Procedure for appealing student's exclusion from school in the UK.

1. How can I appeal?

You must appeal in writing to an independent appeal panel, setting out the grounds on which your appeal is made. Please complete the appeal form EXC/02 sent to you with this booklet and send it, together with any other relevant documents, to:

The Chief Clerk to the Appeal Panels, Conciliation and Appeals Unit (CAU), County Hall. Or the address which will be in your letter from the school advising you of the exclusion.

We must receive your EXC/02 form and your written grounds for appeal within 15 school days from the date that you receive the letter telling you of your child's exclusion. The letter will be from the School Discipline Committee and will tell you the latest date for the Chief Clerk to receive your completed form. We will then set up a hearing for you with an independent panel of three people.

You will lose your right to put your case to an independent appeal panel if:

• your appeal is not received within 15 days
• you inform the Local Education Authority in writing that you do not wish to appeal

2. How will I know about my right of appeal?

When the school Governing Body's Discipline Committee decided not to reinstate your child they should have sent you a letter. The clerk of the Committee should have informed you of your right to appeal against their decision within one school day of their hearing at the school. The letter should have explained:

• the reasons for their decision
• your right to appeal to an independent appeal panel, and the date by which your appeal must be
• received by the Chief Clerk
• the address of the Chief Clerk to the Appeal Panel who you have to send your appeal to
• it is a requirement that your appeal set out your grounds (reasons) for appealing

You can appeal to the appeal panel even if you did not put your case to the Discipline Committee.

Student Services, on behalf of the LEA, should have written to you within 3 working days of the Discipline Committee meeting. This letter will also tell you the last date for your appeal to be received. No appeal can be accepted after this date.

3. What are school exclusion appeal panels?

These are independent panels set up by the Conciliation and Appeals Unit (CAU) on behalf of the Local Education Authority (LEA) to consider appeals from parents and carers.

Your appeal will be against the decision of the school Governing Body's Discipline Committee. They will have decided to uphold the headteacher's decision to exclude your child permanently from school.

4. How do I decide whether I have grounds (reasons) for appeal?

You have grounds for appeal if:

• you do not believe your child did what he or she is accused of doing
• you do not believe the school has acted reasonably by excluding your child permanently from school for what he/she is accused of doing

To help you decide whether you feel you have grounds for appealing against your child's permanent exclusion from school you may find it helpful to know what guidance has been given to schools about exclusions. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has issued the following guidance to schools. Schools must have regard to this guidance, which is included in the revision of circular 10/99 issued in January 2003.

1. Introduction

1. A decision to exclude a pupil should be taken only:

• in response to serious breaches of the school's behaviour policy; and
• allowing the pupil to remain in school would seriously harm the education or welfare of the pupil or others in the school.

2. Only the headteacher or teacher in charge of a PRU - ESC in Hertfordshire (or, in the absence of the headteacher or teacher in charge, the most senior teacher who is acting in that role) can exclude a pupil.

3. A decision to exclude a child permanently is a serious one. It will usually be the final step in a process for dealing with disciplinary offences following a wide range of other strategies, which have been tried without success. It is an acknowledgement by the school that it has exhausted all available strategies for dealing with the child and should normally be used as a last resort.

4. There will however be exceptional circumstances where, in the headteacher's judgement, it is appropriate permanently to exclude a child for a first or 'one off' offence. These might include:

• serious actual or threatened violence against another pupil or a member of staff
• sexual abuse or assault
• supplying an illegal drug
• carrying an offensive weapon

Schools should also consider whether or not to inform the police where such a criminal offence has taken place. They should also consider whether or not to inform other agencies, eg Youth Offending Team, social workers, etc.

5. These instances are not exhaustive, but indicate the severity of such offences and the fact that such behaviour can affect the discipline and well-being of the school community.

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6. In cases where a headteacher has permanently excluded a pupil for:

• one of the above offences, or
• persistent and defiant misbehaviour, including bullying (which includes racist or homophobic bullying), or repeated possession and/or use of an illegal drug on school premises

The Secretary of State would not normally expect the governors' Discipline Committee or an Independent Appeal Panel to reinstate the pupil.

2. Drug-related exclusions

1. In making a decision on whether or not to exclude for a drug-related offence the headteacher should have regard to the school's published policy on drugs and should consult the school's drugs coordinator. But the decision will also depend on the precise circumstances of the case and the evidence available. In some cases fixed- period exclusion will be more appropriate than permanent exclusion. In more serious cases, an assessment of the incident should be made against criteria set out in the school's policy. This should be a key factor in determining whether permanent exclusion is an appropriate course of action.

2. Schools should develop a policy that covers not only illegal drugs but also legal drugs - volatile substances (those giving off gas or vapour which can be inhaled), and over the counter and prescription medicines - which may be being misused by pupils. This might say for example that no drug should be brought in to school without the school's knowledge and approval. Where legal drugs are concerned, again an assessment of the seriousness of the incident is necessary before deciding what action to take.

3. Factors to consider before making a decision to exclude

1. Exclusion should not be imposed in the heat of the moment, unless there is an immediate threat to the safety of others in the school or the pupil concerned. Before deciding whether to exclude a pupil, either permanently or for a fixed period, the headteacher should:

• ensure that an appropriate investigation has been carried out
• consider all the evidence available to support the allegations, taking account of the school's behaviour and equal opportunities policies, and, where applicable, the Race Relations Act 1976 as amended and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 as amended.
• allow the pupil to give his or her version of events
• check whether the incident may have been provoked, for example by bullying or by racial or sexual harassment
• if necessary consult others, but not anyone who may later have a role in reviewing the headteacher's decision, for example a member of the governors' Discipline Committee.

2. If satisfied that, on the balance of probabilities, the pupil did what he or she is alleged to have done, the headteacher may exclude the pupil.

3. Where a police investigation leading to possible criminal proceedings has been initiated, the evidence available may be very limited. However, it should still be possible for the headteacher to make a judgement on whether to exclude the pupil.

4. Alternatives to exclusion

1. Exclusion should not be used if there are possible alternative solutions available. Examples of alternatives to exclusion schools may want to try include:

• using a restorative justice process, which enables an offender to redress the harm that has been done to a ''victim'' and enables all sides with a stake in the outcome to participate fully in the process. This has been used successfully to resolve situations that could otherwise lead to exclusion.
• internal exclusion (also known as internal seclusion), which can be used to diffuse situations that occur in school that require a pupil to be removed from class but may not require exclusion from the school premises. The exclusion could be to a designated area within the school, with appropriate support, or to another class on a temporary basis, and may continue during break periods
• a managed move: if a school feels that it can no longer manage the behaviour of a particular pupil, the school may ask another school to take over his or her education. This should only be done with the full knowledge and co-operation of all parties involved, including the parents and the LEA, and in circumstances where it is in the best interests of the pupil concerned. Parents should never be pressured into removing their child from school under threat of permanent exclusion, nor should pupils be deleted from the school roll to encourage them to find another school place. Section 9 of the Education (Pupil Registration) Regulations 1995 details the only lawful grounds for deleting a pupil's name from the school roll.

5. When exclusion is not appropriate

1. Exclusion should not be used for:

• minor incidents such a failure to do homework or to bring dinner money
• poor academic performance
• lateness or truancy
• pregnancy
• breaches of school uniform rules or rules on appearance (including jewellery and hairstyle), except where these are persistent and in open defiance of such rules
• punishing pupils for the behaviour of their parents, for example where parents refuse or are unable to attend a meeting

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6. Who will consider my appeal?

We will set up the independent appeal panel of 3 people. They will be:

• a lay member (someone who has not worked in school in a paid capacity, although they may be a governor or a volunteer) - they will be the chair of the panel
• a governor of a maintained school (either currently serving or having served at least 12 months in the last 6 years, but not a teacher or headteacher)
• a headteacher of a maintained school or ESC (either currently serving, or having served within the last 5 years).

