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Mulan Offline OP
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Just something I thought of while watching *The Wizard of Oz* yet again:

The condition of narcissism is named for a character in a Greek myth, Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflected image in a pool and pined away for it until he died.

This has led to the idea that narcissists love only themselves, but that�s not exactly what the story means. Because he was so empty on the inside, Narcissus only existed when he saw himself reflected somewhere else. And that�s how someone with the condition called �narcissism� goes through life: An empty hole on the inside, with no sense of self-worth or self-validation to make them feel whole and human and good. Instead of looking inward for those things, they only look outward � to other people � to give them what a healthy person has learned to create from the inside.

But of course no other person can give them what they need, and so narcissists spend their lives as bottomless pits for attention, admiration and validation. And they only end up more and more and more empty, because that sort of pit cannot be filled from the outside. It can only be filled from within.

In *The Wizard of Oz*, our famous four characters search for the things which every human needs: A brain, a heart, courage, and a home. But just like the narcissist, they make the mistake of searching for others who can give them those things instead of looking within.

The Munchkins represent well-meaning friends who actually encourage the narcissist to search outwardly instead of inwardly. �Follow the yellow brick road!� they say, because the yellow brick road leads you to the ones who can give you what you seek � namely, it leads to the Wizard.

Glinda the Good represents a true friend who wants to help but knows she cannot, because she understands that she cannot give the characters what they seek.

The Wicked Witch represents full-blown narcissism run rampant. She is surrounded by evil, misshapen characters like the Flying Monkeys who try to bring her what she wants � namely, attention and admiration that she has not earned � and by thralls, the Winkie Guards, who are enslaved by her cruelty but don�t know how to break free of her.

In the end, the Wicked Witch is vanquished by simply washing her away with honesty and courage. And then the Flying Monkeys are gone and we see that the Guards were not really loyal to her at all.

The Wizard is a fraud, of course, because no one can give you what you must create and nurture from the inside � courage, wisdom and love.

Glinda finally tells Dorothy that she had the power to go home all the time. �Why didn�t you tell me?� Dorothy cries, and Glinda says, �Because you would not have believed me. You had to learn it for yourself.�

And so they did. As we all do.


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Mulan Offline OP
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I guess I posted this here because having an affair is such an incredibly narcissistic act in itself. You're out looking for love and valdiation from Flying Monkeys and enslaved thralls - who have the power to destroy you and will not care if they do - instead of using your own power to simply go home.

In this story, "home" is the place within yourself where you will have all the things you ever wanted or needed - including people who will love you simply for yourself, as Auntie Em and Uncle Henry and all the other "real" characters loved Dorothy.

That's why there's no place like home.


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Interesting perceptions, Mulan. Thanks for sharing this.

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Too bad narcissists didn't glow neon green or something as a heads up to save the rest of us from the certain pain they bring.


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P.S. The Witch wanted the Ruby Slippers, but they were unobtainable for her. That's because the Ruby Slippers represent Home and you must make your own Home - you cannot just take someone else's and expect their home to be yours.



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Would add that the Flying Monkeys also represent the sycophants, lackeys, toadys, groupies and hangers-on that powerful narcissists often attract. The Monkeys are pathetic, unnatural creatures who exist on the crumbs and leftovers of the narcissist but really care nothing for him, because if he's gone they'll just attach themselves to someone else.

Remember the "Memphis Mafia"? They were Elvis's Flying Monkeys, living at his feet and dragging in whatever they thought he wanted (even if it was really very harmful and would ultimately kill him, which it did).

Michael Jackson had Flying Monkeys, too.

Elvis and Jacko are just two examples of people who chose - yes, chose - Flying Monkeys instead of the genuine love and respect they could have had from real family and real friends. There are many more, both famous and not.


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Elvis and Jacko are just two examples of people who chose - yes, chose - Flying Monkeys instead of the genuine love and respect they could have had from real family and real friends. There are many more, both famous and not.

And your favorite pro-golfer, too.
[Linked Image from celebritysmackblog.com]

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Originally Posted by Pepperband
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Elvis and Jacko are just two examples of people who chose - yes, chose - Flying Monkeys instead of the genuine love and respect they could have had from real family and real friends. There are many more, both famous and not.

And your favorite pro-golfer, too.
[Linked Image from celebritysmackblog.com]

Yup. NPD plus Sex Addiction = A Match Made in the Ninth Circle of Hell (but Tiger's a billionaire so it must be the rest of us who are just crazy)


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If you can stand one more:

I looked at some excerpts from *The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists.* The author seems to feel that the Wizard himself represents an NPD.

