ego / narcissism : page 2 - quotes  articles  books......... .Talent Development Resources --..home page...site map

.. .. We are treated as special. We get away with things that other people can't. And you start to believe the lie that you are special, that you're better than other people. You start demanding that kind of treatment. Most of the time I fight it because I know I'm going to get older and it's going to go away, but at times I succumb to it.

.. .. I've got a couple of friends that might as well be family, and I've caught myself just ordering one of them to do something because you get accustomed to people doing things for you...  It's the money and the power, it just crushes everything.    Brad Pitt .... [Vanity Fair, Dec., 2001] photo at left : Charlize Theron and mirror - Elle magazine, unknown date - posted on charlizetheron.com  - She has been widely praised for her egoless preparation and performance in "Monster."

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I'm not sure how other people of my generation look back on that time [when she acted in "To Sir With Love"], but since I trained at a professional stage school, if you took yourself too seriously, or started to think you were better than anybody else, you just got the sh*t beaten out of you. ...  I can only imagine in a way that it's what young people today feel: it's the job you do. You pray to God you get a good job and can do it well, and you hope that you can keep on doing it. [laughs] I never, ever felt that different.  ****Judy Geeson****[Venice, Oct 2002]

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Newer research on self defeatists shows that fear and low self esteem are not the only culprits. "Self defeat often seems to follow from people's inflated opinion of themselves," say Steven Berglas and Roy Baumeister, the authors of "Your Own Worst Enemy..."  Berglas and Baumeister say that, at bottom, most self-saboteurs are obsessed with how others perceive them. "Some of the worst patterns of self-defeat are set in motion by fear of being seen in an unflattering light," they write. To avoid having that unflattering light shed on them, self-saboteurs resort to one or more of the following behaviors:  Misguided persistence : Face it: Some of the brainstorms we come up with at work stink. Some of the relationships we get into are doomed. But self saboteurs won't give up. . "We may persist against our better judgment simply to avoid being called quitters," the psychologists write.  Self-handicapping : In this approach, the self saboteur uses impediments to preserve an image of competency. The impediments might be as drastic as substance abuse or as seemingly benign as caring for a sickly relative. "Experiments have shown that people with low self- esteem engage in self-handicapping to protect themselves against failure."***from Winter '96 GRADDA Newsletter: The Greater Rochester Attention Deficit Disorder Association **Your Own Worst Enemy: Understanding the Paradox of Self-Defeating Behavior - by Steven Berglas, Roy Baumeister

French poster for  Rebel Without a Cause

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Esquire mag.: One of the things I appreciate about your career is that you make a lot of movies. These guys like Warren Beatty who have the chance to make movies and then don't -- what's so important that he's doing? It's a bad sign when there are years between films. And there's no substitution for shooting, in my opinion. The biggest benefit is that it roots out preciousness. I think preciousness is the enemy of art. ...  Esquire mag.: What is it, the urge to be brilliant? The idea that there's something that matters to an audience beyond the story and the characters, basically. That people actually give a sh*t that YOU made it. *****Steven Soderbergh ***[Esquire mag., August 2002] **Steven Soderbergh, Richard Lester. Getting Away With It: Or: The Further Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw - "..a hilarious, insightful conversation between two visionary directors.." [Amazon.com review]

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Small roles, says Joan Cusack, are valuable if they mean something. For instance, Cusack is part of a large ensemble in Cradle Will Rock, a movie directed by her Arlington Road co-star, Tim Robbins.  "It's not about you, it's about a story," says Cusack. "You're more successful if you connect to something that's more meaningful and of a high quality than if it's just about you out there with your ego."  [Toronto Sun, July 26, 1999]

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Film is tremendously satisfying to the ego because of the amount of manipulation involved, the amount of money involved, and the amount of control in putting out the way you see the world. That's extremely appealing to artists - or just egomaniacs. So there tends to be this so-called auteur business because the director wants to control the whole show. The idea of controlling their work by being the director as well as the writer motivates a lot of these screenwriter/directors. A lot of them, though, are not ready for it. They just like the idea but they haven't gone through the apprenticeship that it takes to learn the craft well enough to be able to accept that responsibility fully." Robert Redford*****from  Writers Guild / Written By magazine article: "Robert Redford Talks Scripts, Independent Film and Sundance"

