Are psyhcologists making us feel worse?

This is the topic of an interesting blog entry (link attached) which I've just commented on. (Hope you'll check it out- it expands on what I'm talking about here.)I think it's an especially important topic for adoptees to be aware of.

A medical doctor once told me that my psychologist had listed me as having "narcissistic personality disorder". I hadn't heard the term before, but I pretty quickly replied, "Well, I guess that's the artistic temperament." I went away thinking on this, later to learn from my psychologist that "He [the doctor] shouldn't have told you that." I ignored the annoyance of the secrecy aspect and went on to address the term. I told him, I'm not worried about the narcissistic part, I'm worried about "disorder".

If you take a look at my comments on the Austin Holistic Parenting site, you'll see more of my thoughts on "disorders" in psychiatry. Here, I want to touch on "disorders" in relation to adoption and narcissism.

Narcissism is a bolster against the pain of insecurity. Adoptees know it well as the "false self", under which we invent fantasies of our own genius, beauty and importance. The insecurity underneath chips away at us, whispering about how the grandiose notions are a big lie. (And in this context, they are.) Then we're left feeling even more insecure and we behave with even more grandiosity. **For adoptees, the pitfall of the narcissism exists in parallel with a natural reality: the adoptee's family life is usually presented to the world, and to the adoptee, as natural kinship. This also is a very big lie.

When people say to me "You're so kind" or "so good", my first thoughts are, "No I'm not. I'm a ridiculously angry person. I thought everyone could see that." I suppose I'm preoccupied with seeing, or experiencing it. I say to people I know well, "I'm not 'good', I'm very angry, most of the time. Whatever 'good' I do is whatever I need to do, or feel obliged to do."

Those "good" things are behaviors, actions, and they are good things. But I think that the "good" that people are really seeing is my strong vein of empathy. And that's ok. I think that this is what author Alice Miller means by the "gift" in her "The Drama of the Gifted Child". [I'd also note that Miller is a psychologist who doesn't rely on "disorder" jargon.] I hope that all adoptees can learn to cultivate this gift as they navigate their insecurities. I don't know if those insecurities, and losses, ever really heal, but cultivating empathy is a soul food like no other.

Adoption Bonanza

An article in yesterday's New York Times titled "After Haiti Quake, the Chaos of U.S. Adoptions," has left me nauseous and heartsick. I've attached a link to this very important update on the Haitian situation. Some particular verbiage heightened my reaction to the article...

Phrase 1: "Adoption bonanza," describing the explosion of supposedly orphaned/"adoptable" children and the American flurry to seize opportunity.

Phrase 2: "Humanitarian parole," which is categorized as being "a sparingly used immigration program". Apparently this classification was used to facilitate the expediting of adoptions of children regardless of whether the children were in immediate peril or actually orphaned in the first place.

Predicaments of prospective adoptive parents are also touched on. One couple will be appearing in a Haitian court to testify to the identities of their two, yet to be officially adopted, children. (One child has highly suspicious documents, the other has none at all.) The adoptive mother states that "As things stand, I'm basically going to show up in court and tell a judge, 'These kids are who I say they are,' and hope that he takes my word for it, because if he asks me to prove it, I can't."

The couple's Haitian children are now named "Owen" and "Emersyn".