PSYCHOTHERAPY: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICEVOLUME 5, #4, DECEMBER, 1968

LOVE VERSUS OMNIPOTENCE: THE NARCISSISTIC DILEMMA

HARRY BOYDVeterans Administration Hospital

Oklahoma City

In this paper I would like to explore someideas and speculations which have, more orless, forced themselves into my awareness as atherapist and a human being struggling withthe problem of maturing. In particular, cer-tain fantasies or expectations which seem tocharacterize many of my patients, and whichhave manifested themselves in my own life,appear to have implications for understandingthe treatment process and for understandingthe problems in living which face all of us.The two centers about which these fantasiesseem to revolve include fusion-incorporation,as described by Searles (1951), and limitlessomnipotence. Both of these fantasies, I be-lieve, have their origin in the narcissisticstruggle of infancy.

The problem of narcissism has been rela-tively ignored in the literature of psychother-apy, although it was considered by Freud(1914) to pose a central concern for psycho-therapy. Perhaps the knowledge that the"narcissistic neuroses" were held by Freud tobe untreatable has discouraged the investiga-tion of narcissism within the "transferenceneuroses." It certainly appears that manytheorists, such as Federn (1952) and Fenichel(1945), have assumed that an "either/or" re-lationship exists between the transference neu-roses and the narcissistic neuroses, and havethus tended to ignore the usefulness of theconcept of narcissism in the understanding ofthe "transference neuroses." Freud, however,explicitly states that there is ". . . a certain re-ciprocity between ego-libido and object li-bido" (1914). Thus one could expect certainevidence of narcissistic functioning in anytype of neurotic development and for thesenarcissistic remnants to play an active part inthe interaction between therapist and patient.

Although rarely, if ever, is explicit refer-ence made to their origin in a narcissistic fixa-

tion, many authors have described characteris-tic patterns of behavior which seem to fit theconcept of narcissism as it is considered inthis paper. For instance, the concepts of om-nipotence and magical thinking, which Iwould consider as belonging under the rubricof narcissism, have been discussed in awide variety of contexts (Pumpian-Mindlin(1965; W. F. Murphy 1965). Freud andsubsequent authors have related these topicsto the narcissistic stage of development. Searles(op. cit.) and Kaiser (1965) have referred,in somewhat different language, to a fantasyof fusion or incorporation, a fantasied sym-biotic and primitive relationship between peo-ple whose model is the mother-child relation-ship in early infancy.

The twin fantasies of fusion-incorporationand limitless omnipotence appear to be pres-ent in a wide variety of kinds of people, re-gardless of the apparent kind of characterstructure. At times I have wondered if the at-tempt to preserve the integrity of the uncon-scious fantasy of omnipotence does not makenecessary the subsequent development of neu-rotic character structure. In this sense, onecould speculate that the roots of most (or atleast many) patterns of neurotic life style aregrounded in narcissistic fantasies and expecta-tions. Since the narcissistic period is the mostprimitive of the developmental stages, a dis-turbance on this level could be expected tohave far-reaching effects on subsequent devel-opment and adult behavioral patterns. I amprimarily interested, as a therapist, in the na-ture and content of the interpersonal behaviorof people trapped in the confines of narciss-ism. Therefore, it seems appropriate to beginby exploring the interpersonal developmentalhistory of the narcissistic way of life.

A very early picture of the relatedness be-tween the child and his world must include

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the child's learning to value mastery or con-trol as a means of insuring gratification. Thesmall child meets frustration with screams ofdenial of the right of the world to impinge onhim. The fortunate child is surrounded byenough love and acceptance that he is able oc-casionally to forego immediate gratificationfor the sake of slightly delayed but greatergratification, and, in this way, is graduallyable to give up the assumption of an omnipo-tent and symbiotic relationship with his worldin favor of learning more adequate mastery byrecognition of the limits of his autonomy. Toput it another way, he had developed enoughconfidence in the long-range benevolence ofthe people around him that he can at timestolerate delays; he trades the comforting butincorrect assumption of an omnipotence whichpromises total passive gratification now for amore frightening recognition of a real worldoutside himself which imposes limitation andpain but which offers opportunities for ac-tively taking gratification. Essentially, it isthe confidence of the child in the benevolenceof the world (i.e., his parents) which providessufficient positive motivation for him to movefrom passive, omnipotent symbiosis to a moreactive attempt to manipulate the world assomething separate from himself.

