Narcissism Of Minor Differences Research Articles

Bridge, Wall, Mirror; Coexistence and Confrontations in the Mediterranean World

This article examines three contradictory images of the Mediterranean: the “polyphonic” one of exchange, convivenza, diffusions, and cohabitation; the “cacophonic” one of conflict, incompatibility, hostility, aggression, and ethnic cleansing; and the “anthropological” one of underlying cultural complicities. Each image has had its own literary exponents, and selectively draws upon its own source examples. The author then explores some of the problems associated with each model. For example, for the first model, the notions of hybridity or metissage are criticized because they are incompatible with the logic of the religions of the book, and because the social fluidity contained in these concepts is not borne out by practices and the sentiments of group membership and identity. Whilst the author agrees that the criticisms of the Mediterranean as a uniform cultural area with static attributes and limits (the “Anthropological Mediterranean”) are justified, he nevertheless suggests what gives coherence to the Mediterranean world is not so much the evident similarities but the differences that form a system. These complementary differences, inscribed in a reciprocal field, allow us to speak of a Mediterranean system. Attempting to synthesize Freud's notion of “the narcissism of minor differences” with Wittgenstein's concept of “family resemblances”, the article suggests the image of the insupportable twin, the one who is too much like us. Everyone is defined in the Mediterranean in a game of mirrors (customs, behaviours, affiliations) with his neighbour. All neighbours are close relatives who share Abrahamic origins and their behaviour only makes sense in this relational game. The article concludes by suggesting that to approach the Mediterranean it is essential to examine both its constitutive “family resemblances” and contradictions, and to analyze the interplay of reciprocal differences that now rigidify and then relax. The article thus attempts to explain how such opposed models of “polyphony/harmony” and “cacophony/hostility” could have been constructed based upon some degree of valid (but partial) evidence, and to move beyond and synthesize them into a dynamic anthropological analytical programme.

The "narcissism of minor differences" theory: Can it explain ethnic conflict?

In many ethnic conflicts and civil wars in the 20th century the cultural differences between the warring groups were very small. The bloody conflicts between Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnians during the breakup of Yugoslavia are a case in point. This observation has led some commentators to conclude that a lack of objective cultural markers between groups may itself be conducive to violence: When the members of two groups are difficult to tell apart, violence is inserted in order to create identity boundaries between them. One particular version of this theory goes under the name ?narcissism of minor differences?. This expression goes back to Sigmund Freud, who applied it both to individual psychology and in his philosophy of culture. The notion has been largely ignored by practicing psychotherapists, but over the last decades, however, it has been discovered by journalists and social scientists and applied to cases of collective rather than individual violence. The present article examines some of the articles and books that expound the ?the narcissism of minor differences?-concept in order to assess the explanatory strength and weaknesses of this theory. .

THE PURSUIT OF NEWNESS

The paper draws on research conducted in the late 1990s into the workplace cultures of London-based advertising agencies and the subjective identities of a group of young, largely male art directors and copywriters (Nixon 2003). The paper explores how these practitioners used the trope of creativity to describe the work they performed and considers what was at stake in their easy but insistent recourse to the term. It suggests that their extraordinary valorising of creativity was bound up with the extrapolation from quite small degrees of different-ness in the work they produced or strove to produce. In this sense, their cult of creativity was partly bound up with a ‘narcissism of minor differences’ in which creative teams sought to differentiate themselves from each other in the advertising that they generated. Furthermore, the valorisation of creativity was tied up less, in this sense, with making a client's product stand out – the manifest commercial reason for finding new ways of communicating with consumers – so much as with drawing attention to the creative teams in an intensely competitive occupation. The pursuit of newness also often came to be bound up with struggles over genres and genre hierarchies that themselves become coded in generational terms. Young creatives would ally themselves with ‘newness’ in order to challenge more established colleagues. We might read into this pursuit of newness and creativity, then, a strategy of distinction and position taking by differently placed practitioners over the accumulation of recognition and status and its conversion into tangible economic rewards. As such the cult of creativity amongst these creative people formed part of the cultivation of a distinct habitus in this ‘talent-led’ field of cultural production in which speaking the language and pursuing the signs of creativity was central to the successful shaping of an identity at work.

