Body Narcissism: Tattoos, Gym Rats, Bodybuilders, Fashionistas, Sex Fiends

Religion (body as a shrine), cannibalism, religious prostitution, sex work (conform to stereotypes like big boobs), human sacrifice.

In narcissism, the body is either idealized or devalued, but considered in both cases a persecutory object (aging, disease, disability and death) that needs to be placated (sacrifices) or maintained/renovated.

This ambivalence and existential angst (dread) are anxiogenic (hypochondriasis). They lead to OCD (e.g., injurious, ritualistic exercise regime) and a dissociated body (estrangement).

Seat of trauma (body keeps score) and of healing.

Somatization, somatoform disorders, and conversion.

Solution: objectified but fluid body (e.g, makeup, plastic surgery).

Objectifying body as bait and a strategy to elicit narcissistic supply.

The somatic leverages his body to obtain narcissistic supply via:

Flagellation or mortification (Christian saints, Diogenes, Gandhi, endurance sports).

Autoerotic gratification (confirmatory sex).

Nudity and sex: sexual narcissists is wrong, it is somatic. Narcissism is somatized not only via sex.

Signaling: palimpsest of hidden and over texts.

Tattoes: externalizing one’s essence and recording one’s personal history, milestones, mnemonics.

Tattoos signal rank, in-group affiliation (gangs).

Bodybuilding (compensatory, rewriting body by rewiring musculature emphases).

Martial arts (philosophy and worldview).

Sports (extreme).

Sartorial attire: Normcore vs. ostentatious clothing.

Othering: recognizing and accepting the externality and separateness of other people.

Child others himself via mother's gaze: first body (Freud's psychosexual stages), then mind (early form of neutral splitting).

Then child others mother and transitions to object relations (from autoerotic narcissistic libido to other-directed object libido).

Narcissism is a failure of othering, so the child remains stuck in the othered body (somatic-solipsistic) phase or othered mind (cerebral-solipsistic) phase.

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