Echo's Lament: Teaching,Mentoring, and the Danger of Narcissistic Pedagogy

In this essay, I explore “narcissistic pedagogy,” a pedagogy that centers disproportionately on the needs of the teacher – especially the need for admiration. I engage psychological discussions of narcissistic patterns, and I retell the ancient myth of Narcissus. The core of narcissistic pedagogy is that the teacher experiences students not as centers of their own activity but as part of the teacher's self. All educational situations are vulnerable to narcissistic dynamics, and I will consider strongly narcissistic pedagogy as well as milder narcissistic dangers. I will, additionally, explore healthy narcissism. I pose “conversational education” as an alternative to narcissistic patterns.     

A Comparative Assessment of an Analysis of Envy: Commentary on Paper by Julie Gerhardt

This discussion is introduced with emphasis on the need for comparative psychoanalytic studies in our pluralistic psychoanalytic world and describes an approach to such an endeavor. A very brief comment on the extensive literature review is followed by a more detailed focus on the “analysis of envy,” which gradually changed into the analysis of the patient, as a person. The discussant's “empathic entry” into the analyst's mode of listening and responding was simultaneously also applied to the patient's experience, to see how well patient and analyst communicated with each other and whether or not the patient indicated that she felt understood or not. When she did not feel understood, the patient signaled this with an intensification of her envy into furious “envy attacks.” The analyst's “decoding interpretations” implied that the patient was causing her own problems and should not feel the way she did. The analyst discovered this later herself. Her discoveries in the fourth year of the analysis yielded notable changes both in her approach and in the patient's progress. Ultimately, the analyst allowed her subjectivity to enter the analysis and became better amalgamated with her chosen theory, leading to the changes in a progressively more fruitful analysis.     

Melanie Klein and Envy: A Static Totalitarian Script or a Sample of our Protean Theories? Commentary on Paper by Joye Weisel-Barth

I agree with Joye Weisel-Barth's main point. But I regret her impression that Klein “monopolized” envy. In the world of ideas, a concept cannot be appropriated as if it has been bought. We acknowledge the originator, but the concept belongs to our collective heritage. It is open at all hours and there is no entry fee. Quite apart from this, Klein's concept is not simple. I have discussed elsewhere the conflicting currents in her paper on envy and questioned traditional views. But even for Klein herself, envy is never isolated. It is always in a dynamic conflict with love. To my mind, Klein's envy was loaded with a further responsibility: to remind us of the worst in our nature. If we accept the full humanity of our patients, we must remain receptive to their cruelty as well as their love. In my own thinking, envy has a subtle relationship with admiration and is ever shifting on a spectrum, from a point of positive emulation to a point of destructive attack. Lastly, I enjoyed Joye's clinical work. But I expressed deep concern about the paedophilic activities disclosed by the patient.     

Analyst Envy in Working With an Artist: Four Scenes

The paper describes a rich analytic relationship with an artist patient in which countertransference feelings of envy surfaced. The analyst's examination of her envy led to a review and reassessment of the concept of envy in psychoanalysis. I propose here that envy is a complex affect that moves on a continuum from a fairly benign combination of admiration and desire to more malignant emotional states, described by Melanie Klein and her followers. Malignant envy may lead to anger, fury, and murderous rage. A more benign form of envy, which emerged for the analyst in the treatment, resulted in psychic support for and validation of the patient as well as a shift in personal identifications and new motivational directions for the analyst.     

Burning With Envy? Dispositional and Situational Influences on Envy in Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism

Research on narcissism and envy suggests a variable relationship that may reflect differences between how vulnerable and grandiose narcissism relate to precursors of envy. Accordingly, we proposed a model in which dispositional envy and relative deprivation differentially mediate envy's association with narcissistic vulnerability, grandiosity, and entitlement. To test the model, 330 young adults completed dispositional measures of narcissism, entitlement, and envy; one week later, participants reported on deprivation and envy feelings toward a peer who outperformed others on an intelligence test for a cash prize (Study 1) or earned higher monetary payouts in a betting game (Study 2). In both studies, structural equation modeling broadly supported the proposed model. Vulnerable narcissism robustly predicted episodic envy via dispositional envy. Entitlement—a narcissistic facet common to grandiosity and vulnerability—was a significant indirect predictor via relative deprivation. Study 2 also found that (a) the grandiose leadership/authority facet indirectly curbed envy feelings via dispositional envy, and (b) episodic envy contributed to schadenfreude feelings, which promoted efforts to sabotage a successful rival. Whereas vulnerable narcissists appear dispositionally envy‐prone, grandiose narcissists may be dispositionally protected. Both, however, are susceptible to envy through entitlement when relative deprivation is encountered.     

