Just wondering

[English]

I wonder if personality disorders are more prevalent in the those places in the developed world where family and support is so fragmented, especially in US.  Does a nearby extended familly reduce personality disorders?  What are your thoughts?  I can't tell from my own experiences as my family was/is fragmented so the only "support" I had was with crazy parents.  I can tell that grandparents on both sides were messed up too.  NM's mother was divorced in the 1940's, so her family was broken and non-supportive at a time when divorce was taboo.   

[gratitude28]

My NM had a big family - 6 kids (actually 7, but one died young). She paints the family as Beaver Cleaverish, but from what I really gather, her father was abusive and a drunk diabetic and her mother pretended everything was wonderful. It is interesting... how do the family dynamics contribute?

[English]

NM had a large family, one of eight.  All the kids are dysfunctional in some way.  Some of them turned to religion strongly.  Some moved away and separated themselves from family.  Many have issues. But NM's family didn't have an extended family.  Just the 10 of them.  NF or whatever disorder he has, was one of two children and they did not live near family.  When I say near I mean very close.  His extended family was about 1 1/2 hours away.  I wonder what it's like living very close, i.e. next door or a few houses down from more family.  Or at least in the same small town. 

Interesting-as I'm thinking of any of my parents' families, I'm getting an anxiety attack. The anxiety it seems is coming from imagining dealing with NM or NF and escaping to extended family.  But it's the thinking of NM and NF that's causing the anxiety and then getting in trouble for escaping to them for help and the shame.  All in my imaginiation.

[Twoapenny]

Hi English,

Years ago I read a book called 'The Continuum Concept'.  I forget the name of the author, but she was a psychologist who had lived with and studied tribal groups - mostly North American Indians but other parts of the world as well.  The book focuses mostly on raising children, but she makes interesting comments about the tribal group system as a whole in comparision to our 'Western'way of living.

She talks about how tribes live in harmony with nature, eating what they can grow and catch when it's available.  They rarely over eat because there isn't usually enough food to be able to do that.  They make most of what they need themselves, spend most of their time outdoors, live in close communities, with families - mum, dad and the children - sharing the one hut and all sleeping together.  They usually have quite defined roles for men and women and strong traditions regarding coming of age, marriage, hunting rituals and so on.  Basically they have very little in their lives that is artificially constructed.

She goes on to make the point that they have no word in their vocabulary for work or stress.  They don't, as a rule, suffer from mental health problems, learning difficulties, cancers, tumours, anxiety, depression, eating disorders or conditions like ME.  They don't really have 'disability' as such; people get injured hunting but they don't have the vast range of health problems that we do and they certainly don't have DSM IV!

I've not read anything else about tribal groups or about the lady who wrote the book so I don't know how valid or accurate her statements were, but basically she felt that the majority of our problems - health and social - were related to the toxins we have all be ingesting for decades now and our 'artificially' constructed lives.  I guess this would include all the different kinds of abuses as well, which I suppose are manifestations of people's inability to cope with their own demons, as it were.

My parents families are all basket cases, as are they and I suspect much of their craziness was passed down to them and has been passed down to their children.  I do wonder how much of it stems from our move away from people having a little patch of land and a goat and their focus being on finding enough food to eat to our world of so much being man made and us needing to have everything available constantly.  Life would have been incredibly hard in those days but I wonder was it healthier, mentally?  I know more people died but given that we have an over populated world now it would seem that nature was doing what she does - keeping the balance that's necessary for survival.

It's a very interesting question  Personally, I find healthy, understanding people help a huge amount.  Unfortunately I didn't know any until I was in my late twenties   I try hard now to seek out people who aren't toxic to me, but it's hard to move away from those old patterns and I still find myself making the same mistakes.

[English]

Twoapenny
This is very interesting.  It reminds me of a show I saw on two types of societies: jungle people and desert people.  What you are describing sounds like the jungle people.  We in western society, what I really mean is "modern society",  live like desert people-competing for resources, fighting.  Jungle people live in harmony with nature and live cooperatively.  They have abundant (well sufficient anyway) resources.  I'm afraid I don't remember much else about it.  Competition just creates SO MUCH stress.  Everything in our society is based on competition.   I even fantisize (sp?) about living in a close "jungle" group of people.   