The appeal panel is independent and must be fair to both sides. A person will not be allowed to be on the panel if they are:

• a member of the LEA or the Governing Body of the excluding school
• an employee of the LEA or the Governing Body (unless they are employed as a headteacher in another school or ESC)
• someone who has, or who has had, a connection with an interested party (which might raise doubts about whether they can act fairly)
• the headteacher of the excluding school (or if they have been the headteacher in the last 5 years)

7. When will my appeal hearing take place?

The appeal panel must meet to consider your appeal no later than the 15th school day after the day on which your appeal was lodged.

8. What arrangements will be made in advance of the hearing?

The Appeals Section of CAU will write to you regarding the time, date and venue for your appeal hearing, which will be held in private.

Appeal hearings will always take place during the school day, normally starting at 10.00 a.m. Occasionally they may last all day and into the evening.

If you have any matters to raise or documents you wish to produce for the hearing, which were not included with your notice of appeal, you are asked to submit them to the Chief Clerk no later than 6 working days prior to your hearing.

You, the school, and the LEA representative will be sent written evidence 5 working days before the hearing. This will include the statement of decision by the Discipline Committee, your appeal form, your grounds for appeal and any other written evidence you send us. It will also include any written representation from the headteacher, Governing Body and LEA.

You will be sent details of all those attending the appeal panel hearing and their role. You will also be sent an Order of Proceedings (a running order) for the hearing.

9. What will happen at the appeal hearing?

Your hearing will be held in private and will be reasonably informal so that all sides can present their case effectively.

The appeal panel will conduct the hearing, and a clerk will be on hand to provide independent advice on procedure for all parties. The clerk will also keep a record of the proceedings, who attended, and any decisions made. The clerk will also ensure that no side is alone with the appeal panel without the other sides also being present.

At the start of the hearing the chair of the panel will outline the procedure to be followed, and explain that the panel is independent from both the school and the LEA. The panel will closely follow current legislation and DfES guidance in both the way it conducts itself and the decision it makes.

Following introductions by the chair of the panel, the clerk will explain the order in which the sides can state their case. After each presentation the chair of the panel will take the lead in establishing the facts. The other sides will then have the opportunity to ask questions, followed by panel members, who may want to clarify an issue or ask for more information.

Generally the order of proceedings will be as follows:

1. The school's case
2. Questioning of the school's case (by the parent, LEA representative and panel)
3. The parental case
4. Questioning of the parent's case (by the school, LEA representative and panel)
5. The LEA's case
6. Questioning of the LEA's case (by the school, parent and panel)
7. Summary of case - school
8. Summary of case - parent

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10. Who will normally attend the hearing?

The following are allowed to attend a hearing and present their case verbally:

• you as parent or carer (or the excluded pupil, if over 18)
• a legal or other representative acting on your behalf
• the headteacher of the excluding school
• a nominated governor
• a legal or other representative of the school's Governing Body
• a nominated Local Education Authority officer
  (The headteacher, Governing Body, and LEA may also make written representations.)

You are entitled to bring more than one friend or representative, but you will need to inform the Chief Clerk no later than 5 working days prior to the hearing. The panel will want to consider a reasonable limit on the numbers attending.

11. Can my child attend the hearing?

Yes - an excluded pupil under the age of 18 will normally be allowed to attend the hearing and speak on his or her behalf, if he or she wishes and you agree. However, the panel cannot compel your child (or other witnesses) to attend.

12. Can any alleged victim of my child's alleged behaviour attend the hearing?

Yes - if the victim of your child's alleged behaviour wishes to attend, then he or she will be given the opportunity to be given a voice at the hearing, in person, through a representative, or by a written statement.

13. How will the panel consider the evidence and any witness statements?

Physical evidence: if the school's case rests largely or solely on physical evidence, and if the facts are in dispute, the school should keep the physical evidence, if possible, and make it available to the panel. If there are difficulties keeping any physical evidence, photographs or signed witness statements will be acceptable to the panel.

New evidence: all sides may put forward new evidence about the incident that led to the exclusion, including evidence that was not available to the headteacher or the Discipline Committee. However, the school may not introduce new reasons for the exclusion.

Witness statements: to help them reach a decision, the panel will usually need to hear from those involved, either directly or indirectly. The governing body may wish to call witnesses who saw the incident, and these may include any alleged victims or any teacher (other than the headteacher) who investigated the incident and interviewed pupils.

Written statements: in the case of witnesses who are pupils of the school it may be more appropriate for the panel to be presented with written statements. Pupils may only appear as witnesses if they do so voluntarily and with their parent's consent. Panels will be sensitive to the needs of child witnesses and will make sure that the child's view is properly heard.

Anonymity: all witness statements must be named and signed, unless the school has good reason to want to protect the anonymity of pupils. The general principle remains that your child, as the accused person, is entitled to know the substance and source of the accusation. The panel will consider what weight to attach to written statements, whether made by adults or pupils, as against oral evidence.

How long will witnesses stay? It is for the panel to decide whether any witnesses should stay for the whole of the hearing.

14. How will the appeal panel consider appeals where there is police involvement or criminal proceedings taking place?

Where there is police involvement, or criminal proceedings are taking place, the appeal panel must decide:

• whether to proceed to hear the appeal, or
• whether to adjourn (postpone) the hearing pending the outcome of any police investigation and/or any criminal proceedings that may be brought

In order to help them decide on this the panel will consider:

• whether it would be helpful to know what charge, if any, is to be brought against your child
• whether relevant witnesses and documents are available
• the likelihood of delay if the hearing were to be adjourned
• the effect any delay might have on any complainant, the excluded pupil or the school
• whether an adjournment or a decision to proceed might result in injustice.

If the panel do decide to adjourn, the clerk will ensure that the panel meets again at the earliest opportunity. If the panel reconvenes following any criminal proceedings, it will take regard of any relevant information about the outcome of those proceedings.

The panel will be aware that both the police and the courts apply the criminal standard of proof known as 'beyond reasonable doubt'. However, the headteacher, Discipline Committee and Independent Appeal Panel will apply the civil standard of proof known as 'balance of probabilities'. The DfES does not consider that the case law imposes a higher standard of proof on schools than the simple balance of probabilities.

If a pupil has been acquitted of any charge relating to the conduct for which he or she was excluded, such an acquittal might be because of a legal technicality, or the stricter standard of proof required by a criminal court. The panel may still conclude that the pupil did do what he or she is alleged to have done.

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15. How will the appeal panel reach its decision?

The appeal panel will decide if:

on the balance of probabilities your child did what he or she is alleged to have done (if more than one incident of misconduct is alleged, the panel will need to decide in relation to each one)
considering all relevant factors, permanent exclusion is a reasonable response by the school to that conduct

The appeal panel will then consider the basis of the headteacher's decision and the procedures followed, having regard to the following:

• whether the headteacher and Discipline Committee complied with the law and had regard to the Secretary of State's guidance on exclusion when they excluded the pupil and directed that he or she should not be reinstated
• whether there was evidence that the process was so flawed that important factors were not considered or justice was clearly not done
• the school's published behaviour policy, equal opportunities policy, and (if appropriate) anti-bullying policy, special education needs policy and race equality policy
  the fairness of the exclusion in relation to the treatment of any other pupils involved in the same incident

Once the panel has satisfied itself on the above matters it will consider whether, in their opinion, permanent exclusion was a reasonable response to your child's behaviour. If they conclude it was not a reasonable response, they will then go on to consider whether this is an exceptional case where reinstatement is not a practical way forward.

In deciding whether or not to endorse the exclusion decision and whether or not to direct reinstatement, the panel must balance the interests of the excluded pupil against the interest of all other members of the school community.

Racial discrimination: if you are claiming that there has been racial discrimination, the appeal panel will consider whether there has been discrimination in relation to the Race Relations Act.

Disability discrimination: if you are claiming that there has been disability discrimination, the appeal panel will consider whether your child is disabled and whether there has been discrimination within the meaning of the Disability Discrimination Act. Appeal panels will consider the Disability Rights Commission's Schools Code of Practice which provides guidance on the Disability Discrimination Act.

