Reflections: Narcissism and Space Travel.

I recently spoke with my friend of twenty years “Guillermo.” He is someone who knows my history (at least my adult history) intimately well. He’s seen my ups and downs. He’s seen me at my worst and at my best. We’ve weathered verbal and even physical altercations as young adults. Once upon a time, we were direct roommates in a cramped “log cabin” that housed six 21-year-old “men.” This “cabin” was perpetually littered with empty beer cans. Anyhow, my social skills pale in comparison to his. He is a physician and sees patients every working day. I am an architect who stares at inanimate objects all day. My friend has the uncanny ability to impersonate anyone. He delivers expert impressions of everyone we mutually know. Even when he does impressions of people I’ve never met, I can trust that those impressions indeed capture something real. This kind of skill seems to come naturally to people with high levels of emotional intelligence and self-awareness. He simultaneously “knows” how another person presents in the world, and “knows” how he himself appears to others.

It was fascinating to me when I first met him twenty years ago. His ability to impersonate people is nothing like what I’ve ever seen in Korea where I spent much of my childhood. My words and actions were both more insulated from self, and also naively unaware of others. It felt like I had cultural blinders to my left and individual blinders to my right. The blinders were a mutually reinforcing pair that locked me into a regime of complacent forward-motion and limited carrot-definition. Like a horse drawing a carriage, I was well-equipped to be selfishly absorbed in my own interests and goals. The problem was when I needed to take steps back, go around obstacles, or discover better carrots. Horses are often easily frightened and aggressive when goals are challenged, especially when they are carriage-bound. This is because they are half-blind and ultimately “unfree.”

Anyhow, I recently asked Guillermo a sort of serious question. I asked him if I may be exhibiting narcissistic tendencies. He told me that we all can and do exhibit disordered tendencies especially given particular challenging circumstances, but that those tendencies should not be mistaken as meeting diagnostic criteria. Challenging situations can and do become opportunities for growth because they do reveal to us tendencies that can otherwise be hidden. Anyhow, my friend’s answer wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped. I was pretty convinced that I was or am a narcissist. In any case, it’s not as important that I am declared a narcissist by a clinician. What’s more important to me than a clinical diagnosis is coming to a better understanding of my own behaviors, thought patterns, and even emotions. This has been helping me unhinge what I view as “narcissistically” reactive tendencies from the internal and external triggers that plunge me into unhealthy patterns of interactivity with self, other, and God.

What’s exciting to me is that these patterns are more than simply half-choices and habits. Rather, they constitute my personal manner of being in the world. This is personal in that it is the manner in which I relate with self, other, and God. And to be a person is what makes human beings in a particular likeness to the image of God. It is that aspect of my being that is revelatory par excellence of God. It is what reveals me as an individual. It is what makes humans particularly human. In a way, personhood is the particular appearance of a human soul in the world. To be made aware of this personhood, in how it appears / unfolds to self, other, and God, is both a terrifying and an exhilarating experience. The truth sets one free. It just so happens that this truth is presented to me in my personhood, unfolding before me in a very personal way. That truth too is a person. A personality disorder is a disorder in one’s relationship with self, other, and God. And when there is a disorder, and in fact we are all somewhat disordered, this experience of personhood can be terrifying precisely because of the particular disorder that afflicts us.

What’s interesting to me is that a disorder seems to be a double cause of terror. What we fear is the disorder and the person to whom the disorder attaches. This person can be both self and other. We can both fear and loath self and other. We also fear, perhaps even resent and abhor, the person in whom one's disorders are revealed. We can experience “hatred” (resentment, anger, jealousy etc.) toward the person with whom one’s relationship results in the discomfort and pain that arise as a symptom of disorder. This is similar to how one can simultaneously be attracted to and jealous of holy people because they cannot be manipulated for personal gain. We have all condemned Jesus to death. And we have all gawked at John the Baptist while holding court in one’s own self-enclosed ego. My disordered “need” to viciously consume another person is laid bare in my inability to do so. But an encounter with the holy is alarming and an occasion for healing all at once. The Word of God is a double-edged sword. Similarly, what entrenches one in a disorder is that the disorder can prevent one from seeing the disorder in the first place. Disorder is itself a kind of blindness fueled by denial and fear. It too has two edges. Fear can prevent one from the “confidence,” “trust,” and “security” needed for healthy relationships. Lacking in these is the cause of fear in the first place that painfully sever one from self, other, and God. The double-edged nature of the Word, and of disorder, is paradigmatic of the very “personal” nature of human relationships that are organic, complex, and non-linear in its circular causality. In blindness, disorder prohibits one from seeing the problems for what they really are. It also prevents us from seeing the person of Christ that assures us of safe-passage.

