Arcipelago N. Variazioni sul narcisismo

Narcissus was a very beautiful young man; he drowned in his beauty and gave life to a flower. Ovid gathered up this flower and turned it into a myth, Freud turned it into a psychiatric reality: narcissism. It inhabits our loves, appears in our conversations, and seduces politicians and artists, as well as criminals. A tightrope-walker of self-esteem, Narcissus walked the tightrope between a healthy love for oneself and its pathological celebration. Which can become a diagnosis: narcissistic personality disorder. As long as we try to cage it with just one definition, we will never be able to know it: we need a sextant and the ability to navigate the reefs and breakers of self-esteem. There are arrogant narcissists and very shy ones, those with tough skin and very thin-skinned ones. They all swim in an archipelago of possibilities: satiated with arrogance, surrounded by charisma, blessed with success, crushed by depression, tormented by dissatisfaction, possessed by a void, suicides out of frustration. They can poison a relationship to the point of sadism and manipulate others to the point of psychosis. Almost always, they are hounded by four beasts: fear, rage, envy, and shame.