Final Thoughts on the Case of Pamela and Commentaries

Much gratitude is offered to Drs. Bach and Bromberg for their rich discussions of the case. Some reflections and final thoughts are gathered. The value of the single case study is underlined. The emphases by Bach and Bromberg on the centrality of trauma, failures in recognition, and the healing fostered by acceptance, consistency, and care in the treatment are highlighted. Bach points to the patient's need to regress and to “float in her own subjectivity” in the treatment, to not be impinged on by another “I” in the room. Bromberg's focus is on the need to accept all of the patient's different self states, including the guardian of the weak vulnerable self. Bach highlights the unbalancing of the analyst's narcissistic equilibrium in enactment and Bromberg emphasizes the importance of real and spontaneous engagement. Both point to how such enactments involve a crucial unthought living through of the central trauma itself in the treatment of such patients. The analyst is both in the enactment and a witness to it, allowing for the transformation of traumatic affect and bodily memory. The issue of regression and the concept of the false self are highlighted as topics for further discussion.     

The Moral Value of Envy

It is common to think that we would be morally better people if we never felt envy. Recently, some philosophers have rejected this conclusion by arguing that envy can often be directed toward unfairness or inequality. As such, they conclude that we should not suppress our feelings of envy. I argue, however, that these defenses only show that envy is sometimes morally permissible. In order to show that we would not be better off without envy, we must show how envy is not merely morally permissible, but morally valuable. Here I provide a defense of envy's moral value. I argue that feelings of envy are integral to the value that moral agents place on the goods and talents that they judge to be central to a worthwhile life.     

A Response to the Contributors

Abstract

In my “response to the contributors” I emphasize that I was moved to write my book in response to the question “Why are so many well-trained colleagues, young and old, having so much difficulty developing satisfying analytic practices?” To answer that question I proposed to explore my experience successfully developing and maintaining an analytic practice.

In attempting to answer the question I inadvertently stumbled upon a revolutionary (with a “small r”) answer to the problem. I discovered, in my attitudes and in my way of working in a consultation and the early phase of an analytic collaboration, a new “concrete puzzle solution” to the problem of how to help a prospective, often reluctant collaborator give analysis a “try.”

My book emphasizes my view that courses on “analyzability” and differential diagnosis are based on psychiatric rather than psychoanalytic diagnostic schema and may interfere with candidates' ability to learn how to create analytic patients.

Since I was a candidate, courses on analyzability have always seemed to me to resemble an exclusive club, deciding whom to exclude and whom to admit, rather than a procedure based on sound clinical experience. Analytic experience has demonstrated that it is not possible in a consultation to predict accurately the outcome of an analysis. To make matters worse, it is probable that an analyst whose mind is focused on the task of evaluating a prospective analysand contributes to creating an environment in which certain patients are experienced as sicker than they might otherwise be.

In spite of the fact that it is not possible in a consultation to predict accurately the outcome of an analysis, many experienced “senior” analysts believe an analyst can and should be evaluative and selective. In their discussions of the subject, they focus primarily on characteristics of the patient rather than the match.

In my book I emphasize that in a consultation there are advantages in focusing on the patient's responses to the idea of engaging in a trial of analysis. The issue of the match and the particular time in their lives are significant from my perspective. The analyst's gender, age, personality, and related state of mind may be as important in effecting the outcome of a trial as any feature of the patient's mind.

My book shifts the emphasis of the focus of inquiry in a consultation from the patient to the analytic couple. It offers a different way of teaching candidates to work with prospective collaborators.     