Our society is so competitive; it's survial of the fittest.  Even in school where we as teachers try to get everyone to work together cooperatively- competition is rampant.  I'm not saying all competition is bad, but it has gotten us in some unsafe situations.  For example the gulf oil well spill.  Cooperation (the government) has to fix it.  Sorry starting to get political; I'll stop.

I just dream of living in a jungle with non-stressed happy people.  I know that they basically have no medical care, but with no stress they need a lot less.  They eat healthy food, not additives and preservatives.  They don't have a myriad of chemicals asaulting them all day-gas fumes, air pollution, chemicals from carpet, cleaning chemicals......

Don't get me wrong. I am VERY competitive, but I do not like it.  It is very stressful.  The person I am most competitive with is myself.  I always try and outdo myself.  I'm looking for perfection, but of course, I'll never get there.    So I get down on myself because I'm not perfect.  And if I do do something perfectly, say a test, then it was "too easy".

As you can tell it's the end of the school year, so I am stressed out and burned out for the year.  I need a break.   One more week!!!! (maniacally)

[mudpuppy]

  People who live in the jungle don't eat too many unhealthy things. However healthy things often eat them.
And if the rains don't come or they come too often people don't eat unhealthy things or healthy things; they just slowly and painfully starve to death. And if you'd like to see competition just wait til there's one bowl of rice left for fifty people.
  In large parts of Africa and most of the rest of the earth where tribalism dominates severe abuse of women and children, especially girls, is commonplace and often condoned.
  People are people. Whether you live in Minnesota, Guyana, Bangalore or Cameroon if you're around decent people it doesn't matter what kind of a family you're in; life is tolerable, maybe even good.
If you're around a bunch of miserable creeps, not only is a close knit family or tribe a curse it's also pretty handy to be able to pick up sticks and move to the next village over without getting your head shrunk by the tribe next door.

mud

[Hopalong]

I think there's something about primitive life that's as brutish and terrible, just like Mud describes. (FGM makes me insane, as does war.)

But I do believe there's a spiritual piece of it we miss and could refashion in our lives. I think maybe a lot of people do, even by accident.

Just from always, always, always being present with nature, either respectful of it (or dominated by it or both...there is also a knowledge, kind of deep, that you are always always always part of something, connected to it...you don't have to "strain" to figure that out. You just know it.

I think many people in modern culture miss that, unless you work on land or walk in woods or fish, etc...

When nature is something you "go visit" or "go spend time in on rare occasions" (if you live an urban or suburban life) and you add to that the lack of a family "village" -- you don't have the one-species-among-others and one-person-always-connected-to-others thing that some other cultures do.

I like life with toothbrushes better than life with boar hunting. And damned if I'd survive a village where I was a slave, essentially, as so many are.

But there is also an aspect to mental health that I think comes from knowing who we are as a species in nature...

Right now, we're one that is crapping into our own drinking water (the Gulf). And are near the tipping point of destroying our own hut.

Hops

[teartracks]

Hi Hops,

...there is also a knowledge, kind of deep, that you are always always always part of something, connected to it...you don't have to "strain" to figure that out. You just know it.

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Romans 1:20

I like knowing that I'm not just a cluster of nerve endings and appetite!

tt


 

[mudpuppy]

Right now, we're one that is crapping into our own drinking water (the Gulf).

 I'm not too sure who drinks the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico , but as bad as the BP spill is it still pales into insignificance with the deaths and disease pandemic every single moment of every single day of every single year in the drinking water of those living the primitive life who literally have people and animals crapping in their drinking water.
There's nothing spirtual about schistosomiasis or bot fly larvae or hookworms, liver flukes, cholera and a never ending list of other disease and parasites beyond.
  And a good portion of the spirituality those conditions have given birth to is a bizarre and fatalistic  animism which has helped make escape from their conditions almost impossible.
  And given that, IMO it's not a spiritual deficit that living away from nature causes but a lack of appreciation for where and how our physical needs are still met and an amnesia of the horror and hardships that living the primitive life truly entails.
 
