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 NARCISSIST VS. NARCISSIST

The ENDING is revealed in these comments.  Consider yourself warned. 

       In “There Will Be Bl00d,” we have two miserable men, both struggling to make it in the world by living through larger-than-life masks.  Both survive by convincing people that they are special and deserving of the awe of others.  The oilman, (Daniel Day Lewis character) only feels alive when he is making deals, proving to himself that he is smarter than others.  Success doesn’t quench the thirst, because he is not looking for money or rest, but constant admiration.  His fraudulent “psuedo-self” is revealed painfully when he bullies an associate into “taking back” a comment he’d made about the oilman.  The associate complies mostly because he is embarrassed for the oilman’s reeking show of insecurity.

          The preacher of the Church of the Third Revelation feels alive when he seen as special and gifted with the power to call on God and win hand-to-hand combat with the devil.  He preys (and prays) on the members of an isolated congregation he views as lesser beings than himself.  His true character is revealed in his interactions with his parents and his sisters whom he despises for their naivety and “stupid compliance.”

          These two are locked in a war of false egos.  The oilman must treat the preacher badly to “prove” his superiority and the preacher, in turn, humiliates the oilman to prove himself better.  The two likable characters are the oilman’s young son (adopted) who lives as an extension of his father, more like an extra arm that he controls, until a rig accident causes him to go deaf.  The boy’s deafness only infuriates the oilman.  He sends him off to a special school (by lying and tricking him).  The other likable character is a man (Henry) who shows up impersonating the oilman’s half-brother in hopes of getting work.  When the oilman realizes he’d been duped, he murders Henry. 

          Two of the more interesting elements of narcissism come to a head as the story closes.  The son tells his father that he is leaving for Mexico with his wife to start his own company.  The oilman makes sneering remarks about his son’s use of an interpreter in speaking with him . . . though he has not, in all these years, made any attempt to learn signing.  For him, his “extra arm” was damaged goods.  He could love what he wasn’t puffed up proud about.  In true narcissist fashion, when the son tells him of his decision, the oilman throws the son out of his life.  After all, for him, his favor only lasts as long as you make decisions with which he agrees, and by the way, it works even better if you just let him apply his superior mind and decide for you.

       The final scene shows the endgame for the narcissist.  The two of them alone and empty, fighting like little boys until the oilman “proves” he’s the “better” man by killing the preacher.  I hope you’ve seen this movie, with me telling the ending and all, but if not, remember you were warned.

Writers’ Note:  The theme of the movie is a part of every scene, no wasted scenes.  Good theme carrying sentences:  “I never want any one else to succeed.”  “I don’t like people very much.” 

Okay, after this, I’m leaving the Philip Seymour Hoffman, older psychopathic brother, character alone. 

This family keeps rattling around in my head (this is not good news for friends and family who’d prefer I had Mary Poppins in there).  One of the things I like about a good story is when the writer has the courage and skill to put the entire story right there in the first scene.  BtDKYD opens with PSH older brother having sex with his wife.  So what does that tell you?  He’s watching in a mirror.  Sexy?  No.  He’s watching HIMSELF. 

This is a great example for writers and stands as a word to the wise to those of you out there scouting the world for true love or friendship.  If he/she orders take-out without asking what you want, look out.  If he/she ”tells” you what you should order, run.   

Okay, already.  I’m done with that movie.  I think. 

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead–

A second element of this film provides insight into the difficulty each of us has in having our actions be the result of our own best thinking (this is not the same as acting in accord with the ups and downs of our emotions) and not the result of emotional pressure from others or pressure from within ourselves (this is acting in accord with the ups and downs of feelings.)

What the heck does that all mean?  In BtDKYD, the older brother (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is in deep trouble with an expensive drug habit and a long-term embezzlement issue ready to be exposed at his job.  The younger brother (Ethan Hawke) has child support problems and would like to be able to support his lover (big brother’s wife) and ask her to marry him.  His problems, while troublesome, are not at the immediate life-changing level as his brother’s.  When his brother first suggests the robbery of their parents’ jewelry store, he holds his posion.  He knows what he thinks and says “No.”  But, older brother is not one for long term thinking or concern for others.  He’s also deft at manipulating others–a skill helping him to screw up his own life.  He plays on the younger brother’s recent embarrassment at not being able to pay for a field trip for his daughter by offering a small amount of immediate cash.  The younger brother loses his point of reference, his sense of himself and what he believes.  He goes against his best thinking, engaging in behavior based on crossing his fingers and turning against himself. 

