Over the weekend, I spent a day chasing after Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant's new drama "Inaction". As a middle-aged woman who has not followed dramas for a long time, I chose this drama for two simple reasons. One is that I have the same profession as Grace in the drama; the other is that the older I get, the more I prefer the wonderful "racing racing" between the old actors. Sure enough, it didn't disappoint me after reading it, and it didn't last a long time. (Friendly reminder, this article has spoilers)
The story of this drama can be summarized in one sentence. How did Grace, a psychotherapist with 20 years of clinical training, deny, doubt, see through, and expose step by step the oncologist husband Jonathan, who has been sharing bed for 17 years, is actually a man with Murder with Narcissistic Personality Disorder!
The brains of American dramas are always beyond your imagination. The protagonist is a clinical psychologist who graduated from Harvard, and the other is a child oncologist who is respected and loved. Whether it is saving people’s spirit or saving people’s body, the professional image full of halo effect has been lifted from the altar. Uncovering the mask of beauty and hypocrisy, everyone can't escape the calamity of secretly marking prices in their own destiny.
At this time, many people can't help but wonder, what kind of disease is the "narcissistic personality disorder" elaborately detonated by Grace in the last episode? What kind of person is a patient with narcissistic personality disorder who can have such a huge "attraction" and "destructive power"?
To put it simply, "narcissism" is actually a continuum of healthy narcissism from extreme arrogance (extrinsic exaggerated narcissism) to extreme low self-esteem (recessive fragile narcissism). Narcissistic personality disorders are the two extremes of this pedigree for a long time. Jonathan in this drama belongs to a patient with high-functioning and exaggerated narcissistic disorder. In real life, exaggerated pathological narcissists generally have the following characteristics:
1. Self-exaggeration and self-esteem are very high, feel that they are omnipotent, the proud son of heaven.
2. It is difficult to empathize and empathize with others, and it is difficult to truly develop an intimate relationship of deep attachment. It is easy to use others as an instrument in the relationship. Lack of reflection and guilt.
3. Addiction to continuous attention and praise from others.
4. Self-privilege awareness, need to enjoy privileges and care that others don't have. Have a strong desire to dominate and lead the environment.
5. Criticism from the outside will produce a great sense of humiliation or anger.
And the patients with high-functioning narcissistic disorder that I am talking about are people who possess these characteristics at the same time have high IQ and social function, or hold important positions or have a prominent reputation. The only difference is that all these glamorous titles, prominent powers, perfect partners and children are all ways they use to enhance self-adoration, self-indulgence, and continue self-expansion. The so-called "I love you because I love myself more."
In the third episode, Grace's conversation with her husband's former colleague near the hospital in the cold wind suddenly pulls us out of fantasy and sees a more real Jonathan personality. Obviously, in the eyes of others, the husband's unrepentant and unscrupulous behavior is totally different from Grace's kind and warm heroic image like a bodhisattva in her heart.
However, what I want to talk about today is not just the types and characteristics of popular science narcissistic personality disorder. (For more friends who are interested in this, please refer to the books of American autopsychologist Cohut, who created the autopsychology genre.) Next, I would like to try to get close to Grace, who has been trained in clinical psychology for 20 years. A psychotherapist with keen insight, analysis and reflection, why all her 18 martial arts about "mind-reading" are completely abolished in front of a loved one.
Let's go back to the first episode and listen to her incisive analysis when facing the compulsively repeated marriage dilemma of her lawyer visitor: "I rarely see anyone who is more cautious than you. You will You need to try at least 20 pairs of shoes to choose one pair. You will do a background check before choosing a hair dyer. The same is true when you choose me. But for love, once a man who attracts you appears, you have all of these. Traits will disappear."
This passage seems to analyze all the women who have been dazzled by love, but in fact, they have already made a clever foreshadowing and topic for the whole show at the beginning. Undoing, in the context of psychoanalysis, is originally a defense mechanism, which is a symbolic reverse behavior to offset unacceptable or painful things that have happened. This offset can be understood in this play as various clumsy or clever disguise and cover-ups made by Jonathan after the murder. But I personally think that Undoing can also be interpreted on the heroine Grace.
In order to prove and wash off her husband's innocence, she tried her best to find witnesses, suspects, lawyers, her husband's colleagues, and the victim's family members. Rationalize the husband’s motives for derailment, seek financial support from the father, and strengthen the victim’s personality and mental problems, without letting go of any clues.
She offsets the "sin" for the one she loves, just as she stunned her denial when her father confessed that she was never loyal to her mother, "No, in my childhood memory, you are not like this, you are not like this."