Exceptional circumstances: there may also be exceptional cases where the panel considers that your child's permanent exclusion should not have taken place, but that reinstatement in the excluding school is not a practical way forward in the best interests of all concerned. Examples of this would be:

if you have made it clear that you do not want your child to return to school
if your child has become too old to return to school
where there has been an irretrievable breakdown in relations between your child and teachers, between you and the school, or between your child and other pupils involved in the exclusion or appeal process

Balancing the interests of your child and the whole school community may suggest that reinstatement would not be a sensible outcome. In considering whether such exceptional circumstances exist the panel should consider representations from the governors, the headteacher and from the parent (or pupil if 18 or over).

16. What can the appeal panel decide?

The appeal panel may:

• decide to uphold the school's decision to exclude your child
• decide to uphold your appeal and direct your child's immediate reinstatement
• decide to uphold your appeal and direct reinstatement at some future date (which must be reasonable under the circumstances)
• decide that there are exceptional circumstances or other reasons which make it impractical to direct your child's reinstatement but that otherwise it would have been appropriate

In any case where the panel decides that reinstatement would have been justified but is not practical, the reasons and circumstances leading to that decision will be set out in the decision letter. This letter should be added to the pupil's school record.

17. What happens after the hearing?

The appeal panel members will decide on your appeal on their own following your appeal hearing. Only the clerk will remain with the panel to advise on points of law and to record their decision (but the clerk plays no part in the decision itself).

You will be informed of the appeal panel's decision by the end of the 2nd working day after your hearing. The letter will include the reasons for the panel's decision.

The decision of the panel is final.

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18. What if I have a complaint about the outcome of my appeal hearing?

If you have any queries about your hearing, or the letter from the Chief Clerk informing you of the panel's decision, please contact the Chief Clerk at the address shown on page 13. However, it is not possible for the Chief Clerk or the County Council to change the decision of an independent panel.

You cannot complain simply because your appeal has been unsuccessful. However, if you feel that you were not given a fair hearing, or that procedures were incorrectly followed, you could complain to the Local Government Ombudsman about maladministration by the appeal panel at the address below.

The Ombudsman can only make recommendations if he or she finds there has been maladministration on the part of the panel. Where the Ombudsman finds that there was maladministration he or she might recommend a fresh hearing (if this were practical) and the LEA would normally be expected to comply.

19. What if I feel the decision of the appeal panel was wrong in law?

If either you or the Governing Body consider that the panel's decision is perverse, you may apply for a judicial review. This must be done promptly and no later than three months from the date of the decision.

If a judicial review were granted, the court would consider the lawfulness of the panel's decision. If it found the panel's decision to be unlawful or unreasonable (in the narrow legal sense of 'unreasonable' i.e. irrational or perverse), the court could quash the decision and direct the LEA to hold a fresh appeal hearing before a newly constituted panel.

20. What if I want advice which is entirely independent of the County Council?

The Conciliation and Appeals Unit (CAU) is a unit within the Children, Schools & Families (CSF) department which operates entirely independently from any other service within CSF. It is separate and independent from the LEA's school admission service. It does not therefore become involved in the allocation of school places or in providing advice to schools on exclusion procedures. We seek to provide impartial advice to parents on the statutory appeal process.

If you would like to speak to someone who can help you but works entirely outside the County Council you could contact the Advisory Centre for Education (ACE) at the address below.

21. Further information: useful addresses

Advisory Centre for Education (ACE), 1c Aberdeen Studios, 22 Highbury Grove, London, N5 2DQ
Helpline for exclusions Tel: 0808 8000327 (Freephone)

Local Government Ombudsman, Millbank Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
Tel: 020 7217 4620, Fax: 020 7217 4621

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Alan Adla on how after a big change in your life, you don't take things for granted anymore.

I was in an ambulance, bumping down a mountain road for an hour-and-a-half. Someone on a gurney was moaning at the top of his voice. It was me.

I was gripped by something that comes upon us from time-to-time, whether we like it or not: change. It wasn't something I felt I really needed.

I was aware of being tripped up by change for the first time when I was seven years old. One day I was playing with my friends and the next I was in bed with a case of polio. I got over that, but a year later, my dog died from eating leftover Chinese food and I got introduced to the biggest change there is. I suddenly realized that death is permanent. It won't go away; nothing you do can bring your dog back.

Then in my teens, I chose a profession that has change at its very core; I became an actor. People in other lines of work sometimes don't change jobs until years have gone by. Actors change them every few weeks. M*A*S*H, of course, went on for eleven years, but that was an oasis that only made a desert of change seem even hotter. Every new job is another set of challenges, with new skills to master, or fail at in a public way. And every few years the kind of part you were once right for is only right for the generation behind you.

You'd think after forty years or so of a life like this that I'd be used to change. But it still could surprise me when it made its blunt and unforgiving entrance. I suddenly had to leave the familiar place I was in and go into the unknown. I did know that if I didn't accept change I couldn't grow, I couldn't learn. I couldn't make progress at anything unless I was willing to go through this dark tunnel of uncertainty. So I went through it, but usually I went through it warily, sometimes even a little suspiciously.

It took a lesson on top of a mountain in Chile to make me accept change in a way I never had before. I think I even began to like it.

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I was in an observatory, in in a remote part of Chile, interviewing astronomers for a science program called Scientific American Frontiers. The show often called for me to do dangerous things in far-off places, and I was always a reluctant adventurer because I'm a cautious person. This wasn't dangerous; it was just talk, but suddenly something inside me literally started to die. My intestine had become crimped and its blood supply was choked off. Every few minutes more and more of it was going bad, and within a few hours, so would the rest of me.

The astronomers brought me down the mountain and hustled me to the closest town; not a very big one, but amazingly, there was a surgeon there who was expert in intestinal surgery. I had only a few hours. There was no chance to fly to a larger city.

It's not just that I'm cautious; I usually practice a form of caution almost indistinguishable from cowardice. And yet I wasn't frightened. It happened too quickly for fear to set in. Knowing I might not wake up from the surgery, I dictated a few words to my wife and children and grandchildren. And then I went under.

I woke up a few hours later with a deep understanding that this surgeon had given me my life. I was grateful to him in a way I had never been grateful to anyone before; I was grateful to the nurses and to the painkillers; I was grateful to the soft Chilean cheese they gave me to break my fast. The first bite of that bland cheese, because it was the first taste of food I had in my new life, was gloriously complex and delicious. Everything about life tasted good to me now. Everything was new and bright and shining.

I hadn't asked for this change and I certainly wouldn't have picked it if I had a choice, but it actually transformed and excited me.

When I got home, I saw that I was paying more attention to things. The way the cheese tasted when they finally let me eat again became the taste of life for me. And I began doing more of the things I care about and caring more about whatever things I did. It didn't matter if what I was doing was an official, important enterprise -- or a game on a computer screen. I gave it my attention. My sense of taste for everything had been heightened.

It's only been two years since that night in Chile. Maybe this will all go away, and maybe I'll take life more for granted again. But I hope not. I like the way it tastes.

Copyright © 2005 Alan Alda

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About the author: Alan Alda played Hawkeye Pierce in the television series M*A*S*H and has acted in, written, and directed many feature films. He has starred often on Broadway and his avid interest in science has led to his hosting PBS's Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005 and is the only person to win Emmy awards for acting, writing, and directing. He is married to children's book author/photographer Arlene Alda. They have three grown children and live in New York.

For more information, please visit www.alanaldabook.com.

next:Articles: Radical Common Sense

Chinese clinical trials show that Huperzine A significantly reduces the damage caused by Alzheimer's disease (AD).

A herbal medicine called Qian Ceng Ta that is prepared from Chinese club moss (Huperzia serrata) has been used for centuries in China to treat colds, fever, inflammation, pain, and irregular menstrual cycles. Huperzine A, an alkaloid isolated from Chinese club moss, has recently been used for treating dementia and myasthenia gravis in China. It is available in the U.S. in supplements promoted as memory enhancers.

Clinical Trials

A number of animal studies have documented that huperzine A is a long acting acetylcholinesterase inhibitor with greater potency than tacrine or donepezil, two cholinesterase inhibitors approved for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Huperzine A also appears to decrease neuronal cell death in the brain. Well designed human trials with huperzine A have not been published in the Western medical literature. Four clinical trials have been published in China, where it has been approved for treating dementia for many years. One of these studies was an 8 week, double-blind, placebo controlled trial of 103 patients with AD. Among patients who took 200 mcg of huperzine A twice daily, 58% improved in memory, cognition, behavior and function, compared to 36% of patients who took placebo. A derivative of huperzine A, huprine X, is also currently of interest for the treatment of AD.