The less fortunate child, faced with a worldof inconsistent performers (i.e., his mother)who have made it impossible for him to de-velop confidence in long-range gratification,tends to cling to a cherished world of passiveomnipotence, the model for which he has ex-perienced as the symbiotic mother-infant rela-tionship. The child, in effect, rebuilds theworld according to his needs and attempts todeny all evidence that he is subject to a realworld in which he is limited, weak and ungra-tified. He can hold on to the remembered frag-ments of good and gratifying relationships,present in almost any relationship, no matterhow bad, in an attempt to form a self who hasexperienced acceptance and love and is thusloveable and acceptable to the world. Otherinteractions between himself and significantothers which were frightening or overwhelm-ing are denied or repressed. The child is thusmore or less aware of a feeling of incomplete-ness, which is reinforced by two elements:The self itself is inadequately accepted and

thus incompletely experienced by itself, andthe child has not received adequate gratifica-tion and is thus incomplete. The failure toachieve an integrated and valued self is rarelyexperienced, I believe, as the fault of the par-ents, but rather that the person himself feelsinadequate or lacking in some mysterious,dimly understood but nonetheless awful way,and for this lack, in the back of his mind, hefeels a terrible shame. In adults I have seen intherapy, this shame is usually connected witha feeling of isolation and loneliness, as if theperson were somehow basically bad or shame-ful and undeserving of human respect andlove. The denied and repressed "bad me"struggles toward awareness and makes theconscious "good" and partial self aware of itsown dishonesty.

This is not to say that such an attitude willoften be stated in so many words. Neuroticpeople are, of course, notorious for the widevariety of ways in which they attempt to denyor conceal their feelings, even from themselves,and this is especially true of the feeling ofdeep shame. But, nevertheless, I believe thatthe sense of shame and dishonesty, of over-whelming guilt for their own incompletenessand loneliness, characterizes their self concept.Such people are sometimes more comfortableif they can assign their shame not to them-selves in totality but to some fragmented andunaccepted or ego-dystonic aspect of their be-havior or being. From my standpoint, thislimited shame is what is frequently referred towhen the word "guilt" is used. Thus, guilt ofthis kind appears defensively as an attempt tocope with shame, or the total devaluation ofthe self, which is a kind of death.

Thus, the dilemma in which the neuroticand narcissistic person is caught involves hisattempt to achieve with others a fantasied om-nipotence and limitlessness which is totallyimpossible to attain after infancy (if it is at-tainable even then). The tragic consequence isthat such striving and denial of real and per-sonal limits makes impossible the attainmentof more limited, but nevertheless potentiallyrewarding, involvement or engagement withthe real interpersonal world. This is the nar-cissistic dilemma, and it appears to lie at thecore of a great many neurotic ways of life.This dilemma has to do with the relationship

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between man and his personal universe, andthus, in Frankl's (1959) term, is noetic.

What is the consequence in the interper-sonal life of the adult who clings to the fan-tasy of omnipotence and Hmitlessness? Whatdoes it mean for the adult to be unable to ac-cept or even acknowledge personal limitationsor boundedness? To answer these questionswe must first consider what limitations therereally are on interpersonal relationships. Weall know, for instance, that all human rela-tionships are limited by their nature and mustend in death or loss. No matter how hard wework at them, no matter how deeply we arecommitted to others, the outcome is inevita-ble. And no matter how much we wish it oth-erwise, we are separate from one another andcan never become one with another person formore than the most fleeting moments. Yet theknowledge of this limitedness and separate-ness paradoxically makes it possible for us torecognize the reality of the other person andto respect him in his separateness.

