I like this statement a lot. There's a great song, written by Whitney Houston, entitled "The Greatest Love of All", which has been misinterpreted. The song basically states what you are stating above. Narcissism is when you have no sense of self -- all your love is coming from outside yourself. You are just ego -- and there is no true love of self. An example is Don Draper from Mad Men, and to a smaller degree Cordelia and Angel, who also don't really have a strong sense of self -- and are constantly hunting their validation from outside themselves.
Right. MM is one of my favourite shows, and Don is a very interesting character -- who has something in common with Cordelia and Angel, and also something in common with Willow. At the time we meet him, he is a man who seemingly has everything -- he's a high-level executive, creative genius, very good looking, multiple affairs, beautiful wife and children. But none of it satisfies him for long. As one girlfriend Faye Miller tells him as he breaks up with her by telling her that he's gotten engaged to Megan, he only likes the beginning of things. It turns out that he is running from his background and his past -- piling lie after lie about who he was before reinventing himself, and himself always waiting for the shoe to drop, at which point he panics and seeks to change identities again, sometimes literally wanting to run away and start over with a new name, sometimes just wanting to "start over" with a smaller cosmetic makeover (responding to losing cigarette companies with a declaration that he now stands against them). Don's attitude toward his big secret past is something like Willow's -- and there is even something oddly similar in the way both hit a kind of bottom in their respective sixth seasons, where Don ends the season with a declaration to his children, "This is where I grew up," whereas Xander tells Willow that he knows/accepts who she was in kindergarten. The wounds of childhood never go away, but they can face them and try to make sense of them -- or they can keep running.
Willow wants to be the type of person that Tara (or Oz -- or Xander or Buffy platonically, or Giles or her parents parentally) can love -- and it seems like nothing she does can assure it. I think that part of the reason she goes to manipulation is that it's something of a natural extension of what she needed to do all along; there is something wrong with her, so she tries changing who she herself is. Eventually she gets to a point where it's no longer possible to do so -- all her internal resources are exhausted. The only thing left is to start manipulating others to maintain the illusion that she is the person she feels she needs to be (hyper-competent and always good). What she shares with Don is the desire to run and hide. What she shares with Don and Angel/Cordy is the need for reassurance in order to believe that they are doing okay -- Willow doesn't really believe the praise as you say, but she at least needs it to believe that she's on the right track, and that she won't lose what she has.
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Right. MM is one of my favourite shows, and Don is a very interesting character -- who has something in common with Cordelia and Angel, and also something in common with Willow. At the time we meet him, he is a man who seemingly has everything -- he's a high-level executive, creative genius, very good looking, multiple affairs, beautiful wife and children. But none of it satisfies him for long. As one girlfriend Faye Miller tells him as he breaks up with her by telling her that he's gotten engaged to Megan, he only likes the beginning of things. It turns out that he is running from his background and his past -- piling lie after lie about who he was before reinventing himself, and himself always waiting for the shoe to drop, at which point he panics and seeks to change identities again, sometimes literally wanting to run away and start over with a new name, sometimes just wanting to "start over" with a smaller cosmetic makeover (responding to losing cigarette companies with a declaration that he now stands against them). Don's attitude toward his big secret past is something like Willow's -- and there is even something oddly similar in the way both hit a kind of bottom in their respective sixth seasons, where Don ends the season with a declaration to his children, "This is where I grew up," whereas Xander tells Willow that he knows/accepts who she was in kindergarten. The wounds of childhood never go away, but they can face them and try to make sense of them -- or they can keep running.
Willow wants to be the type of person that Tara (or Oz -- or Xander or Buffy platonically, or Giles or her parents parentally) can love -- and it seems like nothing she does can assure it. I think that part of the reason she goes to manipulation is that it's something of a natural extension of what she needed to do all along; there is something wrong with her, so she tries changing who she herself is. Eventually she gets to a point where it's no longer possible to do so -- all her internal resources are exhausted. The only thing left is to start manipulating others to maintain the illusion that she is the person she feels she needs to be (hyper-competent and always good). What she shares with Don is the desire to run and hide. What she shares with Don and Angel/Cordy is the need for reassurance in order to believe that they are doing okay -- Willow doesn't really believe the praise as you say, but she at least needs it to believe that she's on the right track, and that she won't lose what she has.