Preaching in the Culture of Narcissism: Reassurance, Not Pleasure, is What I Seek
Preaching today encompasses many different styles from narrative to charismatic to expository. What is noteworthy, however, is how few sermons address a most critical and pervasive issue today—narcissism.
As Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism, diagnoses our society it is imperative for the church to address the issue not only in pastoral counseling but from the pulpit. It is also critical to note that the conventional approach to addressing the problem of narcissism may not be the most effective way to heal those who are suffering with these tendencies. The most common approach to addressing narcissism is to treat narcissism as the pursuit of pleasure or self-gratification. By consulting Heinz Kohut, the psychoanalyst who created “self psychology,” I claim that although narcissistic people appear to be preoccupied with self-grandiosity and self-absorption, their core experience is their desperate attempt to restore a sense of reality to their lives. They are trying to save themselves from the psychological death of meaningless existence. I propose that preachers need to acknowledge that the sense of assurance, and not pleasures, is what people today are often seeking in their lives, and that they are seeking that assurance from the pulpit.
My near-death experience in my childhood demonstrates the psychological death that can be experienced by narcissistic people. I was 11 or 12 years old. My friends and I were swimming in a section of a river that formed into a small lake-like place, almost separated from the river by a body of land covered with stones and some trees, but open enough to see the river flowing beyond. The area was surrounded by trees with luscious green leaves.. The sun was brightly shining and the gentle breeze was lightly stroking the leaves of the trees creating soft and pleasing music to our ears and skin. We were enjoying the coolness of water, the freshness of the air, and the togetherness of friendship. As we talked and swam, we felt at one with nature. We also felt that we were both as big as the world and as small as a pebble.
I decided to swim as far as I could from my friends and then return. I swam, staying close to the land to avoid the deep water. I stopped paddling and tried to stand as I turned around to shout to my friends “Hey, I am over here.” As I tried to yell, water covered my mouth and before I completed saying a word, I sank under the water. My being once filled with joy and excitement changed to devastating fear and panic. Water was no longer the playful support of my body but had become my adversary. The surroundings no longer seemed to maintain connectedness with me but were indifferent to my life-and-death situation. I thrashed around in terrified, chaotic movements.
I felt like I was falling into a deep abyss that was ready to swallow my insignificant body. Two confusing thoughts oscillated within me: “This must be the end!” and “No, I am too young to die!” I managed to push my head out of the water moving my hands and arms frantically, trying to get my friends’ attention. I even managed to make a sound while I desperately continued barely peeping my head out of the water, gasping for air and being swallowed up by the water. The ground beneath me felt like a bottomless pit and the time during my desperate attempt to stay alive seemed an eternity. The odds for “This must be the end” began to prevail, but I stubbornly clung to my life, saying, “No, no, no, no, ….” Suddenly, I felt my body pulled by a hand and found myself able to stand firmly on the bottom, only a few feet away from the edge of the drop-off. I was so thankful that I was out of that chaos, fear, panic, and feelings of imminent death.
This childhood near-death experience is a stark contrast in the psychological experiences of what Kohut calls the mature or cohesive self and the immature narcissistic or disintegrated self. My experience of being connected to my friends and surroundings while fully experiencing the realness of my own distinct existence represents the psychological experience of a mature or cohesive self. It is the simultaneous experience of my own greatness as a unique individual making a claim and contribution to the life of this world and my own smallness as a constituent of the far greater reality including human beings, the natural and spiritual worlds, and God. It is thus the simultaneous experience of feeling right about myself as an individual and my location as organically connected in the web of relationships among human beings, the natural surroundings, and God. It is the experience of one’s surroundings and God to be supportive and sustaining of one’s existence and purpose of one’s existence. It is the experience of claiming the authentic self as willed by God.
On the other hand, my near-drowning experience represents the psychological experience of an immature narcissistic self. It is the experience of fear and panic that my own existence is at risk of disappearing from the life of this world. It is the experience of losing the reassurance that I deserve to exist and that my existence is real. It is the experience of my fragmentation into minute pieces that are dispersed into thin air. It is the experience of the invasion of acute and pervasive anxiety into one’s self. It is the experience of the explosion and dismantling of one’s self by that very rampant anxiety. It is the experience of one’s dire need for acknowledgment of his or her very own existence while that existence is being fragmented right in front of one’s eyes. It is the experience of desperately attempting to catch those fragmented pieces of one’s self and trying to put them back together into a whole. It is the experience of the repeated failure of one’s desperate plea for others and God to be aware of the desperate attempt to stay alive–to exist. Alas! It is the experience that one’s desperate plea is neither supported nor sustained by his or her surroundings and/or God. It is the seeming malevolent and hostile experience of one’s surroundings and God. Better yet, it is the experience of God as Death like “a cement floor wait[ing] for the dropping of a light bulb” as depicted by Saul Bellow in his novel, Herzog. It is thus the experience of both non-existence and one’s disconnectedness to other human beings, the natural world, and the divine. It is the experience of what Sharon Daloz Parks, a faculty member at Seattle University calls the “tyranny of ‘the they,’” i.e., refusal of their authentic self planned by God.