But in the person still trapped in the di-lemma of narcissism, his inability to acceptthese limitations and his own helplessness inthe face of the workings of the universe pre-vent him from ever seeing anything in othersbut the mirror-like reflections of his ownneeds for symbiotic self-completion. He isdriven to attempt to possess the other as anobject, utterly and forever, denying the oth-er's nature as a separate person and seeingonly his capacity to fill the patient's needs,needs which, by their growth from an unat-tainable fantasy, are insatiable and unending.Others must exist in the patient's own uni-verse of self or they do not exist for him atall. They must somehow bolster his falseimage of a powerful, boundless, and endlesslyreceptive self or be discarded in panic beforethey can become important in themselves.

Thus the narcissistic dilemma is one inwhich the subject is caught between twosources of pain: the pain of loss or separa-tion, which for whatever reason seems to himgreater than the possible rewards of acceptingseparateness and limitation, and the pain ofloneliness and alienation which are the inevi-table results of clinging to the fantasy of lim-itless omnipotence. Even to acknowledge thenecessity of one or the other of these two

kinds of pain means to accept to some degreea limit exerted by the nature of the world, andsuch acknowledgement may thus be intolera-ble. To avoid the awareness of this pain, hemay develop a number of techniques, depend-ing on his family and developmental historypast infancy, all of which have in common therefusal to give up the fantasy of omnipotence.One person, for instance, may fight his fearvia reaction formation, by which means he as-serts the opposite of being limited: competi-tive and arrogant mastery. Or he may strivefor control of all his feelings by exerting mas-tery internally: He splits himself into goodand bad parts, and combats shame with guilt,in the way usually characterized as obsessive-compulsive. In this way, he may achieve alimited tolerance for himself, although his ex-perience may be distinctly uncomfortable.Through his cognitive narrowing and splitting,he exerts mastery and control by dividing hisexperience. Another person may become ashallow drifter, never completing his educa-tion, perpetually delaying all significantchoices as to permanent kind of vocation,mate choice, and so on, because to make anycommitment means to give up the possibilityof making other commitments and is, thus, ex-perienced (or rather avoided) as representinga limit and, therefore, a threat to the fanta-sied omnipotence (Pumpian-Mindlin, 1965).One price of omnipotence is paradoxicallythat of total guilt for everything that happensin a kind of neurotic hyper-responsibility; inits most extreme form, this dynamic maycharacterize the catatonic.

When the person can express his feelings offrustration at all, he may verbalize his irra-tional and infantile need for complete gratifi-cation by saying something like, "Why isn'tthe world (or a particular person) the way itought to be, the way I want it to be?" Tosuch a child, the parent frequently says, "Youcan do anything you make up your mind todo," thereby encouraging the denial of limita-tions which itself seems to be one of the cher-ished myths of American society. In the moreopenly narcissistic neurotics, the unconsciousfantasy of symbiotic omnipotence is mani-fested by a dissatisfied and restless searchingfor something or someone who will give grati-fication. Such a search can take many forms,

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depending on the overlying character struc-tures: absorption with acquisition of posses-sions, striving for status, multiple "love" af-fairs, footloose wandering and frequentchanges of occupation, and so on. The inevita-ble failure to meet the fantasied needs breedsan objectless rage against everything, a ragewhich increases as the years of frustration goon, and the rage itself must be dealt with bymore or less neurotic defenses since there is noway in which it can be resolved without ashift in character structure. When one consid-ers the basic mistrust present from childhoodit is perhaps not at all remarkable that openlynarcissistic people so frequently become para-noid if they become severely disturbed.

Ultimately the failure to resolve this di-lemma in favor of a limited version of theworld leads to increasing alienation and de-spair. Rage may be manifested as boredomwith life or loneliness or depression. Paradoxi-cally, the more capacities and potentials onehas, the more acute this progression becomesbecause the adequate development of any skillrequires the capacity to tolerate one's personallimitations. Thus, to the already crushing bur-den of loneliness and shame, is added guilt,through his knowledge of his failure to meethis capacities. The outcome, in Farber's ex-pressive phrase, is "despair and the life of sui-cide," or else denial of the reality of the worldoutside the person to an extent that is usuallytranslated as psychosis.