Projective identification in Othello and Verdi's Otello

In this paper I explore how projective identification is depicted in Shakespeare's Othello (1603–4 [2006]) and in Verdi's Otello (1887). Both the play and the opera can be seen as studies in projection – in the evacuation into others of feelings that the subject finds unbearable, such as envious and jealous exclusion or unbearable sexual excitement. The essential issue is the same in both the play and the opera, which is that the very sight of love between Othello and Desdemona, or of contentment in anyone's mind, drives Iago mad with envy and jealousy, which he has to expel and project into others, particularly into Othello, who is susceptible to this attack because of his own narcissistic vulnerability. I take two episodes, which appear in both the play and the opera, to explore in detail how projective identification is represented both verbally and musically. I suggest that music, and words used musically, are particularly suited to conveying complex inter‐ and intra‐personal processes such as projective identification.     

Private Terrors Sexualized Aggression and a Psychoanalyst's Fear of Her Patient

This clinical paper explores the meanings and evolution of an analyst's reaction of fear in relation to her patient's sexualized aggression. From both an intrapsychic and an intersubjective perspective, the author analyzes the coconstruction of this transference—countertransference phenomenon. Case vignettes illustrate the author's attempts to address her patient's sexualized aggression while struggling to free herself from the feelings of intimidation and fearfulness stirred by his sadomasochistic fantasies and patterns of interaction. The analyst's unconscious identification with the patient's disowned femininity and narcissistic vulnerability is seen as central to this countertransference “stranglehold.” Release from the analyst's masochistic position comes through a shift in her own affective participation. The importance of the analyst's recognizing her own unconscious contributions to this sadomasochistic dynamic is emphasized and elaborated. Discussion also focuses on the relevance of gender to the issue of countertransference fear, as illustrated in this particular male patient—female analyst dyad.     

The Suffering of Passion: Metamorphoses and the Embrace of the Stranger

In this paper I use the concept of the “suffering of passion” to explore how human beings endure personal metamorphoses. I suggest that the affirmation of passion, which is both self-interested and self-surrendering, is necessary in order to embark on the journey from self-sameness to otherness. Inasmuch as this transitional path simultaneously entails the “embrace of the stranger” of one's own growth and of the subjectivity of another person, the suffering of passion is both a developmental and ethical achievement. The mutual interchange of giving and receiving, mediated by gratitude and generosity, inspires the passion necessary to construct a relational bridge of conscience from self-sameness to otherness. When the mutuality of giving and receiving breaks down, shame may lead to the negation and disowning of one's passion. The resulting inversion of passion into passivity may then culminate in a narcissistic loyalty to “one's own kind.” A case vignette of a young man is presented to illustrate the difficulty of suffering the passion of one's own growth.     

Crash: What We Do When We Cannot Touch: Commentary on Paper by Meira Likierman

This commentary aims to show the congruence and difference between Likierman's position on recognizing otherness and working with enactment and her relational, intersubjective position. Differences in my reading of the case include stressing the repetition of early attachment trauma, the level of implicit procedural relating, and the patient's contribution to the shared third of rupture and repair. I try to show that enactments arise not merely because the patient is able to pull the patient into forbidden behavior but because the dissociated parts of the patient pull the analyst into dissociation even when the analyst is acting “properly.” The rupture or collision—the “crash”—that the patient helps to formulate represents an opportunity to see the life-giving element in what we, analysts along with patients, inevitably also experience as frightening and even life-threatening.     

The Analyst's Anticipatory Fantasies: Aid and Obstacle to the Patient's Self-Integration

In this paper I explore instances of enactment related to the analyst's feelings and fantasies about how analysis will proceed. As I discuss a patient who was developing a new capacity to experience conflict, I explore how the analyst's fantasies about the impact of his interpretations may be utilized in helping him to elaborate and understand the patient's unconscious fantasies and identifications and unintegrated feeling states. In so doing, we sometimes discover how we are unwittingly influencing or avoiding understanding our patient's own version of their psychic catastrophe. As we develop language where there was previously no integrative language for the patient's internalized and interactive version of catastrophe, we always project particular kinds of expectations into the therapeutic situation.     

Envy and admiration: emotion and motivation following upward social comparison

Two key emotions people can experience when someone else is better than them are envy and admiration. There are conflicting findings in the scientific literature on which behaviour is elicited by these emotions. In one study (with two samples, total N?=?345), we test which motivations are triggered by envy and admiration. The main finding is that (benign) envy and admiration both lead to a motivation to improve oneself. This confirms earlier findings that admiration leads to a motivation to affiliate with the admired other and a motivation to improve one's own position. Furthermore, it supports the idea that envy can lead to both a motivation to improve oneself and a motivation to pull down the envied other, finding support for a subtypes theory of envy.     

