Narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, narcissistic behavior, New York

Every detail of the legend has been conserved, through generations of retelling, because it has symbolic meaning. As I interpret I stay close to the details of each image and seek to understand the meaning of the details. A psychological point which is important to the story will be be represented again and again through a series of completely different images. Repetition, therefore, provides an essential check on the accuracy of interpretation.

Sedna admires her own beauty, too narcissistic to marry an ordinary man. The story says that there is is a disturbance in her relationships, a disturbance which - as we will see - leads her into danger. Normally we have collective rituals (dating, marriage, children, religious ceremonies) which allow us to engage with the unconscious without becoming aware of it. These rituals are collective because they have been devised by the community to help everyone deal with the unconscious. They are averaged rituals - one size fits all - not specifically responsive to any individual. They promote a generalized enlivenment but not the specific enlivenment - different from any other's - which we must find if we are to become more individual. Collective rituals protect us from the full, destabilizing power of the unconscious. But these mechanisms don't work for Sedna.

Sedna expresses her disturbance by being self-absorbed. But this also means that she sees her own specialness, believes that her appearance has special value. She imagines special, wonderful things for herself.

Beauty requires relationship in the sense that the parts of what is beautiful - a person's face, natural scenery, or a work of art - are in relationship to the whole (contrasts of color, form and intensity, for example, relate the parts to the whole). Beauty implies relationship also in the sense that it draws people to each other and inspires them to work at relationship.

To take pleasure in beauty is not work but play, not about utility but about imagination, symbolism and soul. To take pleasure in one's own beauty suggests a playful, symbolic relationship with one's own soul, that is, with the unconscious: the soul is one's own representative of the unconscious.

In psychoanalytic terms this is a "leading edge" interpretation because it recognizes the constructive purpose of Sedna's narcissistic self-absorption. Leading edge interpretations help a patient to see the unconscious potential to which a symptom points, they help the patient to assimilate new energy and to develop better self-esteem.

The repetition in the second paragraph confirms the above interpretation. When two different images suggest the same interpretation, then we can be more confident that our interpretation is correct. Her father's interest in literal food emphasizes, by contrast, Sedna's interest in symbolic nourishment. Her father's desire for a literal marriage emphasizes, by contrast, Sedna's desire for a symbolic marriage, that is, for a relationship with the unconscious.

Eskimo Man: Noatak. Edward Curtis, 1929, old-picture.com.

We look for polarities in the story because these represent major psychological tensions. The polarity between father and daughter expresses the theme of the whole story: that success in the material world (hunting) depends upon first attending to the symbolic world. In modern terms we'll be more successful in our jobs and our relationships if we work on our relationship to our inner selves.

Soon her father saw another hunter approaching their camp. The man was dressed elegantly in furs and appeared to be well-to-do even though his face was hidden. Sedna's father spoke to the man. "If you wish to seek a wife I have a beautiful daughter . She can cook and sew and I know she will make a good wife."

Again, our interpretation is confirmed by repetition. The father is too impressed by the stranger's furs and does not try to see the stranger's face, which might have revealed something about the stranger's inner self.

Also the father values his own daughter for her external beauty and for her conventional skills; he does not attend to Sedna's unique inner being. This may be the cause of Sedna's narcissistic injury. If parents appreciate their child's inner core then it may flourish; if they don't appreciate it (or if they intrude upon it with excessive attention), then it may be injured.

Under great protest, Sedna was placed aboard of the hunters kayak and journeyed to her new home. Soon they arrived at an island. Sedna looked around. She could see nothing. No sod hut, no tent, just bare rocks and a cliff. The hunter stood before Sedna and, as he pulled down his hood, he let out an evil laugh. Sedna's husband was not a man as she had thought but a raven in disguise. She screamed and tried to run, but the bird dragged her to a clearing on the cliff.

Sedna's new home was a few tufts of animal hair and feathers strewn about on the hard, cold rock. The only food she had to eat was fish. Her husband, the raven, brought raw fish to her after a day of flying off in search of food.

Common Raven (Corvus Corax): Saffey Sound, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, Glen Tepke, 2007.

Sedna has married not a man but a black, evil bird. Birds suggest ideas because they occupy the sky or spirit world and, like ideas, move fast and far without effort. Sedna seems, therefore, to have become possessed by ideas. There is no human or animal warmth and no hut or tent to contain her (no container for her inner liveliness). Her life is barren, windswept and cold but she can see far into the distance from her cliff-top perch (her mind is far-reaching.) These are vivid images of how life becomes when we are possessed by our minds, by the unbalanced power of the intellect. Our down-to-earth feeling and bodily reality is stripped away from us and we become cold, isolated, and verbose. The bird controls her ruthlessly, as the mind is ruthlessly controlling when it gains unbalanced power.

