Just look at yourself

At the commencement of this study there was a desire on my part to explore the processes negotiated by women who feel compelled to alter their appearance with cosmetic surgery. I felt sure there would be a more complex explanation than the common assumptions which malign, or rather shame, women who undertake such surgeries by characterizing them as merely vain or narcissistic. As the study proceeded, however, it became increasingly plausible that narcissism, a term enshrouded in contention, is implicated in resolving shame. Despite Freud’s (1957) attempt to understand narcissism as normally enacted behaviour, it was evident from the reading undertaken for this chapter that little headway has been made in conceptualizing narcissism in more normative forms. The term ‘narcissism’ is usually associated with clinical pathology. This chapter examines how we have come to understand narcissism. It draws from selected texts, including the Ovidian (1997, 2004) poem, to argue that the conceptualization of narcissism has been overshadowed by pathological connotation, which has occluded the possibility of understanding it in alternative ways. This chapter proposes that shame, and the threat of social exclusion which underpins it, presents an occasion for narcissism. Shame must firstly be acknowledged as a shared social phenomenon. It is directly implicated in the management of the body’s boundaries, and is centrally important to the terms under which we learn to become socially embodied. Shame, moreover, and the narcissism the self deploys in managing the physiological, emotional and aesthetic dimensions of embodiment, informs and shapes social life. Grooming practices, and those associated with the presentation of the body in particular, are located at the nexus of these ideas. Schilder (1935) did not discuss shame but he recognized the importance of

narcissism in body image construction. He understood that the dedicated concern for one’s body and its appearance is hardly abnormal and, in writing ‘We have to expect strong emotions concerning our own body. We love it. We are narcissistic’ (1935:15), he acknowledges narcissism as a shared, prosaic phenomenon. In contrast, depictions of one’s appearance as loathed in the extreme, or substandard at the least, infused the discussions of pre-surgical body imagery presented by participants in this study. Clearly, they had not always loved their body’s appearance but, in agreement with Schilder’s

comments above, their natural inclinations were to want to love it. This study found that heightened appearance dissatisfaction fractures the self-concept. It draws the self to critique its reflection before a mirror, allowing it to differentiate its body image and, through the body’s imagery, the body. Participants claimed they undertook cosmetic surgery because they disliked their appearance, but they also spoke of wanting to feel better about themselves, which suggests that heightened appearance dissatisfaction not only destabilizes the self-concept but also enhances the self ’s vulnerability to shame. Significantly, Schilder also understood that it is through narcissism that the self, body image and body achieve their unity. In agreement with his assertion, this chapter proposes that narcissism arises in response to the shaming effects of appearance dissatisfaction. Normative forms of narcissism, initiated on this occasion through ritualized grooming practices, are mobilized in an attempt to resolve the division between the self, its body image and body, which manifests when the self is dissatisfied with its appearance. Narcissism is, as Schilder would have it, enacted to restore cohesion within the self. In keeping with the psychosocial position observed in this study, and in agreement with Elias’ premise (1978) that social life is interwoven, the notions of self-love and loathing articulated by participants also correlated with the self ’s evaluation of its appearance in terms of its acceptability within the broader social context. In this study, cosmetic surgery represented a strategy of amendment enacted to resolve the fractures within the self-concept arising in response to appearance dissatisfaction, with a view to restoring not only self-acceptance but social acceptability. My interest in the relationship between shame and narcissism developed

over the course of this study and the discussion which follows is introductory at best. It is offered by way of final observations taken from the research and suggested as a recommendation for future study. Shame and narcissism, this chapter proposes, must be understood as interrelated concepts closely aligned to the psychosocial processes of self-evaluation and correction. To consider narcissism in isolation from the conditions which precede it is a serious oversight. While narcissism is commonly understood as a personality disorder, this chapter argues that limiting its meaning to pathology excludes the possibility of understanding shame and narcissism as related, normative, phenomena. Furthermore, restricting narcissism’s meaning to pathology accords society something of a reprieve in that it diverts attention from considering the terms under which the dissatisfied self negotiates the existential dilemmas of selfloathing and self-love, and the social processes which inform and frame them. Achieving self-love, it would seem, is something of a contemporary quandary, perhaps because the possibilities once available to the self, namely, the embodying of self-love through the incorporation of a divine entity, no longer appeals to or sustains the modern, frequently secular, self. Shame is a structure of self-regulation through which the wider rules of

culture are learned and upheld (Elias 1978). The shame dynamic is first encountered in childhood when those who breach the rules of their social

group are directed to enact a shame sequence. They are either removed or instructed to withdraw from any given social setting and directed to reflect upon themselves, with a view to making the appropriate corrections prior to their social reincorporation. The socially incorporated merge and cohere within the broader social body, whereas the unincorporated risk expulsion, exclusion and the withdrawal of the support needed to sustain life (Will 1987). Put another way, those deemed shamed are directed to ‘look at themselves’, to acknowledge their faults and initiate any action required to restore themselves to the standard deemed satisfactory by significant others. Shame demands selfreflection, self-evaluation and, finally, self-correction. Shame is potentially powerful since actual and imagined perceptions of social exclusion threaten the shamed subject, but there are, within the shame dynamic, mechanisms to address its amendment. Shame provides a framework through which the self assesses its performance in accordance with prevailing cultural ideals. Through learned shame structures, and the restorative function availed through narcissism, the self regulates and maintains its self-esteem, while managing its social status. Normally occurring narcissism, this chapter proposes, arises as a consequence of exposed shame. It encompasses, moreover, any strategy enacted to recover or avert the shamed state. Linking shame and narcissism is not a new idea. The small group of psy-

choanalysts who study shame argue that it is a form of narcissistic injury. It has been described as the ‘veiled companion of narcissism’ (Wurmser 1987) and the ‘underside of narcissism’ (Morrison 1989), but whether shame initiates narcissism, as appeared the case in this study, is not entirely clear. Lewis (1971:89) proposed that shame, on a behavioural level, tends to evoke restitutions or narcissistic affirmations within the self. In addition, she argued, shame when not corrected could lead to ‘psychic symptoms’ (Lewis 1971:27). Her observations shift narcissism and its reparatory relationship to shame from the extreme of pathology towards a normative response enacted to address shame. In later work Lewis (1987b:95) proposed that shame and narcissism ‘overlap’ since the self is positioned centrally in both. Narcissism, she wrote, ‘is a positive experience of the self ’ when recognized as ‘a defence against the hatred of the self in shame’ (Lewis 1987b:95-96). At around the same time that Lewis wrote about shame, others in her field

described a similar type of patient whom they classified as the ‘narcissistic personality’ (Lewis 1987b:95). Writing independently, however, Lewis proposed that shame lies at the root of behaviours more commonly diagnosed as narcissistic. She reanalysed case studies published by her peers, including work by Kohut and Kernburg (in Lewis 1987b:92-102), both influential psychologists writing on narcissism during the 1970s, and argued that they had failed to identify the shame evident in their patients’ histories. Furthermore, she added, the grandiosity, arrogance and conceit which clinicians levelled at the patients they diagnosed as narcissistic was accusatory, infantilizing and, ultimately, shaming. Lewis steadfastly maintained that shame had been overlooked in the manifestation of narcissistic behaviours.