mud

[Hopalong]

Yes. I did not say that Western culture is "bad" and living without modern medicine or industrial progress is "good". I say that we have gone so far in the materialistic & mindless consumption direction that I believe we (many) have lost a positive spiritual connection with nature that is inherent in many primitive cultures and could be respectfully learned from. Found an interesting paper...pasted below. I don't agree with Muir that you have to leave nature completely undisturbed (how would we eat?) but I think the Gulf is a good symbol of what this species does NOT need. Plastic water bottles, massive amounts of energy. I think we have to change the whole way we live and we may be too late. Some Native Americans considered everything they did to/asked from the earth in terms of its effect on the Seventh Generation. Most Americans/Westerners consider how it will affect the earth for about the next seven minutes. Including me...I'm struggling every day with how inadequate my response is. But I know without doubt that it's one of the highest spiritual values I could personally strive for, to respect the interdependent web of life of which I am a part (just a part, not with dominion). I believe we've massively flunked "stewardship" of the earth.
------------------
Western Views of Nature

Hebrew Bible
Divergent, even conflicting views
1. Spiritual value beyond the natural world
   Creator God is separate from and transcends nature.
   Religious worship should be directed to the Creator.
   Humans are a special creation: they are the only part of creation that are created in God’s image.
   Humans are given “dominion” over nature.

2. The spiritual value of creation
   God made creation and called it good (before humans were created).
   Creation manifests God’s glory and is alive and responsive to God.
   Humans are a creature of God along with all other species.
   God cares for all of creation, which is God’s, not the possession of humans.
   Humans are given the duty of stewardship, protecting God’s creation.

Ancient Greek Philosophy
Plato (ca. 400 b.c.), Aristotle (ca. 350 b.c.e.), and Neo-Platonism (3rd century c.e.).
   Plato and Neo-Platonism clearly placed highest spiritual value on a transcendent world and devalued the natural world.
   Aristotle assumed that nature was essentially good and continuous with spiritual reality. However, he too espoused a form of “transcendental dualism.”

Transcendental Dualism
“Dualism”: binary split into two. “Transcendental”: one of the two is higher and is related to transcendental reality.
   There are two realms of reality: the natural world, and a transcendental world, which has highest spiritual reality.
   Human nature is dualistic: mind versus body, reason versus emotions, with mind and reason corresponding to the transcendental realm, the body and emotions part of the natural world.
   Social dualism: sex and race showed same dualism: men (associated with mind and reason) higher than women (associated with body and emotions).
   Nature-culture dualism: Culture is associated with mind, males, and the transcendent. Nature is associated with body, females, and is inferior to culture.
   Domestic and tame animals are superior to wild animals.
“It is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient; whereas equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful. The same holds good of animals in relation to men; for tame animals have a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by man; for then they are preserved. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.”
--Aristotle, Politics

Medieval views of nature
“Organicism”
•   Nature has an inherent vitality of its own: anima mundi.
•   Different things in nature interacted like organs in a body.
•   The natural and supernatural realms can interact (magic).
•   Hierarchical view of cosmos and of society (feudalism).

Nature as book
Late Medieval period up to 18th century.
   Nature is God’s creation.
   Nature is orderly and intelligible.
   Thus creation tells us about God. To understand the mind of the Creator, we can “read” his “book.”
   Nature has value as God’s creation and as a medium to learn about God, but does not have truly inherent spiritual value in and of itself.

Nature as chaotic “wilderness”
Associated particularly with early Protestant John Calvin (1509-1564) and Puritanism.
   A fallen world of nature: when Adam fell from Grace, his world also fell – from a Garden of Eden to a contaminated place.
   Nature is chaotic, disorderly, ever-changing without pattern or predictability.
   Therefore nature is not intelligible and is dangerous.
   We need either to wall out the wilderness, or conquer and tame it and turn it into a Garden based on human spiritual design and control.

