Whoever thought of putting Sam Vaknin and Richard Grannon on the same screen as a “dialogue” — though it usually turns into a Vaknin lecture while Grannon pays close attention — was inspired, though I gather that in the end their “ways” parted, which is not a surprise. Vaknin (shorthand follows) is a scientifically educated Russian Jew and Grannon is an Australian who once taught martial arts. He’s a listener, an understander.
This vid linked below addresses malignant narcissism and its causes in modern society: the need to be unique in a crowded world is pressing people to extremes. This is why we’re so obsessed with the idea of narcissism and use it to blame people as though it were always a bad thing to be self-centered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix-trtzii_8&t=17s
Somewhere is a conversation in which the two men agree on a contemporary gender culture dilemma that encourages men to maintain their unique circle of identity with a hard boundary that allows few to cross. Taken to extremes, isolates explode into violence that is bound to make people notice them as they yearn for attention. Thus the incels rage.
The culture — in contrast — encourages women in particular to find an identity through attachment, a word I use to escape the distortions of both our modern obsession with sex or with romantic love, an ideology that grew up in agricultural times with divided roles and has become more and more distorted by the idea of equality.
The vid below is a crash course in the ideology of romanticism that has grown up over many centuries. Graphic cartoons make this version accessible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jltM5qYn25w
The little diagram of men as circles of identity and women as attachers on the outside of the male boundary is very relevant to the story of my life in the Sixties. Bob Scriver was 47, which meant his circle of identity was full of his work, Western bronze sculptures — a kind of romanticism in themselves, a high valuing of the notion of the “winning of the West” and the necessary heroism. Bob’s life in Browning since birth in 1914 meant that he included in his circle the Blackfeet.
I was 21, idealistic, educated in the theatre, ready for a sex life, and needing more of an identity. I attached to him, brought all my forces to bear on trying to be loved by him, to be drawn into his circle, but returned to being a dependent child. Bob had not learned to love equals, but as he put it, I “just wouldn’t go away.” He never “loved” me but he did attach. I had a private — almost secret — identity he never knew. Why would he?
Our relationship was one of mutual attachment which I fancied was romantic love. Life was full of amazing risky adventures I could not and would not have considered alone. In spite of being dependent, my contribution was major. I saw the bigger picture, the art world with headquarters in Manhattan, and daily I worked hard for low pay, the same as the tribal men who did the same jobs. Vaknin would point out that they too were included in Bob’s identity circle. Up to a point.
We poured bronze, we hunted on horseback, we sold art to rich people, we ventured into Many Glacier in the middle of winter on newly invented and undependable snowmobiles, and we went to Manhattan where Bob was on “To Tell the Truth.” The whole town closed down to watch the TV show. I wrote promotion. I wrote the captions for the little dioramas I helped make, which were the hardest sentences I ever struggled with because they had to be short but full of content. Eventually I put all this in a book, “Bronze Inside and Out”.
As Bob aged, overwork began to crumble Bob: a heart-attack, a resulting change of personality, a greater dependence on his mother, and a tighter circle with fewer portals into it. More than anything else, his growing fame and fortune changed him. His narcissism began to be a bit malignant, resentful, closing me out, valuing secrecy, responding to flattering and more enticing women.
In terms of the diagram, this is what happened, the closed-out attached person (me) got more frantic and caused scenes, began to be hysterical, and even approached madness. The fights become worse, even life threatening. I became deeply depressed, but I thought I just had flu and went to bed for days. Bob did not have a kind of education or family that could help. Finally, he checked me into a hospital and divorced me without my knowledge. We had previously agreed on paper and the judge thought that was enough. Then Bob came and got me. I had no resources to do anything, no money at all.
At that point we had agreed the divorce was necessary and the community also agreed. I was seen as the culprit, so he was right to keep everything but $1200. He paid all the bills, even my lawyer, and with a generosity partly motivated by his regret that I was leaving, he let me stay out on the little ranch he had bought on Two Medicine without my knowledge or input.
A Blackfeet elder told me that in their traditional terms, because we still were attached, we were still married. Legally, by resuming our life as before the divorce, the same argument could be made. Stiffly, Bob told someone that of his four marriages, ours was the only proper wedding with our parents present in a church. I never remarried. Clearly this ten year adventure was outside convention, but it was intelligible in that little diagram.
Snowed in on this isolated spot along the river, I had space to recreate my own identity, my own circle. I remembered that I had meant to be a writer and now I had a great wealth of stories to tell. With only horses and cats, except for Bob bringing me groceries, I began to read, write and walk the boundaries of the land. Delicate etching of the weeds, blue against the snow, was a kind of writing I could read. I made paths as I walked.
The big ginger tomcat went with me unless the snow was too deep. Then one day the cat was missing and I found the documentation of his fate on the snow — the wing prints of a big predator bird, a bit of blood, and a little bit of yellow fur. I had been preoccupied by the fragility of my life, but from that time on, I never worried about my own death and that heedlessness took me through the next stages of my life as an animal control officer, as a seminary student in Chicago, and then circuit-riding in Montana.
I haven’t died yet, but since I’m 80 it’s closer. Bob died twenty years ago and it was not as good a death as the ginger cat’s. The little empire I had helped to build was scattered as soon as he died. His fourth wife died a couple of years later. His millions went to a slick lawyer.
Now images of Westerns are challenged. Scriver bronzes are worth about the same in dollar amounts as when we first sold them, but the value of the amounts is much less. The narrative exceeds the diagrammatic theory, but the idea of the narcissistic circle and the devoted attachment to it make it more intelligible. Still, the dramatic story of attachment remains even as theories change.
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