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The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family - by Eleanor D. Payson Every day headlines are filled with examples of narcissistic individuals in positions of power who are nothing more than impostors plundering and wrecking havoc on the lives of others. From the corporate moguls of Enron and WorldCom to the clergy leaders of the Catholic Church, we daily encounter narcissists and the self-serving systems that enable them. ...  Using simple metaphors from the American classic, The Wizard of Oz, Payson illustrates how Dorothy's journey captures all the seductive illusions and challenges that occur when we encounter the narcissist.  Empowering the reader with the ABCs of unhealthy narcissism and the unique problems that occur when a person becomes involved with the narcissist, Payson gives step-by-step practical tools to identify, protect, and heal from these destructive relationships. [from review from ADD Consults site]

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In her book "They Say You're Crazy..." Dr. Paula Caplan suggests a new category of mental dysfunction, Delusional Dominating Personality Disorder, that may fit a number of men in positions of power in the film community. Characteristics may include: "Inability to establish and maintain meaningful interpersonal relationships; Inability to identify and express a range of feelings in oneself (typically accompanied by an inability to identify accurately the feelings of other people; Tendency to use power, silence, withdrawal, and/or avoidance rather than negotiation in the face of interpersonal conflict or difficulty..." from article Women in Film : Identity and Power by Douglas Eby photo: Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson in Anger Management

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....Sandy Hotchkiss. Why Is It Always About You? : Saving Yourself from the Narcissists in Your Life Ever since Sigmund Freud published his ideas involving narcissism and libido, psychologists and counselors have worked from the premise that many people suffer a form of stunted emotional development which makes them, well, insufferable themselves -- ostensibly shameless (but actually shame sensitive), arrogant, self-centered and selfish, exploitive and manipulative.  Sandy Hotchkiss takes this premise and constructs on it what she calls "The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism" and tells the reader how to deal with these people and their unwanted effects.  Those Seven Deadly... are worth enumerating here: shamelessness, magical thinking, arrogance, envy, entitlement, exploitation, bad boundaries. The author devotes all of Part I to these seven.  These pages lay out the problem and ring lots of bells for any reader about problem people we have all known in our working lives -- if not in our families and personal relationships. from Review by David M. Wolf, M.A. - Metapsychology Online Book Reviews

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"I'm probably the smartest person I know." orchid thief John Laroche [Chris Cooper] in the movie "Adaptation"

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A monumentally prolific artist and an open-hearted collaborator, Robert Rauschenberg led the way in much late 20th-century art, including silkscreening onto canvas and performance art. As critic Robert Hughes writes, "There has never been anything in American art to match the effusive, unconstrained energy of Rauschenberg's generous imagination."  Today, the artist works in Captiva Island, Florida, with a group of assistants. Working with others "takes away the egotistical loneliness of creation," Rauschenberg once said. "But the downside is that you have to wake up with an idea that will keep eight people busy for eight hours." [AARP The Magazine, March-April 2003] ...........Robert Rauschenberg - by Branden W. Joseph

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Last month, Darren Statt, a talent agent at Endeavor, showed up at the DreamWorks lot to meet with the studio's top production executives. When he discovered the execs weren't around, the Scottish agent launched into an obscenity-filled tirade directed at a production executive's assistant. "It was so ugly that someone went around closing all the assistants' doors. You could hear this guy in every corner of the building," recalls DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press. ... "Personally, I think most of the people at Endeavor could use a three-week sojourn to charm school," says Press.  "But this is Hollywood, the only business in the world where people seem to confuse rudeness with power. People think that being rude and demeaning is somehow a show of importance when, to me, it just suggests that you're dealing with a lot of spoiled brats whose mommies didn't give them enough time-outs." .... [latimes.com December 24, 2002]

*related page:.........anger....

