Existential Psychology & Narcissism - Mini-Quiz For The 99%

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When we use existential as in existential psychology, existential alienation or an existential vacuum, we the authors mean only that the topic under discussion relates to the satisfying, mediocre or disappointing lifestyle men and women choose or have thrust upon them by society. For us, existential or life style values, attitudes, expectations, beliefs and choices have no connection with the purposeless European philosophy formerly called existentialism or know now as secular nihilism.

The anti-spiritual or too pragmatic devotees of nihilism which is a selfish belief in disbelief (or of meaninglessness) have devastated entire nineteenth and twentieth century generations with a hundred million battle deaths plus a great many political, religious and financial disasters within many nations. Life can still become nasty, brutish and short for many naïve or simply unfortunate women and men from a society that seems to have lost the ability to serve its members with wisdom.

Consider the sad fate of the millions of families who have lost their employment,life savings, educational opportunities and homes since 2008 because of the greed of a relatively few narcissistic investment bankers like Bernie Madoff and his ruthless narcissist peers who dominate the American Congress so completely that our much despised legislators have only a nine or ten percent approval rating by their victims.

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It was Sigmund Freud who resurrected the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus who was so enamored with his own beauty and charm that he rejected the worth of all other persons and eventually destroyed himself. Freud wove this all too common human failing into his psychoanalysis treatment system to represent the many neurotic souls who remain too selfish to co-operate with women and men in sound relationships and ventures.

The narcissistic scams that caused the world wide financial disaster of 2008 -- with a double dip recession threatened across Europe in 2011 and 2012 when few new jobs were created -- were neither acts of God nor the normal vicissitudes of fate. They were orchestrated by no more than three hundred or so wicked investment banker sharks and their greedy remoras. These were the primary users and abusers One percent of society who invented the mortgage bundling and other wicked schemes that sabotaged the world’s financial system in order to increase their already vast personal and institutional fortunes. Those greedy investment bankers certainly verified the old French witticism:

Behind every vast fortune is someone’s limitless greed and his great crime.
This was surely the case during the early twenty-first century mortgage scam that ravaged the world by those three hundred or so financial manipulators who control so much wealth that they fancy themselves beyond the physical, political, legal, financial and pychospiritual values and traditions that keep most ordinary persons honest stewards of their responsibilities and rewards.

These financial narcissists that included reactionary politicians, fundamental preachers and ideological plutocrats -- certainly did not feel required to obey the rules and regulations of governance and business that keep the peasants of society laboring for as little income as possible! The limitless narcissism of no more ideologues who could be carried aboard one Boeing 747 on a single flight, has made it much more difficult for we honest, hard working people to find consistent sources of life-style satisfaction for ourselves, our families and our institutions.

We reasonably well adjusted homosapien creature-selves have always been self-centered to some degree, although the narcissistic approach to existence emerged full blown from the anti-spiritual European assumption that we humans evolved by chance from a series of meaningless events - that we sentient beings appeared on earth because of a great Cosmic accident. Thus, a rigorous spirituality and sound ethics seemed pointless superstitions to deeply secular men and women. Both spirituality and ethics were often replaced by the less demanding feel-good esthetics of literature and the arts. Therefore, since the origins of life per se were considered a random event and human life a meaningless accident rather than spiritual and purposeful in nature -- the powerful triad of narcissistic users and abusers emerged in society; they prospered in virtually all research universities, governments, association, religions and corporations -- eventually deciding that our grubbing for personal possessions, power, prestige and pleasure could satisfy our souls. Thus, it seemed to make sense to secular minded manipulators that ordinary people should be satisfied by simply eating, drinking, fornicating and being merry because tomorrow we die. The narcissistic triad that we shall later discuss in greater detail include the following narcissists with their most damaging yearnings that well up out of their badly wounded souls --


