Gold Coast Suicides up 36%, page-163

"If the narcissist substitutes approval for love then how do they experience self-love? ". ....... crikey you do ask a lot of an old mug student of human nature..... the dynamic is complex and volatile..... I can offer a suggestion but each person's changes are triggered by different stimulus --- no hard and fast analysis to be generalised. .....

From my limited understanding of this dynamic its not so much a substitution as a sublimation. where the desire for love is externalised and is often associated with an unsatisfactory self-love, insufficient to fill the hole within. So the narcissist learns that they can acquire love from others by actions which are lauded. You can see this dynamic at work in religious leaders who are morally perfect and an example of piety to the community, eg Pell.

I haven't read/heard the term "metathinking" ........ yet the roots would seem to fit ...... tell me more please?

my first Steinbeck was Grapes of Wrath.... possibly one of the most powerful books I've read of the US 30's economic disaster and culture where the moral was the Milk of Human Kindness...... a dying old man with no teeth due to beri beri meets a young women whose breasts are extremely painful after her new born child dies..... they satisfy each others needs through the old man feeding from her breast. I take all the power, beauty and majesty of human nature out in this brief, yet this is what sets Steinbeck apart from other writers.

I went on to read several critiques of Steinbeck, then read some of his collections of short stories, which were really short human studies of the kind that Henry Lawson wrote. I haven't read "Red Pony"..... I must look out for it next trip to the book shops.