The Raven is an unconscious spirit. Any part of the psyche which functions unconsciously tends to be destructive, because it is autonomous, not integrated with the whole person. Ideas are not intrinsically destructive but they become destructive when they dominate and are not balanced by feelings and the senses. So technology may become destructive when it gains unbalanced power: our planet is now threatened by technology whose influence has not been balanced by human values. Consciousness requires more than intellectual understanding because consciousness sees the whole picture, including the personal and ethical, feeling dimensions.

Why has this happened to Sedna? In the logic of dreams and legends, temporal sequence conveys cause-and-effect: because her father failed to see her inner self, her self esteem was injured and she was seized by her mind. To be 'in one's head' is to be grandiose: one's powers of perception and understanding transcend human limits (the Hubble telescope sees into the farthest reaches of the universe). Grandiosity is a defense against narcissistic injury. Because my inner self has been devalued, I feel fundamentally worthless, like a worm. I compensate with a fantasy of god-like power. My self esteem is then split between these opposite poles.

Sedna was very unhappy and miserable. She cried and cried and called her father's name. Through the howling arctic winds Sedna's father could hear his daughter's cries. He felt guilty for what he had done as he knew she was sad. Sedna's father decided it was time to rescue his daughter. He loaded up his kayak and paddled for days through the frigid arctic waters to his Sedna's home.

Inuit seal hunter with atlatl lashed to kayak. Edward S. Curtis, ca. 1929. old-picture.com.

Our interpretation is confirmed by repetition. Now Sedna has feelings and evokes feelings in her father. Sedna's cold life in her head evokes her emotions which seek to reintegrate her being - she cries for her father. Her father begins to care about her feelings and not just about externals. If the human warmth between father and daughter had regained control, it might have saved Sedna from further injury.

When he arrived Sedna was standing on the shore. Sedna hugged her father then quickly climbed into his kayak and paddled away. After many hours of travel Sedna turned and saw a black speck far off into the distance. She felt the fear well up inside of her for she knew the speck was her angry husband flying in search of her.

There is much emphasis on feeling here: hugs, fear, anger. Again, repetition: the story portrays tension between human feeling and unbalanced ideas.

The big black raven swooped down upon the kayak bobbing on the ocean. Sedna's father took his paddle and struck at the raven but missed as the bird continued to harass them. Finally the raven swooped down near the kayak and flapped his wing upon the ocean. A vicious storm began to brew. The calm arctic ocean soon became a raging torrent tossing the tiny kayak to and fro. Sedna's father became very frightened. He grabbed Sedna and threw her over the side of the kayak into the ocean. "Here, he screamed, here is your precious wife, please do not hurt me, take her."

The raven creates the wind. In Germanic myth the raven is Odin's bird, and Odin is symbolized by the wind. The wind/Odin is another symbol of the unconscious spirit of yang, that is, the animus, the mysterious, threatening male spirit who arises in woman's psyche and catalyses development.

What does it mean that the father - who represents conventional consciousness - fights the unconscious spirit? We know already that the father has been too concerned with externals. Because of its superficiality (again, temporal sequence sugests cause-and-effect) consciousness is being attacked. The hidden purpose is to deepen consciousness. The more we deny the depths the more fiercely they attack, insisting that we relate to them.

Storm

This interpretation is confirmed by what happens next: the whole ocean, the whole unconscious psyche, becomes viciously destructive towards the father, threatens to drag him under and drown him (transform him completely). He throws Sedna to the sea, acknowledging by his words, "here is your precious wife," that the sea and the raven represent the same thing, that is, the unconscious. Sedna has now become a sacrifice to the unconscious. What does this mean?

The unconscious cannot be conquered, but must be acknowledged and respected. If we don't relate to it we will inevitably be devoured by it. By sacrificing his daughter to the ocean the father gives to it his own feminine potential, his own potential for relatedness; he seeks to relate to the ocean. By this terrible sacrifice he acknowledges the unconscious. This is the meaning of going to church or temple each week, of sacrificing time and money in the ritual.

Sedna screamed and struggled as her body began go numb in the icy arctic waters. She swam to the kayak and reached up, her fingers grasping the side of the boat. Her father, terrified by the raging storm, thought only of himself as he grabbed the paddle and began to pound against Sedna's fingers. Sedna screamed for her father to stop but to no avail. Her frozen fingers cracked and fell into the ocean. Affected by her ghastly husband's powers Sedna's fingers, while sinking to the bottom, turned into seals.

Cape Fur Seals. photo: BBC, planet-earth/images.

Sedna attempted again to swim and cling to her father's kayak. Again he grabbed the paddle and began beating at her hands. Again Sedna's hands, frozen by the arctic sea again cracked off. The stumps began to drift to the bottom of the sea, this time turned into the whales and other large mammals. Sedna could fight no more and began to sink herself.

