Female narcissism invents a hidden self because action in the world is denied

Evidence

A trait shared by young Mrs. Weldon, stunning Anna de Noailles, Stekel’s unfortunate patient, and the multitude of women marked by an exceptional destiny is that they feel misunderstood; their family and friends do not recognize—or inadequately recognize—their singularity; they transform this ignorance, this indifference of others, into the positive idea that they hold a secret inside them. … But above all, because she has not realized herself in her life, the heroine cherished by the narcissist is merely an imaginary character; her unity does not come from the concrete world: it is a hidden principle, a kind of “strength,” “virtue” as obscure as phlogistonism; the woman believes in its presence, but if she wanted to show it to others, she would be as bothered as the psychasthenic determined to confess to intangible crimes. In both cases, the “secret” is reduced to the empty conviction of possessing in one’s deepest self a key to decipher and justify feelings and behavior. It is their abulia and inertia that give this illusion to psychasthenics; and it is because of her inability to express herself in daily action that woman believes an inexpressible mystery inhabits her: the famous myth of the eternal feminine encourages her in this and is thus, in turn, confirmed. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1808

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘secret self’ as compensation for blocked action connects to her earlier account in the myth chapters of woman’s situation foreclosing transcendence, and to existentialist themes of bad faith in Sartre. — connects to: Forbidden physical violence denies girls the capacity to affirm and shape the world — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 836; Girls’ diaries extend narcissistic self-cult to the entire inner self — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 858; When denied real action, women substitute theatrical self-display for action — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1818
• DEFINE: Beauvoir’s definition of the narcissist’s ‘secret’: an empty conviction of an inexpressible key to the self, paralleled to phlogistonism as a pseudo-explanatory entity.