The Dignity of Creating: The Patient's Contribution to the “Reachable Enough” Analyst

Through the defining power of words, the phrase “difficult-to-reach” patient reflects the extent to which the analyst inverts the patient's will to change and makes the analyst the subjective agent of treatment progress. If making a constructive contribution to another person's life engenders a sense of creative agency, the traditional dichotomies of analyst/helper who gives and an empty patient who receives may not be useful. I trace the evolution of a 23-year-long psychotherapy from a parent–child dynamic through to more uncertain relational terrain in order to illustrate how the analyst's own evolution may have clashed with the patient's ambivalence toward change and endings. I raise questions of how the dignity of making a creative contribution to the “reachable enough” analyst's life may enable the patient to work through gratitude, attain a sense of belonging, and terminate with good conscience.     

Technique as a Case-Specific Problem: Reply to Commentaries

Seligman's appreciative response to the discussions of his paper is most concerned with the issues raised in Leon Kleimberg's critique of his “modifications of technique.” The dialogue between Kleimberg's and his point of view, with the latter echoed as it in Case and Dent's and Frosch's, reflects a number of key convergences and divergences between the American relational perspective and the British Independents'. Both approaches rely on a fundamentally dyadic perspective that stresses how the analyst's work is fundamentally shaped in response to the patient's internal objects. At the same time, although he is sympathetic to Kleimberg's concerns, he questions the idea of technique as a fixed set of uncontaminated practices. Instead, he endorses the North American relational idea that whatever the analyst does in the name of “technique” cannot be extricated from the transference-countertransference in which it is implicated. From this point of view, technical decisions are most likely to be experienced by the patient, and very often by the analyst, as inevitably reflecting one aspect of another of the patient's internal object world from within the phanstasmatically organized matrix of each analytic relationship. In addition, he is concerned that analysts' rigidly adhering to “technical” positions will reduce their likelihood of being effective with the widest range of patients, an increasing number of whom may not accept the traditional analytic practices. The mentalization concept, although not guiding his decisions in the case, is useful in describing many such situations.     

Adolescent narcissism and interpersonal trust: A cross‐lagged study

In recent years, narcissism has been attracting considerable interest by researchers because of its enigmatic constructs. To enhance our understanding of narcissists’ psychosocial functioning, considering the relationship between narcissism and interpersonal trust is crucial. This study aimed to investigate how narcissistic admiration and rivalry are associated with interpersonal trust. To gain a more nuanced understanding, a cross‐lagged design was conducted at two time points that were six months apart. In total, 357 adolescents (M_age = 16.33 years) completed the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ) and the Interpersonal Trust Scale. The results showed that narcissistic admiration positively predicted interpersonal trust while narcissistic rivalry negatively predicted interpersonal trust at the second time point. However, interpersonal trust did not predict subsequent levels of narcissistic admiration and rivalry. These findings enhanced our understanding by showing that narcissistic admiration and rivalry have different effects on interpersonal trust, and that they remain relatively stable during a six‐month period.     

Luck,envy and gratitude: It could have been different

Previous studies have shown that people feel lucky in situations that could easily have turned into something worse. The present investigation was designed to focus more closely on the comparative aspect of luck, using a linguistic approach (Study 1 and 2) as well as self-reports of perceived luck accompanying selected emotional episodes (Study 3). The participants in Study 1 were asked to comment upon the difference between describing a state of affairs as “lucky” vs. “good”. The term “lucky“ was frequently seen to imply a comparison process, sometimes expressing gratitude (“It is lucky I have a family”) and at other times envy (“it is lucky you have a job”). This was confirmed in Study 2 where statements about self and other being lucky or unlucky were rated for implying comparison, gratitude, envy, concern, and impression of speaker. In Study 3, 60 students described situations in which they had felt grateful towards other people as well as towards “life in general”. Questionnaire answers revealed that they also had felt very lucky and had been thinking “it could have been different”. They also produced recollections of envy, which were rated to imply others' good luck and own bad luck, which could easily have been interchanged (“it could have been merdquo;). It is concluded that counterfactual thoughts are decisive for the experiences of luck, gratitude, and envy.