How can you tell “best thinking” from emotionally based thinking?  One way is time.  The Emotional Guidance System in our brain is unable to consider the long term.  The EGS just wants what it wants NOW.  “I don’t want to hear about how what I’m doing now has long-term effects!”  A person’s whose life is governed by the EGS is more dependent on “luck.”  This is a scary way to live.  If our lives are the result of chance or the choices of others, we live as victims.  Our lives, our thoughts and feelings are up for grabs. 

The goal here will be for us to work together toward the goal of HAVING MORE OF OUR ACTIONS DETERMINED BY OUR BEST THINKING RATHER THAN BY EMOTIONAL PRESSURE FROM OTHERS OR EMOTIONAL PRESSURE FROM WITHIN OURSELVES (our anxieties and fears).

Why?  So we can stop making the same stupid mistakes.

Update:  every two days. 

What CAUSES behavior?

In Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, two brothers pull a robbery on their parents’ jewelry store.  Both are desperate for money (the younger one for child support, the older one for drugs) and their mother is killed when plans go awry.  A couple of aspects of this presentation are interesting.  The older brother is the first character making the “Psychopath Kings” category and the nature of bonds in the family are captivating.  What happens when a man and woman are deeply in love with each other for many years?  That’s a good thing, right?  What about when those two people are your parents?  And you want more attention from them?

This is not to suggest that the current way of managing anxiety in families–extreme child focus–is a good thing.  In fact, if your parents have enduring feelings for each other, you have a better chance of getting out there and making such a relationship for yourself.  But what if you have problems and there is little emotional energy left?  Both brothers in this film are immature, have intense needs for validation, and both have been unsuccessful in establishing adult lives.  What does it say when the younger brother’s “true love” (and one day a week sex date) is his brother’s wife?  How adult relationship is that?

The Philip Seymour Hoffman character is first to go on the Psychopath Kings list as he has so removed himself from emotional life that he is unable to feel concern for another person, even a family member.  A couple of scenes give some background to his removing himself from the human race.  His father was too hard on him, his brother was the one who was seen as needing attention, but there has to be more.

MysteryShrink’s Famous Test:

If it’s true that ”X” CAUSED “Y” then everyone who experienced ”X” is now “Y.”  

In this case, if it’s true that being an older son whose father is hard on him results in extreme drug use and the capacity to dispassionately kill, then everyone older son whose father was hard on him has extreme drug problems and is capable of killing without compassion.   

MS says, take a second look at what “causes” behavior.  We don’t know, not like we psychologists say we do.  Over recent decades, we in the mental health field have said that domineering mothers and distant fathers cause homosexuality, that having an alcoholic parent causes particular emotional problems, that not getting enough attention from mother causes you to be insecure, that getting too much attention from mother causes you to be insecure.  Not that long ago, we claimed mothers caused autism by rejecting their children in the womb.

So what caused our psychopath to be the way he is in BtDKYD?  A mix of physical inputs, events (including how he was raised), his basic functioning capacity, and the availability and functionality of him emotional field (family).  We don’t know specifically how the mix comes together.  Beware of anyone who picks one and says that caused his/her behavior.  Be double aware of anyone who picks a physical feature, event, personality feature, or member of your family and claims THAT caused you to be a certain way.

Okay.  Enough lecture.   

THE SAVAGES depicts family members dealing with anxiety by cutting off from each other.  The family history and its members depth.  In THE SAVAGES, a brother and sister reunite after their father’s decades-long girlfriend (a woman they never met) dies in a Phoenix retirement village.  The father is without funds and on the fast track to senility.  In their forties, neither of the siblings are married.  Both are involved in thin, unfulfilling relationships–her with a dedicated (well, sort of) married man; him with a woman living in Poland.