When the father relates to the unconscious by sacrificing to it, he evokes its positive maternal aspect: it begins to provide for the needs of consciousness. So Sedna's fingers and hands become seals and whales.

Sedna's suffering makes sense on the external level but what does it mean symbolically? Why is her anguish so emphasized? The father's sacrifice is what Jung called an ars contra naturam, a true painful sacrifice. Like Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac, Sedna's father opposes human feeling. Analysis, for example, is painful and exhausting but the work must be done if consciousness is to increase. There is no easy way out.

The father abuses Sedna just as men abuse seals by clubbing them to death. Sedna becomes Mother Nature: the story describes both child abuse and our abuse of nature. Both of these symbolize the aggression of consciousness against the unconscious. A story of a dragon fight shows this aggression from the point of view of consciousness while this Inuit story - from a people who were closely intertwined with the natural world and depended upon it for sustenance - is more sensitive to nature's suffering. This story asks: 'what is the psychological effect of our aggression against the unconscious?'

(Glen Welker's version begins here.)

But Sedna was not drowned. Instead, she became the Spirit of the Sea and Mother of the Sea Beasts. She lives still at the bottom of the sea, jealously guarding the creatures which came from her fingers. Because of her father's cruelty, she has no love for human beings. Their wicked deeds trouble her, affecting her body with sores and infesting her hair like lice. Lacking fingers, she cannot brush her hair and it becomes tangled and matted. In revenge, she calls up storms to prevent men from hunting, or keeps the sea creatures to herself.

Sedna and seal. Davidee Amittu: Quebec, 2008. Soapstone.

When consciousness grows it disrupts unconscious patterns and seizes - for its own use - the energy which has been expended in those patterns. The unconscious may be shocked and injured and may withdraw defensively, just as an abused child may withdraw and throw up draconian defenses.

If the conscious personality cannot be sensitive to the suffering of the unconscious, then it (the conscious personality) will become alienated and cut off from the source of all life. So a man who becomes successful in business finds that he feels lonely, uncreative, and emotionally unreal because he has lost his connection to human feeling and to his own creative sensitivity. He has sacrificed his anima and lost connection to it.

Sedna is now like Persephone, the queen of the underworld. She is an intermediary. So humans achieve at best a conflicted liaison with the unconscious; like Persephone we live in a state of divided loyalty. The parallels between Sedna and Persephone are yet more evidence for Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, a level of the unconscious common to all people.

That Sedna is infested with lice and has sores on her skin shows the ongoing conflict and discomfort of her position. She is like Job and like Christ, suffering for the sins of humankind - again the parallels with Western mythology are remarkable. In psychological terms sin is the result of injured narcissism. Senda's trouble began with a disturbance of her narcissism.

When we are not conscious of our injured narcissism, it cannot be balanced by human values. We are possessed by it and our lives become sterile (Sedna keeps the sea mammals to herself).

At such times shamans must travel to the land below the sea to confess men's sins and to beg her forgiveness. Only the most powerful, who fear nothing, can undertake this journey for the way is long and dangerous, blocked by great rolling boulders, and evil spirits guard the entrance to the Sea Mother's sealskin tent.

To sooth Sedna's rage and pain, the shaman must first comb her hair until it hangs clean and smooth once more. Then Sedna may feel more kindly and release the whale, walrus and seal from the great pool below her lamp, so that for a time, until they forget and sin again, people may hunt freely and without fear.

Shamans brave hardship and danger to immerse themselves in the unconscious, to give it the attention it requires. One way we can do this is by interpreting dreams.

The image of shamans going underwater to comb Sedna's hair is an astute portrayal of the psychological situation. Sedna's hair represents her ideas since it grows out of her head; her ideas get tangled unless consciousness intervenes, again and again, to clarify them. When thought is left to the unconscious alone it becomes destructive. That is what happened in Germany under the Nazis.

Hitler, Himmler at Nuremberg September, 1938.

Hitler's hair was tidy but his thoughts were tangled. He thought himself to be god-like, with limitless power, which means that he suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. When narcissism is severely disordered the potential for destruction is great.

In modern consciousness writers serve the function of shamans. Writers tell stories about our injured narcissism, thereby helping us to maintain our connection to the unconscious. We are shocked and pained by their bad reports but we can only be real if we are willing to look at our own darkness.

It is for this reason in the north that after a hunter catches a seal he drops water into the mouth of the mammal, a gesture to thank Sedna for her kindness in allowing him to feed his family.

If we maintain an attitude of sacrifice and remembrance then we live in better relationship. We are not possessed by narcissism because, by acknowledging the primacy of the gods, we remind ourselves that we are not gods.
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