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Another conditional assumption of power is the belief of exemption from normal rules and laws, even the laws of science and nature. Risk is viewed as remote, minimal, or easily managed. The patient may dismiss or actively distort evidence indicating risk, even when overwhelming, because of the firm belief in being the “exception.” “I’m special; I can get away with it,” where the “it” may be smoking, drinking, reckless driving, spending, overeating, substance abuse, emotional abuse, even sexual abuse or physical harm. The fallacy of this exception will not be casually accepted. “This can’t be happening to me,” is the refrain when exception fails. When faced with an unremitting loss, perhaps as in a life- threatening illness, the patient with NPD may persist in believing that he or she will not have to cope but will be excepted from the emotional stresses experienced by other, “lesser” individuals. Other normal expectations such as compromising in a marriage may be resisted or resented, based on the belief that “it should be easy for me, and I should not have to make that effort.”
The narcissistic patient also assumes as a condition of power that “other people should satisfy my needs,” and that “no one’s needs should interfere with my own.” Thus, he or she is apt to approach any number of situations feeling automatically entitled to personal gratification. From simple examples such as hogging the best seat, biggest steak, or choice bedroom; dominating entire conversations with personal concerns; commanding excessive portions of a family budget; or relentlessly demanding an outrageous inheritance claim, the assertion of his or her needs seems to lack the constraint of consideration for others. If others fail to satisfy the narcissist’s “needs,” including the need to look good, or be free from inconvenience, then others “deserve to be punished.”
The belief about the importance of appearances will frequently, although not always, extend to those whom the patient views as an exten- sion of him- or herself (e.g., spouse, child): thus the assumption, “My child (spouse) has to make me look good.” Perplexing double binds may arise out of this view for significant others. If they fail to perform in an admirable way (according to the narcissist), they may be ridiculed, punished, or tormented. If they succeed in admirable performance and challenge or surpass the narcissist, they may be ridiculed, punished, or tormented.
Amanda and Lewis arrived at their marital therapy session in a private limousine, courtesy of Amanda’s parents, who always wanted the best for her. Marital tension was focused on Amanda’s growing dissatisfaction with Lewis, and his “unwillingness” to please her. It seems that at 42, his hair was thinning and receding, and he was getting a bit flabby in the middle, although as a sports professional, he remained physically well toned. Slim Amanda proudly pointed out that at size 1, she was the same size as she had been at age 16. Lewis’s unwillingness to please her involved his reluctance to undergo hair implants which, she reasoned, would ensure that he retained some hair as the natural process of thinning progressed. “I just can’t be married to a flabby, bald guy,” she complained. “It would make me look bad.”
When failed expectations or dreams are the presenting problem, it may be that ruminative comparisons, minimization of the necessity of effort, and contempt or dismissal of partial results stem from similar rigid expectations for superlative achievement. Further, the NPD patient may be minimizing or denying some exploitive or aggressive actions that have impaired their advancement.
Scott, an investment broker terminated from his third firm, complained that “this shouldn’t be happening to me.” He ruminated con- stantly about the success he “deserved,” and angrily compared himself to former classmates now in business, noting that “their successes just grind at me.” He expected to be earning “at least” a $1 million salary, and he did not see that the complaints about his sexual harassment of employees should have anything to do with his lost positions. Scott accepted the idea that it probably was not in his best interest to constantly measure his potential against the past successes of others. More grudgingly, he explored the viability of expecting a $1 million contract with a “prestige” firm despite repeated (and well-substantiated) claims of sexual harassment and other unprofessional conduct. Most difficult but crucial was exploration of the meaning of his expected success and modifying the beliefs about the worthlessness of alternative goals.
wow
Avoidant patients may engage in wishful thinking about their future. They may believe that one day the perfect relationship or perfect job will effortlessly arise from out of the blue. In fact, they often do not believe they will be able to reach their goals through their own efforts: “One day I’ll wake up and everything will be fine,” “I can’t improve my life by myself,” “Things may get better, but it won’t be through my own efforts.”
triggering lol
Shapiro, although not presenting a comprehensive theory of OCPD, discussed what he saw as three of its primary characteristics. The first characteristic was a rigid, intense, sharply focused style of thinking. Shapiro found compulsives to have a “stimulus-bound” quality to their cognition, comparable in certain ways to that of brain-damaged people. By this, he meant that they are continually attentive and concentrating and rarely seem to just let their attention wander. Thus, they tend to be good at detailed, technical tasks, but are poor at discerning more global, impressionistic qualities of things, such as the tone of a social gathering. Shapiro referred to compulsives as having “active inattention.” They are easily distracted and disturbed by new information or external events outside their narrow range of focus, and they actively attempt to keep this distraction from occurring. As another consequence of this, they are rarely surprised.
The second characteristic Shapiro discussed is the distortion in the obsessive–compulsive’s sense of autonomy. Unlike normal self-direction based on volition and choice, the compulsive deliberately and purposefully self-directs each action. Thus, the compulsive exerts a continuous willful pressure and direction on himself as if by an “overseer” and even exerts “an effort to direct his own wants and emotions at will” (Shapiro, 1965, pp. 36–37). The fundamental aspect of the compulsive’s experience is the thought, “I should.” Compulsives experience any relaxation of deliberateness or purposeful activity as improper and unsafe. They invoke morality, logic, social custom, propriety, family rules, and past behavior in similar situations to establish what the “should” is in a given situation, and then act accordingly.
Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,
Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear,
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!
Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,
Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last
We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:
Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.
This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
This air, a little indistinct with autumn
Like a reflection, constitute the present---
A time traditionally soured,
A time unrecommended by event.
But equally they make up something else:
This is the future furthest childhood saw
Between long houses, under travelling skies,
Heard in contending bells---
An air lambent with adult enterprise,
And on another day will be the past,
A valley cropped by fat neglected chances
That we insensately forbore to fleece.
On this we blame our last
Threadbare perspectives, seasonal decrease.
Even so distant, I can taste the grief,
Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.
The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief
Worry of wheels along the street outside
Where bridal London bows the other way,
And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare
Console you if I could. What can be said,
Except that suffering is exact, but where
Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?
For you would hardly care
That you were less deceived, out on that bed,
Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair
To burst into fulfilment's desolate attic.
from my Goodreads review:
a painful one, about rape. However, the last line, "To burst into fulfilment's desolate attic", feels tragic in a more universal way, and warns of the hidden bleakness of any sort of presumed fulfillment -- in love, career, life -- which honestly just about sums up Larkin's less cheerful poems. (Incidentally, this line was also mentioned by the author in the introduction to Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis, in which the author recalls a bout of depression that coincided the publication of a bestselling novel; the context may differ from that of the poem, but the use of that specific line feels apt.)
She kept her songs, they took so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter---
So they had waited, till in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood
Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,
The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.
from my GR review:
this one starts off on a light and even sweet note that leaves the reader wholly unprepared for the chilling brutality of the last few lines. This might actually be my absolute favourite.
Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.
Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,
And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul ,
They whisper at their own distress;
For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there
At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable inside a room
The traffic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.