Why The Narcissist Destroys

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

The pathological narcissist is always about destruction.

He is now impossibly pitiful, now immensely great, now pathetic again. Up down. Below is horror, emptiness, therefore upward at any cost. Wanting to be better than everyone, more correct than everyone - and for some reason every now and then fall into the traps created by your own hands. Denying reality, he looks only one way. And destroys what he does not want to see.

We read from the classic of psychoanalysis Otto Kernberg: "In the most difficult cases, such a patient feels safety and triumph only when he destroyed everyone around him and, in particular, caused frustration among those who love him." Such a person at the helm of power is a common thing in world history. In Russian, in particular. Everyone will remember a lot of examples.

But now - about the affairs of bygone days. About narcissistic processes in Russia in the middle of the 18th century.

Immediately from the incident. At that time in Russia, two people signed themselves as tsar. Actually, Alexei Mikhailovich Quiet Romanov himself and Patriarch Nikon, who in the documents called himself synonymous - "the great sovereign". The same Nikon who charged religious reform and schism in Russia. Two Fathers. Tsar-Father and the Holy Father. For a long time Nikon was to the tsar as a parent, the tsar could not imagine himself without his advice. When Alexei Mikhailovich went on campaigns (then the Turks, Poles and Scandinavians were very annoying), then Moscow, in general, was ruled by Nikon. They agreed on a narcissistic idea. But in order. Nikon's mother (by birth Nikita) died early, and his stepmother beat and did not feed the child. The story is very similar to Lomonosov's childhood. Both fled to a nearby monastery to hide their tears, where they learned to read and write. One local fortuneteller, seeing the boy, predicted: "You will be the sovereign over all." He remembered. At the age of 20, Nikita became a village priest and got married. But all his children were dying. Then Nikita decided to leave the world for a stronger prayer, persuaded his wife, and both of them took tonsure. Then the monk Nikon changed several monasteries. He managed to conflict with the monastic authorities and move up the monastic career ladder.

The ideas that interested him were just magical. At that time, more than a hundred years have passed since Byzantium - the Second Rome, once the eastern Roman lands. The greatest Greek-speaking Christian empire in history was conquered by the Ottomans. But her work, as they say, was alive. And Serbs and Bulgarians, who were very strong at that time, already dreamed of being the heirs of Byzantium. Muscovy has been approaching this topic for several centuries. Then Sophia Palaeologus, a Byzantine princess, will be married to Russia. Then Monomakh's hat will be declared a Byzantine gift. And just Europe was busy with its own affairs: the Dutch were in their prime, England was at war, the Borgia in Italy - well, a lot of things happened to those all the time. It's time to take, strain, and unite the entire eastern Christian world. All! Under Moscow! And then he could become a new Pope, an Orthodox sovereign … In general, it was with these ideas that Nikon went to the tsar. And they got along. Aleksey Tishaishy already then raved about sea ambitions (he started a lot, but embodied ideas, surpassing his father, his youngest 16th child Peter the First). First, the tsar transferred Nikon closer to himself, made the abbot an archimandrite in the monastery where the Romanovs' tomb was. Then he became a patriarch, bypassing, ironically, the same hieromonk who once taught him to read.

Tsar Alexei, by the way, was not at all of the quietest disposition, on the contrary, like many Romanovs, he was very unpredictable, with mood swings. But he tried to pacify the uprisings "to silence", calling for silence in the country (either the Salt Riot, or Stenka Razin, or the riots of disobedience). And in anger, Alexei Mikhailovich once, for example, in front of everyone, dragged his father-in-law boyar by the beard. They began to probe the allies - and the leader of the Christians in Jerusalem, Paisiy, even came to Moscow to talk, made it clear that the idea was okay, he would support it abroad, but it was only necessary to deal with ideology, that is, Greek rituals and books. They began to think about how to implement the plans. I needed my own person, on special assignments in the west and east, after all, it was about foreign business trips. The choice fell on the adventurer Arseny Grek, who was sitting in the Solovkov prison. Before that, he tried to travel around the world with some business, then converted to Catholicism, then Islam, then Orthodoxy - everywhere at home. In general, Patriarch Nikon and the tsar decided to become a real Greek-Byzantine country, starting with religious details.

Initially, the first church fathers were baptized with one finger (a symbol of monotheism), then they became two (for some it meant father and son, for others - the bodily and spiritual duality of Christ). But from the 12th century, Byzantium moved on to three fingers, adding the idea of the Trinity. Russia remained with the same rules. Byzantium, and therefore Greece, the Greek Church, has long experienced Turkish influence. So headdresses for priests on the basis of a fez gradually came into use there, while in Russia "veils" remained. There were at that time both common saints, and Russian saints. The activator of the changes was the annexation of Little Russia to Russia, where they were already baptized in the Western way and wrote the name of Christ. To become the head of everyone, one had to first become like everyone else. This is how the religious reform began. For several years, starting in 1750, Nikon fought with the top leadership of the church. No one could understand why Arseny the Greek had brought new Greek books from Venice and Paris, and everyone was forced to burn the old ones, but they should be rewritten? (Then, over several years of burning old books and Bibles in special courtyards, 650 kg of copper fasteners were collected from editions. At best, the old ones were erased from the books and corrections were made.) Why burn your old icons and write new ones from modern Greek ones? Why write not Jesus, but Jesus? Why from now on it is impossible to pray on your knees, but you can only do bows "without throwing"? Why is the procession not clockwise, that is, along the sun, as after Christ the Sun, but against the clock? Why wear new clothes for priests? Everybody whispered about some new faith. It all ended with Nikon beating one participant at one Synod, ripping off his clothes, and expelling all those who disagree.

