envy and Jealousy
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Shame/Narcissism
128

JubilationEarlier this week, my friend Sherry came over for dinner. After asking all about her trip to Las Vegas and briefly discussing our vacation, I finally got around to telling her of some recent developments in my writing career (more about this in a moment). After a few minutes, she said to me, "So you just told me all these marvelous things that are happening in your life and your demeanor hasn't changed one bit. You're not smiling. You don't seem excited. What that's about?"

One of the great things about Sherry is the way she calls you out (in a loving way). She is nothing if not frank. Anyway, I explained to her that I didn't feel comfortable "tooting my own horn," but that I was in fact very excited. When it comes my turn to talk about myself, I tend to keep it short and to the point ... though I'm secretly hoping other people will show that they truly are interested by asking more questions. I'm usually disappointed in that regard (but that's a different issue).

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The Shame in Mental Illness

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Shame/Narcissism
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The Medicalization of Mental Health
41

DSM5My recent posts got me to thinking about the term mental illness and how stigma-laden it remains to this day. As a society, we've come a long way from the bad old days when most people were too ashamed to admit going to a psychiatrist, when families kept those members with obvious psychological problems hidden from view. Back then, a moralistic aura surrounded mental illness, as if having one implied that you (as well as your family) were morally defective and therefore to blame for your emotional difficulties. This view of mental illness still prevails on the religious right -- as in the claim that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice," for example, and that gays are obviously making the "wrong" one.

In society at large, the easing of stigma has a lot to do with the marketing of psychiatric medication to address "chemical imbalances" over the last few decades. Nowadays, you don't suffer from mental illness, you have a mood disorder, a result of faulty brain chemistry rather than a moral defect and of course, not your fault. While I strongly object to the widespread overuse of anti-depressants, I do believe that removing the shameful stigma surrounding depression and manic-depressive illness has been a good thing. It's difficult enough to struggle through depression without feeling you're a bad person to boot for being "abnormal."

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Intolerance and Conformity

Joseph Burgoin
The Psychotherapy Relationship
39

I always know when I've written something controversial when I receive a number of email un-subscriptions for my blog. I haven't received one in many months, but this morning, in very short order I received five. As site visitor Lauren made clear in her comment to my last post, many people will cut you off if you have an opinion that differs from their own. It's a minor instance of the current atmosphere in our country where people increasingly affiliate only with other people who share their views.

From my perspective, controversy is good when it promotes discussion. As many of the other comments to that post make clear, however, people largely don't discuss but resort to ad hominem attacks instead. Or they leave. As a result, we end up in our respective echo chambers, listening to people who think exactly as we do, unwilling even to listen to the "other side."

I've been doing more research and there seems to be a kind of war going on out there, where people who question the trans premise are routinely attacked and vilified. I guess I'm just getting a small taste of what established "authorities" on the subject experience.

On Success and Having Arrived

Joseph Burgoin
Self-Esteem and Self-Sabotage
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Shame/Narcissism
41

Success
During a session on Thursday, one of my clients was talking about his feeling that he had "arrived" in his profession. In his mid-30s, he's well-established now in a competitive field, earning an excellent income and finding himself respected and sought-after as an expert. As I listened to him, I recognized that I had never felt that way, not fully. By just about any standard, I'm successful, leading a comfortable life; I'm valued by my clients and respected by my peers. I've written and self-published a book on psychological defense mechanisms that has sold far better than I expected. But I have not felt that I've truly arrived, not yet.

Arrival, to me, has always meant being accepted by the New York publishing world as a serious writer. As much as I love my work as a therapist, I've always thought of myself as a writer, first and foremost. For me, arrival would mean finding a first-rate literary agent and then securing a book contract with one of the Big Six. This is my definition of success and I've been trying very hard for a long time to achieve it. Despite what I wrote in my post about precocity and impatience, around the time I sold Why Do I Do That?, my contract with New Harbinger Publications didn't really give me that feeling of having arrived, not fully. New Harbinger is a small specialty house based in Oakland, California. And then, I had such an unhappy experience working with their editorial team, who tried to shove me into the cognitive-behavioral box, whatever satisfaction I felt didn't last.

I've mentioned here on the site that I've been working on a book about narcissism for a while now. In October, I sent my proposal out to A-list literary agents and actually got to choose between several very good ones who wanted to represent me. Together, my superb new agent Gillian MacKenzie and I worked hard to craft my first draft into the strongest proposal we could devise. I had some excellent and crucial assistance from my friend Emily Heckman, a freelance editor. As always, I had the weekly support and critical feedback of my writer's group: Laurel Goldman, Angela Davis-Gardner, Peter Filene, Christina Askounis and Peggy Payne. Earlier this month, Gillian finally sent out my book proposal to New York publishers. There was a lot of interest. Bids were due by noon yesterday -- the day following the session with my client who felt he had at last arrived. I wanted so much to feel the same way.

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Constructing the Psychotherapy Narrative

Joseph Burgoin
The Psychotherapy Relationship
48

Writing [THIS POST IS A BIT DIFFERENT FROM MY USUAL STYLE; IT'S ADAPTED FROM SOME IDEAS I'M EXPLORING IN MY NEW BOOK ABOUT NARCISSISM]

At the beginning of our first session I ask MacKenzie, a 32-year-old single woman, what prompted her to seek treatment. Although she mentions occasional depression and anxiety, she seems most focused on her inability to maintain relationships. She has never felt truly intimate with any man she has dated. It might go on for several months, but inevitably she finds reasons to break it off. He's not smart enough. He's not ambitious. He's too needy. She doesn't like his friends and family. By this point in her life, she recognizes that these ostensible reasons are mere pretexts. She knows that she's afraid of intimacy but doesn't understand why.

Over the next few sessions, she fills me in on her personal history. Mom was an alcoholic and MacKenzie often came home from school to find her drunk or passed out on the couch. Dad was a workaholic and neglected the family, then divorced her mother and largely disappeared from their lives when MacKenzie was in her early teens. My client was left more or less in charge of her younger sister and stood in for parent as Mom disappeared deeper and deeper into her addiction. As an adult, MacKenzie has always been hard-working, utterly reliable and valued by her employers. She consistently advanced in her career at a major corporation and now occupies a mid-management level position.

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