FOOTNOTE:
[5] Homo-sexuality—sensual love for a person of the same sex as oneself.
CHAPTER VIII THE IRRITABLE TEMPERAMENT
Irritability is not merely that quality in a person which makes his friends carefully guard their every word, lest inadvertently they should cause an outburst of temper, in its fullest sense it means over-sensitiveness to unpleasant stimuli, followed by over-reaction of any kind whatsoever. Thus, if a person by accident damage his clothing, his over-sensitiveness and over-reaction might result in an oath, in abusing the nail which tore his clothing or in abusing the workman who put the nail in place originally. It might again result in a feeling of depression, with anger displaced on to anyone who was present during the next hour, on the smallest pretext; or in an over-sensitive woman, it might result in an outburst of tears, or perhaps merely in volubly deploring the accident for half-an-hour with the next visitor who called; or she might merely “worry” about it, and keep turning the memory of it over and over in her mind, refusing to allow the fact to separate itself from her fancy.
All these various results, with many others which may be imagined, can be gathered together under the one term “irritability,” or the term “over-sensitiveness” would do equally well. This irritability or over-sensitiveness may apply to material things or to purely mental ones. Narcissism may lead to an irritability of the body, and again it may lead to irritability merely of the mind. When Narcissism leads to an extremely sensitive body, it reacts to pain of every sort, however mild, as though it were acute. The omnipotent mind cannot bear to have its body disturbed. I gave an example a short while back of the lady who could not take a fly out of my eye, because her own eyes were so sensitive. Not only was this particular lady sensitive as regards her eyes, but at that period she was as afraid of the dentist touching a tooth as if it had been a serious abdominal operation. Pain of any sort or even slight accidents involving practically no pain, were reacted to as though they had been overwhelming misfortunes. Here we had an excellent example of one in whom Narcissism had produced extreme irritability of a physical nature.[6]
On the other hand, one finds a mental sensitivity equally pronounced. People who are always in fear lest somebody should find fault with them, with their mode of behaviour, with their manner of dress, even with their habit of thought. Unconsciously, to themselves they are the acme of perfection, they are the centre of importance, and they are inclined to think that people are paying very much more attention to them than is actually the case. They may consciously realise that they are not important at all, that other people do not give them a thought; but their unconscious Narcissism will not accept this slight upon their importance, and they remain miserably self-conscious in all their acts, reacting with exaggerated feeling whenever some slight criticism of their thoughts and actions appear even to be implied.
Pride, vanity, and self importance are other manifestations of this temperament. The person who feels slighted, or whose feelings are hurt when other persons think too little of his opinions, or pay too little attention to his actions, or, in fact, whose feelings are hurt easily by anything whatsoever, is for the most part a Narcissist, in whom once again the infantile omnipotence has been disturbed.
Jealousy very often represents the Narcissistic idea. The “dog-in-the-manger” attitude, which finding it cannot possess for itself, cannot bear anybody else to possess, is largely the attitude of unconscious phantasy, in which the individual cannot relinquish the idea that somehow he will succeed by means of his omnipotent mind in possessing the desired object, and his unconscious mind retains this idea so long as the object has not become the property of somebody else in such a definite and irrefutable manner as to prove in spite of his unconscious phantasy that he cannot possibly possess it himself.