Adverse Effects

No serious side effects have been reported with huperzine A. As a result of greater selectivity for central acetylcholinesterase, huperzine A may cause fewer cholinergic side effects (e.g., nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anorexia) than tacrine, donepezil or rivastigmine. Bradycardia was reported in one clinical trial. Individuals with heart conditions should not use huperzine A without guidance from a physician. Possible contraindications include sick sinus syndrome and bradycardia. As an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, huperzine A can be expected to interact with cholinergic agonists, anticholinergic drugs, and the muscle relaxant, succinylcholine.

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Dosage

Usual doses of huperzine A, which is extracted and purified in China, range from 50 mcg to 200 mcg twice daily. A dose for huperzine A has not been established in domestic clinical trials.

Conclusion

If animal studies and the findings reported in the Chinese medical literature are confirmed in domestic clinical trials, huperzine A may offer a significant benefit in reducing the damage caused by AD, with fewer side effects than currently available agents.

Source: Rx Consultant newsletter article: Traditional Chinese Medicine The Western Use of Chinese Herbs by Paul C. Wong, PharmD, CGP and Ron Finley, RPh

ENJOY BETTER RELATIONSHIPS at home and at work (and everywhere in between) by applying practical principles from the People section of  Self-Help Stuff That Works. Click on a title below and begin.  

Complaint Compunctions	It might be a good idea to post this one at work. Help end the popular hobby of negative venting.
The Bad Apples	One chapter that Dale Carnegie left out of his classic book on Winning Friends was how to deal with people who don't want things to work.
Confidence With People	Many people lack confidence when first getting to know someone, especially someone of the opposite sex. Find out what you can do to increase your feelings of confidence.
Your Inner Guide to Self-Esteem	The desire to increase your child's self-esteem is good; but make sure you're using a method that won't make the child a social outcast.
How to Have More Life in Your Time	Here is a simple thing you can do to have more walks at sunset, more good conversations with people you love, and more life in the time you have.
Here Comes the Judge	Cure yourself of one of the barriers you keep between you and other people.
Attitudes and Kin	Here's what to do when someone in your family brings you down.
The Power of Listening	The finest and most productive of all "spiritual" disciplines.
The Conflict of Honesty	How to deal with the discomfort of conflict that honesty can create.
Too Polite?	Does it seem like the wishes of others get more of your attention than you're own wishes? Maybe you're too polite.
TRUE Love	Honesty is an extremely important practice in an intimate relationship.
Make Your Own Labels	The way you dress and talk, your posture and attitude tells other people who you are and how they should treat you.
Play Yourself Down	Read this carefully if you are getting more criticism than you feel is justified.
How to Avoid Feeling Socially Awkward	At parties or meeting new people, it is common to feel uncomfortable and awkward. Here is a way out of that discomfort.
How to Find a Lifemate	If you're single and want to find someone with whom you can spend your life happily, this is the chapter for you.
Necessary Conflict	How your children turn out is largely up to you. Here is a key principle for child raising.
Mastery	One way to raise your child's self-esteem will result in your child's depression later in life. Find out how to avoid that.
Elicit Your Own Acknowledgement	Do you feel that you're not getting enough appreciation for your good efforts? This is the chapter for you.
Refuse to Flinch	If you think you're shy, or if you would like to be bolder or more comfortable around people, check this out.
Forging Mettle	Friendship and trustworthiness are two fundamentals to a life well-lived. Discover the principles to achieve these golden rewards.
Very Impressive	Why is it important to make a good impression? Because human brains aren't perfect and are biased by our earliest conclusions.
Danger	Expressing anger has a good reputation. Too bad. Anger is one of the most destructive emotions we experience, and its expression is dangerous to our relationships.
E-Squared	How to be here now. This is mindfulness from the East applied to reality in the West.
Send a Blessing	There may be evidence that prayer may actually have medical benefits, even if the prayed-for doesn't know it's happening.
Personality Myth	It is unnecessarily limiting to label yourself shy, outgoing, Aries, Taurus, strong, weak, or any other label. Be your true, flexible self and you'll be better off.
How You Measure Up	Comparisons are natural. Indeed, you can't really help it. But you can direct it in a way that enhances your relationships, even making you feel better about people you haven't even met yet.
To Zip or Not to Zip	Would you like to improve your ability to connect with people? Would you like to be a more complete listener? Check this out.
Is That Clear?	If you are a manager or a parent, here's how to prevent people from misunderstanding you. Here's how to make sure things get done the way you want.
We're Family	Most the people in the world are strangers to you. Here's how to increase your feeling of connectedness to those strangers.
Suggestive Moves	You can make the world go more the way you want by following this simple suggestion.
Take the Sting Out	Is it necessary to criticize people? Is there a way to avoid the pain involved?
How to Melt Hard Feelings	If you have hard feelings between you and another person, you ought to read this.
How to Be Close to Your Friends	Close friends are probably the most important contributor to your lifetime's happiness and your health.
The Power of a Poker Face	Being able to express your feelings is an important part of intimate communication. But there are times and places where the ability to mask your feelings is important too.
How to Get What You Want From Others	Here's how to create a spirit of willing cooperation in the people you work with and live with.
Right Makes Might	What you think about someone else tends to influence them and it alters what you see about them. Take control of this important function of your mind and your relationships will improve.

 

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Do you like interviews? Here's some questions and answers with the author in an interview-like format:
FAQs

See what the author looks like:
Author

Trying to get rid of negative thoughts? Think again! Learn how to do it here:
Think Positively Positively

Do you feel overwhelmed with things to do? Do you constantly feel that you don't have enough time? Check out:
Having the Time

next: Table Of Contents from the book Self-Help Stuff That Works

These life letters are short essays focusing on parenting - the love, fears, hopes and dreams that come with being a parent.

Index:

• A Mothers Darkness
• Struggles and Snuggles
• Another Close Call
• Mommy Do You Love Me?
• What Do They Need?
• What Will You Remember?
• Appreciating the Gift
• On Rituals
• Please Give Me Patience
• You Can Do It but Can I?

next: Life Letters: On Rituals

Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 30

1. Narcissists are Never Happy
2. The Off-Handed Narcissist
3. Being Embarrassed
4. Narcissists ARE Appearances
5. Personal Incompatibility
6. People are Tired
7. The Rational Narcissist

1. Narcissists are Never Happy

Narcissists are never happy.

They are euphoric, elated, or manic - but never happy.

Happiness is an amalgam of positive emotions.

Narcissists have very few positive emotions.

2. The Off-Handed Narcissist

Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so off-handedly, absent-mindedly, and naturally.

They are aware of what they do to others - but they do not care.

Sometimes, they sadistically taunt and torment people - but they do not perceive this to be evil - merely amusing.

They feel that they are entitled to their pleasure and gratification (narcissistic supply is often obtained by subjugating and subsuming others).

They feel that others are less than human, mere extensions of the narcissist, or instruments to fulfil the narcissist's wishes and obey his often capricious commends.

After all, no evil can be done to machines, instruments, or extensions.

3. Being Embarrassed

One can embarrass only those who collaborate in their own embarrassment.

I am not embarrassed by anything I am - and everything I did is what I became.

I am what I did. How can I be embarrassed by my very being? Isn't this what narcissism is all about - a sense of shame, worthlessness, and embarrassment so overpowering that one stops being just in order not to feel ashamed?

4. Narcissists ARE Appearances

Narcissists ARE appearances. They derive their sense of self from the acceptance of their appearances and pretensions by others. Thus, first they settle on an appearance which best sustains their grandiosity and inflated sense of (false) self. Then they insist that others collaborate with them by pretending that the appearance were real. They react with rage and indignation in the face of "lack of collaboration" and "resistance". This is because their very cohesion and sense of self is threatened if there is no agreement regarding the appearance they choose. The appearance can be: "I am a great father and husband. Even my estranged ex-wife, her parents and my son think so. They continue to think so even following a painful divorce. Nothing - not even my awful behaviour - seems to change their minds about my perfection as a father and a mate. This proves that I do exist and that I AM a wonderful, unprecedented father and partner." Puncture this pretension of his in a determined way - and he will vanish forever from your life.

