Ok. A close friend and me have been exploring the concept of psychopathy and narcissism as we have both had experiences with these individuals – which left emotional scars, still plaguing both of us to this day.
I have – by virtue of my trade, a good basic knowledge of psychopathy, but it must also be said that I do not necessarily recognize one when I encounter one. This is simply because the really vindictive one’s are a rarity in society, and so well masked behind a façade of “normality” that you often only realize their true psychological identity once you have been successfully manipulated into their web of lies and deceit.
What is more – many of these individuals have so successfully integrated into society – that their camouflage have now molded around them – causing them to appear normal, with some common personality traits that we can all identify with. This is scary, because we interact with people like this almost every day.
Because of their generally conducive and amiable facades, most of us will fall for the charms of the narcissist and psychopath. They are outgoing, display a keen interest in you, make you feel fabulous, listen and respond well, and soon they have you snared. Welcome to hell. As soon as you are snared – they start stripping you of all identity, self worth and self-control. Then desperation sets in – you want out.
Unfortunately for the victim – this is easier said than done – as the psychopath and narcissist does not relinquish control easily. They ease up to make you feel safe again – just to launch the following attack. These attacks are mostly emotional blackmail – with the explicit intent of breaking you down into nothingness in order to exercise more control over you, your resources (money, sex, social acceptance and manipulation) and their own self-esteem and needs.
A study published in 2010 (Joshua W. Buckholtz, BS. Vanderbilt University, Tennessee) suggests that the feel-good hormone, dopamine, is released into the nucleus accumbens (a sector of the brain regulating gratification) when a psychopath or narcissist identifies a target. Almost like being a junky – they become addicted to dopamine, and therefore have a reward system in place for their malicious escapades.
This makes them dangerous, as the behavior is adopted chronically, especially if you consider that the psychopath has stopped developing emotionally since age three. Lack of emotion implies lack of empathy and compassion, and a disregard for social norms, rules and laws. And this is certainly true in psychopaths as well as narcissists. They are soul-less creatures, and doing harm is their trade.
However, as I continue to delve into the psyche of these individuals, my thoughts keep on going back to the horrors of cult-consciousness – and the comparison I inevitably draw is that – on the micro-cosmic scale of existence we are all little cults – personalized, yes, but little self-serving cults anyway.
But a little more about cult leaders.
Cult leaders have as their ultimate aim dominance over a group – their laws and beliefs will be respected and not questioned. Charming, enigmatic and docile as they may appear – they have hearts of ice. In essence – they limit our personal choices and thoughts, and rule our belief systems. It is all about “thou shalt” – their own personal gains (money, adoration, self-aggrandization) becomes their god (yours to) and that becomes their own dopamine saturated gratification system. Examples of these individuals abound.
Dogmatic adherence to the cult’s rules, belief systems, monetary policies (tithing) is demanded – and further manipulation is to be expected to extort as much as possible from it’s members. That – in essence, is the mind of the cult leader. They create a pseudo-religious movement – cultivate members and then extract maximum benefit. Period.
This is particularly true of new age movements – let’s get you hooked, devise a good self-help programme, under the guise of “the guru”, and extract as much financial gain as we can, while boosting your ego and telling you that you can do it all alone. Just buy my books, cassettes, CD’s and you are a winner. Gullible as we are – we lap it all up, and we again just blindly (and with much enthusiasm) jump into the deep-end and eventually flounder, sink and drown in our own remorse. Another one down. The secret is still “A Secret”.
As a good friend said the other day – “to think that we share a holographic universe with people like that”. Well, it gets worse, and I am now going to raise a few eyebrows.
Being the thinking, analytical type, my mind raced as I suddenly HAD to confront the issue of psychopathy, narcissism and other co-morbid related personality disorders. When confronting these behaviors, inevitably one psychologizes one-self and compare. Oh my gawwd – am I like this? What – I think I may have done that before? Oh yes – I can recognize myself here….and so we batter the Self into thinking the unthinkable. In two weeks flat – you firmly believe that you have at least a zillion psychopathic tendencies.
And we have all done that. Self- psychologizing is a dangerous pass-time. When confronting one-self, rational thinking flees the mind-coup – simply because we cannot detach (like a psychiatrist or therapist can) from our own inner feelings, and therefore have a very skewed view of reality. We cannot expect to have the knowledge (or detach sufficiently) to be able to be discerning in evaluating our own inner psyche.
