Dan Tcaci

A Study of the Narcissist and (especially) of His Natural Historians

The fortunes of the psychological discipline have certainly enjoyed a steady rise since

its inception in the nineteenth century. This rise in fortunes can be grasped in, among other

things, the increasing institutionalization of the psychological discourse and its ever-

improving muscle in shaping subjectivities (the latter point is illustrated on one hand by the

professionalization of psychology, and on the other by the psychologization of social spaces

and relations previously subject to non-psychological techniques). Both of these

developments have been illustriously brought into light by Michel Foucaults Madness and

Civilization1.

However Foucaults analysis there is limited in scope in two ways: temporarily to works

written before the twentieth century and (more importantly for my purpose) in its subject-

matter to what may be called high-brow psychiatric discourse. However, the psychological

imagination of our times is not limited to the orthodoxies within the discipline2 disputing

among themselves the epistemological and practical hegemony over the human psyche.

Psychology is an incredibly fragmented system of power-knowledge boasting a constellation

of heterodoxies (fringe psycho-therapeutic practices perpetually under the suspicious scrutiny

of official psychiatric institutions), a handful of highly visible renegades (highly untraditional

or anti-psychiatric professionals) and a host of equally influential impostors using its levers

of power without proper institutional and professional affiliation. The latter two groups are

responsible for the voluminous bulk of popular psychological literature that have been an

increasingly visible companion of modern psychological practice. This spin-off comes as no

1 Foucault, Michel. 1971. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason. London : Tavistock Publications. The last chapter is an incredible analysis of how
the asylum, and later the dyadic therapeutic relationship acted as a subject-molding
technique on the body of the patient.
2 Here discipline` is to be understood broadly to include both theory and practice
surprise, given that psychological techniques are what Foucault has later called techniques of

the care of the self, and thus tend to displace the overt source of authority from without to

within the subjected body. It is, however, a scorned phenomenon whose effects are much

understudied.

The object of my study lies mostly in this shadowy tail of psychological discourse. What I

have here summarily dubbed popular psychological literature is notable for its readiness to

construct elaborate psychological typologies and profiles and to offer micro-psychological

management techniques (tips) to the addressee of the text on the basis of these profiles.

Among these typologies the narcissist is one of the most elaborate (and popular) ones,

boasting good descriptive detail, a well-developed temporal narrative structure and daunting

rhetorical pathos. These narratives of narcissism will be one focus of my research.

Such narratives spot many notable features that warrant my research interest. First of

all, they are typically not addressed to the narcissist himself3 (allegedly most are male) but

rather to people that might have had the misfortune to run into a narcissist. Typical titles

include: How to Spot a Narcissist?, Leaving a Narcissist and How to Know that your X

is a Narcissist?. This characteristic of referring to the narcissist while addressing itself to his

victim allows the typical text to assume a very aggressive and deprecatory tone. The active

discounting and othering of the narcissist in such texts, combined with their descriptive-

narrative style renders them strikingly similar to works of natural history.

These unusual characteristics transform such texts into very peculiar devices of subjection.

Ideally they should engage their subject (the narcissist) without the latters knowledge (for, so

it goes, he wont change anyway). It is the narcissists significant others that should read the

texts and subject the narcissist accordingly. The potential narcissist is measured against a host

3 Narcissists are allegedly almost incurable. Thus the authors of such texts feel
themselves fully entitled to discard the narcissist himself as an addressee and an object
of intervention.
of independent criteria of authentication posited by the text and, if found by the texts

addressee to fit these criteria, is pushed into a career (in Thomas Scheffs4 terms) of

narcissism. I am interested in studying in detail how these texts manage to achieve such a

configuration.

The second focus of my research will be the so-called support forums that aim to set up a

space for discussion mainly for the victims of narcissists, but also to a certain extent for

narcissists themselves. By observing (and potentially participating) in the discussions on such

forums I will attempt to see how such texts are actually used as subjection devices by the

forums participants.

I hope that combining my analysis of the narrative structure of popular literature on

narcissism with my observations on how it is applied by the support forum participants will

allow me to satisfactorily analyze the dynamic of subjection which such texts attempt to elicit.

4 Scheff, Thomas. 1971. Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory. New York : Aldine Pub.
Co.