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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: I Want

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In the beginning was the child…
-Photo by Jan Ketchel

Yes, there really is a part of the self that simply is all about me. Born in childhood, this spark of me-ness is our earliest ego state that simply needs, wants, and expects to be given to. And at that stage of life this narcissism is healthy and necessary; it’s all about survival.

Fairly quickly the needs and expectations of powerful others require us to suppress our needs, delay gratification, and give as well as take—all technologies to form a mature adult ego. This socialization of the child ego state greatly curtails its self-centeredness, which slips into the shadows of the unconscious, hidden but hardly dormant. Polite as we might appear to be outwardly, inwardly or covertly the child still wants and gets, in some form.

In our time, new apps appear daily to rapidly cater to all our wants. In America our new president has become the poster child for entitlement. The child ego state has been freed from the shadows, its narcissism given full legitimacy as a national policy.

The wanting child has truly come of age. We are all being asked to grapple with our own wanting child ego state. However, in approaching this inner child ego state, we must be careful to distinguish between it and the many parts of the self that appear in the form of the child and are in fact not the child ego state, what I refer to instead as the child image. The child ego state itself is a universal non-personal inherited psychic structure much like a limb or any other part of the body which serves a necessary function in life. The function of the child ego state in young childhood is simply to procure, as it is too immature to give or care for itself. In contrast, the child image reflects the personal history of the personality’s unfolding in this life.

Often, an inner child image, not the child ego state, may represent a split off part of the self that was abused or neglected in childhood and had to be packaged up and stored away, often somewhere in the body, forgotten to the conscious mind. This part of the personality holds a memory that  may be triggered into awareness by a current event, seeking some kind of recognition and reconciliation with the rest of the personality. This is not the wanting child, this is the traumatized child’s experience seeking peace through integration.

A symbolic child image is also frequently encountered in dreams of  pregnancy, or simply having a child, which might represent the development of a new potential in the personality. Hence, one might decide to start a new career, enterprise, or relationship, all starting in an embryonic state, needing the conscious care of a parent/adult ego state to support and bring to fruition.

A dream variation on this theme might be finding oneself back in grammar school, high school, or college, having to learn something. Here, information or skills we missed in our formative years might need attention, asking our current adult ego state to humbly attend to an underdeveloped part of the self.

Having considered these other permutations of the child image self, we need to consider how best to deal with our structural child ego state. First, we should acknowledge that the child is the true home of innocence in the personality. This innocence has been extolled as the only state worthy of entering heaven.

Innocence approaches the world with curiosity and awe, unencumbered by preconceptions and rules. Of course, this innocence will be wounded by Buddha’s greatest discovery: life is suffering. No-one can escape the ultimate reality of old age, sickness and death. Nonetheless, under the tutelage of the adult ego state, “mature” innocence, that can remain open despite the vulnerabilities and inevitabilities of these truths, may find full expression in adult life.

As to the wants of the child ego state, these may be largely under the compulsive dominance of instincts, be it for food, power, stimulation, or attention. The challenge for the adult ego is to help its child ego state become free from the instinctive dominance of its basic needs so that they may be incorporated into adult life in a fulfilling way. Keep in mind that free will can only exist within the limits of consciousness, which is a function of the adult ego state. Beyond those limits there is the mere compulsion of the child ego state. For instance, a sexual impulse, delayed, might ultimately become the foundation of a real loving relationship versus a narcissistic release with a casual hookup. The adult ego state can reconcile and integrate the energy and power of human animal instinct with true relatedness and spiritual love.

The essential challenge with the demanding “I want” child self is to transform it to coexist with the legitimate needs of others. The child ego state dominating in adulthood is largely anachronistic, non-adaptive to a reality beyond “me.” To achieve fulfillment of wants, those wants must be channeled and transformed through the adult ego state that can navigate the world as it really is and find a home for all its deepest needs, within the greater self as well as in the world. That is recognition and reconciliation in maturity!

