Fused Self-Object

20”x24” encaustic/ mixed media on wood, 2022 October.

“The narcissist says to you, I’m gonna love you like your mother should have loved you. I’m gonna love you unconditionally because you are amazing, you’re a genius, you’re the most beautiful woman on Earth. You are unprecedented; I have never seen anything like you. So I’m gonna love you unconditionally like a mother – because only a mother loves unconditionally. Adult love is never unconditional. Love bombing is unconditional, so by definition, it is maternal love. The narcissist says to you: ‘I will love you unconditionally if you love me the same way – let’s idealize each other. I will let you see yourself through my eyes, I will let you be seen through the eyes of a mother, so that you can finally love yourself and accept yourself through me.’ But at some point he withdraws access to your idealized image because he devalues you; and there’s a prolonged grief reaction. What a narcissist succeeds to do is to make you mourn yourself. In typical healthy grief we mourn losses which are external to us.”

“Here comes the narcissist – he’s a drug dealer. He’s offering a drug that no man alive can resist; so healthy people would fall for it. Unconditional love unlocks the symbiosis. … None of it is real, it’s like a movie or a video-game.”

“The mother issue is critical – be the narcissist, male or female – becomes your mother, and then they invite you to become their mother. And now you’re in this symbiosis for feeding each other’s narcissistic supply. … He forces the woman back into his womb, the ‘matrix’. It’s an illusion, the womb. Then he tears you back out. You’re orphaned at that point.” - Sam Vaknin