Writings on Narcissism, Part 4

Rastinews — The Erosion of Shame and the Age of Narcissistic Exposure

Shame is one of the narcissist's deepest fears. More precisely, it is the possibility of shame: being caught in one's own deceptions, having an inner world exposed, watching the mask slip. Narcissistic structure is not simply grandiosity. It carries a constant anxiety of exposure. The narcissist seeks admiration by exaggerating self-presentation, yet fears that the exaggeration will be noticed, unpacked, and seen for what it is. In the digital age, narcissism does not merely dodge this fear — it inverts it. The posture becomes counterphobic: confront the very thing you dread, put it on display yourself. If nakedness brings shame, nakedness gets exhibited. If privacy is the source of shame, the private becomes public. Both the fear and the shame are neutralized this way. The pattern is visible everywhere today. Those uneasy about nakedness display their bodies, and their secrets, on social media. Those afraid of being seen in their privacy tell their most intimate stories in front of millions on Müge Anlı's television show. What happens here is not only exposure — it is a displacement of shame. The subject who should feel shame does not; the shame is handed off to the viewer. German has a word for this: Fremdscham, shame felt on someone else's behalf. But even this handoff is failing, because the viewer, too, is losing the capacity for shame in the digital age. Shame stops circulating. It simply sits there, unclaimed. A similar shift has overtaken lying. Lying, and getting caught lying, used to produce shame.

Today the lie is told like a success story — even flaunted with pride. Figures like Erdoğan and Trump, despite their strained relationship with the truth, feel no shame over it; more often, they draw strength from it. Lying, in this logic, becomes a skill. Lying shamelessly and fearlessly, in that counterphobic register, leaves the observer confused about whether it was even a lie at all. We are living in a moral order where "that can't be true, it's impossible" has become the normal response.

A significant fracture emerges here, particularly for Turkish society. Cultural theory typically divides societies into "guilt cultures" and "shame cultures." Turkish culture is, to a large degree, a shame culture: social relations, moral norms, and the value system are organized around shame and shaming. The difference shows up concretely in everyday life. A child who skips studying and brings home a bad grade does not hear, as in a guilt culture, "you didn't do your homework, so your allowance is cut" — a statement built on a clear causal link between behavior and consequence. In a shame culture, the emphasis falls on the person rather than the act. The same situation more often produces something like, "you're behaving like a donkey, have you no shame?" What is being condemned is not just the behavior, but the person themselves. Regulation, then, works through an internalized gaze rather than an external sanction. The subject judges themselves not only by what they do, but by how they appear in others' eyes — "what will people say?" It is precisely here that the digital age shakes this regulatory mechanism to its core. Shame depends on the capacity to internalize another's gaze. Today that gaze has either multiplied beyond measure or gone completely dead. In an order where everyone is looking but no one is truly seeing, shame stops functioning. It ceases to be a social regulator, and its place is taken over by exposure, indifference, and numbness. What remains is less a society than a crowd that looks at each other and feels nothing. This erosion of shame in the digital age is not merely an individual shift — it signals the unraveling of the social order itself. As shame weakens, the invisible boundaries that regulate relationships disappear along with it. What we are witnessing today, in this sense, is not just a loss of values, but the wearing-away of being a society at all. What is left to describe is less a society than a crowd standing side by side without ever touching.

Shame holds a central place in narcissism too, though here it is mostly hidden, covered over. The grandiose self is built precisely to protect this fragile core. The need to feel exaggeratedly valuable, powerful, or privileged is, more often than not, a defense against a deep sense of inadequacy and worthlessness. In this sense, narcissism is a cover the psyche builds against its own nakedness. Shame is the rawest truth underneath that cover. A person's disappointment in themselves is one of the deepest sources of shame — shame arises not only when the outside world's expectations go unmet, but when a person fails to live up to the ideal built in their own mind.

This comes down to the distance between the ideal self and the real self. A person builds an inner blueprint of the "self that ought to be" — stronger, more successful, more attractive, more capable. But that ideal usually sets a bar that is difficult, even impossible, to reach. When the real self falls short of it, the gap is experienced not as a mere shortcoming but as outright worthlessness. Shame emerges exactly there. This structure is directly tied to narcissism. In a narcissistic organization, the ideal self is not just a goal — it is the very standard by which the self's worth gets measured. The subject judges themselves not by who they are, but by who they believe they ought to be. That is why narcissism binds two opposite poles together: grandiosity and shame. On one side, the fantasy of being extraordinary; on the other, the deep sense of inadequacy that surfaces when the fantasy cannot be sustained. The grandiose self is usually built to cover that core of shame — the person compensates for the fragility underneath by feeling exaggeratedly valuable, powerful, or special. When that structure fails to hold, the suppressed shame resurfaces, often more intensely than before. Narcissism, then, is not simply a state of grandeur — it is a fragile balance built with shame. A person either exalts themselves by approaching the ideal, or feels worthless as they drift from it. Staying in between — accepting one's limits while still holding onto a sense of self-worth — is among the hardest, and most fundamental, conditions for psychological maturity. A person lives not only under others' gaze, but under the gaze of their own inner eye, the superego. And sometimes the heaviest shame is born the moment a person looks at themselves through the eyes of their own ideal.