Anxiety:  The response of an indivual when threatened.  The response can be to a real or imagined threat.  Usually, the threat is imaginary.  Usually, the threat is fear that the way we see ourselves may be challenged.  The twittery self-esteem problem.

When THE SAVAGE family is together, their conversations are awkward and joyless.  There are no children, grandparents, or relatives of any kind, not even ideas to catch up on.  Neither speaks of the book they just enjoyed, or a movie, a play, a friend who just got back from somewhere, something funny someone said on the bus.  It’s as if each lives an empty life hardly worth sharing.

When a family manages ANXIETY with distance, the family becomes like a small grouping of palm trees without roots.  Figures sticking out the earth, but who can be blown over into nothingness by the slightest wind.

MS would never thumb her nose at anyone’s attempt to deal with anxiety and especially the anxiety that holiday togetherness can spawn.  I am jumpy and don’t sleep too well during these times.  And I come from an easy family–no substance abusers, no malcontents, not even anyone who’s slightly unkind.  Still, I can be a wreck.  I remember stopping for lunch at a Taco Bell one Thanksgiving on a road trip in Arizona.  I remarked to my companions that it was most relaxing Thanksgiving I’d ever spent.  That was my immaturity and difficulty managing my anxiety showing.  Sure, I’d like to say I wasn’t anxious because I didn’t have to deal with all those OTHER crazy, anxious people in my family.  The truth is, I have some work to do to stay myself and as relaxed around my family as I am around friends.

Distance is the most popular way of managing anxiety–like the person who says, “I do fine around my mother.  I haven’t seen her in years.”  But some families cannot be together without getting “overly close.”  In these families, people acting as individuals make others uncomfortable.  “Why do you do it that way?  That makes no sense!  How can you hold such ridiculous political ideas?  Well, you’re just wrong!”  In these families there is a great deal of bickering (exhausting) often “resolved” by instituting the distance solution to anxiety.

Distance-Butt-in-ski-ness.  Two sides of the same coin.

From the Writer’s Bench:  I once read (and, painfully, have never been able to forget) that “the problem with writers is that they think everything that ever happened to them is interesting.”  THE SAVAGES is a case in point.  What happens to this family happens to all of us in one form or another.  Sometimes watching ordinary life experiences dealth with by heroic or unusual people or even people with a sense of humor can be captivating.  Not so with THE SAVAGES.  The characters in this film are not likable or kind enough to forgive their shallow approach to a life change.  Characters need some LIFE.

Which is more real, the person we are RESPONDING to, or the person who exists? 

In fact, we can only see people as we expect them to be, how we believe them to be.  Many times I have seen a client (or family member) change–become more or less optimistic, more or less energetic–when leaving or entering a new relationship.  The new wife thinks his quirks are cute; the former wife thought he was crazy.  The new teacher thinks the boy is quiet becuase he “has an artist’s way;” his teacher before said he was pathologically shy.  What those around us BELIEVE to be true about us will have a strong tendency to be played out,  just as our spouses, children, and friends will play into our expectations.

The person who believes she is unlovable behaves in ways to repel love.  The husband who thinks his wife is wonderful, generous, kind, and capable is married to a woman who grows and blooms with confidence.  Maybe it “shouldn’t” be that way.  Maybe we should all be so mature that others’ expectations do not touch us.  But this is not reality as I know it.

 In Atonement, a young girl, who cannot clearly see the face of a rapist, identifies the perpetrator using the context of her own hurt feelings and her interpretation of his earlier behavior as that of a “sex maniac.”  She remakes the face of the rapist to be the person who has diminished her own sense of self.  Even knowing at some level that she has given emotionally driven rather than factual testimony, her wounded sense of pride and jealousy keep her from admitting the truth for years, even to herself. 

Atonement brings to the forefront a struggle we each face everyday.  Can we be more than the expectations of others?  Can we contribute to the joy others experience in life by projecting positive attributes onto them?  How will our most important relationships change if we consistently give others the benefit of the doubt? 

What happens if we just step up to the plate and say, “Hey, world, I can do anything I set my mind to?  I can and I will.”