This is especially true of ADD/ADHD sufferers – who very often, after you tell them what they are suffering from – exclaim, “Thank God I am not mad after all?” And you say “no, you are not”, and explain the physiological workings of the dis-ease.
The same applies to Asperger syndrome sufferers – who simply have an inability to identify with their emotions – yet can feel and experience intense love, empathy and compassion. AS’rs feel rather, on a macrocosmic scale – as though they feel the emotions of the whole world. So they have difficulty zoning in on the object/person that causes the feelings.
Personally I feel that AS’rs are first-timers on earth – maybe even in a lower density, as they feel the collective, rather than the individual emotion. This causes their thalamus to go into open-faucet mode, making them “allergic” to too much environmental input, and thus they fall into autistic behavior. They also have a tendency to concentrate on one subject – much like they have a certain honed talent, and become extremely successful in their endeavors. In more advanced societies – nurturing of talents in service of, or for the good of the community is common practice when educating children.
So when the self-psychologizing bug bites you – think again. And I will tell you why. Human beings have an ego. As we will know by now – we get born with an empty undeveloped ego, and it develops as we go along, based on the environmental stimuli that we are confronted with. We also know that our brain will absorb everything we experience between ages zero and six – as truth and store it in the personal unconscious as markers of good and bad, causing us to react in certain ways when confronted with a similar stimulus.
The ego – being a sort of referee between the ID and super-ego, will then mediate appropriate responses – based on our personal memory banks. In it’s efforts – the ego will then enact these responses, simply by instructing our body and emotions – without our approval or prior knowledge. We are given no choice in the matter – and when we become aware of this unconscious interaction, our ego devises strategies to counter our awareness.
Simply put – we live in a personal ego-cult. The ego is very happy with it’s achievements, and therefore will do anything to disallow conscious thinking in it’s captive. Yes, the unbalanced ego can be that bad. Mainly – it thinks that it does good – and gets a kick out of steering us towards it’s own reward system. It’s dopamine flows uninhibited.
Please do not think that I am saying that the ego is all bad – for it is not. The balanced ego can protect us from much harm and ensure a balanced passage on planet earth. But the unbalanced ego – on the other hand, can be destructive.
When we lack self-worth, self-esteem, self- love and self –value – the ego will go out of it’s way to provide same – and it does not matter how it does it. As long as it attains it by any means – it is happy. The problem is – the unbalanced ego has been bred by physical and emotional abuse. Therefore – we are dealing with consequence. The consequence is dysfunctional adopted behavior patterns, which tends to dominate our lives. And these – in turn, were inherited.
We adapt to circumstances as they present themselves, through observation and interaction. The bullied person often becomes the lying persona, simply as it is trying to prevent further bullying and confrontation. This will then manifest as a behavior pattern in all his/her personal interactions. But because he is a lying so and so does not make this person a psychopath. Or a narcissist for that matter. It is a consequence of conditioning.
And who do we blame? Actually – no-one. Those who programmed us – simply acted out their own programs. Our mothers and fathers were also prone to their own conditioning, and so also others that we interacted with socially. We simply responded to their conditioned behavior – physical and emotional.
The unconscious (both personal and collective) is nothing less than a cult in marvelous full blown swing. It rules our lives, forces us to behave in certain ways, and leave us without really conscious choices – as it rules through the unseen mechanisms of our psyche. It is – and we are, therefore, simply unconscious. It acts on programmed responses, informed mostly by false truths, and leaves us floundering in a maelstrom of inner turmoil.
So – as we enter the period of solstice, have compassion with yourself. Don’t blame the self. Don’t blame others. Forgive the self. And forgive others – for we are merely products of society. We are clones bred to simulate others. And who wants to be a clone?
It is time for us to discard the personal ego-cult – and align ourselves to conscious awareness of what it is and what it is capable of. Eventually – through conditioning, the ego will have no choice but to comply with our new being-ness, and become more balanced in it’s responses, mirroring the new us.
So when you next practice the “art” of self-psychologizing – remember that you are dealing with your own personal built-in cult consciousness – even though it is mainly an unconscious one. Thank it consciously for it’s input – but also make it aware that it’s intrusions on your own authentic self is at an end. And that consequence can call it a day.
The new spiritual imperative also has relevance to the ego. It has to align to this new paradigm, and let go of its dogmatic behavior.
Only you can do it, and I, for one, refuse to be part of its control systems anymore.
Much Love and Light
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