Answering the Critics:

VIII. On the Charge of [Narcissism]

With the court of public opinion now in session, presiding judge John Q. Public puts to Ehrenfels the question: "on the charge of narcissism and egotism, how do you plead?"

Narcissism is a charge usually slung with greater acidity than any other criticism by inflamed opposition, among them members of the academic or professional community ('profs'). While one would think the best way to defuse Wyatt Ehrenfels is to offer a rebuttal of his ideas, vaunted members of the psychological community and their knuckledragging supplicants have taken to the practice of indicting Wyatt Ehrenfels's personality with language that would embarass a longshoreman. But when distemper gave way to credibility deficit, academics and practitioners resorted to 'official business' to repair their crisis of legitimacy. Still unable and unwilling to address the logic of Wyatt Ehrenfels, stalking psych profs, including a former ranking member of a state psychology board, attempted to diagnose Wyatt Ehrenfels with a personality disorder from the profession's formal canon, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder), adding a breach of professional ethics beyond merely slinging the non-technical charge of "narcissism". Without distinguishing between the casual and official labels, Ehrenfels remarked that the charge of an ego disorder is an appealing tool for 'psych profs' aiming to dress up juvenile name-calling in the official garb of DSM diagnostic nomenclature. "I think it's unfortunate that members of the field would call its diagnostic canon (DSM) into question by using it for purposes of creating unfavorable perceptions of their adversaries. I recommend persons in the public with an interest in the matter to search on the criteria for this disorder on the web. They will not only determine that my presentation does not rise to the level of narcissism (not unless you want to diagnose every reformer from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr. with this disorder), but that these persons, strangers to me, lack the observational base required to make such a determination. And it plays right into my critique of the field, as I have pointed out in various places on my web site the proclivity within the academic community for diagnosing students with whom they have a personality conflict or a political disagreement. When someone like myself comes along and indicates that he has a personal stake in questioning the policies and procedures that govern teaching and research in Psychology, and he does so with some passion and ideology, he becomes a magnet for such charges. At the risk of appearing narcissistic by acting in my own defense (and occassionally referring to myself in the third person which I can do since Wyatt Ehrenfels is an assumed name and political persona), I respectfully submit, Your Honor, members of the jury, that we're talking about the politics of misdirection here. We're talking about keeping Wyatt Ehrenfels on the defensive by raising spurious questions about mhis 'character.' The profs used to rely on labels like 'sour grapes' and 'roman a clef' to disarm me; but that was before response to my movement signified a general belief among the public that at least some complaints in this world are valid. When dismissal did not prove effective, ranking members of the academic and professional community, often under aliases themselves, turned to distraction.

Is it any wonder -- really -- that my ego should become an object of concern among psychology professors desperate to cut me down to size -- their size, when it is their own fragile self-esteem that is being quaked by my issue-driven reform movement? The way I see it -- when someone's ego is threatened, and when they're not feeling so well inside their own skin, they tend to divert attention from their own situations by disparaging the 'ego' of the person or persons who make them feel so insecure. As I see it, I called into question aspects of an institution with which they so utterly and completely identify. That kind of 'as psychology goes, so I go' level of identification and investment is unhealthy, and it is a problem fostered by the institution itself, which seizes upon a student's aspirations and longing for belongingness by making career milestones and membership in the profession conditional on self-denial and self-sacrifice -- on requiring them to give up their freedom and their wits to demonstrate that they fit in. They call it 'professional development,' but this kind of 'professionalization' is detrimental to one's individuation as a person, maturation as an adult, and progress as a scientist and student of this or that phenomenon. Even their own cherished concept of 'cognitive dissonance' supports my interpretation. Profs had to give up quite a lot to beat out hundreds of applicants for one of a handful of tenure-track assistant professorships. So naturally, when they grabbed the brass ring, the only way they can make all that pain seem worthwhile is by viewing Psychology itself as worthy of their sacrifice. And then overestimate the meaning of their own achievements in the field as evidence of their standing as scientists and citizens. This itself can be viewed as a form of arrogance or ego-inflation, though I do not like to make such charges on my web site because it is counterproductive to a discussion of my ideas and their policies and procedures. But it does explain why my critics are so achievement and outcome-oriented in their rebuttal. Their claims that I have not 'achieved' what they have in the way of a place in Psychology suggests they are playing a game of upmanship. They relentlessly attempt to depict all my achievements as unofficial (sometimes going so far as to use the term 'fraudulent' when they mean 'unofficial'), because in their view someone who publishes a book and releases a web site that has not been peer reviewed (i.e. approved by them) is just a 'fraud.' But the more they use comparative terminology and as long as they make references to ego states like narcissism or arrogance, the more it becomes clear to my readers that it is they and not I who view the world in shades of ego. If this is about me, well, that's only because they have made it about me. And they think that if they talk about me enough, that you'll lose interest in my ideas and that you'll ultimately come to see the focus on 'Wyatt Ehrenfels' as a problem with the ego of Wyatt Ehrenfels.

