Disappointed Expectations 失望的预期 Implicit in much of this material is the unremitting dialectic of narcissistic expectation and disappointment, of hope and frustration, of entitlement and disillusionment. Karen set her standards high; she expected to do everything well, to do it right, to do it immediately, and to do it according to a high standard of performance. She saw herself as sacrificing herself to an ideal of perfection, a sort of romanticized, idealized self-portrait of the heroic woman struggling to overcome overwhelming odds. She felt a need to be spectacular in everything she did, either to impress people with her brilliance and capacity, or with her rebelliousness and stubbornness. She wanted to be the absolute best, totally right, and she felt according to the inexorable dictates of her narcissistic logic that if she were not this she was then nothing, a nobody. 这份材料的大部分内容都隐含着对自我陶醉的期待与失望、希望与挫折、权利与幻灭的不懈辩证。卡伦把自己的标准定得很高;她希望把每件事都做好，把它做好，立刻去做，并且按照高标准的表现去做。她认为自己是在为一个完美的理想，一种浪漫化的、理想化的自画像而牺牲自己，描绘的是一个努力克服压倒性优势的英雄女性。她觉得有必要在她所做的每件事上都引人注目，要么用她的才华和能力，要么用她的叛逆和固执给人们留下深刻印象。她想成为绝对最好的，完全正确，她觉得，根据她自恋逻辑的无情要求，如果她不是这样，她就什么都不是，一个无名小卒。 Mere existence was not enough for her; she set high standards and dictated high expectations for herself and to change those expectations would mean for her to run the risk of contempt. She rebelled against being just a child, someone's daughter, just a girl, or even an ordinary analytic case. She complained that her parents expected her to be perfect, as though she were a god. "My parents raised me to be Jesus Christ," she said. Her expectations permeated her relationships with men, expecting them to make her feel important, cherished, needed, and desired. But her expectations were always disappointed, and the fulfillment always carried with it a disparity of anticipation. If her partners did not treat her in such a manner, she began to feel unspecial, began to feel disappointed, angered, and cheated. She could recall how disappointed and unspecial she felt whenever her father went away. She protected herself in such situations with anger and contempt. In the face of her disappointment and contemptuous rage she protested continually, "Somebody has got to be good enough for me." 仅仅存在对她来说是不够的;她给自己设定了很高的标准，要求自己有很高的期望，而改变这些期望就意味着她要冒着被轻视的风险。她反对仅仅作为一个孩子，某个人的女儿，一个女孩，甚至是一个普通的分析案例。她抱怨说她的父母期望她是完美的，好像她是神一样。“我父母把我养大，让我成为耶稣基督，”她说。她的期望渗透到她与男人的关系中，期望他们让她觉得自己是重要的、被珍惜的、需要的和渴望的。但她的期望总是落空，而这种满足总是伴随着一种期待的差异。如果她的伴侣不这样对待她，她就会开始觉得自己不特别，开始感到失望、愤怒和欺骗。她还记得，每当父亲离开时，她感到多么失望，多么不特别。在这种情况下，她以愤怒和轻蔑来保护自己。面对失望和轻蔑的愤怒，她不断地抗议说:“总得有人对我足够好。” An area of particular disappointment for Karen was her relationship with her mother. We shall see more of this shortly, but it seems that every contact with her mother renewed for Karen a sense of outraged disappointment and frustration. It was apparent that she carried into that relationship a set of expectations that demanded from her mother something that her mother was clearly incapable of providing. Behind the conflictual interaction and the angry tirades against her mother, there were the constantly abiding yearning and frustrating expectations that her mother would indeed recognize her and accept and love her for what she was, on her own terms, as the individual she defined herself to be, with her values and attitudes and behaviors. This expectation of acceptance and recognition from mother was continualy denied and frustrated. It became a paradigm of Karen's relationship with other individuals on many fronts. 令卡伦特别失望的是她和母亲的关系。我们很快就会看到更多这样的事情，但是好像每次和她母亲的接触都使卡伦感到愤怒、失望和沮丧。很明显，她在这段关系中带着一套期望，要求她母亲提供一些她母亲显然无法提供的东西。在矛盾的互动和对她的母亲愤怒的长篇大论背后,还有不断的向往和令人沮丧的预期,她的母亲会认可她,接受和爱她真实的样子，用她自己的话说，就是她给自己定义的样子，以及她的价值、态度和行为。这种被母亲接受和认可的期望被不断地否定和挫败。它成为卡伦与其他人在许多方面关系的范式。 Karen prided herself on being special. She regarded herself as having been a spoiled brat, what she called the "only child syndrome." The spoiled brat was of course part of being an "army brat."[军人的孩子] She always found it relatively easy to get what she wanted, especially in school where she was always capable of gaining approval from teachers and schoolmates, both in terms of academic performance and popularity. Later on she took a great deal of satisfaction out of being able to get any guy she wanted, and particularly of being able to get them in bed. During her college years this had been a particular satisfaction to her. 卡伦为自己的与众不同而自豪。她认为自己是一个被宠坏的孩子，她称之为“独生子女综合症”。这个被宠坏的孩子当然是“陆军小子”的一部分。她总是觉得得到自己想要的东西相对容易，尤其是在学校里，她总是能够得到老师和同学的认可，无论是在学业成绩上还是在知名度上。后来，她从能找到任何她想要的男人，尤其是能跟他们上床中得到了极大的满足。在她大学期间，这对她来说是一种特别的满足。 