But the story didn't strike me that way at all.

As I mentioned above, it's our four main characters who represent the NPDs because they're the ones looking for others to give them what they need instead of looking inward to find it. And the Wicked Witch represents NPD run rampant at its most destructive.

But the Wizard - now, think about it:

The Wizard is first shown as nothing but an ugly and very angry face, shouting and growling and erupting in fire and fury, living as a recluse and trying to get rid of all these NPDs who keep trying to Get Things From Him.

He's not trying to get anything from anybody. He hides from everyone and tries to get them to leave him alone. He clearly looks to be angry, lonely and suffering.

Sound familiar?

To me, the Wizard represents the spouses and adult children of all the charming, sweet-talking, innocent-looking NPDs who have been tormenting them to death for years.

Finally, when his true form is revealed as a gentle and quite ordinary man - who is a fraud only in the sense that he cannot give the NPDs what they want any more than anyone else can - he is able to get the NPDs to look inside for what they want, and then he is able to get free of them and go home himself.

Of course, it's left to Glinda to help Dorothy with the biggest hurdle of all - understanding where Home really is.

I don't think the Wizard represents a full-blown Narcissist at all. That's The Wicked Witch. The angry, hideous, reclusive and lonely Wizard represents the NPD's tormented and isolated victims.


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Originally Posted by Mulan
]..The Wizard is first shown as nothing but an ugly and very angry face, shouting and growling and erupting in fire and fury, living as a recluse and trying to get rid of all these NPDs who keep trying to Get Things From Him.

He's not trying to get anything from anybody. He hides from everyone and tries to get them to leave him alone. He clearly looks to be angry, lonely and suffering...

I don't think the Wizard represents a full-blown Narcissist at all. That's The Wicked Witch. The angry, hideous, reclusive and lonely Wizard represents the NPD's tormented and isolated victims.

I love this comparison Mulan. Ever think of "the poppys" representing what we know as poppys/heroin? Think about it, The full-blown witch trys to get dorothy to go to sleep, forgetting her quest and avoiding the pain and fear. So then she doesn't really live her life but instead trades it for a safe place where she dreams her life away instead of really living with all the pain that comes from that. (I'll take the pain thank you if thats the choice.)

I allways thought of the wizard as the way we think of God. He is some scary big impressive force that would squish us like a bug rather than deal with us and thinks of us as worthless and hardly worth his time. The big facade of the fire and brimstone played out was one the wizard created to keep us under "control". Much like people, who trust the law as being what keeps the world in check as they feel they are so "informed" and "educated" and know so much more than us, they are powerless to really change our hearts.

Only we can change that, and Gods influence is personal, not religiuos cerimony and rules. But as children we need to know his authority, and thats all humans can do. Kinda like "you'll be sorry...." So that wizard thing represented religion and mans attempt to control by fear.


But someone saw behind the curtain,(wish I remembered who it was, think it was scare crow, the brain), and dorothy, being the truly brave one who believed the best and sought it even if it meant death, confronted the "man behind the curtain", a human being, a con-man and a liar, who "totally by accident" ended up worshipped as a God. His pretending to be mystical with his need to impress others had "landed him there", like so many actors, sports figures, and fame searching but insecure people do when they fool us into believing there special. Well now he was accually forced to keep up the facade, because thats all he was and all he tried to be. And God to him was that scary image, but dorothy saw thru that.

So, when he told them they had everything they needed all the time, he was speaking from wisdom. He knew people,(as he said), it was his business. But it speaks of the scripture, "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:", we are told to turn away from those people. Dorothy saw the real power,ignored his assumed diety. She was confused and still spoke her heart as she asked the man before her who assumed that power and mislead the people"(if you are a great and powerful wizard)", simply what she could do. She was heartbroken and the wizard did what he wanted to do all along, go back, but now he had the courage because someone else wanted that too. Again he tried to take her back the way he came, because it was all he knew, but it wouldn't work, cuz it never does, life's journey is allways different for everybody. His willingness to try started him on his way, but he was soon to find out he had to go alone also.

He was never so Godlike untill he acted out of compassion for her, and that was the real strength.

So the ever seeking home Dorothy found out she had it within herself all along, just as God tries to tell us he has given us that power also. The booming wizard was not God but peoples willingness to be controlled by fear and calling God a cruel taskmaster, "(bring back the broom?)" like He is asking us to perform impossible tasks to earn favor. Like so many believe that also,(like the human wizard) when it's so simple.

