Article about parents not naming their child
Teacher: We spoke about this in the live class - the case where the parents refused to tell people the gender of their child...well there are a few cases...
Me: I already have a bit of a grasp on this. A blogger that goes by the Last Psychiatrist, makes many lengthily posts on his deductions. He's quite funny and is very good at it. He has recently done something on this. Here is the link.
In a basic sense, the mother refused to tell the world her child's gender because she wanted to confidence her own identity and sacrifice the child's. You can read as that the mother used the child as a narcissistic feed to increase her own worth rather than the child. She ignored the child's rights, enforced potential ridicule, and lowered his ability to identify his own self. In my opinion this was a terrible mother who used the child to engross their own identity. You can read more about narcissistic parents here and more from my own personal blog here.
I hope this helps you understand why parents can sometimes do this. I recently watch an episode of QI (501 Engineering) where Rob Briden states how he has sex and Stephen Fry replies "Rob, can I remind you of something? Your father is in the audience." Rob replies after saluting to his father: "He's up there going 'That's My Boy!'" (He quotes his father using a Scottish accent.) In this example, is this not the point of, forgive my vulgar pun, 'sex'? Only recently has the word sex changed from a gender term to a 'sex'ual term.
To understand why parents do this, I believe looking towards the psychopath and how they only 'empathize' for them is highly important. Of course they are not actually empathizing, but what they are doing is puting their own goals into the child's eyes. Psychopaths have right-hemisphere amygdala damage and from this, they are not able to 'receive' eye contact and also cannot recognize the disgust expression; this evidence possibly indicates that psychopaths can't feel disgust. This stops them from having any concern for others and being able to develop any self-conscious emotions. The psychopath uses self-deception as a technique to 'self'-empathize with their child.
Teacher: Thank you for the links!
In particular I was quite interested in the parent/narcissism article as that was one thing that occurred to me when reading about the parents (especially the Toronto couple) that this seemed more like a stunt than something they really believed in. This is also something that concerns me when Reality TV shows like Toddlers and Tiaras become so popular. As a society, are we rewarding parents for their selfishness?
Me: Before I begin a rant, I'm first going to define selfishness in my context. Selfishness is to build one's self values only, not to increase social, safety, or physiological needs. On the terms of selfishness, is the person focused on building self-esteem or self-identity. Self-esteem focuses on an external locus where they act for the concern of what others are thinking or feeling. Self-identity focuses on an internal locus where they act for the concern of how they feel or think of the value of their own self. Self-esteem could be a university degree, while self-identity could be a set of morals. When one feels a sense of gusto for either the self-esteem ot self-identity motive and becomes ashamed of who they are for it, then one can pin them down as having an addiction, but if one is unable to recognize they have a problem, or rather, are deviating from the norm of society and society are noticing rather than the person, then they themselves are selfish. (I think I just concluded that people cannot call themselves selfish in certain areas... this paragraph is therefore entitled to some development.)
Anyhow, I think I would say that although parents receive that instant 'high' from being "rewarded" by society, I wouldn't say it to be long term. I would feel that although the society is giving them their needed fame, the child will go on to probably degrade them. Although, simple counteractions could be taken to stop this such as instilling a religious belief into them that loving one's parents is mandatory for some afterlife reward. Many things can be counter-productive to remove the religious belief and so on.
Anyhow, these parents have raised a transsexual cultural child, and on a personal note, I'm not very accepting of transsexuals who wear another sexes clothes because they were raised to or because they like it. I'm accepting of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals and so on, but when someone wears another persons clothes, that's like a guest at your wedding wearing a wedding dress (if I were female, I wouldn't find it very 'attractive'). Or, how about an atheist wearing a priests uniform, or maybe an anti-nationalist wearing that nations military outfit; is this not displeasing? Society has set rules and people who break them obviously get attention, but is this selfish? Above, I believe I accidentally defined selfish as being societies word for another, not a word one can use onto themselves. If they are using it on themselves, they have what I believe an addiction and the only reason it is an addiction, is because they are feeling shame, not guilt; where guilt is an emotion that focuses on evaluating events and often leads to repairative actions. since they aren't feeling guilt, they conduct a societal disgrace, enjoy it, and then feel bad because they did something that went against society's rules. This is constantly recurring and they feel evermore ashamed the more they do it. The more they do it, the less enjoyment they receive and therefore after a series, they can't stop an action that will give them no happiness, but a deep sense of shame.
These parents have degraded the child's values towards society and the parent will soon identify the shame they have placed. Perhaps they may receive their 'high', but as time goes by, they will have paid a dear price: the world's evaluation of their family and it's lineage, the deep and intrinsic addiction that will no doubt lead to chronic suicidal thoughts, and the failure to create the fully functioning self that they paradoxically went about to actually mature.
Although, maybe they felt this was society's norm?
Or, what if the parents themselves deeply believe to be split from society?
Or, what if the parents feel that their shame increases the hubristic value of themselves?
Or, what if the parents are doing it to not just to receive attention for themselves, but to prove to society that they are split from society?
There is of course many questions one can ask to explain why some people do certain things, but in the above paragraphs, I think you yourself are equipped with the needed information to answer all four questions and any others you can think of.
Teacher: "Although, maybe they felt this was society's norm?"