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And sure, maybe I'll have to step on a few people as I make my way to the top. But every head I step on will be just another rung in the ladder of fame and fortune. Because I'm honest with myself. Let's face it, we're all on a ladder, from the lowliest beggar in Calcutta all the way up to Stephen Spielberg, we all have our place.  And it takes guts, it takes fortitude and vision, to reach up to that next rung and drag myself up. And sure when I get to the top, maybe all my friends will hate me but by then I'll have new friends. Better friends. Everyone will be my friend! People will line up just to talk to me, even my parents! They'll be like Mary and Joseph standing by the manger when all the kings came by. Puffed up with pride like blowfish. Everyone will feel good just because I'm there with them. Like a baby godlet on the straw! **Wake Up and Smell the Coffee by Eric Bogosian

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It was kind of a shock, becoming famous all of a sudden, having people pay attention, and having action figures (Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scott Evil) made.  I got caught up in allowing those aspects of my career to gratify my ego in an unhealthy way, and I got to a place in my life where I just felt empty.. So I've been spending the last six months getting very honest with myself and finding a spiritual foundation that I've been lacking for 12 years.** ****Seth Green*****[Teen People: September 2001 - posted on sethgreenonline.com] ****photo from book: Men Before 10 AM Too by Veronique Vial

related pages: *****fame / celebrity*******spirituality

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If it weren't for me, there wouldn't be any Paramount Studios. Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd

 
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The fickle heart of L.A. snobbery is, of course, Hollywood.
"There is as much of a food chain in L.A. as there is in Washington," says Graydon Carter,
editor in chief of Vanity Fair. "Because these are essentially one-industry towns."

A reliable shorthand to Hollywood's social structure is the demarcation between the "above the line"
talent -- actors, directors, producers and, if one is being generous or speaking of Tom Stoppard,
screenwriters -- and "below the line," which is everyone else.

"Producers think it's beneath them to have dinner with screenwriters unless they're Steve Gagin.
This year," says Carter. "And it isn't about money, because some of the richest people in town
are television writers, and they seem to eat at pizza parlors, mostly. I would say the hierarchy
goes: movies, music, television."

[Joseph] Epstein calls name-dropping "social-climbing on the cheap," but in this town, one's car
or condiments matter not if it is possible to say with any sort of plausibility: "Sorry, I couldn't
get back to you yesterday. I was over at Tom and Rita's."

from article: "If you want to get ahead, it's image, not money or breeding, that counts"
by Mary McNamara, LA Times  July 5 2002 - about the book:

**Joseph Epstein. Snobbery: the American Version
 

Epstein is right to remind us that "asserting one's superiority to snobbery may be snobbishness too," that "no subject,
apart possibly from podiatry, is impermeable to snobbery," that, as La Rochefoucauld said, "our virtues are, most often,
only our vices disguised" and that "anyone outside a Trappist monastery" will recognize at least some of his own
snobberies in this book.

But he is no less right to warn against the "sour-grapes charge" that equates "elitist" with "snob." "The elitist desires
the best; the snob wants other people to think he has, or is associated with, the best. Delight in excellence is easily
confused with snobbery by the ignorant."****from review by John Simon, LA Times, July 14, 2002
 

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I always envision my ego as a marching soldier who says 'I've got everything under control' and tries to be like my Knight in Shining Armor, like this very heroic character, and ultimately it's really not. ... We're a much more fast-paced society that appreciates and rewards the fast thinker, the fast talker, the wise-cracker, the banter. That's definitely true in filmmaking. Not that awareness can't banter, it certainly can, but the ego gets more strokes than awareness does.    actor/singer/composer Melora Hardin - from article: Ego and Creativity

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You need to move away from your ego to stay in a creative state. Anytime you're shifting the focus back to yourself, you're shutting down creative potential.  It's difficult to achieve a consistent openness, letting things flow through you, without your own judgments, your own personal history, or how you think it should be, interfering with that. Our thinking mind is different than our feeling mind, and if we start thinking, we shut down creative expression.   from interview with Jennifer Lehman, a film acting teacher and scriptwriter.