The difference sameness makes

This article examines the form and effects of differentiation that surface within the artifice of racial sameness. Using contemporary debates between ‘native-born’ and ‘foreign-born’ blacks in the USA over the right to ‘African American’ identity and the socioeconomic threat posed to the former by the latter, I show how the operation of the logic of race internally within a racial group reiterates familiar effects of racialization. Drawing on Freud’s notion of the ‘narcissism of minor differences’ as a framing device, I point out that this difference/sameness relation is not simply antagonistic through an analysis of the ambiguity of Africa as posing a socioeconomic threat in the migrants it sends while also presenting the historical and symbolic basis for African American claims to cultural distinctiveness. The article builds a critique of the invention of sameness that makes difference in two key ways: first, through the representation of difference as an antithesis that affirms the racialized self characterized by sameness; and second, that this makes a political difference in the sense that this dialectic of black as self and other reifies the social problematic of its sameness/difference relation as intrinsically (intra)racial to the extent that the substantive socioeconomic causality of racial stratification and racism are obscured.

Why we can’t get along

The author examines various arguments to explain the internal conflicts and schisms that have afflicted depth psychology since its beginnings. These arguments include the inevitable splits that occur in the course of institutional development, the inheritance of family schisms within the profession, historical, geographical and political influences, Freud's notion of the 'narcissism of minor differences' along with Gordon's idea of the need for enemies in establishing identity, and the impact of market forces. The author refutes these arguments and postulates instead that the profession attracts narcissistically disturbed members who have not been or cannot be sufficiently analysed. The profession needs to address this endemic narcissism in order to prevent further splitting and to establish a more ecumenical framework.

The other other: when the exotic other subjugates the familiar other.

In this paper, the theme of the other will be examined and it will be argued that it is important to differentiate between two distinct types of other--the 'exotic' other which is distant and very different from the subject, and the 'familiar' other which is closer to the subject. The dynamic relationship between these two others will be investigated, and emphasis will be given to the process through which the exotic other tends to subjugate the familiar other. This relationship will then be discussed in its various applied forms, in the contexts of clinical practice and socio-political dimensions. In particular, a new reading of Jung's approach to the 'primitive' will be developed, based on the subjugation of the 'familiar' other by the 'exotic' other. A similar line of investigation will be followed to examine the concept of psychological trauma. In addition, Freud's 'narcissism of minor differences' and Bion's distinction between 'narcissism' and 'socialism' will be considered in the light of this differentiation between these two others.

The Narcissism of Minor Differences

This essay explores the theoretical implications of Freud's notion of `the narcissism of minor differences' - the idea that it is precisely the minor differences between people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them. A comparative survey shows that minor differences underlie a wide range of conflicts: from relatively benign forms of campanilismo to bloody civil wars. Freud's tentative statements link up with the insights of Simmel, Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Elias, and Girard. Especially helpful is what Bourdieu writes in Distinction: social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat. An outline of a general theory of power and violence should include consideration of the narcissism of minor differences, also because its counterpart - hierarchy and great differences - makes for relative stability and peace.

On Hate in Love Relationships: The Narcissism of Minor Differences Revisited

Among the many reasons that feelings of hate develop in love relationships is the need to find and to exaggerate differences in order to maintain a sense of separateness. Freud's notion of the "narcissism of minor differences" provides a framework within which to understand this need to find disappointing differences in one's beloved. Developmental antecedents of this concern about defining and preserving one's separateness can be identified in both oedipal and preoedipal periods.

The narcissism of minor differences in the psychological gap between opposing nations

(1986). The narcissism of minor differences in the psychological gap between opposing nations. Psychoanalytic Inquiry: Vol. 6, Aggression and Its Alternatives in the Conduct of International Relations, pp. 175-191.

The narcissism of minor differences: The electoral contest in Sydney between the Communist Party off Australia and the Socialist Party of Australia

The narcissism of minor differences: The electoral contest in Sydney between the Communist Party off Australia and the Socialist Party of Australia