Narcissism, Shame, and the Taboo on Neediness Could Be Understood When the Mental Health Profession Understands Sympathy

• Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
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In recently studying an excellent book by Nancy McWilliams (Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, Guilford, ‘94), I ran across an interesting passage (pp. 183-4) in which the author mentions that narcissistic personalities, being dominated by shame, “run from their mistakes and hide from those who would find them out.” This of course would describe anyone under shame’s negative anti-light. McWilliams notes that given that the client demonstrates this effect of shame, a therapist is correspondingly inclined toward a disposition to nontherapeutically either (1) confront the client unempathically about his/her contribution to the problem associated with shame or (2) join the client in bemoaning the bad treatment the client got from others. The words “unempathically” (in “unempathically confront”) and “bemoaning” may be operative in identifying the nontherapeutic aspects of these two alternatives, however. A therapist could, that is, therapeutically both sympathize-without-bemoaning or confront-with-empathy. McWilliams sees the therapist’s task as daunting insofar as it seems to be necessary to expand the client’s awareness of the nature of his/her behavior but in such as way that the therapist does not stimulate so much shame that the person leaves treatment or keeps secrets. I was reminded of Don Nathanson’s constant reminder that therapy is for anyone (every therapist and every client) “an arena of shame.” McWilliams then suggests that one approach to the therapist’s daunting task of not stimulating too much shame is to ask, after the client complains and criticizes others, “Did you make your needs explicit?’ Her point in suggesting this is that narcissistic persons in particular have deep shame about asking for anything and that to admit to a need is to expose a deficiency. Since these clients regard it as humiliating to ask for what they need, their interpersonal life leaves them often deprived and miserable if others do not divine their needs.

Now I turn to my purpose in presenting this item for discussion form McWilliams’s excellent book. First I want to be clear that I intend no criticism of what McWilliams has to say. I admire all the works by her that I have studied, and I think she is skillfully addressing a difficult subject in this passage. My purpose in presenting this item is that I think it is a most appropriate topic for this forum, and I would bet that many participants have some wonderful thoughts to add to the general topic having to do with both the importance and difficulty of using nonshaming therapeutic techniques. What I would like to add to McWilliams’s notion is that in asking a client if he/she has made his/her needs explicit, a therapist could add that (1) it is of course difficult to make one’s needs explicit and (2) it does feel awkward if not embarrassing and (3) everyone often feels defective for being needy. Harry Guntrip, by the way, believed that a “taboo on tenderness” (a notion presented to the British psychoanalytic community many decades ago by Ian Suttie) was really caused by a more basic taboo on neediness. Guntrip believed this taboo was culturally entrenched; so there is nothing unique about someone feeling ashamed of being needy. In effect, my idea is to say something to make it not only less shamefull to be needy but, especially, to make it also less shameful to feel ashamed of feeling needy.

I hope some of you will find this a constructive posting to stimulate more ideas on this subject. I appreciate the very thoughtful creativity of this forum and admire everyone’s contributions very much. One of my particular interests in learning more about affect theory and, especially, its value in expanding our understanding of shame is that we just may be able to restore a place of respectability for sympathy. The social psychologist Lauren Wispe wrote The Psychology of Sympathy, which is a real eye opener. For although “empathy” is an acceptable word in psychotherapeutic circles, “sympathy” is usually taboo. In fact, the disposition toward sympathy is what makes therapy possible if there is any true therapeutic motive to really help another in distress. I have attended workshops where “sympathy” was spoken of with derision and contempt. It is really a shamed concept. Although Wispe does not make the claim, I believe that it is in shaming sympathy that much therapy training go astray. I often say, with humorous irony as a forethought, that sympathy is psychotherapy’s “s-word.” There is another s-word, “shame,” that we are just now beginning to bring out of taboo-land. Maybe sympathy can come out of hiding someday and then therapists will be able to openly admit that they really do want to help people in distress--i.e., behave with sympathy. If we permitted ourselves to not be ashamed of our sympathy, it may be easier to devise nonshaming therapeutic interventions. All reactions welcomed and appreciated.

............. “I always try to learn from others mistakes because I won’t have time enough to make them all myself.”

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