Some of the mind's defenses are cruder and harsher: denial, projection, splitting. A person attributes their own shortcoming to someone else; denies their own fragility; splits the world into "all good" and "all bad." More developed defenses do not try to erase the shortcoming outright but manage it indirectly — sublimation, humor, intellectualization. All of these defenses share one goal: regulating the pain a shortcoming produces. What is hardest for a person is not the shortcoming itself, but confronting it nakedly. Psychological maturity may begin exactly there — not in eliminating one's shortcomings, but in developing the capacity to exist alongside them. Giving up the fantasy of narcissistic wholeness, being able to bear shame, accepting incompleteness as an inescapable part of being human — this is one of the deepest stages of a person's psychological birth.

In time, this experience of inadequacy turns into a child's disappointment in themselves. As children run up against the limits of their own abilities, they begin to feel anger not only at the world, but at themselves. A child struggling to tie their shoelaces, for instance, may hurl the shoe to the ground in frustration when they fail — cry, give up, and turn that anger inward.

Benzer şekilde, a child reaching for a button may withdraw after several attempts and give up trying. These scenes may look like simple moments of learning, but they point to a deeper psychic process: the feeling of inadequacy creates a narcissistic injury. The child experiences not just an inability to do something, but a collision with the limits of the fantasy of being a being who "can." This limit renders the child dependent on and in need of others. Dependency in turn produces a dual affect. On one hand, orientation toward and attachment to the needed object grows stronger; on the other, this dependency can be experienced as a restriction of freedom. It is here that anger turns not only toward failure but also toward the condition of being dependent. These experiences become decisive in the organization of the self. If the feeling of inadequacy cannot be tolerated sufficiently, a person may either withdraw inward toward a structure that feels worthless and inadequate, or, conversely, develop an excessive self-assurance and sense of grandiosity to compensate for this fragility.

In both cases, the underlying narcissistic balance is fragile. The issue, therefore, is not eliminating the feeling of inadequacy but how it is met. The attitude the child encounters while living through these experiences—being understood, supported, having limits held realistically—determines whether the feeling of inadequacy becomes destructive or formative. Narcissistic balance is established precisely here: in a place where the feeling of inadequacy can be carried without being denied, yet also without collapsing the person into a sense of worthlessness. What is decisive for narcissistic balance is not the elimination of the feeling of inadequacy but how it is regulated. Because the issue is not the destruction of the lack but the relationship one can build with it. At this point, the distinction between "healthy narcissism" and "pathological narcissism" becomes important. Marie-France Hirigoyen sets out this distinction clearly in her study Die toxische Macht der Narzissten (The Toxic Power of Narcissists, 2021). According to her, positive (healthy) narcissism is the capacity to accept oneself, sustain one's own worth, and carry the feeling of adequacy on realistic ground.

Pathological narcissism, by contrast, points to an organization in which this balance is sought through external means. Instead of regulating the fragile self internally, the subject turns to compensating through others. It tries to sustain narcissistic balance by stepping on others, devaluing them, or becoming dependent on their approval. In pathological narcissism, therefore, balance is fed not by inner wholeness but by a constant production of external support and superiority. Healthy narcissism, by contrast, opens a space in which lack is not denied but the self is also not crushed under this lack. The person neither absolutizes nor completely devalues themselves. The real balance lies precisely in the capacity to remain between these two extremes. Healthy narcissism means a person has a realistic and flexible affect regarding their own worth. A person can recognize their strengths while also accepting their limitations. The experience of inadequacy is not destructive here; on the contrary, it becomes part of learning, growth, and building relationships with others. In such a structure, a person can accept being lacking, but this lack does not render them worthless. Needing others is experienced not as a weakness but as a natural dimension of being human. In pathological narcissism, the situation is reversed.

The feeling of inadequacy becomes intolerable, and the self either denies it or tries to compensate for it excessively. The person either constantly feels inadequate, worthless and lacking, or takes refuge in a fantasy of grandiosity that masks this fragility. This sense of grandiosity may look like self-confidence from the outside, but it is in fact extremely fragile and can shatter at the smallest criticism. In pathological narcissism, shame is a central emotion. When the person confronts their lack, they experience it not as a temporary inadequacy but as a condition threatening their entire self. This is why intense defenses come into play: denial, devaluation, belittling others, or, conversely, excessive dependency and withdrawal. The difference between healthy and pathological narcissism ultimately comes down to this: the former can carry lack, the latter must flee from it. The former makes relating possible; the latter either makes relationships excessively fragile or renders them superficial.

The goal of psychic development, then, is not to construct a flawless self, but to build a self that can exist alongside its lack, one that can carry its fragility without denying it. Because what matures a person is not perfection, but the relationship they build with their own lack.