We are all idealists, and the only difference is what our ideals are. We are driven by the desire to destroy, dominate, control, and stifle life, which is also psychologically "idealistic".
- Erich Fromm
In this book, he deeply analyzes the normal pathology of modern people, including what is mental health, the religious vacuum in contemporary culture, the worship of production and consumption, the relationship between happiness and security, etc., and clearly explains the concept of mental health and humanistic anthropological theory, and tries to answer the question from multiple perspectives such as social economy, science, neuropsychology, animal experiments, and human innate passivity" Are people inherently lazy?" is the classic question.
Erich Fromm (1900-1980), German-American Jew, representative of the humanistic psychoanalytic school, is the author of "The Art of Love", "Escape from Freedom", "Possession or Existence", "The Human Heart", etc.
In addition, Fromm also tries to give solutions to how to overcome mental illnesses such as unsound society, narcissism, alienation, and necrophilia. In his discussion of narcissism, Fromm sharply pointed out that mental health lies in a minimum of narcissism, but psychosis is due to complete narcissism, and that the goal of human beings, both as individuals and as a group, is to overcome narcissism, to be able to care for others, and to overcome the worship of self.
I'm going to start by talking about overcoming narcissism.
I know most of you are familiar with Freud's concept of narcissism, and for those who are not, I will explain it very briefly. Before I begin, I would like to say that perhaps Freud's greatest discovery was the introduction of the concept of narcissism, and that there is probably no entity more important and fundamental than narcissism in the process of mental illness.
If I had to sum up mental health in one sentence, I would say that mental health lies in minimal narcissism. However, I would like to be more specific about this.
Freud's narcissism is an attitude that includes subjective things, my own feelings, my material needs, my other needs, which are more realistic than objective things, external things.
Of course, the clearest examples of this can be seen in babies – especially newborns – and the mentally ill. In the newborn, there is no other reality than the inner reality of need. To some extent, the outside world does not even exist from the point of view of the individual's conception of it.
The same is true for psychopaths. Psychosis – if we give it a universal definition – is exactly complete narcissism, in which the individual is almost completely disconnected from the world, although objectively it still exists.
Stills from "One Flew Over the Asylum".
Between infants and psychopaths, we are so-called normal people, and as Freud had already observed, narcissism plays a role in all of us to a greater or lesser extent.
Let me give you an example: a man falls in love with a woman and she has no interest in him. If he was very narcissistic, he would not be able to recognize that she was not interested. Because his logic thinks so, and he will often say, "I love her so much, how can she not love me?" and his only reality is his own love. Others may have different feelings, different reactions, but this is not realistic for him at all.
You know the writer's story: he met a friend and talked about his book, and I mean the writer's book. Fifteen minutes later, he said, "Oh! I've talked a lot about myself, now let's talk about you." The friend said, "Okay." But the writer will say, "What do you think of my new book?" and here you have the same narcissism, but it's so common, it's not as horrible and pathological as the first two examples.
In fact, narcissistic people simply cannot emotionally conceive of the outside world as it is. He perceives the world intellectually. If he doesn't, he's going crazy. But he didn't perceive the world emotionally. Given the confusion that often causes, I would say that what Freud and I mean here is a completely different concept from egotism and vanity.
A person can be very egotistical—you could say that implies a certain degree of narcissism, but not to a greater degree than the average person—and he is ego because he has no love. He wasn't really interested in the outside world, but he wanted everything. But people with a very ego may have a good perception of the outside world.
Vain people are usually – at least by some vanity – not particularly narcissistic people. He is usually a very restless person who always needs the affirmation of others. So he would always ask if you liked him, and if he was smart and psychoanalytically trained, he wouldn't do it directly, he would do it a little indirectly. But in reality, his main concern is still his own uneasy feelings. But it doesn't have to be narcissism.
