I don't think anyone has ever really looked at words from this light before but words are an ongoing process of 'dialectical negotiations, integrations, and compromises'. In this regard, words evolve too -- just like animals, people, cultures, and ideas... Indeed, words have to evolve to keep up with a constantly changing world.
In this regard, words have both a 'narcissistic' and a 'social' function -- and they are 'compromise-formations' aimed at meeting both functions at the same time. In this regard also, words have both a range and focus of different 'narcissistic meanings' for the same and different people; and at the same time, they have a range and focus of different 'social meanings' that are used within a particular 'social context' depending on the particular culture and/or sub-culture, the country, the region, the municipality, the community, the sub-community, the school of kids, the gang, etc. Meanings can change significantly within all of these different social contexts -- and within the context of one particular person using one particular word in one particular sentence and paragraph at one particular time. When it comes to the meaning of words -- narcissistic and social context means everything. Words -- and their meaning -- are very slippery things. Words -- and their meaning -- are very slippery things.
This is why you have politicians, sports athletes, entertainers, public speakers and the like constantly complaining about 'sound bites' -- and the assertion that they have been taken 'out of context'. The politiciaan, athlete, actor, or public speaker may have a particular message he or she wishes to convey to the community -- the particular journalist may or may not have an 'underhanded agenda to create a provocative, controversial story' -- and the public figure is left 'crying foul' after the story has been written and/or the newsclip is shown on tv, Now partly or mainly, the 'communication problem' may be of the speaker's own making -- a careless use of words, an easy to draw inference from something a speaker seems to be implying (I am thinking about Hillary Clinton's reference to Robert Kennedy's assassination), a 'joke' that is not funny and/or that is alluding to but partly hiding a serious statement beneath it, an abstract word or sentence that can be taken in more than one way..and so on..
Freud may use the word 'narcissism', Kohut may use the word narcissism, I may use the word narcissism -- and it can be practically guaranteed that we will all have a partly similar, partly different, range and focus of meaning for this word -- and again, meaning in each of our individual cases will be 'contextually bound'. We may mean one thing by it in a particular sentence, and something else, slightly or significantly different in a different sentence, a different paragraph, a different essay. There will likely be a particular range of social meaning that will bind all of these individual meanings together into 'one house of social meaning' if you will but within this one house of social menaing it is still very appropriate and relevant to ask the questions: What does Freud mean by 'narcissism'? What does Kohut mena by narcissism? What does Bain mean by 'narcissism'? And what does Freud or Kohut or Bain mean by 'narcissism' in this particular context here? These are all very relevant questions when it comes to the relationship between words and meaning...
Sticking to the same word and its meaning -- narcissism --
we could again quite appropriately and significantly ask the question(s):
Does narcissism include the 'word-concept-phenomenon' (wcp) of 'hedonism'? 'Pleasure'? 'Assertiveness'? 'Aggressiveness'? 'Sensuality'? 'Sexuality'? 'Selfishness'? 'Egotism'? 'Greed'? 'Power'? 'Revenge'? 'Sadism'? The 'pursuit of money'? . 'Survival'?
In every case, I would answer -- 'yes'. But here is the kicker -- Freud and Kohut would probably each answer partly differently.
Is 'altruism' narcissistic? No -- unless it involves 'conditional giving'. Is 'approval-seeking' narcissistic? Perhaps partly. There may be a sense in which we may believe that we 'need' another person's approval in order to 'survive' or in order to get what we want. The same argument can be applied to both 'submission' and 'masochism'. A person may 'submit' because he or she thinks submission is necessary in order to survive -- or to keep one's husband or wife, or to keep one's job. And the same goes at least partly with 'masochism'. Masochism is a complicated subject addressed by Freud. I would have to go back over the material but it is most likely that I will express some agreements with Freud on this subject matter and some disaggrements. I can say right now that I believe that masochism presents a mixture of narcissistic and anti-narcissistic processes. There may be pleasure connected to the masochism. That is narcissistic. There usually involves the 'disownment' of self-assertiveness, self-integrity in masochism. That is 'anti-narcissistic'. Thus, masochism presents a mixture of narcissistic and anti-narcissistic activities.
Obviously, this discussion here is equally relevant to the subject of both 'words and meaning' -- and to the subject of 'narcissism'.
In my opinion, there is a responsibility on the part of both the writer and the reader, the speaker and the listener, to engage in these types of questions -- and their answers in order to clean up the possibility of 'referent confucsion' -- of not knowing what 'phenomenon' a word is referring to, and/or two people having different ideas, different phenomena, in mind when they use the same word.
Coming down the abstraction ladder -- and if necessary -- pointing at the 'real world phenomenon' we are talking about (see Korzybski, Wittgenstein) can significantly reduce this very common type of communication problem.
-- dgb, June 1st, 2008.
