by Gary T. McDonald, author of The Gospel of Thomas (the Younger)

In the ex-vangelical and former fundamentalist Christian online forums the word “narcissism” gets used a lot...

Not surprising.

Sometimes it’s used as a clinical term, a personality disorder description, but sometimes as an insult and catch-all for anything the writer doesn’t like.

I first encountered the term in 1983 when I read Dr. Alexander Lowen’s then latest book, Narcissism — Denial of the True Self. Lowen was a psychiatrist who had studied and worked with the famous and infamous Wilhelm Reich (long story) who was a patient and student of Freud. Lowen’s conception of the term was rooted in the Greek myth. Because of their deeply covert self-loathing or mere low self esteem, narcissists become obsessed with a more acceptable (to them) self-image the way the original Narcissus became obsessed with his reflected image in a pool of water. The term is not a pejorative insult, but a label for victims of bad nurturing who resort to projecting (sometimes grandiose) fantasy versions of themselves to the world while struggling (with some success or not) to believe in them, too, all to compensate for and to try to lessen their psychic suffering around not being acceptable to themselves. Usually, without even being aware of it.

A few years later, I read Alice Miller’s earlier book The Drama of the Gifted Child which similarly linked narcissism to faulty nurturing in childhood. And then there were a spate of books speaking of a “culture of narcissism”. Some of them rooted the tendency in capitalism where the fear of failure in the competitive world led narcissistic parents and their budding narcissistic victims to revel in false selves that, at best, left them feeling phony or, at worst, becoming psychopathic to prop up their self-images with sometimes immoral feats. Dr. Lowen wrote of a spectrum of narcissism, a continuum with garden-variety narcissists at one end and psychopaths at the other.

In the online forums, I see a lot of Christian leaders, pastors and online posters being called narcissists and with good reason. Victims of their abuse have every right to be angry. It’s part of the healing process.

But it’s also important to be brave enough at some point to confront one’s own narcissism. The first step to allowing oneself to do that is to realize that the condition is not one’s fault. Something causes people to adopt this unhealthy psychic survival strategy. And no one is responsible for what is written on the blank slate of their personality during infancy and early childhood.

In my struggle to face my demons, Buddhism has helped a great deal. It teaches that the cause of psychic suffering is desire. Along with desiring more power, materials things and better romantic possibilities, there is this desire to have one’s carefully crafted self-image accepted by the world… and ultimately oneself. This is a fool’s errand. It will never work. One will never find happiness and peace this way.

Buddhism also teaches that the concept of the fixed “self” is itself illusory. None of us are the same self from decade to decade, year to year, or even minute to minute. None of us have an inherent “self”. We are totally the products of the causes and conditions, the nurturing and education (or lack of them) and life events that have made us what we are.

This is where the Buddha’s great advantage comes up. No one knows for sure what is fact and legend in the Buddha’s story. But here is what we get in the generally accepted version — The Buddha was born a prince whose chieftain father decided to raise him in the best of all possible environments. He would lack for nothing and have only the best. Now, these old stories don’t go into a lot of psychological detail, but let’s assume that he gets the very best nurturing that one could get. Then, as a young man, he finally gets exposed to the negative aspects of life — the inevitability of sickness, aging and death. Shocked by this, he leaves his gilded palace on a quest to find answers to how one can be happy, faced with such horrible prospects. Eventually, after trying various practices, he sits down under the Bodhi tree and finds his Enlightenment. From then on, he makes himself available to anyone who has questions. He is a model of selfless compassion and equanimity until he dies decades later.

How different he is from the televangelists we see wheedling for money over the airwaves or the ones who have to make do with the simple wooden pulpit or street soapbox. These clowns usually reek of ego and greed for acceptance of their grandiose self-images, or for just more money. And how different they are from my idea of what the historic Jesus was like. A simple Pharisee wanderer who preached non-judgment, tolerance, generosity and universal love and had no interest at all in the empire-building that Paul and future church fathers would indulge right up to the present day, sometimes even murderously.

When I despair at my own lack of progress at defeating my own narcissism, I have to remember that the Buddha and Jesus probably had the great advantage of better, maybe even perfect, nurturing. The stories we’re told about Suddhodana and Maya and Joseph and Mary all reflect an ideal vision of nurturing parents with no hint that striving to be a big Somebody was imperative. These were very lucky sons to have had such parents. And their lack of narcissism was the essential element in achieving their inner peace and equanimity.

In the case of the Jesus, we get other levels of less attractive complexity that I believe were added by Paul and his followers, the gospel writers. I’ve written a book that re-imagines Jesus and dramatizes the hijacking of his biography by those who wanted to create a First Century Greek-style mystery religion rooted in the monotheism of the Hebrews. It’s called The Gospel of Thomas (the Younger). Learn more at www.garytmcdonald.com

“A convincing faux gospel that challenges orthodoxy. Thomas traverses his world encountering First Century figures from Jesus to Nero bringing his times and the origins of Christianity alive in a fresh, new way with wry humor and exciting storytelling.”

―Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump

“Gary T. McDonald is a born storyteller, and his research is impeccable. The book is fascinating from beginning to end, and his long-overdue, iconoclastic portrait of the Apostle Paul made me stand up and cheer.”

―Lewis Shiner, author of Glimpses

“An inherently fascinating and deftly crafted work of truly memorable fiction,The Gospel Of Thomas (the Younger) is an extraordinary novel by an extraordinary writer and unreservedly recommended…”

― Midwest Book Review