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C-Section as a Narcissistic Injury

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Clarissa

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Great minds, people. One of my favorite bloggers writes about a C-section as a narcissistic injury:

Why are some women devastated by a C-section? Why are VBACs [vaginal births after Cesarean] portrayed as “healing”? Perhaps it is because those women experience C-sections as a narcissistic injury. Narcissistic injury is a term from psychoanalysis. A narcissist is a person who suffers a deep sense of inferiority and masks it by projecting an air of grandiosity and excessive self regard. A narcissistic injury occurs when reality threatens the narcissist’s carefully constructed facade of perfection. . . In other words, for VBAC, homebirth and some NCB advocates, not having an uncomplicated vaginal birth is viewed as an imperfection.

Brava, Dr. Amy! Now, this is a brilliant OB-GYN I would not mind consulting.

This wouldn’t be a problem, of course (who cares if a bunch of narcissists want to torture themselves with home-births, or what not?), if it weren’t for the sad reality that there will be kids saddled with narcissistic mothers for life. And that is a very heavy  burden.

6 responses to “C-Section as a Narcissistic Injury”

  1. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    Having studied this, a ‘narcissistic injury’ is not something that is suffered by those who happen to be narcissists, but is rather the cause of their narcissism. Your writer has it back to front. A child who has told they have no value to their parent becomes narcissistic as compensation for this consequent feeling of worthlessness. Anyone who has had their self esteem injured in significant ways will tend to develop a ‘narcissistic injury’. Some of these are short term and some pervade the whole of the personality.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I have no doubt that narcissists were damaged by their parents. However, we are talking about adults here. They could have taken care of their issue but have chose not to. This is all on them now.

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      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        Yes, but I was referring to the meaning of the term, not the moral implications of it.

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  2. Sarah (@sazen) Avatar
    Sarah (@sazen)

    Thanks for drawing my attention to this fantastic blog. I know some militant natural childbirthers and they seem devoid of all common sense and intellectual function. I will spread the word about this blog with the aim of combatting the madness.

    I had my 2 in hospital and very glad to do so, surrounded by life-saving equipment and staff who could step in in case of problems!

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      I’m still totally not getting this fetishising of naturalism. Does it relate to needing to prove oneself, or does it relate to needing to feel authentic in relation to the world? I can certainly relate to the second issue, since I had this feeling for the longest time. I think if you encounter your limits, that can be reassuring — firstly on the basis that this encounter is a rite of passage that puts to rest previous insecurities, and secondly, on the basis that it allows you to absorb more of organic reality into yourself, which replenishes. However, if it’s about expressing one’s perfection, I think the naturalism is wholly misplaced. A perfect natural object is a tomato, or a gangrenous wound, or a flood-filled plane, or a cow chewing the cud. Perfect natural objects are too many to compete against, and their complexity is manifold.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        Naturalism is the favorite pastime of women who have given up on every single way of self-fulfillment besides childbirth. To make childbirth a valuable achievement, they create all this drama around it.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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