Actually, Hyacinth
The narcissism of volunteer heroes is not directly selfish, unless you’re sophomoric enough to say, for instance, that people make gifts for their own satisfaction and not to please the receiver. But do the White Helmets who pull people out of rubble do such a dangerous thing in order to be admired?
We hear a lot about narcissism in terms of selfishness, self-admiration that pushes aside everyone else and demands what it wants. But I couldn’t think of a variation on the Narcissus story, a different version of the youth who tries to save others, even at his expense. Of course, this is a thing that women — as preparation for motherhood — are expected to do. Preventing or aborting dependence on themselves from others is considered unnatural, a toxic sort of narcissism. If Echo, who in the myth is the female figure devoted to Narcissus, falls into the pool and begins to drown, will Narcissus jump in to save her or will he turn away, complaining that she is ruining his reflection?
Echo
We don’t hear about whether Echo, out there in the brush alone watching Narcissus, might starve or die of the cold or maybe even die from lack of attention. Or is she so well-fed by this meditation on another being — love, sweet love — that she thrives, radiant with the sweetness? It’s wonderful fun to take these old stories that live so deeply in us and our culture and rework them into something new.
Here’s a thought: all toddlers are echoes of the adults around them. This link below is a nice discussion of the attempts of little ones to figure out what to do. Their “bad” behavior meltdowns is often due to frustration. Maybe they need explanation more than punishment. The best explanations are stories.
So Narcissus is looking at his own smooth face and hyacinthine curls in the mirror of the pool when a little face appears at his shoulder and he feels a small hand there. They look at their reflections together and the similarity creates a new concept: “we.” Now Narcissus has a new feeling, the effort to save this child because he has a special empathy for the little one. (Echo smiles.) But what if he doesn’t? The child may feel it must take care of Narcissus, so he will let the child stay there.
Now I’m changing to a new story source: Terrytoons as interpreted by the Black Lodge Singers, a drum group that is a genetic family with Kenny Scabby Robe as grandfather-leader. This is not just a story, but a song, so I’ll put here a link to it on YouTube.
Narcissus considers being Mighty Mouse. So does the toddler beside him. Adults are Mighty Mouse for children; children look for Mighty Mouse among the adults. If Mighty Mouse comes home drunk and beats little kids, then he’s not Mighty Mouse. So the little kid tries to be the Mighty Mouse that can fix this. It could be called narcissism because the child takes it all on himself, in the way a parent would, but this is not about any pretty flower. This is a small animal trying to survive a big animal.
To defend the principle of survival, small children will try to act as parents for sibs, pets, and even parents. One of the stories that haunts me is the mother who died (I forget why) and was lying on the floor. Her toddler had brought a blanket to cover her and put a glass of water by her head, then sat down to guard her until someone found them. Little children will intervene in family fights and get killed.
In dysfunctional families where the adults do not protect the children, the children themselves might be expected to fix things — clean house, get food somewhere. They naturally tend to think everything is their fault and some can be crushed by guilt over feeling they caused divorce or alcoholism. They take on the burden, trying to save everyone though they don’t have the means or even know what being “saved” might be like. Or who is to be saved and who should be abandoned. What I see around me is middle-class youngsters who hardly know their biological or legal parents because they are always at work, but those kids care very much about their sibs or classmates. Sadly, their desire to help each other exceeds what they know and can really do to be effective.
Wikipedia includes this provocative paragraph:
"Narcissistic parentification occurs when a child is forced to take on the parent's idealised projection, something which encourages a compulsive perfectionism in the child at the expense of their natural development. In a kind of pseudo-identification, the child is induced by any and all means to take on the characteristics of the parental ego ideal – a pattern that has been detected in western culture since Homer's description of the character of Achilles."
Achilles was predicted to exceed the fame and value of his father, which might tempt his father to destroy him. So his mother dipped him in water (some versions) or fire (other versions) to make him immortal. Unfortunately, to do this she had to hold him by his heel so that spot, undipped, was always vulnerable, his “Achilles heel.”
Following along the reference to Achilles, I come upon surprising bits of story. “Some post-Homeric sources claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in some versions, Peleus) hid the young man at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. There, Achilles is disguised as a girl and lives among Lycomedes' daughters, perhaps under the name "Pyrrha" (the red-haired girl). With Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia, whom in the account of Statius he rapes, Achilles there fathers a son, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's possible alias).
According to this story, Odysseus learns from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles' aid. Odysseus goes to Skyros in the guise of a peddler selling women's clothes and jewelry and places a shield and spear among his goods. When Achilles instantly takes up the spear, Odysseus sees through his disguise and convinces him to join the Greek campaign. In another version of the story, Odysseus arranges for a trumpet alarm to be sounded while he was with Lycomedes' women; while the women flee in panic, Achilles prepares to defend the court, thus giving his identity away.”
What a great plotline for a novel in our gender-fluid times! The tale winds on and on, but it is not about a child who is pressed into being a parent. Rather it is about a childish parent who tries to force a child to be what the father cannot be. He wants the child to be Mighty Mouse so he can be “Father of Mighty Mouse.” A child’s efforts to fly can be deadly. A small-town father’s insistence that his son be a football hero, because his father wanted to be but never was, resulting in brain-destroying concussions of the boy, might be a contemporary version.
This still does not get at the core of people who want to save others selflessly, without reward, even when their powers are limited and even if the “others” are both more powerful and more bent on destruction. Is this the key story the kernel of “Star Wars”? Could be. Superheroes? Political crusades? Hmmm.
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