REACTIONARY POLITICIANS WHO CRAVE TOTAL POWER OVER HUMANITY

FUNDAMENTAL PREACHERS WHO CRAVE OBEDIENCE AS GOD’S PROPHETS

IDEOLOGICAL PLUTOCRATS WHO CRAVE ENOUGH WEALTH TO DEFY DEATH


The cleverly orchestrated financial assault pre-2008 against society eventually self-destructed because great greed creates conflicting bubbles that inevitably burst after the perpetrators have taken to their golden parachutes. The recent financial manipulators simply couldn’t bring themselves to stop raiding our industrial civilization when they had already garnered enough wealth from ordinary families to cripple the entire world. This is why eight out of every ten contemporary Americans report that they are deeply frustrated with the way our nation’s politicians have stopped protecting the ordinary citizens who have neither the knowledge and wealth nor the time and strength needed to protect themselves from clever abusers who so corrupted our political system that the people cannot rely on it. Our many reactionary legislators have allowed this narcissistic triad of manipulators to cripple our once affluent middle class with its vast purchasing power that for decades kept America prosperous. As the great Elizabethan Era Lord McCauley wrote - virtually every dynasty, society, company or religion eventually commits suicide when the vested aristocracy refuses to adapt as circumstances shift and the powerful elite must change their ways or perish.

Much personal and communal cooperation simply fades away among the secular users and abusers who live primarily for possessions, power, prestige and pleasure -- who often plunge ruthlessly along without a lasting sense of spiritual purpose for their labors and permanence in their relationships. Faith, hope and love are considered delusions of weak souls who haven’t the ruthlessness and strength to wrest everything they desire from a naïve society. The peasants shall have to be satisfied with their weak families and friends, their work and simple games and their absurd worship -- while the manipulators skim the cream off the top. This is still the rationalization of wounded souls who are driven neurotically to seize so much wealth and power from society that they can never be challenged again. Not even by death! Of course this self-defeating narcissism of crippled creature-selves appeals to the young, restless and discontented as well as to many narcissistic adults who are determined to become powerful and prestigious in life regardless of whom they use and abuse along the way.

Living for more and more possessions, power, pleasure and prestige alone, rather than completing purposeful activities and developing permanent relationships, goes against the grain of every personalized or living religion and every legitimate philosophy of existence. Normally healthy women and men are first, last and always spiritual creature-selves who need both the mystical and earthy aspects of life within the Cosmos in order to become completely human. Unfortunately, narcissism and nihilism do virtually nothing to open avenues of personal meaning in places where we belong communally among good people with whom we share love, labor and leadership.

Nevertheless -- despite our inevitable frustrations and challenges of a life crippled by its obvious legitimate secular and materialistic needs, the application of Frankl and DeVille Logotherapy concepts and processes does indeed remove many discontents and frustrations through a sound psychospiritual development of personal meaning in places where we belong among good persons. Download Your Search For A Meaningful Life, to read more.

Mini-Quiz

WRITE A SAMPLE SENTENCE OR TWO THAT DEFINES THE TERM “EXISTENTIAL",  TO YOUR SATISFACTION.

WHEN HAVE YOU HAD TO COPE WITH THE EVIL NARCISSISTIC TRIAD OF REACTIONARY POLITICIANS, FUNDAMENTAL PREACHERS AND IDEOLOGICAL PLUTOCRATS? THEIR VICTIMS.

Jard DeVille has published more than a score of psychology books, seminars and psychological assessment instruments. His book NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST was a powerful best seller. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP was New American Library's offering in their Executive Development Series. Download Your Search For A Meaningful Life and visit Logotherapy Learning Center and The Fulfillment Forum for Free Ebooks.

YOUR SOUL AND YOUR BELIEFS - LOGOTHERAPY FOR FULFILLMENT

For as long as humankind has left a written record, men and women have thought of themselves as having a soul -- or even as being a living soul who came out of the Cosmos in some mysterious manner. This crucial aspect of personhood is still perceived as the key element of our inner life by theologians, philosophers and most existential scholars -- often with the assumption that only creatures with self-introspective abilities can exist in an altered state even after death. Roberta can remember the grief she felt as a youngster when her parents explained that her badly wounded dog wasn’t going to be in heaven -- poor Tippy had no soul to carry on after his demise!