5. Personal Incompatibility

Personal incompatibility is a stand-alone fact. It entails no apportioning of guilt or evocation of shame. It is the outcome of life itself. Taking into consideration the number of variables, it is a great miracle that any two people fit together, however loosely. Yes, marriages are miracles and, in this sense, they are really "made in heaven". Add to this the growing intolerance of others, the narcissism, the hedonism and the consumerism which characterize Western civilization. Mix in the wide field of alternatives that modern technologies bring us. And the end result is the demise of long term commitment and relationships. This is the soundbite age, the era of virtual sex, the shortest term attention span ever. Individualism has gone cancerous and was replaced by Malignant Self Love. The result? Narcissism Revisited by everyone involved.

You are victim to forces which re-shape whole societies. It is not your fault that you are living here and now. Half of all marriages dissolve in the first few years. One third of all children are born to single mothers. People are withdrawing, drawing their bridges, folding their communal tents. They interact via screens and handsets. They go wireless. They watch flickering images instead of watching each other. They don't think or read or listen - they consume and gulp. And sex is just one other commodity to be traded for thrills and frills. Your wife belongs to this new zombie generation. You, young as you are, belong to another. There is and always was an abyss between you. You were misled by appearances (parents, church, social conservatism) into believing the wrong things about your wife. You were using the right nomenclature but with the wrong map. Suddenly you found yourself stranded on a terra incognita, a Crusoe without a Friday, scouring the horizon for the one ship that will never visit your lonely island.

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You rebel against this nightmare. You refuse to accept it, thinking that there MUST be SOMETHING you can do to resurrect your dead. You know there isn't. There is nothing you can do because you married a dead woman to begin with - a dead woman in quest of life, or, rather, in quest of the imitation of life. A woman who preferred pixel sex to real one, fantasy to reality, the future to the present, screen names to your name. You had nothing to offer to her. She was disinterested in your wares because they required her to taste life itself: work, children, a partnership forged in daily minutiae.

All this is not to say that you are an easy person to live with or that you are devoid of grandiosity, mildly sadistic vengefulness, and so on.

BUT, what I am trying to tell you is that your bad traits are more than balanced by very many good ones and that a woman-mate-partner with the right frame of mind would have sought to make use of the latter while ignoring or modifying the former. This is the kind of compromise that is called "being together".

6. People are Tired

People are tired. They carry their lives like trash bags to be disposed in a city without bins.

Communicating with people is sharing trash - rarely an uplifting experience and always a boring one.

Sex is a mode of communication.

People insist that THEIRS is no trash. That it is fragrant. That it is rich and varied. That it represents an investment in a bin-less future.

But it is a charade. A willing self-abnegation. A zombish suicide.

And then there are those whose eyes are peeled, cursed by their inability to pretend.

The olfactorily-challenged.

A damnation of truth-seeking and alienation. Hated by everyone, we wander, our hands empty, our minds ad astra.

We are no longer here.

We never have been.

7. The Rational Narcissist

The narcissist employs numerous defence mechanisms, including rationalization and intellectualization. Ratiocination is a reflexive activity of the narcissist. He tends to generalize on the basis of very flimsy evidence and jumps to exceedingly far fetched conclusions based on a chance behaviour. It leads, at times, to paranoid ideation or to being possessed to some degree by ideas of reference. Often, the narcissist - out of touch with both his own emotions (emotional defect) and the outside world (cognitive defect) - causally attributes unrelated events to one another. The narcissist is plagued by surreptitious magical thinking (see my FAQs). Unlike the schizotypal, his magical thinking is not expressed or manifest but rather is camouflaged as a kind of hyper-ration

alism or "logic gone amok".

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next: Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 31

Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 29

1. Here You are, Madam
2. Human Supply
3. The Time of the Narcissist
4. Abuse
5. Success
6. Rejection

1. Here You are, Madam

I was detained for questioning in 1990. I remember the sweaty excitement of the movie-like setting, the "bad cop, good cop" routines and all the time I kept saying to myself "another adventure" and shivering even though it was pretty hot.

When I exited their headquarters after 8 days of 13 hours interrogations, my world was no more. I went back to our office and stared at the theatrical chaos left behind by the police search. The new computers were papered over. Disembowelled drawers lay all over the wall to wall carpets criss-crossed by sun rays and shades. My partners and I sifted through the paper ruins and burned the incriminating evidence on a big stake. After that we calculated the damage, split it between us equally, as we always did and said polite and hushed goodbyes. The company was closed.

It took me three years of social leprosy, rejection and economic malaise to recover. In the absence of sufficient money for a bus fare I walked huge distances to business meetings. People used to stare at the torn and worn soles of my shoes, at the big armpitted salt stains, at my crumpled, badly odd fashioned suits. They said no. They refused to do business with me. I had a bad name which got only worse by the day. Gradually, I learned to stay at home and read the broadsheets. My wife studied photography and music. Her friends were buoyant and vivacious and creative. They all looked so young and ready. I envied her and them and in my envy, I withdrew further until I almost was no more, a fuzzy stain on our shabby leather loveseat, off focus, a bad piece of motion picture, only without the motion.

Then, I established a firm and found myself an office in a low ceilinged attic above a manpower agency. People came and went below. Phones rang and I occupied myself in holding the shreds of my grandiose fantasies together. It was a miracle, an awesome sight, this ability of mine to lie even to myself.

In total denial, cooped there in the shadows of the damp and smelly attic, I was planning my revenge, my comeback, the nightmare that will be my dream.

In 1993, my wife had an affair. I overheard her hesitantly enquiring about a suggested venue. I loved her the way only a narcissist knows how to, the way a junkie loves his drugs. I was attached to her, I idealized and adored her and, sure enough, she lost weight, became a stunningly beautiful woman, mature, talented. I felt as though I invented her, as though she were my creation now desecrated by another. I knew that I lost her long before I found out. I detached myself from the pain that she was, from the envy that she provoked, from the life that she exuded. I was dead and in the manner of the Pharaohs, I wanted her to die with me in my self constructed tomb.

That night, we had a cold analysis (she crying, I opinionating), an even colder glass of wine each and some decisions reached, to stay together. And we did until I went to jail, two years later. There, in prison, she found the courage to abandon me or to free herself, depending on who tells the story.

In prison, I wrote a book of short stories, mostly about her and about my mother. It is a very painful book, it won awards, very unlike something a narcissist would ever write. It is the closest I ever got to feeling human or alive - and it very nearly killed me.

Propelled by the rude awakening, by blinding pain, that week I teamed up with a former business partner of mine and others and we embarked on a ferocious road which led us to riches in one year. I found an investor and we bought a company owned by the state in a privatization deal. I went on to buy factories, companies. In 12 months, I owned my "empire" with an annual turnover of 10 million USD. Business journals were now reporting my activities daily. I felt empty, vacuous.

One weekend, in a luxurious hotel in Eilat, the southern sea resort in Israel, naked, glistening with sweat and ointments, we agreed to give it all away. I came back and gave it all away, as gifts, to my business partners, no questions asked, no money changing hands. I felt free, they felt rich, that was it.

The last company I stayed involved with was the computer firm. Our original investor, a prominent and wealthy Jew, succeeded to get the Chairman of a huge conglomerate interested in our firm. They sent a team over to talk to me. I was not consulted regarding the timetables. I went on a vacation, to attend a film festival. They came, were unable to meet me and went back furious. I never turned back. That was the end of that company as well.

I was again in debt. I re-invented my life. I began to publish a capital markets fax-zine. But this is yet another story and not sufficiently different to warrant writing it.

