by Peter Wright
Romantic Love
Romantic love can be reconceptualized as a cluster of superstimuli, with each facet driving the human nervous system into over-excitement. That excitement tends to negatively impact men’s long-term welfare. The damage is not contained there. Our social and familial world is disintegrating rapidly under the excesses and toxicity of romantic love. In a way, romantic love has become one of the most anti-human exploitations of human biology to ever grace our species.
To understand where this originated we need to take a brief look at the history of romantic love, previously called courtly love, to show that the same elements were already at work at its inception. As laid out in great detail by medieval forebears, the literature reveals the same exaggerated neoteny, enhancements of sexuality, and the same obsessions surrounding control of romantic attachment.
While the neoteny ploy has been in operation at least since ancient Egypt in the form of colored eyeshadow and eyeliners, the practice gained greater popularity after the Crusaders found eyelid-coloring cosmetics used in the Middle East and who spread the practice throughout Europe.5 By the Middle Ages, European aristocrats were widely using cosmetics, with France and Italy becoming the chief centers of cosmetics manufacturing, including the use of stimulant compounds like Belladonna (Italian name meaning “beautiful woman”) that would make the eyes appear larger.6
Thus neoteny, manufactured by artisan techniques, became the cultural inheritance of each successive generation of girls who were – and still are – taught the art of applying and then displaying makeup, especially to the eyes. Such practices probably encouraged praises of women’s eyes in troubadour poetry, such as we read by the poet Ulrich von Liechtenstein in his autobiography titled In The Service of Ladies. There we read;
“The pure, sweet lady knows well how to laugh beautifully with her sparkling eyes. Therefore I wear the crown of lofty joys, as her eyes become full of dew from the ground of her pure heart, with her laughing. Immediately I am wounded by Minnie.”
Clothing too was always used to enhance sexuality, however fashions didn’t change much over the course of millennia and their sexual utility was not fully realized. The beginnings of frequent change in clothing styles, along with recognition of their multitude ways of enhancing sexuality, began in Europe at a time that has been reliably dated by fashion historians James Laver and Fernand Braudel to the middle of the 14th century – a period when sexualised items like lingerie and corsets began their rise to fame.7
As mentioned earlier, the most powerful of romantic love’s tricks was the tantalizing of men with a promise of attachment, a goal that would remain largely out of reach. Stories of the troubadours attest to a hope-filled agony that plagued the male lover, with men dwelling in a strange kind of purgatory in waiting for a few “solaces” from the beloved.
The medieval love-game went into full swing when codes of romantic conduct encouraged a toying with the two extremes of acceptance and rejection. Compare the above list of dating rules with the following list from The Art of Courtly Love – a love manual widely disseminated in the 12th century:
Love is a certain inborn suffering.
Love cannot exist in the individual who cannot be jealous.
Love constantly waxes and wanes.
The value of love is commensurate with its difficulty of attainment.
Apprehension is the constant companion of true love.
Suspicion of the beloved generates jealousy and therefore intensifies love.
Eating and sleeping diminish greatly when one is aggravated by love.
The lover is always in fear that his love may not gain its desire.
The greater the difficulty in exchanging solaces, and the more the desire for them, and love increases.
Too many opportunities for seeing each other and talking will decrease love.8
Shakespeare’s most romantic of plays tells the same story, with Juliet keeping her lover midway between coming and going, between stable pair-bonding and the single life. Here Juliet tells her obedient lover;
‘Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone.
And yet no further than a wanton’s bird,
That lets it hop a little from his hand
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
And with a silken thread plucks it back again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty.
To which Romeo replies, in accord with the expectations of romantic love;
‘I would I were thy bird.
Following this little detour into history we now come to a final juncture of this article where we ask Aristotle’s million dollar question – that for the sake of which. To what end are these superstimuli employed?
Many would offer the cliched answer that such practices garner “reproductive success,” that the woman employing them gains a quality mate and produces offspring to perpetuate the species. But this explanation is too simple. For starters, there are other aims of a human life than reproduction; such as garnering of food resources, securing wealth, attachment needs, or of securing narcissistic gratification for a woman who may never intend to have offspring – the resources garnered via her carefully orchestrated superstimuli can serve other ends.
Moreover, it appears not to have entered the minds of the reproduction enthusiasts that such strategies may, in fact, be deleterious to reproduction – all one has to do look at the failing relationships everywhere, lowering birth rates, and decaying societies in the West that do not portend a future of success riding on the back of the superstimuli we’ve grown so fond of exploiting.
Narcissistic gratification is certainly one motive we’ve under-emphasized in our focus on reproduction, though it too is not the final motive. There can be nothing more gratifying to the narcissistic impulse than to wield power – as do most women – and to this end superstimuli places immense power in their hands.
Narcissistic indulgence may well be a heavily socialized trait in modern women, but it also proves to be a short-term windfall with not so gainly long-term results. Evidence shows that the misery index for women has risen sharply in the age when they “have it all.”
