FORMATION OF NARCISSISM. SWINGING CRADLE. PART 2

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

If the father of the child is a narcissist, this also creates a barrier to the healthy development of the child. The father's absorption in himself, lack of interest in the mother of his child, ignorance of her emotional needs often turns into the fact that there is no other way for a woman but to satisfy her needs by connecting with the child.

The lack of parental involvement and the necessary participation leads to the fact that the mother becomes too close to the child. It is very difficult to break such a connection later, it is often almost impossible. These adult children are still connected to their mother by the umbilical cord, rendering them incapacitated and unhappy.

If the father is not interested in his own child, or the father is not available to the child for other reasons, then this prevents the child from achieving sovereignty. One of the main tasks of a father is to pave the necessary bridge for his child into life. With this bridge, built by the care of the father and his strong manly hand, the child will go from the mother to the outside world.

But the danger lies not only in the absence of the father. Another type of relationship with the father that can lead to the emergence of narcissism in the child is when the father exploits the child's interest in him as an opportunity for exaltation and power, thereby fueling his narcissistic lust. The narcissistic father may be jealous of the child's mother-child bond without finding a constructive place in it.

Such a father can enter into a relationship of competition for the mother's attention, see the child as his rival. He can compete with the mother of his child, use various tricks: allow the child what the mother forbids, come up with various games, which, however, are often not yet adequate to the child's age, behave pretendly benevolently. All these manipulations are started in order to distract the child from the mother and completely take possession of him. The narcissistic father begins to play different games in order to become the child's “favorite”, and as long as all the child's manifestations sound in unison with the narcissistic father's fantasies, he does not experience excitement and is quite satisfied. But when the growing interests of the child begin to conflict with the narcissistic interests of the father, this leads to the collapse of the illusion of ownership and the father becomes tyrannical, exacting, infringing, angry and unnecessarily shaming the child for "bad behavior." Such affects clip the wings of a child.

DV Winnicott wrote that a "good enough mother" allows herself to be absent. One of the important points in maternal care for a growing person is the opening by the mother of access to the father. But a narcissistic mother may be too clingy to her growing child, throwing her father away from him. A mother who takes care of a growing child is primarily concerned not with how to be always and in everything necessary, but with how, as the child grows, it becomes unnecessary for him. The mother’s narcissism is always evident if she becomes depressed, when it becomes clear to her that the child no longer needs her. On the contrary, a healthy mother, while still young, realizes that she brought the child into this world not for herself, but for life.

The child's interest in the father develops under the condition of the father's involvement in the relationship with him. This context of relationships contributes to the process of separation of the child from the mother and the acquisition of his own identity.

When the father is either real or psychologically absent, this increases the child's narcissism, such a situation leads him to a sense of superiority and a perception of himself as a winner. For example, a boy may feel that his mother chose him over his father. Or, when a woman is not interested in a man, she tends to form an incestuous bond with a child, transferring to him all the impulses that are normally directed to a man. So the child has fantasies about his own omnipotence.

The father discovers an external world that exists outside the idyllic world of mother and child. As mental structures develop, the child becomes ready for adventure, and this is no longer the fruit of his fantasies, but a real opportunity to gain superiority. The child is gradually becoming more capable and ready to weaken the anchor at the mother's shore and begin to learn to swim.

The impulse to leave the heavenly tabernacle is the arising interest, which is embodied in the figure of the father. We can say that the father embodies the image of the tempting serpent, he seduces the child into a life that exists outside the borders of Eden "Mother-child". In a recent study in which I took part in the study of factors in the development of emotional maturity of an individual, it was found that emotionally mature individuals in early childhood experienced an emotion of interest that is associated with the paternal figure. The father encourages the child to learn to swim and, together with the mother, serves as a compass, map and beacon until the child learns to swim in the ocean of life on his own. This process is disrupted if the father is a narcissistic person.