While narcissism is often associated with arrogance and self-absorption, what a narcissistic self-experiences is the lack of assurance of their existence. Most conventional ideas about narcissism are based on Freud’s understanding: narcissism is that which needs to be purged, rejected, or discarded so that object relationship can be nurtured. Since we acknowledge and appreciate Freud’s indelible contribution to psychoanalysis such as his concepts of unconscious and transference, it might be worthwhile to pay attention to an alternative interpretation of narcissism suggested by Kohut. Instead of understanding it as love turned into one’s self, Kohut sees it as the state of the feeble self that is in constant search for others who will embrace and nurture it. In other words, narcissism is not about seeking pleasure from attributing exaggerated importance to one’s self or ascribing superiority over others but seeking reassurance that one’s existence is real. What narcissistic people are pursuing is not finding pleasure in feeling superior to others. Instead they are in desperate pursuit for the acknowledgement of the realness of their existence in various forms of empathic responses. They are in ominous and urgent need to receive empathic responses reflecting both their greatness as an individuals and smallness as a part of the life of this world so that they can own for themselves the sense of the realness of their existence and, more importantly, own a realistic sense of self. What is more, according to Kohut, one’s narcissism cannot be helped alone; it is only by another’s initiative and empathy that one’s narcissism can be transformed. In other words, narcissists cannot help themselves but are at the mercy of others who are willing to engage in empathic relationships with them. They are at the receptive end of another’s empathy.
I hope that this alternative understanding of narcissism encourages us to expand our compassion for arrogant, self-absorbed, and dogmatic people whom we may not closely associate with since they certainly touch our own narcissistic vulnerability. Instead of focusing on how narcissists’ arrogance or self-love are morally wrong or hurting their relationship to us, it might be helpful to remind ourselves of their very real precarious state of self-assurance and their inability to move forward on their own in order for us to be transforming agents for them. This alternative understanding about narcissism may help us be more attuned to the underlying psychological dynamics: behind the sadistic and tyrannical nature of demands is the dire nature of their needs; behind their paradoxical roller coaster ride of an exaggerated sense of grandiosity and low self-esteem is their lack of a realistic sense of self or their lack of sense of proportion; their inability to deal with disagreement from others is from their lack of ability to manage such discrepancy within themselves; their inability to soothe themselves results in inability to wait, needing to know everything, insomnia, getting hurt easily, and incessant complaints about others; their inability to dissipate anxiety created by conflicts in relationships leads them even to pathological lying, rage, and inflicting abuse on others; their seeming inability to stop any kind of addiction is not about pleasure from food, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, and so on, but it is a perpetual attempt to reassure one’s self that something is indeed given to them that signifies their very own existence; and their proneness to a sense of shame and a perfectionistic attitude in life, as well as an inability to express gratitude and apology are their unending attempts to bring reassurance to themselves by trying to salvage their already feeble selves.
Perhaps taking an attitude of anticipation, joy, and pride similar to the attitude we take in a baby’s progress in his or her ability to walk is a far more desirable approach in helping narcissists to move forward in their maturity. For instance, the infant at first is immobile. If the infant is put on his back, he stays that way. The infant is yet able to roll her body over. With the infant, we embrace the period of the infant’s immobility, and we do not tell the infant to stop being immobile but start rolling over already! We do not accuse the infant of being lazy, helpless, or stubborn. We do not tell the child not to expect others to do everything for them. We expect that that is how the infant is; i.e., we embrace and enjoy the child’s inability to move as a natural part of her physical growth while we anticipate that she will roll over in good time. Once the baby rolls over, the family becomes ecstatic. There is big talk and high energy in the family about the baby actually making a rollover! There is a tremendous amount of joy and pride in the air. Just as we embrace each physical growing stage of a child with high anticipation of the next level of growth, we need to accept each of the child’s steps in the development out of narcissism into maturity and to anticipate with excitement the next growth in taming his or her narcissistic tendencies. Just as we celebrate in joy and pride the child’s mastery of each stepping-stone of physical growth, we also need to celebrate similar stepping-stones with joy and pride as narcissists move beyond some of their narcissistic tendencies.
I propose that the dry bones in Ezekiel (37:1-10) are considered not only as a metaphor for the nation of Israel or bankruptcy of our spiritual state but also as a metaphor for the psychological emptiness in narcissists. I propose that preaching needs to join in with Jesus in saying, “Jesus does not condemn you and nor do we condemn you” to those who are suffering with narcissistic inclinations (John 7:53-8:11). Preaching needs to empower people to mobilize the skills, conviction, and wisdom to join in the chorus singing, “Jesus does not condemn you and nor do we condemn you” just as Jesus prevented others to condemn the woman who had been caught in adultery.
Preaching needs to place an emphatic “Yes” to their God-imputed honor at the foreground and “No” to their narcissistic tendency in the background as Karl Barth would say. While preaching needs to address our pursuit of moral perfection, it needs to be sophisticated enough not to insist bluntly on the exercise of self will to eliminate one’s narcissistic tendency, but instead to reframe our understanding about our narcissistic tendency and accept that such lack of empathic responses from us constitutes the denial of an opportunity for the narcissist to move forward into maturity and thus participate in the occurrence of what feminist theologian Susan Nelson calls “postures of refusal.” Preaching needs to reflect that helping narcissists takes an extension of ourselves so that they can take a shelter in ourselves out of the emptiness of their selves in order for them to travel the seemingly impossible and yet realistically little distance from the place of near-death to the place of joy and pride. Preaching needs to encourage people to find joy and pride in looking for the noise and signs of their progress just as the dry bones make a noise and a rattling in coming together and are covered by sinews, flesh, and skin. Preaching needs to reassure people while empowering them to move forward from their immature narcissistic inclinations so that we shall know that God is not Death but is indeed Living and God who “cause[s] breath to enter [us], and [we] shall live” (Ezekiel 37:5).
