Normally, the need to employ the splitting defense wanes as a child ages. Kids don’t allow for dad having a bad day or getting cut by a broken glass. If dad yells and scares a child, he is hated. They cannot, but fortunately a child’s ego comes equipped with “factory-installed” defense mechanisms that enable him to cope with complex personalities: The process is called “ splitting”- bifurcating the world into idealized or devalued objects that gain the child’s affection or incur the child’s loathing. If you found it hard to make sense of Eastwood-as-Kowalski, how can kids make sense of complex personalities that refuse to identify who they are by wearing either a white or a black hat? On one hand he’s a loathsome racist on the other, a sensitive father figure to a young Hmong immigrant who lives next door to him. Integrating good-and-bad traits within one person overwhelms them, but what do you expect? Adults have trouble with characters like Walt Kowalski, the retired autoworker played by Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. Their tender young egos cannot make sense of complex characters with variegated personalities. Here’s what the process of idealization leads to devaluation is all about: Children see objects (entities) in their world as “all good” or “all bad.” Like the stories they love, only heroes and villains inhabit the land in which they live. Client lives by the credo, Idealization leads to devaluation, and seasoned professionals on The Street know that getting anywhere near the downward swing of this pendulum can cut you like a razor. The traditional view on The Street has been, “Bulls and Bears get fed pigs get slaughtered,” but this no longer captures the mood of the times. Is a venue for showcasing mankind’s worst psychological flaws, narcissism being chief among them. Those of you clinging to the notion that Morgan Stanley’s miscalculations were to blame for The Facebook IPO Fiasco can fuhgettaboudit. If you look at the Facebook IPO with these observations in mind, you can appreciate how what began as a feeding frenzy went bust: Facebook the Entity was adored it by narcissists- What’s a greater high for narcissists than discussing themselves and having others “like” what they say? Facebook the IPO was adored: “Nearly 1 billion people are on it… it’s great!” But when Facebook the Stock failed to take off like Google’s did, narcissists exhibited their most loathsome propensity: They debased and disparaged a social networking system they once put on a pedestal, claiming it was nothing more than a glorified version of two Dixie Cups connected by string. They also play entities, if they believe doing so will help them accrue money and/or power. “Playing people” is what narcissists do whenever they are not sleeping. ![]() ![]() I discussed this with my buddy and he finally agreed that most of the “boyhood friends” besieging him were liars: “I don’t mind making people money,” he said, “but what ticks me off no end is getting played.” Of course most of the calls my friend got for Facebook stock came from strangers: Narcissists using guile, artifice, and pseudo-intimacy, to convince someone they deserve preferential treatment is a warm-up exercise for these guys. This broker is still the same sweet kid who came to the Big Apple from the cornfields of Iowa without a malicious bone in his body and no appreciation of how manipulative narcissists can be when the scent of money is in the air. ![]() I love what I do unless it involves figuring out who alleged grade school buddies are…” When I finally got hold of him he apologized: “Every guy I know –and many I don’t, but who claim they know me- has called to get in onįacebook. Facebook’s IPO a stockbroker friend of mine was uncharacteristically unavailable.
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