Ah, yes see, this is what is both curious and alarming - has this become a norm? Has this level of selfishness and narcissism become a norm in our society? Have we, in the past decade in particular, rewarded people for their narcissism? I doubt you waste you time watching TV, but I also teach the Media courses, and in the past decade I have seen the rise of Reality TV along with a marked rise in narcissism. As we reward people with money and increasing fame (attention); when we reward the participants in these "games" (which we confuse people by calling them "reality"), do we condone anti-social behaviors as being the characteristics of "winners"?
And it is interesting that in the past three years we are now seeing former contestants or people who tried to get onto these shows who failed - are committing suicide. (Paula Goodspeed being the most notable in the media, but in your personal studies I think you would find the case of Ryan Alexander Jenkins to be more interesting as he committed suicide after brutally murdering his girlfriend). Is this because failure on TV has no privacy and the participant can not live with their public shame? Is it because once the media attention is no longer feeding their narcissism do they lose their "reason" for living?
This is just something I've noticed and been curious about...
Me:I wouldn't say that this has become the norm, I would rather say that this has become the norm. Has the media caused this epidemic or has media alerted us of this
I actually waste a lot of my time watching TV. That being QI, Criminal Minds, Mental, the once powerful and all great: Rubicon, and my new addiction, In Treatment. If you've figured out my genre, then I should continue to say my favorite movies are Dark Knight, Inception, Memento, and Following; all done by the omnipotent screen writer: Christopher Nolan.
The real definition of narcissism is simply to lie about ones capabilities and say that they are greater than they really are. Here, the definition of lie is quite ambiguous as many identify deception as cooperative. It is not. You do not have to believe the lie to be lied to, you just need the lie teller to believe their own lie for them to tell it as if its the truth. I remember a study where professors took hundreds of people and asked what the worst lie had ever been told to them. For their conclusions, only lies of betrayal rather than lies of harm were spoken. It is interesting though that if I were asked this, I would say whenever I think of something that I have an emotional connection to and have found out that it is false, I blow it away. The fear of it not being true is very painful, so I have to say that I am the betraying rather than those around me. It seems that this is much confirmed externally, so when ones supposed life is flipped into a completely different one when someone finds out a lot of what binds their life together. The binding of their life is like an emotional thread, which has now been broken with a quick snap. Please read this carefully: a participant in their study told the experimenters that the worst lie she was ever told was when she was looking for laundry to clean in her husband's briefcase, but instead found ladies underwear that weren't her own. Why was she searching for dirty laundry in her husband's briefcase anyway?
What I'm trying to get at here is how emotionally connected people will become to deny even reality itself. When it comes to games, we have the losers and the winners. Is the winner a narcissist? No, because if they were, they would not have won, they would have been a loser and complained about how there was mistake as to avoid their own shame. A narcissist rarely feels guilt, so repairative actions such as practicing to have a better chance at winning is actually quite rare. Although many say hubris is bad, it is quite prosperous for an individual. Take in this example: a confident and successful looking businessman walks in asking to make a deal, you take his positive voice head on and give him the deal; later on you find out that he actually has barely any background, but his expensive suit and loud voice got him the deal. This is hubris for an individual, but hubris is toxic for society. Imagine fifty million people screaming a lie... is that pleasant? No. The lie encompasses the group and no production is made. There are no deals to made because the group has isolated itself to its own esteem. In a sense, it can't find anyone to make a deal with.
Pride for an individual is bad. It makes one look snotty and although they have had success, other people looking at them see their own despair and don't prefer to bear the mortification, but prefer to attack him with anger. Pride in a society just increases the societies prosperity. People willingly out of free choice and no peer-pressure will join a society if it is prosperous. If you are a researcher at a university and are interested in a subject the university isn't putting a lot of money into, would you go to another university that is putting a lot of money into the subject you are interested in? Absolutely, there must be a reason why this other university is gambling their money away to these other professors; perhaps they are better and have had greater success.
Public shame is embarrassment and this is a degrading in ones ethical abilities. Humiliation is the public degrading of ones reputation. This is why people feel humiliation is worse than embarrassment, because humiliation hurts ones value to society, rather than embarrassment hurting ones value to one self. One can continue life when one believes everyone loves them except themselves, but can one continue life if everyone around them put them low on the grape vine? Obviously not. It is much harder to heal from humiliation than from shame, much harder. For embarrassment to heal, you need to change your perspective of yourself, but for humiliation to heal, you must change everything: you, the environment, and anything that may remind you of it (even the memories may have to go in extreme cases).
If one is trying to receive media attention, what is one trying to accomplish? Fame obviously. What else than strutting your name and to be high on the grape vine? It is what we all work towards. In deception, a lie can be discovered simply by examining the evidence, but the lie teller may not clean up the evidence because they are cognitively exhausted. Here, I believe this path to humiliation may be caused due to exhaustion, possibly from constant self-deception and planning to achieve the "crown". Now they are out in the world as the failures everyone believes them to be and what happens when the humiliation is greater than one can bear? They attack those who constantly remind them of they are either not capable of or what they are unwilling to demonstrate out of shame. In the last sentence, the scene is set for that brutal murder and from there, the deconstruction of reality. RAJ can keep lying to himself, but he knows reality has finally come and he can no longer betray himself, hence is suicide. No more humiliation. No more.
Just to add, in groups embarrassment and pride are good. In individuals, humiliation and hubris are good. Humiliation usually leads to repairative actions and in RAJ's case: murder as the action and suicide as the reaction. Unfortunately, when successful suicide is a reaction, you don't get the chance to learn from the mistake.