I want maturity,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Locker Room Talk

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(This is the third in a series of blogs around the same theme. Beginning with Narcissism on the Way to Love and followed by Hillary as Hermaphrodite, this blog takes a closer and deeper look at the psychology of narcissism. All three blogs are commentaries on the rebalancing of the masculine and feminine partnership, so necessary for the survival of the world and currently being played out in the political arena.)

Recent political events have given rise to the term “locker room talk” as a recognizable and understandable categorization of male sexual fantasy or actual sexual behavior, at least one common expression of it. So recognizable is its occurrence that many intelligent women in a recent New York Times article actually dismissed locker room talk as a legitimate reason to disqualify a potential presidential candidate exposed as engaging in it, in locker room talk.

On some level these women seem to be expressing the truth and acceptance that all men have that side of themselves; however annoying or immature it might be—it simply is. So, what is “it”?

In my recent blog, Narcissism on the Way to Love, I gave a nod to Freud’s stages of libidinal (sexual) development, beginning in primary narcissism. Narcissism is a psychological mindset that literally can’t get its face beyond looking in the mirror. The eyes simply cannot take in a picture of the world separate from the self.

Time to put away the toys and grow up! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Time to put away the toys and grow up!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Relationship is not possible at the narcissistic stage because relationship requires two separate people in order to exist. For the narcissist there is only one being, the self. Of course, at the adult stage, a narcissist must function in a world of separate objects, and they do. However, those objects are just that, toys in a toy chest for one’s pleasure and amusement.

Locker room talk depicts a woman, not as a separate being, but rather as an object with body parts available for one’s play and for one’s taking: legs, tits, asses, and pussies. The narcissist cannot solve the puzzle of a world beyond the self, much less the mystery of woman, a being distinctly other than themself. In fact, the terror of confronting the mystery of otherness gives rise to the sanctuary of locker room talk. Here men can brag of tales of conquest as they graphically describe the booty of body parts, the treasures they have stolen or intend to steal. Here men collude in an attempt to avoid real terror at the power of nature as embodied in a woman. The fixation here does indeed go back to mother. For what more powerful being on earth could there be than woman, whose body gives life to all human beings?

Freud localized this problem to an incestuous desire to unite with this powerful woman and therefore remain under her protectorate in an eternal Eden of bliss. Jung expanded this perspective beyond this regressive wish to include the challenge to individuate, to truly become a separate self capable of standing on one’s own two feet and thereby actually able to take on the mystery of relating to a feminine being that exists outside the narcissistic orbit of the first three chakras. For Jung, true relationship could only begin at the level of the heart chakra, where another individual can be seen and experienced objectively as existing outside of the self.

At the heart center, another person is a whole person, both body and psyche. Connection requires meeting the whole person. Body parts may indeed activate instinctual desires, but at the heart center the true desire is to meet and connect with another being, body and soul. Reaching this stage of development requires a heroic effort to both withstand the regressive protectorate of the mother world, frequently projected onto all women “partners,” and a willingness to truly encounter the mystery, power, and integrity of another as they truly are.

Donald Trump serves as a helpful example of both Freud and Jung’s perspectives. Donald expresses his penchant for married woman. Freud, of course, would see the oedipal victory in this: steal another man’s wife, obtain mother! This includes the power dynamic of defeating father because, as Donald states, in his world mother (married woman) willingly chooses/loves his lecherous approaches!

Jung would acknowledge this pyrrhic regressive victory but would insist as well that the hero in this case has really not slain the primordial dragon of dependency on mommy and her power to sustain life. To slay the dragon is to move beyond the family nursery, to stand on one’s own and enter the mystery of life. And, in entering that mystery of life, we must grant others their own autonomous existence.

Beyond the narcissistic orbit others are not simply need-fulfilling objects to play with or break. Others are powerful beings who likely terrify us because of their godly ability to give life, as well as take it if they see fit. Can woman be granted the fullness of who she truly is? This is a Relationship 101 prerequisite.

