Re-Visioning Narcissism

Since the early 20th century, when modern psychology was in its infancy, and attempting to establish itself as a legitimate medical and scientific discipline, it largely divorced itself from its close cousins—the world’s religious and spiritual traditions.

The infant discipline had a mantra it was to follow: Where Id is, there shall Ego be. But its egoic-primacy offered little aid either for spiritual awakening, or transforming narcissism (the early psychoanalysts considered the former illusory, the latter untreatable). It failed to see them as two wings of the same inner work.

And the clinical tradition was left with a very partial view of narcissism’s contours—like “blind people describing an elephant.” And a diminished sense of what its complete opposite—and thus, its full healing—even looks like.

And so, for the plethora of books written about narcissism ever since, they haven’t much helped. If anything, our collective narcissism has only increased. And now is oozing out of all the nooks and crannies of a culture—even its White House.

Yet for thousands of years there’ve been spiritual lineages whose perspective—and body of practices—would be helpful adjuncts for modern psychology. For they’d freed adepts from narcissism’s ego-centric, erotically crippled, and polarized vision. This book will provide some of this missing perspective, and some of their practices, in the attempt to heal the century-long divorce between psychology and spirituality. For we humans aren’t pie charts. Psyche and spirit belong together. And we need all the help we can get.

Given all narcissism can impact—our eros, politics, global warming and pandemics—it’s time to re-vision it. But this “re-visioning,” and the skillful means it would offer can’t merely concern a few “adepts.” It’s now a planetary and evolutionary imperative.