![]() ![]() In her teenage years, as Natalie developed into an attractive young woman, her mother would often tell her, “Men won’t be interested in you after you’re 30.” Natalie felt very clearly that her mother envied her, especially for her youthful figure. Natalie felt as if her own experience didn’t matter. Natalie’s mother had been raped as a young woman during her childhood, Natalie repeatedly heard that nothing she suffered could ever compare with her mother’s suffering. Natalie, one of my clients, had a mother who resembled Erica in many ways. ![]() She subtly undermines Nina’s self-confidence and repeatedly tries to sabotage her as the premiere approaches. It’s also clear that, not far below the surface, Erica envies her daughter. Don’t grow up, Erica seems to be telling Nina if you do, I’ll turn on you. When Nina doesn’t want to eat the cake, Erica feels it as a kind of narcissistic injury she becomes angry and manipulative until Nina backs down and lets Erica feed her a bite. When Nina is cast in the lead role in Swan Lake, Erica (a retired ballerina herself) buys a cake to celebrate - the kind of sheet cake you might serve at a child’s birthday party. Mother Erica in Black Swan treats daughter Nina as if she were a little girl and refuses to accept that she has grown up. One type of narcissistic mother uses her children as a narcissistic feed another type abandons them in her solipsistic pursuit of admiration, attention from men, etc.įor the narcissistic mother who tends to merge with her child, struggles ensue as the child begins to separate. Some my clients were burdened with mothers even more lacking in empathy, so completely self-absorbed that they neglected their children entirely. Matriarch Alice in The Fighter also demonstrates a complete lack of empathy for son Micky’s needs and suffering. If you’ve read my post about the mostly bad mother, you may remember that Mom had very little ability to empathize with me (or anyone else, for that matter), a problem shared by most narcissistic mothers. “I failed with your brother and sister if you turn out bad, my whole life will have no meaning.” It’s all about me. (We’re in Alice Miller territory, and The Drama of the Gifted Child.) During my senior year in high school, she broke down sobbing when she discovered I’d been smoking pot. ![]() This incident is but one example of an ongoing way she related to me, as if I were supposed to fulfill some ideal that would reflect well upon her. She said you’re highly intelligent and you could do anything you want with your life, even become a nuclear physicist.” Even then, at age 11, I felt the expectation being placed upon my shoulders. ![]() The school psychologist called my mother in for a consultation to discuss the results when Mom came home afterward, she said to me, “The psychologist told me not to talk to you about what we discussed but I’m going to tell you anyway. During fifth grade, I was given a battery of intelligence tests for admission into the gifted education program. As her second son Micky becomes more successful, she tries to exploit him in the very same way.Īlice reminds me of my own mother, and stirred up one particular memory. She and her oldest son Dicky have a merged relationship and she exploits his past success as a boxer for her own narcissistic needs. Alice, the matriarch in The Fighter is just such a narcissistic mother. When parents have poor boundaries, however, or struggle with separation issues, they may instead regard their children as an extension of themselves, not truly separate. Under normal conditions, even if we do take a kind of narcissistic pleasure in their achievements, we nonetheless see our children as having identities of their own. On some level, I suppose we view our children as a type of achievement of our own: we’ve spent so many years raising and caring for them that we feel pride in ourselves, as well as in them, when they turn out well. “My son the doctor” … you know what I mean. I’m very proud of my kids and take pleasure in recounting their latest achievements to my friends, and those friends in return (the ones who have kids of their own) appear to feel the same way about their offspring. There’s a degree of narcissism inherent in the relationship between most parents and their children: we take pride in their achievements and feel they somehow reflect well upon us when they do succeed. If you haven’t seen them, I recommend both movies for their psychological insight into family dynamics and, in particular, the role of the narcissistic mother. Before I decided to stop writing my ‘Movies and Mental Health’ blog, I had intended to do a video about the narcissistic mother as portrayed in two different films, Black Swan and The Fighter in this post, I’ll be referring to those films but I won’t include video clips. ![]()
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