Menu
header photo

Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.

Killing to justify untamed narcissism

Francisco Miraval

We are all born narcissistic. When we are born, we have a vague awareness of the existence of only one person: ourselves. It is true that very soon there will be some understanding that “others” are also present, but we still believe that, even if we are not the only ones, we still are without a doubt the most important ones. In other words, to use a mythical-psychoanalytical term, we are all narcissistic.  

The narcissistic person, as the Narcissus of the Greek mythology, only recognizes its own image and takes pleasure only in that image to the point that all other needs and interactions simply disappear. There is no cure for narcissism (as Facebook clearly shows). You can only control it. In fact, education and socialization are part of the process to control extreme narcissism.

The process, of course, fails from time to time, even in the context of those institutions –schools– where growing maturity is said to be facilitated and promoted. And when the process fails, there are tragic consequences. Unfortunately, those tragedies seem to be happening as often as the cries of a hungry baby.

Nayra, 17, was going home after school in Junin, Argentina, on April 23, 2014, when she was ambushed by a group of her classmates who attacked Nayra with such ferocity that she died a few days later.

What caused a group of female teens to attack and kill one of their own? What kind of crime or misbehavior could generate such a violent outburst? Drugs? Infidelity? What kind of unspeakable behavior leads to killing for revenge? According to the investigators, Nayra’s female classmates killed her because they thought she was “pretending to be attractive” and she wore “better clothes” than the rest.

For that reason, and for that reason only, they attacked her and they smashed her head against a wall. As a consequence, Nayra suffered from a hemorrhage in the brain and she died, only because, according to the aggressors, she liked to wear nice clothes. Narcissism to the extreme: if we can’t control her, let’s kill her.

Two days after the attack in Junin, on April 25, 2014, and thousands of miles away, another teenager, Maren, 16, went to her school in Milford, Connecticut. As Nayra, Maren was killed by one of her classmates, a 16-year old boy. According to authorities, the boy killed her because Maren refused to be his prom date.

Once again, narcissism won: “Only my desires are valid and they should be all satisfied when and as I say. And if you do not follow my desires, then I will kill you.”

There are, of course, many more examples, and not only from Argentina and the United States, and not only at schools, and not only among teenagers. After all, we are all narcissistic and narcissism, being as old and humanity itself, gets a new life with each birth. But from there to violently controlling others seems to be quite a distance, perhaps now shorter and shorter.

Go Back