For membership in the profession they surrendered their own wits, their own freedoms, and control over their self-development, vital functions they know they can replace with the sources of validation, guidance, and identity provided externally by the professional community as part of an ego welfare system. (Some call it a 'token economy'). And believe me, once you've given up what they've given up to become professional standard bearers and savants, you have no choice but to rely on these one-size-fits-all bureaucratic sources: the self-indulgent polices and procedures, the inbred and derivative research, the abstract busy-ness that is their regulatory affairs, and the reassuring, self-congratulatory evaluation of junior colleagues and selection of new faculty. Their personal identity (and their own professional identity) is excessively suffused with the prevailing attitudes of their peers, and their actions as educators and researchers are governed by social conventions which masquerade as 'standards' but which have either no real standing in science or no unique claim to science.

At this point in my defense, the prosecuting attorney is objecting and asking the judge whether any of this is going anywhere, and it is at this time that I tersely submit the following: "Psych profs are not accustomed to dealing with ideas of their own creation." Psych profs can acutely identify any idea that originates from within someone, viewing it with morbid suspicion and attacking it with a meddling officiousness, as if the idea was tainted by individualism. All ruminations and reflections are self-indulgent dalliances. They then solicit other 'antibodies' within the community to hang on it such labels as "narcissism" and "kookery." The last time I checked, neither unconventional wisdom nor introspection is a DSM diagnostic category, and 'profs' would have you believe that it is a threat to the public interest when in actuality it is an immaterial (purely psychological) threat to their own sense of self (and possibly to the community reputation which they suck in as if it were the very oxygen on which their lives depended). If these labels cannot discourage others from entertaining the ideas, they can at least always count on a few objections from colleagues like themselves who are similarly threatened. And in these mirrors do they find life-sustaining reassurance.

Some of the egotism to which my critics refer is the jubilance of the newly paroled political prisoner, a joint function of uniqueness and inspiration. Nothing offends psychology professors more than passionate support for an original idea. As a graduate student, I recall feeling like I needed permission to indulge the superfluous impulse-to-enthusiasm and I realized that it was tantamount to possessing a working vestige that has long since stopped functioning in my peers (e.g. appendix). Their celebration (of the status quo)is of a shared variety, diffused among so many peers that much of it is reflected rather than physically emanating from any one individual. For this reason, I refer to an "institutional ego" in members of the psychological community, whereas I, the "throwback" and "castoff," am faulted for possessing a more classical egotism reminiscent of a subject-object distinction that trans-avantgarde academics are now trying to subvert as "soooo 20th Century." Is it any wonder psychology departments have come to resemble beehives and hornets nests?

For some others alleging "narcissism," the charge is purely tactical. It is designed to shift the focus from my ideas themselves to frivolous details about the source.