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Hollywood's a bit like a Renaissance court, where artists are employed by princes to create sculptures or paintings.  In this place, studios employ actors and writers to create scripts and films, and the actors they employ give them prestige, and I think you get into a certain game of "Are you in?" and "Are they going to pay you enough money?"  In the end you're just led by your ego, I suppose. I can't pretend that I don't have as big an ego as the next person.  The danger is that, in the end, the size of your pay cheque is a vanity thing, isn't it? And it takes you further and further away from why (you got into it).

I wanted to be an actor because I loved watching stories and being moved and being taken into another world and being transported and coming away from something a little bit changed. I think you can lose your innocence completely when you're part of that world of making movies.  I think it can be very dangerous if you don't knowthat it's happening, because people are very charming and people stroke you and flatter you.  You only have to (laughs) adjust your antennae a little, and you're believing it all! And it's dangerous. ...  Thank God you do meet people working in the industry [in America] who have their feet on the ground, who are very realistic and do have a sense of proportion. Ralph Fiennes Australia Entertainment Guide interview January 5, 2001 posted on The Ralph Fiennes Reading Room site

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"You have to have a certain kind of surrender to do your best work as an actor or a writer. You have to really give up the narcissism." ****Erica Jong****[TALK mag., Feb.00]

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I think the first time I came here [the Cannes Film Festival, in 1997], I was completely unprepared for what this place was and.. the amount of attention I got for The Sweet Hereafter.  You know, I think it's an incredibly easy place to lose yourself, and you can probably trace a lot of actors going completely off their rockers and becoming egomaniacs to their first experience at Cannes. When you have three days of nothing but people asking you questions and being interested in you, it's hard to remember that most of the world doesn't give a sh*t about you and what you are doing.  I think it's really important to remember that, but difficult when you're 18 years old and swept up in something. I think it was the beginning of my becoming incredibly protective of myself and my personal life, and deciding not to market myself in the way that a lot of people are forced to do. Sarah Polley****[Toronto Sun, May 17, 2001]

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When the Buddha taught his middle path, he had the temerity to suggest that both "somebody"
and "nobody" were mistakes, that the true vision of who and what we are involves looking without
resorting to the instinct of intrinsic reality.

"Somebody" was the equivalent of clinging to being, while "nobody" was the same as clinging to nonbeing.

In either case, the mind’s need for certainty was shortchanging reality. The correct view, the Buddha perceived,
lies somewhere in between. The self-centered attitude is as much of a problem as the self-abnegating one.
We can be proud or empty; in either case the problem lies in our sense of self-certainty.

Rather than blaming my upbringing, or other people, or instincts beyond my control, this view offered
an approach that taught me to work first and foremost with my own reactions to things. When I thought
I was somebody I reacted one way, and when I thought I was nobody I reacted another.

In either case I was obscuring my own awareness. Removing these obstacles opened me to myself -- not as
something or nothing, but as a unique, singular, and relational process. I learned to live more in the moment --
not putting up a false front and not focusing only on what was expected of me, but in touch with a more
spontaneous, creative, and responsive self.

*from Going on Being: Buddhism and the Way of Change by Mark Epstein, MD

image from cover of Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein, MD
 

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*--related articles:
 

Addiction to Fame and Celebrity by Sam Vaknin, PhD
Being famous encompasses a few important functions: it endows the narcissist with power, provides him with a constant Source of Narcissistic Supply (admiration, adoration, approval, awe) and fulfils important Ego functions. The image that the narcissist projects is hurled back at him, reflected in the eyes (or in the imagined eyes) of those exposed to the celebrity or fame of the narcissist. This way he feels alive, his very existence is affirmed and it begets a feeling of clear boundaries (where the narcissist ends and the world begins).