To summarize all that we’ve said, the extreme gynocentrism we live with today is a freak, a Frankenstein that on some level should not be, or at least should not be any more than the super-sized Cuckoo chick that swells in the nest of a tiny finch. It’s an event that our systems were not specifically designed for – yet we remain caught in the insoluble loop of desire that keeps it going.
We might think of it as a propaganda campaign every bit as strong as those used during the world wars to target our territorial reflexes, only this campaign has been in continual use and refinement for the last 900 years.
Whatever gynocentric impulse lies buried in our nervous system, it has now been supersized, and we continue to supersize it with ever more refinements of superstimuli. But if we regain our awareness we might, just might, kick this Cuckoo’s egg out of our biological nest – that can begin by recognizing that we have been hypnotized and deciding that we no longer wish to indulge it.
It’s as simple as choosing not to chase the dragon, but to slay it.
Sources:
[1] Wikpedia article for Superstimulus.
[2] Esther Vilar, The Manipulated Man, (1971).
[3] Jones, D., Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness and Facial Neoteny: Cross-Cultural Evidence and Implications, Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 5 (1995), pp. 723-748.
[4] Cunningham, M.; Roberts, A.; Vu, C., “Their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours”: consistency and variability in the cross-cultural perception of female physical attractiveness”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68 (2): 261–79 (1995).
[5] John Toedt, Chemical Composition of Everyday Products, (2005).
[6] Linda D. Rhein, Mitchell Schlossman, Surfactants in Personal Care Products and Decorative Cosmetics, (2006)
[7] Laver, James., Abrams, H.N., The Concise Histo
ry of Costume and Fashion, (1979).
Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries, Vol 1: The Structures of Everyday Life“, William Collins & Sons, (1981)
[8] Andreas Capellanus: The Art of Courtly Love (republished 1990). Capellanus’ love manual was written in 1185 at the request of Marie de Champagne, daughter of King Louis VII of France and of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Cuckoo image by vladlen666 – Own work, CC0,
*This article co-authored by Peter Wright and Paul Elam
12. Gynocentrism as a Narcissistic Pathology
In this article I set out to show that gynocentrism is a gendered expression of narcissism, and that it operates in the limited context of heterosexual relationships.
To make a case that gynocentrism is narcissism we first have to define what narcissism is, which can be done by recounting the original Greek myth of narcissus, followed by an overview of how the concept was taken up by the field of psychology and elaborated into a diagnostic entity. Finally this article will take the diagnostic entity of narcissism as described by psychologists and compare its criteria with those typically applied to the notion of gynocentrism to discover how closely, and in what ways, the two concepts align.
Narcissus myth
One day the handsome youth Narcissus became thirsty after a day hunting in the mountains with his companions. After discovering a pool of water he leaned upon its edge to drink and saw himself reflected in the water. Narcissus did not realize it was merely his own reflection and fell deeply in love with it, as if it was somebody else. Here is the account of his ordeal as told by Ovid:
While he seeks to slake his thirst another thirst springs up, and while he drinks he is smitten by the sight of the beautiful form he sees. He loves an unsubstantial hope and thinks that has substance which is only shadow. He looks in speechless wonder at himself and hangs there motionless in the same expression, like a statue carved from Parian marble. Prone on the ground, he gazes at his eyes, twin stars, and his locks, worthy of Bacchus, worthy of Apollo; on his smooth cheeks, his ivory neck, the glorious beauty of his face, the blush mingled with snowy white: all things, in short, he admires for which he is himself admired. Unwittingly he desires himself; he praises, and is himself what he praises; and while he seeks, is sought; equally he kindles love and burns with love. How often did he offer vain kisses on the elusive pool. How often did he plunge his arms into the water seeking to clasp the neck he sees there, but did not clasp himself in them!
What he sees he knows not; but that which he sees he burns for, and the same delusion mocks and allures his eyes. O fondly foolish boy, why vainly seek to clasp a fleeting image? What you seek is nowhere; but turn yourself away, and the object of your love will be no more. That which you behold is but the shadow of a reflected form and has no substance of its own. With you it comes, with you it stays, and it will go with you — if you can go.
No thought of food or rest can draw him from the spot; but, stretched on the shaded grass, he gazes on that false image with eyes that cannot look their fill and through his own eyes perishes. Raising himself a little, and stretching his arms to the trees, he cries:
“Did anyone, O ye woods, ever love more cruelly than I? You know, for you have been the convenient haunts of many lovers. Do you in the ages past, for your life is one of centuries, remember anyone who has pined away like this .” I am charmed, and I see; but what I see and what charms me I cannot find — so great a delusion holds my love. And, to make me grieve the more, no mighty ocean separates us, no long road, no mountain ranges, no city walls with close -shut gates; by a thin barrier of water we are kept apart. He himself is eager to be embraced. For, often as I stretch my lips towards the lucent wave, so often with upturned face he strives to lift his lips to mine. You would think he could be touched — so small a thing it is that separates our loving hearts. Whoever you are, come forth hither! Why, O peerless youth, do you elude me? or whither do you go when I strive to reach you? Surely my form and age are not such that you should shun them, and me too the nymphs have loved.
