Hi all! I have only recently discovered Dr G's Voicelessness website so I wasn't a participant on the old board. An NPD parent did indeed leave me without a voice for many years and it's been good to find this fresh perspective on NPD generally. I like the clean lines of the new board.
I was musing to myself about a choice of user name and decided on Rosencrantz in the context of my life as an adult child of a parent with NPD. It's a name I've never even thought of using before and I began to wonder what I might be saying about myself!
I am aware that the character first appears in Shakespeare's Hamlet and is taken up again in a British play called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (which, as far as I can remember, I've never read or seen). My impression is that Rosencrantz is rather a hapless fellow. Doesn't really represent me very well as I'm a woman and fairly competent to boot!!
So I just did an internet search on the name.
The first description I came across explained to me precisely why my psyche (or whatever) had chosen the name.
Read on....
"A common reaction to a script like that of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is confusion. Where are we? What are the rules of this world we are in? How am I supposed to understand exactly what is going on and why, when I'm not sure at any particular moment about what's going on, what sort of reality I'm dealing with, and why characters are behaving the way they are. Too much of this seems either incomprehensible or just a silly game, the point of which escapes me. So what's going on? Where is the horizon of significance that I'm used to confronting?"
Join me in laughter at the power of the psyche to know and understand much more than our poor logical brains. What a wonderful description of life at the hands of an NPD parent.
I AM that Rosencrantz!
Best wishes to all - and look forward to future conversations.
R