A true narcissist doesn't care what you think of him at all, because there is no doubt that he thinks his opinion is true and every word he says is wonderful. If you meet a real narcissist who walks into a room and says, "Good morning," and thinks, "Isn't that wonderful?" and he just says "Good morning" there, that's a wonderful thing for him.
The result of narcissism is a distortion of objectivity and judgment, because for the narcissist, "my things are good, and bad things are not mine." The second consequence of narcissism is a lack of love, because obviously if I only care about myself, I don't love anyone in the outside world.
Sigmund Freud made a very important comment on the extent to which a relationship between an adult and a child, as well as between an adult, is love. In fact, this relationship is mostly just a narcissistic relationship. That is, in a mother's love for her child, she is actually loving herself because they are her child, and in the same way, if she happens to love her husband, she may continue to live with him.
I wouldn't say that this is necessarily the case, but it is very common, so the narcissistic personality of this kind of person is often hidden behind the surface, which is the love for another person.
Stills from "My King".
Another result you will see is personal narcissistic disappointment.
Then, you will see two reactions: one is anxiety and depression, and the other is anger. It depends on a number of factors. Studying the extent to which psychotic depression is the result of a severe injury to narcissism is a very interesting question in psychiatry. And what Freud called mourning with a partially depressive component is not the individual's mourning for the narcissistic image, because this self-image has been destroyed, but the mourning for another person who is integrated into it.
If you hurt the narcissist's feelings, you will see that the other person is extremely angry. Of course, this anger is conscious and otherwise depends mainly on social status. If he has power, then the anger may be conscious, and if your power is above him, he will not dare to be angry consciously, and you will see a depressed person. But if things change, you may see anger instead of depression.
Overcoming narcissism as the goal of life, which seems very different in manifestation, i.e. in the great religions of the East and the West and modern science. The goal of human beings is to overcome narcissism, to be able to care for others, to overcome self-worship, and so on. This is precisely the function of modern science, because results aside, modern science as a human being is an attitude of accepting reality as it is, rather than on the will of the individual.
The great hope is related to the development of modern science, and it also brings an objective and rational attitude, which is the key to overcoming narcissism.
Actually, it's very interesting that the most brilliant modern scientists today, I think are theoretical physicists, are arguably the most sane people we have ever seen in the world, with some notable exceptions, and I need not go into details. For me, much of that sanity today is reflected in the fact that the nuclear arms race is catastrophic and stupid. There is probably no one in the world, no professional group, who can see this so clearly as a physicist. Unfortunately, our industry is not in the first echelon of such vision, even though some would say it should be.
Trinity 核试爆（修复画面）
Our main concern here is not individual but social, so I must add a very important point: narcissism shifts from individual narcissism to group narcissism.
You will find narcissistic individuals completely obsessed with themselves. You can also sometimes find familial narcissism, the "crazy family". I remember a case in which mothers, daughters and sons — whose husbands had been driven away — all believed that they were the only decent people in the world;
Anyone who sees this will think that family narcissism is a bit strange. But when we see that the same phenomenon does not refer to a family, but to the country, people will not find it strange. The attitude of thinking that my country is the best, the most beautiful, the most this or that, when applied to a people or a religion, sounds praiseworthy, moral, and feels good, but the same attitude when applied to an individual or a family seems extremely offensive or crazy.
In psychology, group narcissism is not much different from individual narcissism.
This shift from individual narcissism to group narcissism can lead to religious hatred and nationalism, in which things do not necessarily change in essence.
However, there is one more thing that is very important. It is extremely difficult for a poor man who is penniless, dispossessed, and uneducated to maintain individual narcissism unless he is really completely insane. For him, the transformation of individual narcissism into national narcissism allows him to save the same narcissism without going crazy, because this narcissism has been recognized by other people, by leaders, by textbooks. Everything made him think that his country was the best, that it had traditions, that it had a future, that it had justice, that it had morals, and that the people of other countries, especially in times of political trouble, were worthless, mostly criminals, immorals, and so on.