Some ground for hope you offer with your friendly looks, and when I have stretched out my arms to you, you stretch yours too. When I have smiled, you smile back; and I have often seen tears, when I weep, on your cheeks. My becks you answer with your nod; and, as I suspect from the movement of your sweet lips, you answer my words as well, but words which do not reach my ears. — Oh, I am he! I have felt it, I know now my own image, t burn with love of my own self; I both kindle the flames and suffer them. What shall I do. Shall I be wooed or woo. Why woo at all? What I desire, I have; the very abundance of my riches beggars me. Oh, that I might be parted from my own body! and, strange prayer for a lover, I would that what I love were absent from me! And now grief is sapping my strength; but a brief space of life remains to me and I am cut off in my life’s prime. Death is nothing to me, for in death I shall leave my troubles; I would he that is loved might live longer; but as it is, we two shall die together in one breath.”
He spoke and, half distraught, turned again to the same image. His tears ruffled the water, and dimly the image came back from the troubled pool. As he saw it thus depart, he cried: “Oh, whither do you flee? Stay here, and desert not him who loves thee, cruel one! Still may it be mine to gaze on what I may not touch, and by that gaze feed ray unhappy passion.” While he thus grieves, he plucks away his tunic at its upper fold and beats his bare breast with pallid hands. His breast when it is struck takes on a delicate glow; just as apples sometimes, though white in part, flush red in other part, or as grapes hanging in clusters take on a purple hue when not yet ripe. As soon as he sees this, when the water has become clear again, he can bear no more ; but, as the yellow wax melts before a gentle heat, as hoar frost melts before the warm morning sun, so does he, wasted with love, pine away, and is slowly consumed by its hidden fire.1
Unable to leave the allure of his own image, he came to realize that his love could not be reciprocated. Unable to eat, his body slowly wasted away from the fire of passion burning inside him, eventually disappearing entirely and turning into a golden narcissus flower that still grows along the water’s edge today.
Narcissism as a psychological designation
Twentieth century psychiatrists saw in the Narcissus myth a useful metaphor for behaviors they were documenting in some of their patients, and so chose to refer to those behaviors as narcissism. As the figure chosen for representing narcissism was male, it may have helped to birth an assumption that it’s a mostly male pathology, which is misleading as both men and women suffer from narcissism. Those early psychiatrists might just as easily have chosen a female character to symbolize the self-absorbed personality, such as Little Princess Cottongrass of fable who, like Narcissus, became fixated ‘with her own heart’ by a pool of water.2 Little Princess Cottongrass Personality Disorder however doesn’t quite have a clinical ring to it.
The development of narcissism as a psychological concept has a long and complex history, covering ideas like primary narcissism which is viewed as a healthy ingredient of childhood development, through to pathological manifestations that cause personal and interpersonal suffering, such as narcissistic neurosis or narcissistic personality disorder.
For the purpose of this article we will turn to the DSM-5 which includes one of the best descriptions of pathological narcissism, which it describes as “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.”3 The DSM’s nine diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder will be given below and compared point-by-point with typical attributions made of gynocentrism by key/relevant writers and scholars.
Acquired Situational Narcissism
Robert B Millman, Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University, coined the phrase, “acquired situational narcissism” (ASN).4 It is narcissism that is brought about or “triggered” by an experience of celebri
ty status that manifests the same symptoms as narcissistic personality disorder. Millman suggests that it can also be triggered by an experience of power that comes with any favored or privileged social status or occupational position. In that sense it is the environment that facilitates the exaggeration of narcissistic traits in an individual that may have only existed previously as a mild trait or as latent potential.
Some possible examples of acquired situational narcissism are;
Cultural narcissism (A culture-specific manifestation of narcissism)5,6
Ingroup narcissism (Ingroup-specific manifestations of narcissism)7
Medical narcissism (Narcissism among medical professionals)8
Celebrity narcissism (Narcissism among individuals achieving fame)9
Leadership narcissism (Narcissism among leaders and CEOs)10
And, following these examples, I include gynocentrism as a situational manifestation of narcissism, i.e.;
Gynocentric narcissism (Narcissism displayed by women/girls in intimate relationships with men/boys).11
Gynocentrism
Before going on to compare gynocentric narcissism with the DSM-5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, we will need to isolate a consensual understanding of gynocentrism from historical texts and modern theory. We will start with two key historical texts, the first being from Lester F. Ward who was the first person to propose a general theory of gynocentrism, and the second from Irish author George A. Birmingham;