Like the toys of childhood, locker room talk must be put away if we are to take on the challenge of true adulthood and real relationship. It’s time to stop settling for less, men and women alike.

Outside the locker room,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Narcissism On The Way To Love

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Even as the sun rises over Mother Earth each day so are we, her children, charged with rising our consciousness... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Even as the sun rises over Mother Earth each day so are we, her children, charged with raising our consciousness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Freud rightly identified early childhood as the stage of Primary Narcissism. We are born into this life with but the seed of an individual personality planted in the fertile soil of this world, what the Hindus identified as the first chakra, Muladhara, at the location of the perineum at the base of the spine. The spark of awareness at this stage, amidst the vast unknown dark soil of this world, is simply the needs of the body and the relief of those needs from somewhere. The infant can hardly differentiate itself and its needs from the world and from who attends to its needs. All is experienced as one narcissistic Me.

For Freud, this need state evolves into the Pleasure Principle, the prime mover of all stages of life through its myriad of mature civilized permutations, what Freud came to understand as civilization and it discontents, ultimately a variety of sublimations under which lies the libido of narcissism.

Jung introduced the two primary trends in nature, introversion and extroversion. In human nature the introvert looks to the inner self as the final arbiter of truth and rightness. By contrast, the extrovert is open more to the greater external reality and adapting to it as the basis for survival. From this perspective, the introvert, though perhaps more self-reliant, can also be seen as more self-involved or narcissistic. The extrovert, more keenly in tune with the needs of others, can on the one hand be seen as more related to the other yet on the other hand self-negating or codependent. The truth is, however, that both natural introverts and extroverts are likely to be equally driven by narcissism as long as their maturity is limited to the first three chakras: Muladhara, Svadhishthana, and Manipura.

These first chakras, in fact, all exist in the realm of narcissism. Despite outer appearances these three chakras are extremely self-involved, essentially in establishing the ego in the areas of basic security, sexuality, and individual power. These three chakras are bathed in narcissism at their core, simply a fact of development at those stages. These are necessary chakras in the foundation of the ego/body self, which then serve as the ultimate launching pad for the discovery of the spirit self in the fourth chakra, Anahata, located in the region of the heart.

It is only at the level of the flame of consciousness at the heart where an individual is truly freed from the dominance of the pleasure principle, the primary motivator of the animal part of the self, which dominates the first three chakras. It is only at the level of the heart that an individual can grant another autonomy and independent value, separate from their value as a need-fulfilling object, which is the perspective of the world at the first three chakras. At the lower levels, whether introverted or extroverted, the outside world is colored through the lens of what’s in it for Me, whether that be in the form of food, sex, or power and control.

Rising to higher consciousness... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Rising to higher consciousness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

However, once kundalini energy rises to the level of the heart, narcissism undergoes a mighty transformation, as one becomes truly capable of love for another. While narcissism once narrowed the energy of love to the self and how the world could support it, true love at the heart level grants the other and their needs a place in one’s own heart. Thus, at the heart center the way of narcissism becomes the way of love. Of course, the body is included in this new mix, but it must acquiesce to the greater objective need the heart accesses, beyond the narcissistic orbit of Me only.

The journey from the lower chakras to the heart center is many-faceted, involving many explosions and implosions as the world increasingly refuses to gratify the entitled expectations of the narcissistic self. This may result in repeated cycles of failed relationships, but over time, with knowledge accrued, it eventually becomes clear that the main culprit behind the failures is the compulsive drives of the narcissistic self.

With this point of self awareness one learns to contain the leaking of emotional frustration in the form of blame and develop an introspective posture that reveals the prejudices of the narcissistic worldview and begins to mold the objectivity of the heart center that acts from the place of truth vs blind need. And with this accomplishment, narcissism transforms and finds its way to true love.

Transforming,

Chuck