Acquired Situational Narcissism - by Stephen Sherrill
We all know that movie stars, professional athletes, rich people and politicians often act like complete jackasses, but Robert B. Millman, professor of psychiatry at Cornell Medical School and the medical adviser to Major League Baseball, thinks he knows why. The cause, he says, is acquired situational narcissism, a psychological dysfunction that Millman was the first to identify and that he treats in his celebrity patients.

But enough about you - From Britney Spears to Angelina Jolie to robber CEOs, narcissists are selfish, maddening egotists -- and yet we just can't get enough of them. By Nell Casey

Ego and Creativity by Douglas Eby

Is it Ego or is it Free Awareness? by Mary Rocamora
There is often some confusion in class [at the Rocamora School] about how to recognize our current state, so let's review some of the things to look for that help us distinguish what is Ego and and what is free Awareness -- that is, experiences of presence and Love. Here are a few tips on recognizing the wily Ego and its patterns. Is there separation? The feeling of separation is the overarching means of recognizing Ego. We can find ourselves separated in varying degrees from the present moment -- when we are preoccupied with our thoughts, limited by our patterns, or stuck in old emotional reactions.

The narcissist, unmasked by Benedict Carey
Behind the confident face is a self-loathing that therapists are just learning to confront. They've got the most fabulous personal trainer in town, the best lawyer, the top BMW mechanic, and make sure the world knows it. .. In the warm bath of sunlight and celebrity, their behavior can be entertaining, even encouraged, and it's usually relatively harmless. Yet some of these seemingly overconfident people are actually in considerable psychological trouble, suffering what psychiatrists call narcissistic personality disorder.

The Prodigy as Narcissistic Injury - by Sam Vaknin
The prodigy - the precocious "genius" - feels entitled to special treatment. Yet, he rarely gets it. This frustrates him and renders him even more aggressive, driven, and overachieving than he is by nature. ... Not all precocious prodigies end up under-accomplished and petulant. Many of them go on to attain great stature in their communities and great standing in their professions. But, even then, the gap between the kind of treatment they believe that they deserve and the one they are getting is unbridgeable.

 
 

**books:
 

Nina W. Brown. Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting over Narcissistic Parents

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. The Evolving Self : A Psychology for the Third Millenium

Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, Robert M. Pressman.  The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment

The story of Narcissus and Echo is one of self-love that precludes the ability to see, hear, or react to the needs of another.Without too much of a stretch, it stands as a poignant allegory for the interactive relationships of the narcissistic family.

In a healthy situation, parents accept responsibility for meeting a variety of their children's needs; they get their own needs met by themselves, each other, and/or other suitable adults...

In a narcissistic family the responsibility for the meeting of emotional needs.. shifts to the child. The child becomes inappropriately responsible for meeting parental needs and in so doing is deprived of the opportunities for necessary experimentation and growth.

Elan Golomb.  Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self

Sandy Hotchkiss. Why Is It Always About You? : Saving Yourself from the Narcissists in Your Life

Barbara Marx Hubbard. Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence

Alice Miller. The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Alice Miller. Prisoners of Childhood: The Drama of the Gifted Child and the Search for the True Self by Alice Miller

Alice Miller. The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness

Marion Solomon, PhD.  Narcissism and Intimacy

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.  Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Re-Visited

Frances Vaughan, Ph.D. Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision

Alan Watts  The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are   "Modern Western culture and technology is inextricably tied to the belief in the existence of a self as a separate ego, separated from and in conflict with the rest of the world. In this classic book, Watts provides a lucid and simple presentation of an alternative view based on Hindi and Vedantic philosophy."

Connie Zweig, Jeremiah Abrams. Meeting the Shadow : The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

Connie Zweig, Steve Wolf. Romancing the Shadow: Illuminating the Dark Side of the Soul   [Amazon.com review:] "Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part that we generally try to ignore, but which can erupt in hurtful ways. As therapists Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf show in this landmark book, the shadow can actually be a source of emotional richness and vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an authentic life."
 

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