Whatever she did had to be striking and impressive: she had to stand out above the crowd. She felt that if she was not being noticed, she didn't count at all. She felt that she had a greater right to live and be happy than other people. She declared that she was not a democrat, and that her view was arrogant and superior. But her expectations of what life should give her were constantly being disappointed and frustrated. She was raised, she felt, to believe in male dominance and female superiority. Her father was the dominant figure in the family, but they both thought mother was superior. She went on to observe she had always felt superior to the men she had known even though she might have wanted them to be dominant in the relationship. It was difficult for her to undermine her own superiority, especially when she was so afraid of not being seen at her full stature, of being overlooked or ignored. But her own superiority was one of the greatest sources of her continual disappointment. She was an elitist, and it left her feeling lonely and self-righteous. She was constantly disappointed because people could never measure up to her expectations and were constantly failing and frustrating her. 无论她做什么，都必须引人注目，给人留下深刻的印象:她必须在人群中脱颖而出。她觉得如果没有人注意到她，她就根本不算数。她觉得自己有比别人更大的权利去生活和快乐。她宣称自己不是民主主义者，她的观点是傲慢和优越的。但是她对生活应该给她的期望总是不断地失望和沮丧。她觉得自己从小就被灌输了男性主导和女性优越的观念。她父亲是家里的主导人物，但他们都认为母亲更优越。她接着说，她总是觉得自己比她认识的男人优越，尽管她可能希望他们在这段关系中占主导地位。她很难削弱自己的优越感，尤其是当她如此害怕自己的全貌不被人看到、害怕被人低看或忽视的时候。但她自己的优越感是她不断失望的最大原因之一。她是一个精英主义者，这让她感到孤独和自以为是。她总是感到失望，因为人们永远达不到她的期望，总是不断地让她失望，让她挫败。 During one hour Karen reported that her mother had called her to ask why Karen had not sent a get-well card to her aunt who had a mastectomy. Her mother had said everyone else had sent a card or flowers, and wanted to know why Karen had not. Karen's response was to feel infuriated, full of rage and hate and guilt toward her mother. I wondered why she reacted in this way and her reply was as follows; 在一个小时内，卡伦报告说，她的母亲打电话给她，问她为什么没有给她做了乳房切除手术的姑妈寄一张康复卡。她妈妈说每个人都送了卡片或鲜花，想知道为什么卡伦没有。卡伦的反应是感到愤怒，充满了对母亲的愤怒、憎恨和内疚。我不明白她为什么会有这种反应，她的回答如下: It's running to my mother to have her fix the hurt. I remembered when that boy in Germany called me a "dirty Jew," or when I hurt my finger, and she eased the pain. And later in college though, she blamed me for causing the hurt and for upsetting her. I was always afraid of giving in or of making concessions, but I still want to be what my mother wants me to be. I remembered the story of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. He is the only one who can see, and he begins to think himself very special and very powerful. He is the only one who can see reality for what it is. But finally he ends up wanting to put out his own eye. 跑到我妈妈那里，让她把伤治好。我记得当那个德国男孩叫我“肮脏的犹太人”，或者当我的手指受伤时，她减轻了我的痛苦。后来在大学里，她责怪我造成了伤害，让她心烦意乱。我总是害怕屈服或做出让步，但我仍然想成为我母亲想让我成为的人。我想起了盲人世界里一个独眼人的故事。他是唯一能看见的人，他开始认为自己很特别，很强大。他是唯一能看清现实的人。但最后他还是想挖出自己的眼睛。 I commented that was indeed her fear, and that her struggle for independence indicated she was still caught up in a web of dependence on her mother. She replied, "She was all I had when my father was away. I resented terribly our dependence on her family. We had no home, and we were always going to see what they had and what they did. I always had to be grateful for anything they gave me. I simply rebelled at the idea of any concession." 我评论说，这确实是她的恐惧，她为独立而奋斗表明，她仍然陷在依赖母亲的网中。她回答说:“我父亲不在时，我就只有她了。我对我们依赖她的家庭极为不满。我们没有家，我们总是想看看他们有什么，他们做了什么。我对他们给我的一切总是心存感激。我对任何让步的想法都很反感。” Karen's specialness was the specialness of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. But, fortunately, it did not remain as such. Her conviction that her perception of herself and the reality around her was the correct one and that any other was distorted and blind, gradually gave way during the course of her analysis. It became less and less a matter of either-or, or of all-or-nothing perspectives for her. Toward the end of the analysis she was able to remark somewhat plaintively, "If I could only accept that 70 percent was enough, and that I already have 80 percent, then life could be all right for me." As we shall see it was this modulation of the all-or-nothing basis of her thinking, rooted as it was in the dynamics and vicissitudes of narcissism, that lay at the heart of her pathology. It gradually became less and less a matter of 100 percent or zero, and she was indeed able to accept that something less than specialness and its concomitant pressure of perfection was less intolerable, if not more desirable. 卡伦的独特之处就像在盲人的国度里，一个独眼人的独特之处。但幸运的是，它并没有保持原样。在她分析的过程中，她确信她对自己和周围的现实的看法是正确的，任何其他的看法都是扭曲和盲目的。这点渐渐地消退了。对她来说，这越来越不是个非此即彼、全有或全无的问题了。在分析快结束的时候，她有些伤感地说，“如果我能接受70%就足够了，而我已经拥有了80%，那么生活对我来说就没有问题了。”我们将看到，正是这种对她思维的“全有或全无”基础的调整，根植于自恋的动力学和变迁之中，构成了她病态的核心。它越来越不是个百分百或零的问题了，她确实能够接受，不那么特别的东西，以及随之而来的完美的压力，如果不是更令人向往的话，也不是那么难以忍受了。