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It was all meaningless, it still is. A series of automatic gestures performed by another man, not me. I bought, I sold, I gave away, I heard her planning he romance over the phone, I poured a glass of deep red wine, I read the paper, glossing uncomprehending over the lines, the words, the syllables. A dreamy quality. Psychologists would say I acted out but I can't remember acting out - or in. I can't remember being at all. Definitely no emotions, perhaps the odd rage. It was so very unreal I never grieved. I let go as we politely give our place in a queue to an old lady and smile and say: "Here you are, Madam".

2. Human Supply

I know what is the value of narcissistic supply. I can measure it. I can weigh it. I can compare it and trade it and convert it. I have done it all my life more or less successfully.

Being human is a new experience.

The first time it happened, it was terrifying. It felt like disintegrating, like being annulled. Do you remember the Dali paintings (a swirl of molecules)? It felt the same.

This was when I was in prison and wrote my short stories.

Then it got better. I thought I had regained my narcissistic composure. My defences seemed to function again. I was protected.

Then I began doing these things. The book, the list, corresponding with thousands of people in need and helping them here and there.

Deep inside I know that narcissistic supply is a very inadequate - nay, poor - explanation.

But I don't know how to weigh this new factor. In what units to measure it. How to quantify it and trade it against the narcissistic supply lost in its acquisition. In economics it is called the "opportunity cost". You give up so much butter to manufacture so many guns. Only I gave up the guns. And now I am demilitarized and I am not sure that there is no enemy.

Coming back to the particular event:

I gave up a senior position with wide foreign media exposure. This is narcissistic supply. I have been there before. Giving it up was a price I paid.

To do WHAT?

To sit at home and correspond 16 hours a day with people. To help, to soothe, to cajole and chastise and preach. And this also sounds like narcissistic supply.

And it is.

But the transaction is skewed. I gave up a huge amount of very familiar narcissistic supply - for a small, amorphous amount of a new type of supply.

Bad business?

I am envious of what I could have been. I am enraged when I apply old, decrepit principles to new situations. And I say to myself: "Look what you missed. Look how you destroyed your life once more by ruining this new opportunity for yourself."

And then I say: "But look what you gained in return".

And I am appeased and content and full of energy again.

3. The Time of the Narcissist

I want to talk about Time and about Making It from an unusual angle: self defeating behaviours.

The first time I had sex was 25. It was so alien to me that I thought that sex was love and so I fell in love with my next sexual partner virtually overnight. I used to live in a monkish room with white walls, no paintings or decorations, army bed and one shelf with a few books. I was surrounded by my offices in a two story villa. The bedroom was at the end of a corridor and all around (and downstairs) were offices. I did not have a TV set. I was very rich and very famous at the time and a perfect cinderella story and I knew everything about life and nothing about myself. So, there I was, listening to a twig broaching the windowpane and rapidly and deliberately falling in love with the dormant body by my side. Much later I learned that she was repelled by my body. I was fat and flabby, not at all what one would expect judging by my in-clothes external appearance. So, I fell in love and we moved to London, to Marble Arch, where all the rich Saudi Sheikhs lived and rented a mansion with five floors and a butler. We never had sex and she spent most of her days sleeping or staring gloomily at defrocked trees or crying or on shopping sprees. Once we bought records at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street for 4000 USD. It was announced on the radio. And then she left and me, among the ruins of my fantasy, unshaven, unkempt, sobbing uncontrollably.

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I abandoned it all: the butler, the antique furniture, the promising business - and followed her to Israel where we tried to live together and revive our flagging sexual fortunes in group sex, in Parisian orgy clubs (in the days before AIDS) and all the time I knew that I was losing her and I did, to a radio musical editor. When she went away, she said goodbye publicly, on one of his shows and I tore at the armchair with bent fingers, wet with tears and white with leather tearing rage. I had no money, lost all of it in London. I had no love. all I had was a few shabby replacement leather armchairs (the furniture store went out of business the day after I paid them).

Then I established a brokerage firm and transformed it into the biggest private financial services firm in Israel in two years. I met another woman who were to become my wife and I settled. But I was numb. I knew something was wrong, like the echoes of a distant war. I did not know the enemy, though and I wasn't sure this was my war, anyhow. I just listened at night with fascination to the rumblings. Piece by piece I was falling apart and I had no idea, no acquaintance with my own disembowellment. I watched the disintegration with morbid fascination.

Finally I acted out. I orchestrated a criminal take-over of a state bank, I cheated on my partners, they cheated on me, I sued the government, drawing the fire closer, drawing the war to myself, making it real. I was arrested a month after my wedding. My company was gone. My money was gone. I was back at square one. I was terrified, lonely and married. The ceremony was poor. I wanted to punish her for pushing me into a marriage so I sadistically imposed on her a grubby home wedding with almost no invitees. I didn't know what I was doing, who I was, the world was swirling erratically: marriages, high crimes, mortal fears and the inevitable crash. Five years later I was sentenced to go to prison and I did and the same woman left me while there and we divorced in a civilized manner (almost) fighting only over the music CDs, which I, too, wanted. When she left me, I planned to die. I schemed to grab the Chief Warden's gun and use it. I also compiled lists of lethal doses of medication in the prison library of which I was made in charge. But I didn't die. I wrote books, I saved my sanity, I saved my life.

4. Abuse

I hate the words "physical abuse". It is such a clinical term. My mother used to burrow her fingernails into the soft, inner part of my arm, the "back" of my elbow and drag them, well inside the flesh and veins and everything. You can't imagine the blood and the pain. She hit me with belts and buckles and sticks and heels and shoes and sandals and thrust my skull into sharp angles until it cracked. When I was four she threw a massive metal vase at me. It missed me and shattered a wall sized cupboard. To very small pieces. She did this for 14 years. Every day. Since the age of four.

She tore my books and threw them out the window of our fourth floor apartment. She shredded everything I wrote, consistently, relentlessly.

She cursed and humiliated me 10-15 times an hour, every hour, every day, every month, for 14 years. She called me "my little Eichman" after a well known Nazi mass murderer. She convinced me that I am ugly (I am not. I am considered very good looking and attractive. Other women tell me so and I don't believe them). She invented my personality disorder, meticulously, systematically. She tortured all my brothers as well. She hated it when I cracked jokes. She made my father do all these things to me as well. This is not clinical, this is my life. Or, rather, was. I inherited her ferocious cruelty, her lack of empathy, some of her obsessions and compulsions and her feet. Why I am mentioning the latter - in some other post.

I never felt anger. I felt fear, most of the time. A dull, pervasive, permanent sensation, like an aching tooth. And I tried to get away. I looked for other parents to adopt me. I toured the country looking for a foster home, only to come back humiliated with my dusty backpack. I volunteered to join the army a year before my time. At 17 I felt free. It is a sad "tribute" to my childhood that the happiest period in my life was in jail. The peaceful, most serene, clearest period. It has all been downhill since my release.

But, above all, I felt shame and pity. I was ashamed of my parents: primitive freaks, lost, frightened, incompetent. I could smell their inadequacy. It wasn't like this at the beginning. I was proud of my father, a construction worker turned site manager, a self made man who self destructed later in his life. But this pride eroded, metamorphesized to a malignant form of awe of a depressive tyrant. Much later I understood how socially inept he was, disliked by authority figures, a morbid hypochondriac with narcissistic disdain for others. Father-hate became self hate the more I realized how much like my father I am despite all my pretensions and grandiose illusions: schizoid-asocial, hated by authority figures, depressive, self-destructive, a defeatist.

But above all I kept asking myself two questions:

WHY?

Why did they do it? Why for so long? Why so thoroughly?

I said to myself that I must have frightened them. A firstborn, a "genius" (IQ-wise), a freak of nature, frustrating, overly-independent, unchildlike Martian. The natural repulsion they must have felt having given birth to an alien, to a monstrosity.

Or that my birth fouled their plans somehow. My mother was just becoming a stage actress in her fertile, narcissistic, imagination (actually, she worked as a lowly salesperson in a tiny shoe shop). My father was saving money for one of an endless string of houses he built, sold and rebuilt. I was in the way. My birth was probably an accident. Not much later, my mother aborted my could-have-been-brother. The certificate describes how difficult the economic situation is with the one born child (that's me).