The Enlightenment
Particularly the 18th century. Germany (Kant), France (Voltaire), England (Hume), the U.S. (Thomas Jefferson), but continuing today.
   A response against medieval faith, “superstition,” religious wars, and witch hunts.
   Associated with humanism, rationalism, & science.
   Optimistic concerning knowledge (reason & science), society (movement toward democracy & away from monarchy), material well being (allied with scientific and technological advances).
   Nature is orderly, acting according to natural “laws,” and works like a clock (“mechanism”).
   We can understand natural laws through science and reason, which are the surest sources of knowledge.
   The knowledge we gain is not limited to individuals, particular circumstances, or social groups: it is objective and universal.
   Our scientific knowledge enables us to have power over nature and manipulate it for our benefit.
Romanticism
Especially 1750-1870, but continuing today.
   In part a reaction against the rationalism and mechanism of the Enlightenment.
   Nature has high value. It is either a direct manifestation of spiritual reality, or has its own spiritual value.
   There is a close correspondence between the natural world and human nature.
   Reason is suspect. The goal is not abstract knowledge but communion. The world is more complex and fluid: intuition, emotions, & the contemplation of beauty have particular value.
   The arts are particularly valued as a medium for representing the spiritual dimension of reality and expressing sensitive experience of it.
   Social vision: simpler, pastoral lifestyles close to nature are superior to the nightmare of urban technology.
   The “Sublime” is prized: the awe-inspiring majesty of nature, which suggests its spiritual dimension and our place but our smallness within it.

“Conservation”
   Not the general term of conserving nature, but a specific philosophy of resource management.
   Began in Europe in the eighteenth century, a form of the Enlightenment’s rational search for order, progress, and material well-being.
   Championed around 1900 in the U.S. by Gifford Pinchot, the “father of American forestry.”
   For Pinchot three are main options:
   nature could be left unused and thus wasted;
   it could be ruthlessly exploited and used up, leaving nothing for future generations;
   or it could be managed for greater efficiency and long-term productivity.
   The third option is necessary for economic prosperity and as the only moral stance concerning future generation.
   “Anthropocentric”: nature’s value is only found in its use for us. By itself, it has no moral or spiritual value in itself. Nature is something to be controlled, managed, and consumed by humans. Nature unused by humans is a waste.
   This is the dominant view in American forestry.

“Preservationism”
   Championed by John Muir (1838-1914), Wisconsin-born California nature writer.
   Proposed as an alternative to the anthropocentric conservationism of Pinchot.
   “Biocentric”: nature has intrinsic value. The ideal is to preserve nature as it is for its own sake.
   The proper human “use” of nature is aesthetic and spiritual, which ideally leaves nature undisturbed.

[nolongeraslave]

My mom grew up in an extended family, and she's pretty up there in the narcissist spectrum.  She might have gotten worse once she left the system though.

[JustKathy]

Interesting that several of you report that your NMs came from large families. Mine was one of six. I wonder if the larger the family, the more likely that a "pecking order" will develop?

I also would tend to believe that NPD is a disorder that would be far more common in industrialized nations, since Ns are so incredibly materialistic. The things that my NM covets would not exist in a developing nation . . . possessions, houses, wealth, status, celebrity contacts, name dropping . . . all things that a third world nation wouldn't have. While Ns are all about control and manipulation, it would be very hard for them to have that control without material goods. My mother used money to manipulate and control her children, and uses it now (inheritance and so forth) to pit us against one another. I wonder if wealth may even determine how far on the spectrum an N parent is. My parents weren't wealthy, but definitely well off. NM never wanted for anything, and the GC was given everything he wanted (college education, cars, a house). Having access to money definitely brought out my M's full narcissist potential.

[Twoapenny]

I think that point about wealth is a good one, Kathy, my mum has definitely got worse the more money she's got.  It's like they can retreat further and further into their world because they can buy what they need - so instead of being nice to the neighbours and doing favours for them they don't need to bother because they can pay a plumber to fix the washing machine instead of having to be nice to the man next door and asking him to do it.  I think it also massively inflated my mum's ego - being able to splash money around keeps people in your pocket if they want what you buy for them.

i wonder if there's a difference between families who focus on time, love and affection and families who focus on money, shopping and ownership?