Stills from "Oppenheimer".
As I emphasized earlier, once an individual has successfully transferred his personal narcissism into the group, he can maintain the same narcissism without going crazy because this narcissism is recognized by others. It is a pervasive insanity with consequences very similar to those of personal narcissism that I described earlier.
For example, you can see through the data that in some countries, the poorest and most educated are not only the most narcissistic, but also the most nationalistic. This is true for the United States, as many studies have shown it. For it is precisely because of the poverty of life, the material and emotional deprivation, that the individual has nothing to be proud of except his own nation. Nothing but this primal narcissism gave him a sense of accomplishment and pride.
In addition, I would like to emphasize one more point. Many of you may remember that Sigmund Freud once said that Copernicus, Darwin, and himself had seriously hurt human narcissism because they had proved that man was not the center of the universe at all, not God's unique creation, and that even man's own consciousness had only relative significance.
From a historical perspective, one might infer that narcissism has declined dramatically over the past two or three hundred years. But if you look at the nationalism that is rampant today, it has led people to play with the deadliest and most insane tool – nuclear weapons, which has the potential to lead to the destruction of humanity, so I think you have to admit that there is still something morbid and crazy about this ethnic narcissism, which is not at all in line with the expectation of a decrease in the level of narcissism in the course of history.
I think we might as well say that while the factors mentioned by Freud have seriously hurt human narcissism, they have not really destroyed or overcome it. Today, it is abundantly clear that this narcissism has been directed towards nationalism, government institutions, and so on, but primarily over technology.
This sounds both counterintuitive and paradoxical, and psychologically people today seem to be very proud of the atomic bomb, because it is exactly what humans can produce, and its ability to destroy the world has become the object of special attention from narcissism. In other words, using science to reduce narcissism not only fails to achieve tangible results, but instead leads to the use of this narcissism in the technical form of scientific results.
When we talk about mental health, it's about how to overcome narcissism. This question has plagued the human spirit for thousands of years. I'm not going to try to come up with a plan or a way to overcome narcissism. However, I would like to think theoretically.
We can distinguish between malignant and benign forms of narcissism. What I mean by malignant forms of narcissism is the kind of narcissism that you find in psychopaths or seriously ill people, and it does lead to the patients themselves. My appearance, my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my appetite, or anything else is the only thing that is real and the only thing that matters in the world. This kind of narcissism is malignant because it separates the individual from reason, love, companionship, and all the fun of life.
In a benign form of narcissism, narcissism is directed not to a specific area—such as my body, my mind—but to something that an individual has accomplished, an achievement, a scientific achievement, an economic achievement, or anything else. In other words, I might as well say that my narcissistic emotions are not directed at myself, but at something objective that I have created. It's still narcissistic, but benign, because by creating something, I'm also overcoming part of my narcissism, which is a dialectical process.
In the process of producing or creating something, I am compelled to relate myself to the world. It is true that narcissism does not lead to a blatant conflict between people, but it does lead to a competition about the best achievements.
Stills from "Truman's World".
I'm not saying that benign narcissism is the ideal or end point of human development, but it would be the next step in overcoming the sheer pathological narcissism of the individual that we have seen. I would say that there is another way, that the whole human race, and not just one people, becomes the object of narcissism; It is very strange that, despite the United Nations at work and despite the fact that we have made great progress in many areas, few people can be truly proud of humanity as a whole. If people had narcissistic feelings for humanity as they do for their own children, there would be no nuclear weapons today.
This will only be possible if every country in the world achieves tremendous socio-economic development. If I am too poor or miserable to achieve anything, or if my mind is victimized by local bullies or bureaucracy, then I need not be proud of that achievement.
The realization of this method of overcoming narcissism requires not only the acceptance of certain ideas by human beings, but also a fundamental change in the lives of all nations, which will make everyone, every country, proud of what they have achieved, and not proud of their means of destruction.