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Or that I deserve to be punished that way because I was naturally agitating, disruptive, bad, corrupt, vile, mean, cunning and what else.

Or that they were both mentally ill (and they were) and what was to be expected of them anyhow.

And the second question:

WAS IT REALLY ABUSE?

Isn't "abuse" our invention, a figment of our febrile imagination when we embark upon an effort to explain that which cannot be explained (our life)?

Isn't this a "false memory", a "narrative", a "fable", a "construct", a "tale"?

Everyone in our neighbourhood hit their children. So what? And our parents' parents hit their children as well and most of them (our parents) came out normal. My father's father used to wake him up and dispatch him through hostile Arab neighbourhoods in the dangerous city they lived in to buy for him his daily ration of alcohol. My mother's mother went to bed one night and refused to get out of it until she died, 20 odd years later. I could see these behaviours replicated and handed down the generations.

So, WHERE was the abuse? The culture I grew in condoned frequent beatings.

It was a sign of stern, right, upbringing. What was different with US?

I think it was the hate in my mother's eyes.

5. Success

Research shows that education IS a determinant in how much money you make (it seems that this is your way of measuring success) - but less than people believe it to be. Intelligence matters much more - and of this latter commodity you have aplenty.

Unfortunately, intelligence is only one of the parameters. To be consistently successful in the long term (and you and I have been successful - scales are irrelevant to the discussion) one needs more. One needs stamina, perseverance, self-awareness, self-love, self-nurturing, some egotism, a modicum of ruthlessness, some hypocrisy, some narrow-mindedness, and so on.

You and I have a "bad" cocktail inasmuch as "classically defined success" goes.

You are good hearted, almost altruistic. Too altruistic. The word is sacrificial. You sacrifice some of your health and sleep and food to maintain your support lists. Sure, part of it is narcissistic. You like gratitude and adulation - who doesn't? But the bigger part is that you love people, you are generous and you feel compelled to help because you know that there are some things that you know and others don't.

You cannot be hypocritical. You are real. You stand up to "authority" because you know it is unadulterated BS in most cases. So, you get into conflicts with the system, with the establishment, and with its representatives. But the system is omnipotent. It holds all the rewards and metes out all the punishments. It eliminates "perturbations".

You are curious, like a child (it's a huge compliment. Einstein compared himself to a child on the seashore). To become an "expert", a "professional", one needs to kill parts of oneself, limit one's curiosity, deaden one's tendency to sample the variety of life. You can't do that. you are too alert, too full of life, too aware of what you are missing. You can't bury yourself intellectually.

And you are not ruthless, lacking in conscience, egotistical, and narrow minded. You do have self-awareness but I am not sure how much you internalized what you know, how much you have assimilated your vast fund of knowledge about yourself and the human psyche. I do get the impression that you know yourself - I don't get the impression that you love yourself, or that you nurture yourself - at least not sufficiently.

So, what does all this add up to?

Superficially: you lack some important components on the road to success.

You lack the necessary stamina, you are too non-conformist and anti-establishment, you are too generous, you are not sufficiently selfish perhaps because you don't love yourself (though you know yourself), you are not narrow-minded, etc.

But this is not the way I see it at all.

I believe in making a list. WHAT am I. Then finding the profession/vocation/occupation/avocation that fits best my traits, inclinations, propensities, properties and predilections. Success is then guaranteed. If you have a good match between what you pursue and your ability to pursue it - you can't fail. You simply can't go wrong.

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Following success there is the question of self-defeating and self-destructive behaviours, true. But this is a separate issue.

A personal tale:

For YEARS I tried to settle down. Bought a home, married, establish businesses, paid taxes. Went nuts. Acted out. My then p-doc (a brief affair) told me: why do you fight your nature? You are NOT built to lead a stable life. Find an unstable life which you can lead successfully. And I did. I became a roving financial consultant, roaming the globe. This way I balanced my inherent instability with my craving for stability.

I think that the first step is to take an inventory of the phenomenon called YOU. Then find the best match professionally. Then go for it. Then success will follow. Then try to avoid the pitfalls of self destruction.

6. Rejection

I am afraid to write, yes, even to you because I am afraid to be rejected. I do not a pretty picture make. I feel estranged from myself. I love and pity humans while virulently holding them in contempt. I adore and cherish women while being a misogynist. I am a narcissist who failed. So many contradictions tend to put people off. People want clear definitions and tiny boxes and the clarity that comes only when life itself stops. So, all my life I experienced the cautious looks of others, their repulsion, their rage. People react with fear to the exceptional and then they get angry for having feared.

I am Sam. I am 40+, am the first born, followed, in intervals of 4 years, by one sister and three brothers. I am in touch only with my youngest brother (16 years apart). I seem to be his hero, untarnished by my constant failures and glaring failings. He has a personality disorder as well (schizotypal, I think, or mild BPD) and an OCD.

My mother was a Narcissist (spontaneously healed in her forties) and an OCD.

She was physically, psychologically and verbally abusive towards me and to my brothers. This shattered my sense of self worth and perceived ability to cope with the world - for which I compensated by developing NPD (though mild). I am a Narcissist ever since I remember myself. My mother regarded me as a supreme venue of entertainment and I performed for our neighbours, acquaintances and family daily. Until a few years ago, most of what I did was aimed at impressing her and changing her mind about me. Paradoxically, her judgement regarding the personality that she helped foster is accurate: I AM vain, in pursuit of appearances rather than of substance, dangerously pretentious, pathological liar, obdurate to the point of stupidity, highly intelligent but very unwise, shallow in everything I do, no perseverance and so on. But I feel the same about her: that Loving to her is a series of tedious chores, that she pretends, constantly lies and denies, still compulsive, opinionated to the point of rigidity.

My father is chronically depressed and hypochondriac. He comes from a violent family and is a self made man broken by adverse economic circumstances. But he suffered from depression and anxiety long before his economic demise. He was also physically, verbally and psychologically abusive but less so than my mother (he was absent during daytime). I strongly envied him in my early childhood and wished him ill.

My life is a pattern of renunciation of everything this couple stands for: petite bourgeois values, small town mentality, moral conservatism, family, home ownership, attachment. I have no roots. In the last 5 months I changed 3 domiciles (in 3 countries). All told, I lived in 11 countries in the last 16 years. I have no family (divorced, no children) - though I do maintain long and loyal relationships with women, no property to speak of, I am a gambler in disguise (stock options - respectable gambling), no continuous relationships with friends (but yes with my brother), no career (impossible with such mobility) or academic edge (the Ph.D. is of the correspondence type), I served one prison term, have consistently associated with the underworld in fascination mixed with mortal fear. I do achieve things: I published books (my latest one, a book of short stories, won acclaim and a prestigious award, I just published a book about narcissism) and am in the process of publishing a few more (mostly reference), have my websites (which, I believe contain original material in philosophy and economics), my commentaries are published in papers all over the world and I appear intermittently in the electronic media. But my "achievements" are ephemeral. They do not last because I am never there to follow up on them. I lose interest very quickly, move physically and disconnect emotionally. This is all an on-going mutiny against my parents.

Another area which was effected by my parents is my sexual life. To them sex was ugly and dirty. My rebellion led me to experience orgies and group sex, on the one hand - and (most of the time) asceticism. In between bouts of promiscuity (once a decade for a few weeks, after major life crises) I engage in sex very rarely (despite long term relationships with women). My non-availability is intended to frustrate women who are attracted to me (I use the fact that I have a girlfriend as an alibi). I prefer autoerotic sex (masturbation with fantasies). I am a conscious misogynist : fear and loathe women and tend to ignore them to the best of my ability. To me, they are a mixture of hunter and parasite. Of course, this is not my STATED position (I am truly a liberal - for instance, I will not dream of depriving women of their career opportunities or suffrage). This conflict between emotional and cognitive leads to express hostility in my encounters with women, which they detect, in some cases. Alternatively, I "desexualize" them and treat them as functions.

I constantly need narcissistic supply.

