Psychology 101 (Notes on Narcissistic Rumination, etc.)

 

 

'We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. 

For we have never sought to stick our tails in our mouths.'  

 

 

I. 

 

I've heard it said that self-reflection is crucial for personal growth and that personal growth is vital for enhancing self-awareness, thus creating a kind of positive psychological loop, which, for those content to sit with their tails in their mouths [1], is all fine and dandy. 

 

It is not, however, something that appeals to those of a Nietzschean bent who think more in terms of radical self-overcoming rather than bourgeois self-improvement and celebrate innocence and forgetfulness rather than indulge in narcissistic rumination. 

 

Clearly, there are a lot of terms to unpack here. But, without wishing to turn what was intended to be a bright and breezy post into a lengthy psychology lecture, let me offer some clarification ...

 

 

II. 

 

By self-overcoming (Selbstüberwindung), Nietzsche refers to a process via which an individual (or a people) might abandon what they are and enter into what Deleuze and Guattari describe as a becoming-other (devenir-autre), thereby distilling Nietzsche's psychological insights into a more radical ontological concept. This is not a one-time event, but a constant process or unfolding that aims for a new way of thinking and feeling, rather than a development of the same. 

      

Ultimately, of course, if you subscribe to a philosophy of difference, there is no originary or essential self to overcome in the traditional sense; instead, there is only a site where different forces (active or reactive) interact and becoming is the process by which these forces shift and mutate, breaking away from static identities and fixed categories. 

     

 

III. 

 

When Nietzsche writes in Zarathustra of innocence and forgetfulness - I think he uses the German terms Unschuld and Vergessen - he refers to the childlike state reached when an individual has fully stylised an ethical model of self beyond good and evil (i.e., fixed moral values). 

      

Innocence, as used here, is not a form of naivety or ignorance, but rather the ability to affirm life as is (what he terms an economy of the whole), without qualification. Forgetfulness, meanwhile, acts as a necessary (and active) capacity to absorb past experiences and not be weighed down by personal history or the spirit of gravity; to be free of ressentiment. 

 

When working in conjunction, innocence and forgetfulness allows, if you like, for a fresh start and to make an affirmation of life that is both joyful and playful.

      

 

IV.

 

By narcissistic rumination I refer to an obsessive thought-cycle that locks the subject into a fixed state of neurosis and ultimately results in paralysis by analysis [2]. Narcissistic ruminators are thus those unfortunate individuals who spend a great deal of time and energy attempting to make sense of chaos; i.e., to find patterns or structures of meaning to which they are central. They love asking: Why me? [3]

 

Such individuals also love, à la Miss Haversham, recycling old conversations so that they might finally get others to admit their logical inconsistency and take ownership of their moral failings (there's nothing narcissistic ruminators enjoy more than making others feel miserable about themselves).   

     

 

V. 

 

And finally, re the idea that self-reflection can be dangerous - can lead to paralysis by analysis - let me admit that this needn't always be the case and that there are, I suppose, benefits to be had from knowing something about the self (even if it's only that the self is a convenient fiction rooted in grammar). 

 

However, it can become detrimental to wellbeing when the would-be self-knower falls into the black hole of narcissistic rumination; i.e., when they swallow their own tail and dwell on toxic negativity; when they become so obsessed on evaluating past events and collecting grievances that they become unable to act (or even smile) in the present. 

 

 

VI. 

 

In sum: Nietzscheans never ask why and rarely ruminate; they leave that to those who seek that highly suspect type of self-knowledge dreamed of by Platonists, Christians, Jungians, and other idealistic herd animals [4]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Him With His Tail in His Mouth', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Esssays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 307-317. 

      In this short essay, written in 1925, Lawrence humorously attacks closed, self-referential styles of thinking and the obsession with interiority. With reference to the figure of the ouroboros, he also challenges the idea that the end is one with the beginning (i.e., that infinity is some kind of perfect cycle).

 

[2] Hamlet, of course, is the poster child for this idea of paralysis by analysis; a man whose 'powers of action have been eaten up by thought', as Hazlitt says in his landmark study Characters in Shakespeare's Plays (1817).   

 

[3] See the recent post 'Why Me Contra So What' (6 Feb 2026): click here. 

      Referring once more to literature, then Melville's Captain Ahab might be said to be the ultimate narcissistic ruminator. For he cannot view the loss of his leg as a random, natural event. Instead, he anthropomorphises the great white whale, convinced it acted with inscrutable malice specifically against him. He spends his life ruminating on this personal grievance, making himself the tragic centre of a cosmic drama. 

 

[4] Before I'm accused of being reductive by grouping Platonists, Christians, and Jungians together in this manner, let me indicate my awareness of the fact that these traditions have different understandings of the self and of what constitutes knowledge of the self, and different reasons for wanting to attain such knowledge. 

      However, all three traditions, it seems to me, consider the unexamined life to be a very bad thing - devoid of value, meaning, purpose, etc. - and each tradition suggests that failure to know the self will have negative consequences. I'm not adopting Thomas Gray's position here - ignorace is bliss - but I do think that innocence and forgetfulness, as discussed above, can make happy and free (inasmuch as anything can ever make us happy and free).