Letter II

PREFACE

Please see the posting above titled "Explanation of Six Didactic Letters from Narcissus" if you have not already read it so you understand that this letter is fictitious and used only for instruction. Questions and comments can be directed to Jessica, not to Narcissus, who cannot really write or speak about the matters in these letters, of course.

In this second letter, Narcissus refers to three CMT principles. First is the notion that testing is a behavioral substitute for directly discussing matters that are not yet directly accessibile to consciousness.

Second is the notion that tests conform to a kind of "mini-max" strategy. That is, Narcissus explains that it is necessary to make it hard for a helper to be directly helpful. A helper is allowed minimal room to intervene in an existing adaptation that is maximally fortified. A helper's passing difficult tests can perform therapeutically in a way that is all the more impressive to the person seeking help because the help was given despite the mini-max principle being in effect.

The third principle illustrated in this letter is the notion that passing early tests sometimes means that still more difficult tests have to occur before Narcissus can move more confidently away from pathological beliefs and replace them with more satisfying ones sought by his or her unconscious plan.

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If I Could Speak, Letter II

Hi again, Narcissus here talking at you.

In my last letter I told you about an indirect way of helping me feel entitled to needing people--speak for me by amplifying my complaints when I feel slighted.

It is going to very hard for you to directly help me feel entitled to needing others because I must make it hard for you to give me direct help. See, what I do is make difficult demands that others directly help me and care for me. My demands will be so insistent that you will call me "unreasonable" and say my "expectations are unrealistic" and harsh. This will make it hard for you to recognize any legitimacy to my need for others--you will tell me "your needs are excessive" and I will of course agree with you because I surely already believe that ANY need for others is excessive.

I express my human need for others in openly offensive and demanding ways because, as those folks say who use Control-Mastery Theory, my demands are a TEST.

My demands are a way to see if anyone will help me correct my belief that I am not entitled to care or to needing others. Since I don't believe I am so entitled, I have to make you feel as if you won't want to care for me when I am demanding and while I'm simultaneously not even too clear about what I even want or need!

But if DESPITE this severe testing--in which I try to get you to feel like telling me I am too obnoxious and have excessive needs, extravagant expectations, and also feel TOO entitled-- you nevertheless try to help me feel understood and help me find what is entirely good and realistic and wholesome about my demands, you will have passed a hard test that will impress me. At least this time. But you should know that I'll then have to put you through more severe tests later. That's the way it works.

It's as if I'm telling you, "I want you to help me feel entitled to need others, but I feel very humiliated admitting this, and so I absolutely cannot admit it and do not believe anyone should help me in this way. But I still want help and want to be convinced I'm wrong about this belief about being unentitled to needing others."

If you can help convince me, even under these trying conditions, that I may be able to feel entitled to needing others, that's quite impressive. And it could get me to begin to consider believing in what I have I wanted to believe all along but couldn't let myself become fully aware of.

If I could really tell you all these things about what my problem is, I wouldn't have a problem. So everything I'm telling you now is top secret--you'll rarely hear me admitting to any of these things. How could I? I'm not aware of any of it myself.

Sincerely not yours or mine,

Narcissus

Replies:

Letter III, by Narcissus, 5/15/99 Re:Letter III, by Anonymous Admiring Reader, 5/20/99 Re:Letter III, by Jessica, 5/21/99

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