To allow one's self to respect and caredeeply for the separateness of another humanbeing means inevitable loss which one is help-less to prevent. Ultimately, therefore, eachperson, in order to become as healthy and lov-ing a person as he is capable of becoming,must resolve the dilemma on an emotional,non-verbal level by knowing that death andloss are less painful than loneliness, or morepositively, that the rewards of loving and,thus, meeting a basic capacity are greatenough to meet the pain of loss and death.

What kind of marriages do narcissistic peo-ple make? While, obviously, the variety is asgreat as the variety of kinds of people thereare, there seem to be certain common featuresby virtue of the narcissistic preconceptionsabout the nature of human relationships.Searles (1951) has pointed out the nature of

neurotic "love" as essentially an attempt atincorporation, a maneuver which ultimatelydenies the separateness and reality of theother person. In such a relationship, the otherperson is taken in and fused with, not as areal person but as an object, an inhabitant ofthe fantasy-laden, unrealistic inner world ofthe neurotic. All realistic differences are de-nied. The basic model for such a relationshipis the mother-child symbiosis. It should bemade clear that this is not intended to meanthat the neurotic of this type is always look-ing for a mother. The adult neurotic is, afterall, an adult, not a child. But the fantasy ofmagical completion or "Love at first sight," asymbiotic relationship which will make himcomplete and whole at last does exert a pow-erful pull, tending to make him search rest-lessly for just the "right person" for the grat-ification which must exist somewhere andwhich, by being in the right place at the righttime with the right person, he can passivelyreceive. American songs (and perhaps others)repeat this theme constantly.

The neurotic marital relationship, therefore,many times becomes a kind of game whichboth partners play by mutual and unconsciousagreement, a game which provides both withcertain gratifications and enables both tomaintain the fiction of being unlimited. Butthis kind of socially acceptable folie a' deuxis, by its nature, unstable since it depends onmutual lies and pretense, conscious or uncon-scious. Therefore, of course, a drastic denialof the real nature of the relationship betweenthem is required. Either an extremely limitedand ritualistic relationship is developed whichis rigidly the same at all times, and which of-fers satisfaction in safety, or the two personsmust develop an extremely careful sensitivityfor the feelings and behavior of the other, asituation in which each person behaves in away which is least threatening to the otherperson. In many cases this latter course be-comes extremely difficult, with each partnerfiguratively "walking on eggs" with the otherperson. One form of the latter might be thepseudo-marriage, in which each partner seekspart, or all, of their gratification outside themarriage. A common characteristic of narcis-sistic-neurotic marriages is that of tremendousambivalence; each partner is caught between

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being unable to give the other up because ofintolerance for loss, and resentment becausethe other person is unable to meet all his part-ner's needs, to make him a whole and totallygratified person.

When such people come into therapy, theyfrequently give more or less vivid evidence oftheir difficulties in accepting the boundariesbetween themselves and their spouses. For in-stance, one will complain of his inability tomake his spouse feel toward him what he wantsher to feel, or will attribute various kinds ofmotivation to his spouse for which he has nodirect evidence and typically has never askedabout. Certainly, they cannot accept thelimited nature of their relationship with theirspouses, and are angry because there is neverthe total gratification which they are seek-ing. In therapy, their transference is initiallypositive, because of their hope for a good (i.e.symbiotic) mother, but very quickly the nega-tive transference makes itself evident by in-creasing demandingness and/or increasing non-verbalized anger.