If fear is what prevents one from calmly taking steps to remedy disorder, then fear can also become a paranoia about some disorder being present in self and other. This too is a symptom of disorder. The plank in one’s own eye presents the speck in one’s brother’s eye (including in oneself who is also one’s own brother) seem to appear as though an insurmountable plank. Simultaneously, one’s own plank prevents one from seeing anything at all. On the other hand, health would allow one to rather smoothly and diligently accept, grow, and mature in the face of challenge, while simultaneously love one’s brother for who he is. In so doing, one removes the “plank” from both one’s own eye and one's brother's eye. A relationship is plank-free and healthy at once. In this image, the human soul is organically beautiful in its personhood. It has the ability to “have” human relationships; it is not a functional machine that simply “processes” and “consumes” them. On the path to order from disorder, everything synergistically moves upward. Dynamic processes are non-linear and robust. But when things disintegrate, failure can appear catastrophic. Everything falls apart together. At the same time, it is possible to overcome fear. Making a small move in the direction of order sets off a dynamic process of growth and renewal. On the other hand, a small movement in the direction of disorder can and does take time to “show” as catastrophic even as its effects accrue and compound in a multitude of different ways. These relationships are interchangeable in that progress can appear swift and sudden, but also slow to mature and solidify.   

The organic model helps us see why mechanistically input-output driven regimes that are goal-oriented toward certain “successful” outcomes are only “useful,” but never fully “human.” This is the point at which mercy, patience, gentleness, and love are outward and inner expressions, not of some tool that simply works better, but of the true modus operandi of the human person. It’s in this way that the measure by which I judge another is the measure by which I am judged. The relationships are mutually implicative, and in fact, constitutive of my own personhood. When I condemn Christ, I condemn myself, and when I gawk at John the Baptist, I reveal myself to be naked and ashamed. Ultimately, ordered relationships are expressed, experienced, and made “real” in personal ways through the person of Christ, the person in whom love, patience, and mercy are synonymous with justice. In the order of human relationships, persons are not to be consumptively possessed as outcomes to successful models of behavior. As an example, to simply not be exploitative of self and other isn’t simply to avoid causing harm, this is of course true, but to be non-exploitative of self and other is an outgrowth of one’s own personhood. It is a manner of being of my own person in relation to self, other, and God, and in whose relationships my personhood is constituted. One knows a tree by its fruit.   

What I’ve experienced throughout this therapeutic journey is that the typically blinkered mode of goal-oriented action is insufficient, but also redeemable. It can be wrapped up in delusion and blindness, self and other exploitation, and narrowly defined carrots even while reaching for better outcomes. At the same time, it can be harnessed to initiate small steps toward order that can synergistically backtrack into more “personable” modes of understanding and being. Having a better “goal” can redeem the “motivation” and “process” of accomplishing the goal that is then put into better focus and definition. The horse, after all, is a moral creature whose being is tethered to its carriage under the mission of delivering it to a destination. The payload that is carried and delivered is the manner of being of its personhood. Quite suddenly, the carriage can morph from a rickety buggy, blind to its left and right, with an overly wide and clumsy turning radius, into a nimble spacecraft with warp drive and interdimensional jumping capabilities. The person begins to recover personhood itself, thereby revealing one’s own image of and likeness to God.

Thinking back to my friend Guillermo, part of our friendship is grounded in deep trust. There is no judgement, though we have made very different decisions in life. He is a physician in New York City while I am a deskilled artist and designer currently living in Seoul, ROK. He was raised Catholic and is no longer practicing, whereas I am in process of becoming “furiously” Catholic as an adult. This speaks volumes to the wayward path I’ve taken and the straight-and-narrow that he’s taken. I am of course only half-serious. What does appear true to me is that relationships of nimble spacecraft-like freedom are grounded in attentive and non-judgmental trust. Trusting in Jesus and finding him ever attentive and merciful is like discovering an interdimensional matrix that makes warp drive possible. Space travel can be terrifying and exhilarating all at once. In that trust, seeing one’s own faults is possible, and also happy. Progress is slow and painful, and also somehow dynamic and sudden. A once stiff and clumsy horse-drawn carriage is suddenly jumping through dimensions. A lame man picks up his mat and walks home. Space travel is terrifying and exhilarating all at once.