On “Empaths” and “Narcissists” (Brief Article)

In depression, in certain cases, it strikes me that there can be a an inner reversion to which we might call something like “oceanic striving”, where the individual unconsciously wishes to return to a state of fusion with the original caregiver(s). One may also look for partners who are seen to have the capacity to fulfill this wish, and who will later become co-conspirators in a particularly destructive union.

In this wished for scenario, there are no problems anymore, and growing up is unnecessary. I suppose this is something like what Michael Balint called “malignant regression”. The partner is recruited to become an idealised lost mother object of yearning, and together the pair then enter a vortex of mutually destructive longing from which it is very hard to escape. The partner has also been chosen as they are wounded in a destructively complementary way; the individual experiences the wounded aspects of his/her partner as a potent “empathic” elixir which he/ she feels will satiate the oceanic striving. You will perhaps have seen plenty online about “empaths” and “narcissists” which often over-simplifies the dynamic I briefly describe, by locating all the “badness” in the other, and encouraging people to continue to oscillate between idealisation and denigration of themselves and other people. This unfortunately continues to bolster an unconscious strategy to avoid mourning, and ensures that the individual remains walled in by depression and self-loathing (melancholia). This can become very destructive as it is a malignant spell, and which prevents mourning of the wounded self.

In order to begin healing from this form of depression, it is therefore important to recognise the hurt in oneself, and the associated feelings of aggression, rather than locating them in others as “narcissists”, or any other terms which limit the spectrum of human experience.

The Devil’s Culpa

In ‘Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy’ I write about the psychic interplay between guilt and evil that arises in cases of relational trauma.

When one experiences developmental trauma at the early stages of one’s life, one’s caregivers’ needs can easily become confused with one's own. As a result of a complex interplay of factors beginning in the deepest recesses of the mind, the individual feels that they are a ‘bad person’. This is because relational trauma takes place at a stage when one is not yet equipped with the psychological and emotional apparatus to make sense of it. If one’s caregivers are perceived to be responsible for the neglect or abuse that has taken place, this creates a significant deficit in terms of the absence of having a caring mind to help one to begin to make links between events and one’s feelings about them.

As a result of these deficits, and the unthinkable aspects of the trauma, the child unconsciously takes on the ‘bad’ aspects of the caregiver, and then begins to blame him/herself; to ‘take on’ what Fairbairn (1943) calls the ‘burden of badness’. Those who have taken on this burden often feel that they weigh heavily on other people throughout their lives. As a result of this burden, one then experiences feelings of rage, disappointment, or despair as manifestations of one’s badness/ evil, and unconsciously feels that expression of these emotions will only lead to abandonment and compound one’s immanent sense of badness. One begins to see one’s innate needs for love or affection as acts of selfishness, or capricious indulgence. This is the net result of what Ferenczi called 'identification with the aggressor' (1988), to describe instances where the child takes on the guilt of the perpetrator. This combination of guilt and the ‘burden of badness’ then conjoin to form a harsh, punitive conscience.

Satan in Paradise. Gustave Doré

The individual consequently experiences an ontological shame at the core of one's subjectivity (faulty); if something goes wrong, one is ‘at fault’ (guilty); and, finally, is often afflicted by the overarching sense that he/she has somehow invited the actions of the perpetrator due to inherent badness, or evil. This relational process is redolent of the folklore of the vampire: the winged revenant does not, after all, go anywhere without an invitation.

As a result of the developmental trauma and its associated unconscious phantasies, the child consequently feels culpable and evil in equal measures; a paralysing psychic state which, in ‘Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy', I call ‘culpevility’ or ‘the Devil's culpa'.

Like the vampire, we often think of the Devil as an archetypally evil entity: when we speak of someone as ‘Devil incarnate’, this betrays this perception, as unlike most of us, the Devil lives without a conscience to contend with. In this sense the Devil is only evil, and simply gets on with being bad, carrying out his malevolent deeds without compunction.

However, we may also perceive the Devil through another mythological lens, this time as an outcast, unjustly expelled from heaven. This may feel closer to the traumatised individual’s familial experience of alienation. This version of the Devil is Milton’s romanticised Lucifer, a Promethean hero who rebels against a dictatorial supernatural authority. By drawing on these two different mythological perspectives, we can see how one may take on the disavowed conscience of the ‘evil’ perpetrator (guilt and the ‘burden of badness’), but perhaps at the same time identify with the more Promethean/ Luciferian aspects of them: one feels an affinity with the perpetrator as a ‘co-outcast’: a kind of trauma bond, if you will. This is however driven by an unconscious phantasy that one can somehow replace the ‘evil’ perpetrator with a loving and caring parent, thereby reversing the original trauma. Sadly, in this way one only creates a romanticised and nostalgic ‘pseudo’ tenderness.

Importantly, in having taken on the guilt of the perpetrator, the individual is deprived of agency later in life by confusing his/her own responsibilities with those of others, thereby reenacting the relational dynamics of infancy. As the individual continues to find his/her own aggression unbearable, he/she may only be able to locate feelings of rage in others, or equate feelings of love and tenderness with contempt. This is because the individual feels that they must always defend against the feelings of vulnerability and fear of abandonment that threaten them to their emotional core.

Psychotherapy can therefore help one to find one's sense of agency through a process of mourning; by understanding what belongs to whom, and acquire a temporal sense of where responsibility lies in one’s life story, as one develops a better sense of self and other. Through this grieving process the individual can begin to foster a clearer relationship with one’s ideals aside from being ruled by culpevility. This means that responding to one’s own needs, desires and dreams is less likely to be experienced as a transgression against one’s inner God/ gods.

If you would to like to read more about this subject and matters related to it, my book on trauma and the supernatural is available now.

Fairbairn, R. (1943). The Repression and the Return of Bad Objects (with Special Reference to the War Neuroses). In W. R. Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Ferenczi, S. (1988). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child – The language of tenderness and of passion. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24: 196–206