I think therapy with neurotics is nevercompleted until they are on their way towardan increasing ability to accept their own limi-tations and to live in spite (or because) of thetragically impermanent nature of human rela-tionships. One way this can be noted is in thewillingness or ability of the patient to come toterms with his fantasy of his own death. Inneurotics, the idea of death is not one of sim-ple cessation of existence, but an unconsciousnarcissistically determined fantasy of com-plete isolation and helplessness. Such a fan-tasy has its roots in the child's terror of lossof its mother, an anxiety which has usuallybeen exacerbated in the neurotic either be-cause of the mother's rejecting attitude or be-cause subsequent events cause the person tore-evaluate the mother as a rejecting person.Death, then, becomes the epitome of helplessloneliness and failure of all narcissistic sup-plies, like being locked in an empty, blackroom forever. Religion frequently has a majorappeal for neurotics because of its reinforce-ment of the resurrection fantasy which can besummarized as saying that some time motherwill come and take you from the dreaded per-manent isolation of death. Even the notion of

hell, of being punished forever, is less awfulthan that of death because death is equatedwith marasmus. Punishment is less painfulthan abandonment and loneliness. Death, notlife, is a nightmare from which neuroticsstruggle to awaken.

Thus, death is fantasied as love's alternate,the absolute and irrevocable loss of narcissis-tic supplies and of helplessness to obtainmore. The neurotic denies this fantasy by om-nipotently attempting to turn everyone andeverything into an object whose purpose is tofurnish him with more and better supplies,turning the idea of death into the repositoryfor all his fears of loss, limitation and help-lessness. One cannot understand the neurotic'sfear of non-symbiotic love without havingworked through the death/abandonment fan-tasy which lurks behind it. Agnar Mykle, thenovelist, has put this very well:

. . . And it was this idea of utterness that made hishead suddenly swim. Suddenly, fortuitously, he hadlooked into man's profoundest terror. At the bottomof things is death.

In that swift second he had recognized that loveand death are life's two great demons. He used tothink, for his knowledge of life came largely fromnovels, that love was light and easy, a dance on aflower-strewn bank. Now, he sat there knowing thatat the bottom of love is death. (1961)

To have come to terms with the fantasy ofutter loss disguised as a fear of death requireshaving accepted the limited nature of humanexistence and the limits of one's own existenceon a direct and experiential level.

Such a notion is, of course, not new. JesseTaft (1962) based many of her theories con-cerning the effects of time limited therapy onRank's (1945) approach. My own approachto the importance of the capacity to acceptlimitations obviously owes much to Dr. Taft,and ultimately to Rank. One of the character-istics of all kinds of psychotherapy is that itinvolves a necessarily limited relationship, atemporary alliance between patient and thera-pist; perhaps this built-in limitedness, as Taftpointed out, in itself contributes to the prog-ress of the patient toward giving up his fanta-sies of omnipotence. When this fantasy or setof fantasies are no longer necessary, much ofthe force behind the tendency of the patientto cling to his neurotic defenses dissolves or

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perhaps has already dissolved, and he is readyto go on with the task of learning how to ob-tain gratification and development in the realworld of limitation.

REFERENCES

FARBER, L. The ways of the will. New York: BasicBooks, 1966.

FEDERN, PAUL. Ego psychology and the psychoses.New York: Basic Books, 1952.

FENTCHEL, O. The psychoanalytic theory of the neu-roses. W. W. Norton and Co: New York, 1945.

FRANKX, V. From death-camp to existentialism. Bos-ton: Beacon Press, 1959.

FREUD, SIGMUND. On narcissism: an introduction.Collected papers, ed. E. Jones, 4 30-59. New York:Basic Books, Inc., 1959.

KAISER, H. Effective psychotherapy. New York: TheFree Press, 1965.

MURPHY, W. F. The tactics of psychotherapy. NewYork: International Universities Press, Inc., 1965.

MYKLE, AGNAR. The son of the red ruby. New York:E. P. Dutton, 1961.

PUMPIAN-MINDLIN, E. Omnipotentiality, youth andcommitment. J. Amer. Acad. Child Psychiat., A,1-18, 1965.

RANK, O. Will therapy and truth and Reality. NewYork: A. Knopf, 1945.

SEARLES, H. F. Data concerning certain manifestationsof incorporation. In Collected papers on schizophre-nia and related subjects. New York: Int. Univer.Press, Inc., 1965. pp. 39-69.

TAFT, JESSIE. The dynamics of therapy in a con-trolled relationship. Dover Publications, Inc.: NewYork, 1962.