Harry Potter and Narcissism

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So, a lot of people here seem to think that Harry Potter and his friends are narcissists. That's interesting because I was looking up narcissist behaviors for a villain in one of my own stories and I realized that Harry fits the "vulnerable-narcissist" pathology to a T.



So on this psychology blog there was a description of two types of narcissists: vulnerable narcissists and grandiose narcissists. The distinction lies in that vulnerable narcissists are obsessed with overcompensating for deeply-rooted inferiority complexes (possibly stemming from abuse in many cases), which leads to them getting defensive and angry whenever they're not treated like royalty, and being paranoid that people are about to turn against them (and thus obsessed with preventing that from happening). GEE, DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?

On the other hand, grandiose narcissists have higher self-esteem, and tend to be more aggressive and obsessed with showing everyone how fantastic they are. They're also likely to ditch people who don't treat them like royalty on the grounds that they're "not good enough," not really caring how they think of them. The blog goes on to posit that such narcissists might have been spoiled from a young age. So Harry's parents could be grandiose narcissists.

An archetypal vulnerable narcissist is as follows:

"John, a truck driver, is a vulnerable narcissist. He prides himself on his technical abilities to deal with any problem situation. He has a good reputation at work for his skills, but others are offended by his arrogance. They try to avoid him and put him down behind his back.

He marries Sandy, who has an administrative job. He feels easily threatened by Sandy's success and independence. But Sandy is quite codependent and spends a lot of effort "fixing" him, helping him feel great about himself. He complains to her about how people mistreat him at work and don't appreciate how special he is. He talks a lot about quitting his job and working with people who appreciate him. But he never does.

He also complains that his friends "turn against" him when they seem to avoid him or have other priorities. He blames Sandy when things go wrong around the house while he's on the road, and she has learned not to argue back. When Sandy gets a raise at work, John insults her and claims she must be sleeping with her boss. He demands that he determine how they spend their increased pay. Sandy sometimes hints about divorcing him, but he says he would kill himself if she did--so she doesn't."

While an archetypal grandiose narcissist is more like this:

"Fred is a physician. He met Sharon at work, who is a nurse. He divorced his first wife (who helped put him through medical school) and married Sharon, an attractive "trophy wife." Their relationship revolves around hiscareer.

He routinely belittles Sharon behind the scenes and occasionally slaps her for acting "stupid." He doesn't want her to work, so she gives up her career to raise several children. Fred, in the meantime, has several short affairs with other secretaries and nurses, which he doesn't hide. He gets furious with Sharon when this upsets her.

When the children get older, she wants to return to work. But he belittles her abilities, so she devotes herself to volunteer work related to the children's activities.Then Sharon gets cancer and Fred gets the best treatment for her. But while she is in the hospital, he also develops a more substantial relationship with another nurse at work. When she finds out, she is crushed--not only about the affair, but his inability to emotionally support her."

If you read the rest of the blog, I think you'll find that a lot of the traits they describe to be reminiscent of the behavior of several Harry Potter characters.

Comments

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

Not really. He is only convincing when we ignore her interviews.

@ Oryx: She wrote the character: he doesn't exist outside her head. Therefore there must be SOMETHING there in the text about Snape's character which you and I are picking up on, regardless of the author's intent or what she says in interviews. Isn't that how the dynamic interaction between narrative and reader works? And has always worked?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Hey, Pearlette! When you say, "She wrote the character. He doesn't exist outside her head", I beg to differ. I'm a writer, too, though a beginner, and i believe strongly in "the death of the author". The character does not exist in Rowling's head. He exists on the page, and in the space between the written words and the readers' imaginations. He belongs to the readers!

So it doesn't matter what the author thinks she meant. What matters is what she actually wrote. Is that what you're saying in the latter part of your comment? I'm not at all sure i understand you.

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

Actually, MaryJ, I do agree with you. I ‘m not a big fan of ‘death of the author’ (as a Tolkien fan, it’s impossible for me to be so hardline about that), but, yes, you are right: the character takes on a life of their own in and even beyond the story, in the interaction between reading the text and the reader’s imagination. To me the author isn’t dead (I’m not using the word 'dead' literally since Tolkien, for example, is, in fact, dead). However, their story takes on a life of its own after they have completed it. That is a more rich and satisfying way to see our relationship with literature.

So it doesn't matter what the author thinks she meant. What matters is what she actually wrote. Is that what you're saying in the latter part of your comment? I'm not at all sure i understand you.

That is exactly what I meant.

[oryx_leucoryx]

As Mary said, he exists in the heads of each reader. A different version of him. Some readers have more than one version. Much of what people are picking up on is how they fill up what we weren't told. And much of that is due to the promise people saw earlier in the series, when we got hints that Rowling had some kind of plan. But her plan ran out by mid-series leaving us with the choice of throwing the books away in disgust, accepting her version, no matter how shallow and incoherent and not looking further, or using the remaining gaps as means to construct whatever we want that each one of us finds more satisfying.