ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the links between narcissism, narcissistic injury, dysregulation, and aggression are explored. Rooted in infancy, and subject to regression in later life, old encoded memory of aversive life events is activated. The injuries and disillusionments of life through infancy and later create ruptures and disequilibrium. Memory is rooted in the unconscious and subject to the repetition compulsion Freud identified, an adaptive survival mechanism that enables revisiting of aversive events encoded for future reference. Kandel’s neuroscientific research into memory is used to demonstrate these processes. Initial states of psychic meaninglessness, what Bion referred to as beta-elements, are linked to primitive interpretation by the infant, developing forms of thinking to represent emotional states and changes to homeostatic ideals. But thinking can also be perverted, split off from the emotional origins and channelled to into ideological narratives, usually fed by unmetabolised aggressive or rage signals. Further data from PW Botha and Apartheid South Africa is used to demonstrate the universality of the villain-victim inversion due to narcissistic threat or injury. Regression to original injuries forms part of a loss of linking between experience and ideation. Under the right conditions, social and geopolitical trends can be driven by these perversions of the aggressive response.