The true hearted Dorothy would not be impressed with a scary God, she doubted he was real from the start. She even bravely went out and faced impossible odds to do what the Wizard wanted and thought it made no sense to get the broom. When she came back with it was he confused and flustered lol. She shattered that illusion by her courage to challange him. What a brat, challanging authority, untill she got to the real one, which represented what she knew was true in her heart.


What do you think Mulan, Plausible?

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But someone saw behind the curtain,(wish I remembered who it was

I remember it being Toto, the dog.
He pulled the curtain back with his teeth.

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You will need to click "Watch on You Tube"

I remembered correctly.

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Funny you should mention Toto - I was thinking about where Toto figures in the story. I think that because Toto is an animal - a normal, natural animal, not a fantasy creature like the Lion - he therefore represents the kind of innocence and purity of spirit that can never be contaminated by narcissism. He can neither be one nor respond to one.

It is in protecting Toto that Dorothy finds the courage to destroy the Wicked Witch, and it it Toto who reveals that the angry and blustering wizard was also a "real" creature who should be treated as such - not merely used as a source of supply for NPDs, which left him angry and reclusive.

When the innocent Toto pulls back the curtain, the Wizard can finally respond to the NPDs as his real self and *then* he is able to get free of them - presumably to go back to a normal, natural world.

The only place where the metaphor doesn't quite hold, IMHO, is that the Wizard actually *is* able to turn around the behaviour of the NPDs merely by pointing out their own traits to them. We know that this happens only rarely, if ever, in the real world.

But it is fiction, after all, and the purpose of fiction is to help us make sense of a senseless world - to give us a place where things *do* make sense and can end up the way they *should* end up.

As we often say, real life doesn't have to make sense. Fiction does. That is its purpose. And *The Wizard of Oz* makes perfect sense.


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And I still maintain that the Wizard is NOT a narcissist at all.

"GO AWAY!"

"I was hoping the Wicked Witch would kill you and I would never see you again."

"PAY NO ATTENTION to the man behind the curtain!"

No NPD would EVER say such things. They live for constant attention and emotional feeding from others. They are the polar opposite of the Wizard.




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Mulan-
When he was a teen, our son spent a year at an out-of-state residential treatment center.
They put on some plays.
They did "The Wiz".
The parents who could, went to the performance.
H and I attended, we also brought his younger sister.
It was a fabulous production.
Normally disruptive/difficult teens cooperating with each other to create an outcome greater than the sum of it's parts.

The Wiz is a very positive powerful message to out-of-control teens.

What part did our son play?
A flying monkey, of course!
Plus a citizen of Emerald City.
Plus he played guitar ... a snippet of a BEATLES tune that was briefly inserted into the play.


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Originally Posted by Mulan
..But it is fiction, after all, and the purpose of fiction is to help us make sense of a senseless world - to give us a place where things *do* make sense and can end up the way they *should* end up.

As we often say, real life doesn't have to make sense. Fiction does. That is its purpose. And *The Wizard of Oz* makes perfect sense.

Yeah, ask any Dungeons and Dragons geek or a trekie.

I really have never watched it at and the same time compared it specifcally to Narcisism. I sure do see where it works that way.

When I was much younger, I was a very afraid person full of self doubt and examined myself all the time not liking what I saw. Not from a religiuos point of view, but yet phycological and spiritual I looked for truths in many fictions because the impresssions that were laid on me about me were unacceptable in real life. Where they came from is another issue, but the imagination is a great tool to see things differently or from another perspective.

. Being raised in the 60s and the rebellion from the "establishment" and "dogmatism" also made want to understand rather than assume standard established beliefs. Fiction has very often gave me a different view though the imagination on peoples and my own core issues that were behind me or others intentions.

I guess fear being the greatest motivator, was the one I focused on and saw as the greatest crippling factor in living a heathly balanced life, so thats what I saw in OZ. People blinded by fear and who didn't know themselves.

I wonder, does that dovetail into narcicismm? Fear?

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Pep, the *WOO* is indeed a powerful story that works on many levels. Some of the themes are closer to the surface, of course, especially the one that says, "You were smart enough, brave enough and kind enough all along. You just didn't know it." Maybe that's what the teenagers were responding most to.

I never saw the story as a metaphor for NPD until very recently, when I saw an article somewhere mentioning the book *The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists".

So glad your son was able to connect with the positive themes in the story and get some good out of it. That's what every writer hopes for.


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WH cheated in corporate workplace for many years. He moved out and filed in summer 2008.

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