Many then went through earthen prisons, tortures, like the archpriest Avvakum, and were, like him, burned. In all the churches of the country, the new rules were explained, but both the boyars and ordinary people at first decided that darkness had seized power and refused to obey. The inquisition began. Almost a hundred years of genocide. Those who defied Nikon began to be called schismatics (only from the 19th century - Old Believers and Old Believers). In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church abroad took a very courageous step - it asked for forgiveness from the Old Believers. Prior to that, since the 19th century, they were already recognized as co-religionists, as a branch of Orthodoxy.

Tsar Peter was the first to come to his senses once and canceled the decrees of his sister Sophia, who was in the kingdom after her father and in her "12 laws" ordered the quiet Old Believers to simply deprive all property and expel, and burn and chop the stubborn ones. Indeed, they burned them in whole villages. But often there were "burns": when the archers approached the settlement, the inhabitants locked themselves in a large hut. The archers will not leave - we will set ourselves on fire. And they were burned. For eight (!) Years the troops besieged the Solovetsky Monastery, after which all the defenders were executed.

In the time of Peter, Old Believers already had to simply register, live openly, but pay a double tax for their faith. There would be no happiness, but misfortune would help. The Old Believers had to work doubly, many of them became rich. Tretyakov, Mamontov were from the Old Believers. Well, without the Old Believers, Peter would not have won the war with the Swedes - officially 43% of Old Believers worked at Demidov's factories in the Urals. And unofficially? And the Pomors are the northern Old Believers who are bespoke? Without them, there would be no fleet. Old Believers-Pomors were well portrayed in the series about Peter the Great "Primordial Rus". So, perhaps, at the suggestion of Nikon, Russia moved so forward under Peter.

But back to Nikon. Despite the reform, he did not succeed in becoming the head of the Christian church. Although the documents as "the great sovereign Nikon" he signed. The boyars nevertheless chose the moment when Alexei Mikhailovich's dependence on him decreased, opened their eyes to reality. There were rumors that during the period of disagreement with the king, Razin's revolt began, to which, allegedly, Nikon sent a person to bless. Plus Nikon, in anger, wrote a letter to the tsar, in which he cursed him and wished the fate of the orphans to the tsar's children. Abroad not only did not help Nikon, but also sorted out his conflicting relations with the tsar, in fact, approving his fall. As a result, the patriarch renounced his dignity. Then Nikon was deprived of everything (he was one of the richest people in Russia in the lands), was demoted to a monk, and the tsar sent him under guard to a cell of a remote monastery, where he fell ill with scurvy and went insane.

"… in fact, they are not able to be in a position of dependence on anyone, because deep down they do not trust anyone and devalue all people, and also unconsciously" spoil "what they received from others, and this is associated with unconscious conflicts of envy ", - we read about pathological daffodils in Kernberg. Envy of someone else's power, of the status of the Byzantine patriarchs prompted to destroy the relationship with the king who loved him, the native primordial culture as a parental family, as a Mother, as a stepmother, for the sake of a better neighbor Mother - the Greek Church. Such is the powerful narcissistic depreciation, the natural result of idealization. Both the tsar and Nikon. Alexei himself was very worried about the break with Nikon. Literally grieving. He was the only obese Russian tsar and died of a heart attack at the age of 48.

And in modern folk life, folklore, religious and cultural traditions, the once forbidden elements have remained. The old and the new coexist. Under Nicholas II, they began to return the old Russian saints decanonized by the reform. After the split, the relics of many locally venerated saints were buried, the graves were leveled to the ground, as was the case, for example, with Anna Kashinskaya (Tverskaya), and the names were deleted. There are proverbs and sayings about the times before the reform. "Teach a fool to pray to God - he will break his forehead" - about the rules of kneeling prayer, as was customary in the old tradition.

And now a huge number of icons in houses and churches - with "cunning". Icon painters drew two fingers with the third, as if slightly raised to them. Either two or three. This is where the childish habit of crossing his fingers behind his back when they lie came from. On the icons, the name of Christ was written in the old Ic instead of the new Iis - who can figure it out. The traditions of Old Believers for home icons have remained everywhere and strengthened in Soviet times. And such and such crosses, icons, books, rituals.

And it is precisely the pre-reform icons, as well as those painted in exile in remote corners of Russia after the split, that are known throughout the world as keepers and successors of Rublev's traditions, as the most authentic, distinctive in technique and subjects, the brightest. The isolation has helped to preserve the unique cultural and artistic traditions to this day. And these are not pseudo-folk kokoshniks of DK folklore ensembles. True, the split in the two churches, in the two branches of Orthodoxy, has remained in spite of the world.

Narcissistic wars and wounds are serious things …