She was desolate as a child but obviously has matured to understand more clearly what theologians and philosophers mean when they speak of the soul as the central factor of human personality. Of course, most persons spend little or no time pondering how and why the soul originated in the complex creature-self or unified body/spirit personality humans have evolved to become. Unfortunately, a great many women and men fail to understand there are often choices we should make and service we must offer to others for nothing more rewarding than the health of our intangible but always active souls. The very perceptive Ernest Becker wrote;

It really doesn’t matter if we discover that our inner assumptions about human nature and the world, our self-awareness in language, art, laughter and tears, is built into ourselves genetically or socially. We still haven’t discovered the inner forces of evolution that have led to our character development in ways that no other mammal shares. But it is this development in a human mammal capable of introspection, that we still mean by the word ‘soul.’ The soul remains the mysterious life force for each person, with the inner dynamisms and pulsations of existence.

In other words, the soul is at the heart of our self-awareness, is the crucial element of the creature-self aspect of each personality. The soul is the seat of spiritual virtues, positive attitudes, high expectations, mature beliefs and responsible choices and through it humans yearn to make sense of life and love, of significance, rage, guilt and violence. This causes thoughtful men and women to ponder the purpose of their lives according to their values and expectations. Our ancestors always created superstitions, traditions and philosophies in order to understand life in a pre-scientific era and to rely on theologies and ideologies to justify what they planned to accomplish. Of course from our human beginnings on the Savannah of Africa, some women and men were open minded and generous while others were closed minded and grasping. Some people loved others and other persons seemed incapable of offering love or support to anyone beyond their own supporters. Obviously, this crucial aspect of life is what we are concerned with.

Earlier scientists, physicians and psychologists, who were themselves maturing beyond myths and superstitions to understand life and matter through scientific methods, assumed that while humans were often confused and conflicted, they would live more successful lives guided by scholarship than by worn down religious traditions and ideologies. Superstitious beliefs, they assumed, would soon be banished. Men and women would surely learn how to live without the myth of a supernatural God insulating them from reality. Fearful and illogical humans would choose to live in a rational manner because the scholars were pointing out their many idiosyncrasies and irrational decisions. Boy -- did the early scientists ever underestimate the staying power of subjective human expectations and beliefs! Jard sat beside Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square one day and debated the nature of his flight around the world from Singapore with a twenty year old member of the Flat Earth Society. The young woman insisted that he had actually flown around the rim of a plate shaped world! Since he had seen the curvature of the earth from thirty-five thousand feet, he was not persuaded by the charming if somewhat ideological girl. When teaching psychology at Olivet College, he once had several Creation Science true believing students walk out of a class session when he pointed out that the resistance microbes develop to anti-biotic medications is a form of evolution occurring before our eyes. The ideological youngsters had no intention of learning anything about science -- their minds were already closed to anything new unless it fit into their constricted world-view.

One major problem in psychology arose because that Freud and many of his contemporaries had imbibed deeply of the secular philosophy of Nihilism. This mind-set is the disastrous belief in disbelief, the assumption that all values are relative, that real politik comes out the barrel of a gun and the ordinary people should be used or even abused by the aristocratic elite that controls every nation. Nihilism is the wretched philosophy of meaninglessness that focused Germany’s aggressive attitude through five bloody wars, destroyed its peasant farmers through the Industrial Revolution and orchestrated six million additional victims during the Holocaust in less than a century. The mind set that Germany was superior to all other nations, that it had a divine right to dominate Europe, was embedded in its national anthem -- Deutsland Uber Alles -- ‘Germany above everything else.’

Humans have always been prone to violence in our relationships, as a brief reading of history, scripture or the Greek tragedies reveal very well, but our ancestors always understood that war and the sacrifice of their sons and the destruction of their homes and crops was evil and spiritually bankrupt. Warfare and heroism is far more glamorous and heroic at a distance than up close and bloody. It was very hard to convince a farmer that watching a band of pillaging horsemen abscond with his family’s winter food supply was some great boon to society in the long run. Only powerful aggressors who planned to personally benefit from slaughter have justified war. They still do, as they sacrifice ordinary men and women and their wealth in order to serve their nefarious purposes!

Only in the last few centuries have philosophers and theologians, usually in the service of narcissistic rulers, rationalized aggression as somehow beneficial to a society and blessed by God. Only recently have the spin doctors of America created a bloddy,war,relationships to justify rapine and raiding, of maiming and murder. The spin doctors of society understand that fear and greed always sell better than faith, hope and love, that mind-bending propaganda in an era of televised images can step by step seduce naïve people into virtually any kind of self-defeating behavior.