The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors

The Isis Papers
Alienation, Anxiety and Narcissism
Because the conscious overt dialogue in the whole of Western civilization
and culture is never about its global white minority status, its
recessive (therefore vulnerable) genetic status, or its initial rejection by
the Black parents and the Black majority, these feelings about self and
fears of inadequacy and vulnerability reside underground in the braincomputer.
These subconscious and unconscious thoughts become the
basis for the pervasive neurotic anxiety that characterizes Western culture.
Such is the specific nature and cause of this "nameless and formless
tmeasiness that has dogged the footsteps of modem man." Modern man
means Western man, means white man, means the global white collective.
This is the reason that valium (diazepam) is the most prescribed drug
in the U.S., the key unit of Western civilization and culture. It is this same
anxiety that causes Western civilization's preoccupation with weapons,
spending more money on armaments than on any other single budgetary
item. These weapons surround all of the world's non-white peoples. The
whites hope that the weapons will prevent white genetic annihilation and
thereby ensure white genetic survival, but then whites hold the pervasive
attendant fear that they will be destroyed in the conflagration also.
This fundamental anxiety relative to global white genetic annihilation
pervades all patterns of symbols, logic, thought, speech, action, emotional
response and perception in all areas of people activity within Western
culture and civilization. Also, it pervades all aspects of family life, for
whites and all non-white victims of white supremacy. All of the aforementioned
theories of anxiety -::::: by Freud, Jung, Rank, Adler, Homey,
Sullivan and May-are encompassed in the above stated Cress-Welsing
thesis on anxiety in Western civilization and culture.
Narcissism. Just as alienation and anxiety have become key foci of
attention for Western behavioral and social scientists and other scholars,
narcissism has become the most recent abstraction for intense intellectual
involvement.
A January 30, 1978 Newsweek article entitled "The New Narcissism"
outlines several qualities of narcissism:
Long before social critic Tom Woefe labeled the '70s 'The Me
Decade', scholars were exploring narcissism as a new-perhaps even
dominant - psychological pattern of both individual and social
behavior. According to this theory, the New Narcissus suffers and
emotionally dies because -like his mythological proto type_ he cannot
return anyone's affection. His fatal flaw, however, is not really self
love but a grandiose expectation of himself that cannot be sustained
and makes him vulnerable to chronic bouts of boredom and inner
emptiness. In the eyes of the New Narcissus, the outside world is
essentially a .mirror that reflects his own alternating feelings of
personal ommpotence and disintegration.
!o ~·. E~est Wolf of the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, the
1dent1fiCat10n of the new narcissism signals 'a major revolution in
psych~analysis', in which self-esteem is seen as just as important as
sexuahty. For social historian Christopher Lasch, narcissism is the
key to understanding why 'self preservation and psychic survival'
pervade the moral climate of contemporary society ... At a recent
co~~rence on 'Narcissism in Modern Society' at the University of
M1ch1gan, several psychiatrists argued that there are still no solid
clinical data proving that narcissism has increased in relation to
traditional neuroses. Others, such as psychologist Kenneth Keniston,
wonder whether a clinical term like narcissism can properly explain
patterns of social behavior ... Nonetheless, through a series of books,
~ssays and symposiums, the new narcissism has emerged as a central
~tell~tual concern. A post-Freudian school of psychoanalysis, based
m Ch1cago, has proclaimed pathological narcissism the besetting
psrchological disorder of modem Western culture and has developed
a psychology of the self' to explain its causes. And some social
scien~ists have adopted clinical descriptions of narci~sism to help
ex?laJ.n the declining interest in politics, social action and
child-rearing, and the corresponding rise of an individual survival
ethic.
'Pa~ologic~lnarcissists simply cannot depend upon others, which for
me lS a cruc1al characteristic,' says New York psychoanalyst Otto F.
Kernberg, author of an influential study, 'Borderline Conditions and
Pathological Narcissism.' Much as they crave admiration, says Dr.
Kernberg, narcissists systematically exploit and devalue others.
Freq~ently charming and charismatic, they tend to enjoy only fleeting
emo~o~al contacts, .rather than genuine, long-term intimacy.
Narc~s1sts are often h1ghly successful in business, bureaucracies, or
othenmpersonal organizations; typically, such situations reward those
who can manipulate others, while discouraging personal attachments
and providing enough emotional feedback to satisfy self-esteem.
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