Two movies, a cartoon and 3 lessons for a fictional narcissist
The classic romantic comedy ‘500 days of Summer’, ‘Life after Beth’ and the cartoon Frozen. In the first, the protagonist learned that a person not always the will remain in his life, just because ‘it interests for the same things that he’, that this was an illusion, something superficial and started to see the real world, alternatives, options, and people beyond his nose. Finally Tom left the fixed idea that only Summer was good for him and finally found someone nice and kind, Autumn. He learned the ‘’ I like everything it likes ‘’ is not enough for a long-term relationship and does not mean it will lead to marriage/kids.
The second movie, the horror comedy ‘Life after Beth’, talks about overcoming that nothing will be as before, when the long time girlfriend that was dead returns as a zombie and in the end the protagonist Zach had to overcome the sad reality death of his girlfriend and move on. Beth was a Zach longtime girlfriend, that Zach really knew. And Zach realized that there are conditions for a new nice someone else in his life and be happy again.
Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds did not learn the 2 movies lesson and persisted until the end of the serie without having the slightest interest (did not seek psychology support) in overcoming the tragic phone-affair end with an unknown woman (who had a fiance) and who were linked by superficialities of “we like the same things, we have same interests, tastes ‘’, ‘’ we are nerds/geniuses’’ (pretentious), ‘’ she prescribes vitamins for me ‘’, ‘’we have the same dress style’’. And the fans bought this fantastical, childish, mythical and superficial idea of ’soulmate’ based on superficialities, idealizations and fantasies by phone between two unknown adults.
The cartoon is ‘Frozen’, when Princess Anne is dazzled by a complete stranger, a prince who seems to have all the qualities she dreams of for a wedding and decides to marry this prince immediately. So Kristoff asks her about how she is so determined to marry someone she doesn’t even know about based on such superficial qualities. Ane reflects on this and realizes how precipitous she was being with the sudden idea of marrying a stranger who seemed ‘so perfect’. Then, Anne and Kristoff known better each other and fell in love.
These movies and cartoon references speak of overcoming, moving on and how it is rash to immediately imagine a marriage with someone you don’t know, just taking into account characteristics such as being a supposed copy of each other. Spencer Reid, instead of looking for psychotherapy to overcome the tragic end of the affair with a woman he didn’t know (and that he idealized as his genius ‘copy’ and as maternal figure) in his life, and after that the overcoming he would see a horizon around him and see that there are single women in his city who have affinities and interests in common with him and who can be intelligent, friendly and kind women who would be good companions. The character Spencer preferred to spend the rest of the series eternally disturbed by the obsession with the image of an idealized figure, with that of a single woman in the world who would be at his level in ‘genius’ and the only one who would be able to give him’ genius kids. ‘.
This thought by Spencer Reid is not at all healthy and also reveals narcissistic traits of this character from the Criminal Minds serie. For Spencer Reid, who before was only interested in women for their appearance and popularity, suddenly became obsessed through a phone affair with the idea of having an exact copy of him about his genius status and on the same level as his proudly supposed ‘superior’ intelligence. All the time Maeve Donovan, the phone affair, has personality limited to being an improved copy of Spencer Reid, without the psychological disorders he suspects. When we love in the other what is a more outlined version of ourselves, the name is narcissism. Such a person will never be happy, he will always be tormented and the serie was irresponsible in romanticizing this toxic plot.
