Perpetual self-pity becomes an addictive identity that resists all help

Evidence

Each time around Christmas, Mrs. H.W. appears at my office, palefaced, clad in somber black and complains of her fate. She relates a sad story while tears stream down her face. A thwarted existence, an unfortunate marriage!… The first time I was moved to tears and would have almost wept with her … Two years have since flown* … but she is still at the threshold of her hopes, still bewailing her misspent life … her face begins to show the early signs of the disintegration brought on by age. She thus has an additional reason for bemoaning her fate … “What has become of me! I was once so beautiful and so much admired” … Her complaints are cumulative; she stresses her despair. Her friends … are well familiar with her sad plight … She makes herself a nuisance to everybody with her perpetual complaints … this in turn again furnishes her the opportunity to feel herself lonely, abandoned, not understood … This woman found her satisfaction in the tragic role. The thought that she was the unhappiest woman on earth intoxicated her … — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1807

Categorization

• SEED: The Mrs. H.W. case is a vivid clinical vignette — an essay tracing how self-pity functions as a self-sustaining identity loop could open with it.
• XREF: connects to: Self-deception is a stable life-style punctuated by abrupt awakenings; Maternal guilt and self-pity can manifest as suffocating, destructive over-protectiveness — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1521; People self-sabotage to preserve excuses that protect self-esteem — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 247 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• People self-sabotage to preserve excuses that protect self-esteem #corroborates (0.80) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 247
• Maternal guilt and self-pity can manifest as suffocating, destructive over-protectiveness #complicates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1521
• Bad faith flees anguish by relocating freedom into a fixed essence of the self #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 257
• Self-deception is a stable life-style punctuated by abrupt awakenings #expands (0.72)
• Self-obsession and self-loathing both replicate human-centered solipsism #expands (0.72) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1070