We might pay close and empathetic attention to Camille’s pieces, because she wants us to. She is telling us things that are important and which she wants us to understand.

The projective-defensive dynamic of Cluster B personality disorders (narcissistic, histrionic, borderline and antisocial) literally overwhelms the psyche. There is a marked instability of identity and of mood which may alternate between cutting aggression and self-absorbed grandiosity. All in service of protecting against the horror of nihilistic humiliation from exposure of an unacceptable, unlovable, vulnerable, disowned part of self. Self is at war with self, and the causalities include authenticity and coherence – utterances ostensibly about external content don’t hold up logically, simply because they are projective, driven not by intellect but by an impulsive need to protect and defend.

Thus:

Nerves, nerves, nerves…super concerned about…making a crippling misstep. Am I a fagged-out media scold? No! I love nice sharp barbs and lofty assertion. Am I a bitch, or a calm, strong man? Do I even have a stable or coherent sense of self? Or is everything factitious, mimed and scripted (like my flipping butch and femme masks) for expediency?

No. I am agile, articulate…with keen…mind and rugged, strong-jawed persistence…with…analytic mind and…steadiness of character. And I hate that part of me that alternates between smugness and defensiveness that isn’t really there…just riffling through …cue cards. I hate that part of me that bizarrely and covertly called John Edwards a “faggot” in my last Salon Piece. It makes no sense whatever and now I embarrass myself by disingenuously backtracking in this piece. Am I truly oblivious to my conflicted gender weirdness I project onto Edwards?

But wait! That’s not me. I’m a smart woman with formidable energy…a high-profile feminist role model in my appetite for aggressive debate. But I hate that my arguments are shoddily constructed…so thrown together and full of holes…the product of an unfocused mind that mistakes erratic connections for insight. I’m split between extreme self-love and self-hatred, and I project my conflicted sexuality by humiliating others, like Gingrich, whom I identify with as both male and weak.

I avoid(s) psychoanalysis…unreachable and yet knowing that I detest my ambivalent dynamic with my masculine authority…internalized…as a visibly heavy burden rendering me static, convoluted and self-entombed…my independent judgment paralyzed.

I’ve always felt that liberals’ hatred of me is misplaced as a genuinely tragic figure whose defense mechanism(s) so overwhelm intellectual function, that I am forced to make patently absurd assertions about media bias, about capitalism, about Ann Coulter.

At this point it seems my persona will never mature…I feel embarrassed because Confident manhood should not need to constantly strike poses.

So consumed am I with self, that I’ll use the pretext of relevance of a marginally interesting work of literary scholarship just to once again project my inner fears: Mary Shelly was a fake! A female, so afraid of being weak and intellectually shallow that she stole the language of a strong, brilliant male!

Who am I? I am mired…paralyzed by convention and fear.

no. It’s not favorable environments that trigger earlier reproduction or higher reproductive rates. In animal studies, it is higher mortality rates in populations (unfavorable environments) that trigger higher reproductive rates (like the “war baby” phenomenon) and earlier ages of reproductive maturity.

Nor does it make sense that “plenty of fat” in the diet of an ancestral infant or 4-year-old could predict nutritionally favorable conditions 10 years later, given natural cycles and vagaries of nature. Nor, in ancestral environments, would an infant’s survival be enhanced by being cared for by an obese mother, as opposed to a healthy, fit mother (picture it).

But we do know that what drives abuse of food, and obesity, is anxiety, that is, an insecure or unsafe environment. And it would make a certain amount of sense that in unsafe, unfavorable environments, populations would compensate by increasing reproductive output. It’s only natural.

This film seems worth taking a look, based on Stephanie’s review, as a possibly interesting take on object relations theory, which forms the basis for understanding both healthy childhood development and intimate adult relationships. Healthy emotional and intellectual development in infants becomes possible as the object (primary caretaker to which she attaches for survival) becomes internalized and its physical absence can be tolerated without levels of anxiety that impair functioning.

Romantic relationships (obviously regressive) recapitulate this process, and unhealthy levels of anxiety (and possessiveness) in them result from intolerance of absence, as opposed to emotional independence and the trust (faith?) that comes from mutual responsiveness when needed.

In both cases, insecurity results in maladaptive, fear-based behaviors (“anxious attachment”) that restrict freedom and development – like “clinginess” in a toddler, or marriage in her adult counterpart.

And Stephanie is right to warn against disingenuously comparing smoking to heroin. Opioid addiction, versus nicotine, may be easier to manage (because it’s not normalized or romanticized), less likely to kill you, and of course does not take years off the lives of others who happen to share a household with the addict.

This sounds like a film about the ill effects of giving up autonomy for social conformity and of culturally-enforced sexual repression.

Isn’t that what the elevator scene is about? In which Richard metaphorically disowns an uninhibited, vital, naturally healthy part of self?

Disappointing that the review seemed to uncomfortably avoid the central theme of the film – sex.