And then there are those who envy my swashbuckling anti-establishment iconoclasm. I bet that statement sounded narcissistic. But why else would some of these Usenet aliases drone in their menacing, vulgar, unprovoked voices (I have not posted to Usenet in 8 months) that I am "full of myself" or "suffer a grandiosity problem"? There is something here that they fear or envy. One moment they are posturing that I am innocuous and that they are "'jus havin' fun" and the next minute they are doing mental gymnastics to build a case that my opinions present a material threat to the public. So which is it?

I eavesdropped on a discussion about me that unfolded in the MetaFilter forums. I never posted there myself. I have never even known of the forum until it appeared in the results of a Google search of my nom de plume. Apparently, someone took issue with my cyberstalking report: "This isn't a "report"; it's a rant. And, more to the point, it's the rant of one of the parties in a long raging usenet war. As is the case with many salvos in such battles (and I myself have participated in a number of them; lo the shame of having surrendered to temptation), the author attempts to portray himself as calm, reasonable, and 'above the fray,' while actually being just as big a dickhead as everyone else involved. However, if you want to read this as sort of primary source material for the study of egomania on the internets, I think it totally kicks ass."

One wonders what sort of person would feel threatened by this report. After all, I never made the acquaintance of this gentleman. I do not believe I have ever crossed paths with him. And he doesn't give any indication that I attacked something he believes in. Having looked him up, I learned he put together a support blog for the children of adults with narcissistic personality disorder. It's quite possible that, having been a child of a certified narcissist, he is sensitive to displays of individuality and willfulness. Have you ever heard the expression: "if all you have his a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? I suspect one does not have do very much to draw a charge of narcissism from this fellow. While you can find plenty of events that triggered -- necessitated -- my report, there does not appear to be provocation for his message assailing my report as a 'rant.' So who is the real ranter here?

Even more bemusing is that other strangers joined in to notarize his sentiment. "I don't like to call people names, but I'll make an exception here: the guy who wrote this is a huge dick. 'Wyatt Ehrenfels' (a pseudonym) is an ex-psychologist with rather strange ideas about how research should be done and a huge axe to grind (his main beef seems to be that modern academic psychologists don't all conduct Freudian dream research). If anyone's guilty of cyberstalking, he is: he's repeatedly spammed virtually every psychology mailing list he can find with his tripe, typically resulting in banning when he refuses to shut up at the moderator's request. He's a raging narcissist, has nothing positive to contribute, and is completely out of touch with reality. Keep that in mind as you read the linked article (or browse the rest of the site and draw your own conclusions)."

Over the five years I have managed this web site, I tack a one-and-done bulletin-board style announcement of one of my relevant reports. Consequently, if you Google my name, the results will number in the hundreds (though many of these are web sites that collect links to author web sites). Sorry, this does not make me a spammer. Also, nowhere on my web site will anyone find anything to suggest that I am an advocate of Freudian dream research. You can find many arguments that I believe modern psychological research can be more scientific, but (1) faulting modern professors for being anti-intellectual careerists and (2) lamenting the lack of attention paid to the actual content of dreams (as opposed to output from an EEG) does not make me a Freudian. It's obvious here that this fellow is engaging in something akin to a witch's spell: if he could invoke the words that link me to two of the most scorned or despised groups in the modern era (spammers and Freudians), he could undermine my credibility. Oh, and perhaps we should add 'flamer' to the list. The fellow does takes issue with my appearing 'above the fray' and claims that I participated, and continue to participate, in a flame war. Apparently, he did not read the report about which he protests so much. The truth of the matter is that after a similar bulletin-board style post in a Usenet news group, I drew these stalkers. When I couldn't conciliate or disarm them, I stopped posting to Usenet for over a year. The stalking persisted. So I composed my web report for the benefit of those visiting my own web site. How is that participating in a flame war?

"Mr Julian Wyatt Ehrenfels PhD. Dream Scientist. Fuckhead."

Oh, my.

