Writings on Narcissism, Part 2

Rastinews — I used to watch İbrahim Tatlıses. In nearly every show, he said "I love you all" again and again. Doesn't "I love all of you" amount to the same thing as "I love none of you"? Being loved by someone as famous as him gave me a sense of worth.

It was a narcissistic sense of worth. Being loved by someone that towering made me part of that towering stature. The word "towering" didn't belong to Tatlıses alone: the more I built him up, the more towering I made him, the more the "me" he loved grew and towered too. People separated by status or knowledge seem to become equals by loving each other. A person becomes equal to whoever they love. I liked that picture. Jörg Willi, in "Die Zweier-Beziehung" (1992), describes a phenomenon he calls complementary narcissism. A narcissistic structure, he argues, rarely operates alone; it exists alongside another narcissistic structure that supports and completes it. One side is the active narcissist; the other occupies the passive position, feeding and completing that structure. The pattern was unmistakable with Tatlıses. He wanted to be admired and exalted, and we applauded him, believing he "loved us" for it. We, the viewers, were the passive narcissists. We didn't just admire him — we exalted him. He repaid that exaltation by telling us "I love you." A complementary narcissistic loop formed between us: we built him up, and by saying he loved us, he built us up in turn. When the show ended, everyone went back to their own life, but the taste of having been exalted was something else. He loved that we loved him; the "price" he paid for it was saying he loved us. Yet love is a specific, weighty feeling between two people. In that sense, the sentence "I love you all" can, in substance, also mean "I love none of you in particular." But because the sentence is phrased affirmatively, we choose to hear it as affirmation.

There's a small trick of language at work here. Take the famous parliamentary example: a lawmaker says, "Half of this parliament are donkeys," draws an uproar, then takes the podium and says, "I apologize — half of this parliament are not donkeys." The meaning is identical. But the affirmative phrasing eclipses the negative one. For that reason, "I love you all" is not merely a declaration of love; it is also a narcissistic arrangement. And perhaps that is exactly why it feels so good to us.

The Narcissistic Age

In traditional societies, the individual is born largely into a ready-made symbolic order. One is an ağa's daughter, another a headman's son; one a farmhand, another a shepherd, another an ağa. Social positions are fixed in advance; mobility between them is limited and usually stays fixed for life. This structure doesn't require the individual to keep rebuilding their own sense of worth, because worth is derived largely from the place one belongs to. In modern urban society, by contrast, the individual finds no ready-made position waiting for them — they have to build one. Worse, that position isn't fixed: it must be reproduced, defended and displayed to others every single day. Recognition is no longer a given; it has to be earned. That inevitably places the individual under constant narcissistic strain. In traditional, closed communities, narcissistic investment is spread across more limited, concrete areas. A person is recognized through specific skills and contributions — plowing well, dancing halay beautifully, mastering a particular task within the community. In such structures, esteem is embedded in daily life and relatively within reach. There are defined arenas in which anyone can stand out and be recognized.

In modern urban society, anonymity is the norm. People don't know one another, so recognition doesn't happen on its own. The individual is therefore locked into a constant effort to make their existence visible, to assert themselves, to be noticed. "Being" is not enough; one has to "be seen." Recognition is no longer expected from reciprocal ties within a defined community, but from the attention of a broad, often faceless crowd. That turns narcissism from an individual trait into a social necessity. The modern individual can sustain their own worth only through others' gaze. But here lies the paradox: modern society constantly generates the need for recognition while making esteem an extremely scarce resource. That scarcity only intensifies the individual's demand for recognition. Narcissistic investment keeps rising, yet it is never fully satisfied.

Christopher Lasch, in "Das Zeitalter des Narzissmus" (1995), calls our age and culture a "culture of narcissism." Modern society, he argues, builds a structure that forces the individual to constantly produce, display and seek validation for themselves. Narcissism, in that sense, is not merely an individual pathology; it is the era's own psychic organization. The question, then, is not why individuals are narcissistic, but why the modern social order has to produce a narcissistic subject. Narcissism here is not a deviation — it is a form of adaptation.

Singing in the Flames

The burning scene in Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" is not merely a ritual of punishment. As he burns, Salvatore blows on the fire. At first the gesture is ambiguous: is he trying to put the fire out, or fan it higher? The same motion carries both the possibility of release and the possibility of annihilation. The scene exposes a basic paradox of the human spirit: sometimes a person wants to end their pain; sometimes they want to intensify it, just to feel themselves. Because for a human being, the greatest threat is not pain but absence — nothingness. Pain is proof that one is still alive. Salvatore begins to burn. There is no turning back now. And Salvatore begins to sing. A moment comes in every life when a person stops caring about anything else and sings their own song. Socrates, perhaps, was in that state when he drank the hemlock, the moment his death was decreed. İbrahim Kaypakkaya may have reached such a threshold under torture. So, perhaps, did Mazlum Doğan in his cell, in that final moment. And the Denizler, in the hours before their execution. In every one of these moments, the individual does not dissolve in the face of death — they intensify. The outside world's authority recedes; the individual leans on their own inner law. What emerges in that instant is a kind of final moment of freedom. The one speaking no longer speaks for others; they speak to themselves. Hrant Dink. Tahir Elçi. Listen closely, at another depth, and there is a moment in their words where they seem to be speaking to themselves. But we hear it too. Because in that instant, the address of the words changes. What appears to be spoken outward is, in fact, turned inward. Osman Kavala. Selahattin Demirtaş. Perhaps Ekrem İmamoğlu too. Past a certain point, they sing their own songs. We hear the words, but we cannot join the singing. This is unmistakable in Pir Sultan Abdal. He sings his song to those who banned the Shah. A song we think we understand but never quite do — sung, by then, from another realm. Some songs are the same as Salvatore's song: the song of humankind. This song resembles a song of rebellion, but it is, in truth, the song of the human being. "I too will go from this highland to the Shah…" Something overflows from within; it cannot be held back, suppressed, or turned away. Words are no longer composed — they pour out. The individual no longer represents; they present themselves directly. They try neither to persuade nor to be seen. And it is precisely for that reason that the words take on their most authentic form. Because a person is sometimes most real when speaking to themselves. But to sing our own song, we first need an inner system of our own, and words of our own to sing. Peace, poverty, oppression — all of these are calls. Somewhere a voice is heard: "If you have a song to sing, sing it here." Here, too, with these writings, I am singing my own song. This song is neither against anyone nor solely for anyone. Yet every text ever written inevitably takes a position — against some, and alongside others.

Salvatore is the film's madman. Yet when he sets down the fire and begins to sing, it is not a surrender — it may be an attempt to become himself. In that moment, though his body is surrendered to the crowd's gaze, his voice still belongs to him. This gesture represents the last domain that cannot be taken from a person: their own inner continuity. Salvatore is visible in the midst of the fire. The crowd's gaze is fixed on him. Yet his existence does not depend on that gaze. He hears his own voice from within. His song is not for others — it exists for his own being.

One of today's fundamental problems may be that a person loses their own voice. Rather than experiencing their existence from within, the individual seeks validation from outside. For this reason, the modern subject lives in a constant sense of lack. This lack can be temporarily eased by others' approval, but it never disappears for good. I was writing about narcissism. The subject drifted. No — I drifted…