What could be more dreadful than the sudden discovery that you have been living in unreal fantasies for decades? The father I thought was not the father in my memories, and the partner in my eyes was not the partner in my imagination. All the magnificent palaces of life built in the first half of life sank in an instant. This extremely exaggerated version of the midlife crisis engulfed her like a tsunami.
Frankly speaking, who hasn't used a few "101 defense mechanisms" in this life to survive and live comfortably? Either deny it or project it. Either regress or isolation. However, the irony is that a person who deals with the defenses of others every day and knows how to properly benefit the quality of the ground and clarify the pink bubbles of the client ends up unsuspectingly facing the collapse of two important idealized objects in life at the same time?
In fact, I don’t believe that a child who lives in a family where his father is constantly cheating on his mother is ignorant of this. What's more, her professional professionalism has proved without suspense that she has a certain natural and sensitive "smell" for people and relationships. So a more probable explanation is that she “denied” the fragile family relationship that was obviously swaying in the wind and rain with the help of a powerful fantasy very early, and instead “constructed” a model of affection that did not exist. Parental marriage. Coincidentally, I don’t believe that she has never found an abnormal sign of the person next to her pillow in her entire 17-year marriage, (for example, he broke off the relationship with his native family very early), so she may have adopted the same defense mechanism. "The trick repeats", has been selectively "extracting" the other side's particularly noble and beautiful image.
One day you have to admit that sometimes the most powerful PUA in life does not come from others, but from yourself.
After losing her professional aura, Grace was as lost as all other women whose IQs fell rapidly in love. In the highly involved emotional vortex, when we put all the expectations of the perfect partner in our minds on someone, when we are so eager for others to fill and complete the missing self, we are accustomed to have neutral and objective cognition Power, discernment and judgment are "deliberately" weakened and dormant. Because of our deep-rooted love, we will unconsciously "help" the other person to create a "he is not bad" image, "accumulate" all the evidence of his "luminescence" in the past, and even continue to do for the other party's obvious "abnormal behavior" Disguise and rationalize. It is too easy for us to wear "colored filters" in the emotional world, beautify and maintain, be patient or believe.
Perhaps this is why many people continue to exhaust themselves in a scarred relationship that has no future, and refuse to give up, even in the cycle of "masochistic". Some people stay for a long time after losing their lover. Falling into the memorial and indulging in the phantom of the former lover, he cannot extricate himself from it. In fact, when we are constantly frustrated in an uncontrollable reality and unable to solve it, when we are confined to a certain system or a certain relationship cage and cannot move, when we are trapped in the clutches of certain extreme emotions and cannot break free, Fantasy has become our spiritual garden of Eden and a refuge for our souls. We can run free in fantasy, unlock the shackles, overdraft desire, gain control, and realize our dreams. We can also use fantasy to tightly wrap our precarious self to escape and avoid the dross and cruelty of reality.
No doubt, no shame. Like Grace, almost everyone has frequently used psychological defense mechanisms such as "fantasy" or "idealization" at various stages of their growth. Part of our illusions will be constantly broken and revised along with the normal socialization process. And the other part—the illusion that has been with us for a long time to protect certain "traumatic experiences" is often indestructible.
At this point, I suddenly came up with an illusion: If Shang can live in some wonderful fantasy for a lifetime without being awakened, is it also a kind of happiness?
However, time is always crueler than the truth. After a person passes middle age, you will gradually find that in the long and infinite time track, you may be randomly shot by a spear of fate at a certain moment, the core of the fantasy cracks and shatters, accompanied by the bloody self-collapse and self-reconstruction. . Don't worry, time will push you to grow sooner or later.
After many years, you may finally admit: your parents don’t love each other; your family patriarchal; your children are going to be ordinary just like you; the man you are obsessed with will not divorce your wife for you; you are for it All the girls may have never loved you like you loved her; the love that you drunk for the night when you were young is actually already riddled with holes; the one who approached you in an extremely passionate way captured your body and mind People finally disappear from your world in an extremely indifferent way. And, if you never forget it, there may be no response. .
So one day, when you look back, you see fragments of fantasy scattered on the ground, and there is still gleaming aftertaste. Don't hesitate, please hug and thank them one by one. These pieces of armor once inlaid on your weak body have been loyal to "protecting" the past you, the inferior, weak, dependent and hungry you, the you who can't see the light of your own life. You have to believe that after you muster the courage to endure the pain of peeling off every fantasy, you will definitely see your own brand new and stronger skin grow out.
Like Grace, like me, like him.
Like the one who got a new life together, yourself.
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