"I took one look at it, and I found the idea of his guests being interested in knowing more about the case to be an extremely unlikely one indeed and most probably a figment of his fevered imagination. Seriously, if you invited people for dinner and told them you were being cyberstalked, would they honestly ask to know more about it, or would they be more likely to say something like "er, interesting. Now how about those Yankees"?"

Is one look really all you needed? Because even in this day and age, I find death threats rather sensational. At least enough to compel a friend to raise the subject at a dinner party. What's so incredible about that? If you can't imagine such a reaction from one of your own friends, I suggest you get some new friends.

"Tell me more, you CRAZY FUCK."

Oh my II.

"Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, now go fetch me a Pepsi Blue you damn librulz ! Eww !"

Once again, I'm no Freudian. Apparently, the person who posted the link to my web site (and for all I know it may have been someone posing as me, as one of my stalkers has done in recent days after my report made it hazardous for him to continue to be himself in the offending news group), quickly learned what kind of treatment real ideas receive on the Internet, because from what I gather from this discussion, the thread was deleted by the moderator.

"I don't think it should have been deleted either, unless by deleting it we're hoping to attract J. Wyatt Ehrenfels so he can come infect us with his virulent brain-virus virus.

And apparently the only rationale offered by the moderator for deleting the message was that it linked to a "bunch of crazy sounding rants." I didn't realize we were outlawing all causes and complaints from the Internet. Now if only we could excerise that kind of control in real life. There'd be no rapes (at least we wouldn't know of any), no murders, no discrimination. Perhaps this site is exactly what Martin Luther King Jr had been dreaming about all those years.

"I was the first person to bash on the post and I feel a little guilty about this pile on. I do think that the rant makes a fine "oh my god, look at these nitwits" sort of post as well as a good jumping-off point for a discussion about public forums on the internet and what we choose to do or not do with them and why.

Apparently, the moderator feared that the original message (and again, it wasn't I who posted it in this community), was "really intended solely to rile people up and enjoy their reactions?" I didn't realize this was such a sin or that it came at the expense of the members of this forum.

Just to put things in perspective, a forum member even took issue with a couple messages alerting forum members to the London bombings. Get a load of this.

"Alright, never mind. One's OK, and inevitable, if the blowups in Londong are as big and bad as they look to be at this early stage, but two threads is still one too many."

Needless to say a brawl ensued. "Where the fuck do you get off, bardic, you gnat-ass little douchebag?"

The moderator did not find any of the profanity or hate speech that follows cause for moderation (or even mediation). But any post containing a link to my web report ... now that's heinous. In fact, the group even managed to brow beat the author of the original message into apologizing for his message. Get a load of the following message and pay careful attention to the 180 turnaround this fellow does in his last statement. Apparently, he thought my having brought my report to the attention of his psychology forum was worthwhile. Until he learned from other members of this forum that I had dropped a link to my report in other forums as well. That makes me a 'troll.' I guess only the members of that one psychology forum deserved the civic-minded message. As he himself acknowledged, there isn't a lot of talk about cyberstalking on the Internet. Well, I agree. I agreed so much, that I disseminated the report about stalking in a psychology news group in many psychology forums (whose members might have been inclined to join that news group). Here it is, the author of the original (now deleted) message:

"Hi guys, Just discovered this discussion about the deleted link. I'm sincerely sorry to have posted something not acceptable to MetaFilter. Ehrenfels posted his link in a psychology group I belong to. I had no idea he had spammed a bunch of groups with his postings. I went to his site and thought his rants were interesting for the following reasons:

This is exactly the kind of bullying the stalkers use to get people to stay in line. This is what some of the forum members had to say about the author of the original message:

"I have to say it - this is a terrible post. I'm not even sure alerting people to this guy's behaviour and history has been worth it. Most people here would I suspect recognize batshit crazy ranting without a headsup. I can't imagine I would believe or give credence to anything he said. If people want to search for info on the internet about other people they can.