I probably could get a Ph.D. in psychology, treat patients (sorry, clients) a few years and then come out with a first monograph. But this is not what Narcissistic supply is about. NS is absolutely comparable to drugs, without any reservations. To maintain the high one must increase the dose, do the drug more often and pursue it in a any manner open to one. It is useless to try and postpone satisfaction. The reward must be stronger than before, immediate and exciting. The pursuit of Narcissistic supply spirals towards depths of degradation, humiliation and abuse - both of self and of others. Anxiety is a product, not a cause. Really, it is (justified) FEAR: what if there will be no NS available? How will I obtain the next shot? What if I will get caught? Actually, the symptoms are so similar, that I believe that NPD has some biochemical fundament. This biochemical disorder is CREATED by life circumstances, rather than the converse.

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next: Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 30

Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 31

1. Euphoria and Dysphoria
2. Saying Goodbye
3. On the Move
4. Creating Dependence
5. N-magnets a Bad Metaphor
6. Ideas of Reference
7. Fighting Back

1. Euphoria and Dysphoria

The Narcissist has various overlapping cycles of euphoria-elation and dysphoria-depression.

Bipolar Disorder (the current name for mania-depression) is an altogether different affliction which can and does co-appear with personality disorders (co-morbidity). Why (genetics? environment?) is anyone's guess. But it seems to be more of a biochemically induced disorder.

Narcissists have also been known to be cyclothimic and dysthimic.

Narcissists very rarely commit suicide though they often resort to suicidal ideation and to suicide threats or allusions.

2. Saying Goodbye

If you wish to stay out of her life altogether - why would you care what she does with her life?

I know. It's a cruel sentence. But there is no half separation as there is no half pregnancy.

To say goodbye to another person is easy. What is difficult is to say goodbye to what WE once were, to ourselves, to the relationship. It is easy to get out of a relationship - but very difficult to get the relationship out of us. Addiction wears many guises - altruism the most common, love, compassion, and empathy.

3. On the Move

I am never on the move on what appears to me to be my free accord.

Cognitively, I know that I am the organizer of my own itinerary.

Emotionally, I feels like a sailor after an off shore leave on the way to yet another sleazy port.

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4. Creating Dependence

Not all character traits are the result of narcissism.

A person can be parsimonious and this will have nothing to do with his personality disorder.

Deploying money to control others IS narcissistic.

The narcissist tries to make significant others financially dependent on him by preventing them from obtaining a job, keeping a bank account, or having access to money.

Some narcissists secure this dependence by threatening and being verbally or physically abusive to the other - or by berating the partner and eroding her self esteem to the point where she is afraid or ashamed to look for a job or to otherwise financially fend for herself.

Some narcissists are impulsive - others are control freaks.

The important thing is the use of money as a tool of subjugation of others.

The narcissist always maintains a double standard: the best for me, at any cost - as for you, dear significant other, the bare minimum necessary to keep you by my side.

5. N-magnets a Bad Metaphor

I disagree with the term "N-magnets".

Magnets are inert, physical objects.

They attract and are attracted because that's the way they are.

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There is nothing a magnet can do about being a magnet.

Magnets have no will, responsibility, cognition, analytical skills, choices, decision making powers, the ability to change, etc.

It is very convenient to think about oneself as a magnet. If one is a magnet - one is subject to natural forces beyond one's control. It is such a cosy feeling.

The world is bad - I can't help being what I am.

Inverted Narcissists are NOT magnets.

They are human beings who ARE responsible for their choices and for the decisions they make.

They can change themselves for the better and, to a large extent, they choose not to do so.

Inverted narcissists ARE narcissists - only they are inverted (read FAQ 66).

Like all other narcissists, they refuse to get better until they are narcissistically injured by a major life crisis.

And then, as all narcissists do, they blame the world (i.e., the narcissists in their lives) rather then assume responsibility for their actions and realizing that something is wrong with them, that THEY are narcissists who need professional help and treatment.

Read more about the alloplastic ("the world is guilty") versus the autoplastic ("I am guilty") defences in FAQ 15.

The phrase "N-magnets" is a BAD metaphor.

It is not a question of semantics. Metaphors both stand for unconscious processes and prompt them.

Metaphors are VERY dangerous things. They should be handled with care.

Inverted narcissists are FULL FLEDGED narcissists who are attracted to other people with personality disorders (NPD, BPD, AsPD, etc.)

They do so out of choice. They do so repeatedly. Many of them do so willingly.

Magnets do not choose. Magnets do not have a will.

(Physical) Magnets are not RESPONSIBLE for what is happening to them.

Magnets are PASSIVE. They are SUBJECT TO natural forces and natural laws which are IMMUTABLE.

Magnets CAN DO NOTHING about being magnets.

Inverted Narcissists can be hurt, can rage, can strike back, can choose to heal, can avoid narcissists.

That so few of them do - is because they are narcissists.

Narcissists - of ALL types - blame the world (in this case, they blame other narcissists) for their troubles.

This is called ALLOPLASTIC DEFENCES.

Narcissists - including inverted narcissists - harbour grandiose delusions, have a False Self and feel entitled.

Narcissists of all stripes exploit others and are devoid of empathy.

The difference is in the strategy. The survival strategy of Inverted Narcissists is to be victims.

The survival strategy of narcissists is to victimize - a perfect match.

Comparing oneself to a magnet is COPPING OUT. It is refusing to assume responsibility.

Moaning and groaning, complaining and crying, accusing and finger pointing, pouting and screaming - are all therapeutically commended and recommended activities.

BUT, it is NOT healing. Magnets, may I remind you, cannot heal. How convenient.

6. Ideas of Reference

An idea of reference is when you attribute to yourself - your existence, your qualities, your behaviour -
something which has nothing to do with you.

Ideas of reference are a derivative of grandiosity and magical thinking.

You think that the world revolves around you, that you are the centre of attention (often negative attention), that you somehow direct other people's behaviour and elicit their reactions, that you are the target of actions and inaction.

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It is a mild form of paranoia - non-persecutory paranoia, if I may use this oxymoron.

7. Fighting Back

The first thing you have to do is stop loving M.

It is natural to harbour these feelings so shortly after a separation.

But M is and always has been an enemy of yours.

You did not love M but his False Self - a projection of his, a movie he no longer screens for you.

Loving M (in your case, being infatuated with him as well) - is a bad strategy.

It provides your enemy with an immediate advantage.

Your enemy being unscrupulous and ruthless - he is bound to maximize this advantage. It is his main weapon.

Your second mistake is to continue to play the role of the hapless and helpless victim.

M is used to this. Any reversal of roles is likely to whack him completely out of balance and to yield miraculous results.

Think how to grasp the initiative. Think how you could victimize HIM.

Think how to put him on a desperate defensive.

Play the strong - he will immediately play the weak.

One way of achieving this by finding a man, a boyfriend.

I know how emotionally inhibited you are after this traumatic affair.

But getting attached - however superficially - to a man will serve the dual purpose of infuriating M while rendering him helpless.

It will also annul your third mistake - that you continue to provide M with Narcissistic Supply.

Your emails, your pleas, your threats - are all music to M's ears.

They serve to prove that you are still addicted to him, that he can still fine tune you.

M derives a sense of sublime omnipotence whenever he hears from you.

He is sadist and a narcissist - so your pain is his supply, your fear is his sustenance.

Stop it immediately. Ignore him completely.

Two weeks of utter, complete, unbroken silence will do more to shatter M than two years of legal battle.

M NEEDS you. You hold enormous power over him - the power of the attention that you give him.

No attention and a new man in your life (just be SEEN with him, make sure M knows about him, that's all). Take the initiative and dictate new rules of the game and M is quivering history.

Just two caveats: do not do anything illegal and make sure you are protected from his physical abuse. Your lawyer can advise you on the first - the police and your new boyfriend can take care of the latter.

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next: Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 32

sexual fantasies

Articles, stories, and your input on Sexual Fantasies is here:

1. Are Sexual Fantasies Good For Us?

2. Sexual Fantasies: Are They Dangerous?

3. The Science of Sexual Fantasies

4. Sexual Fantasies: Friend or Foe

5. Understanding Male and Female Sexual Fantasies

6. The Differences Between The Sexual Fantasies of Men and Women

7. Interview on Sexual Fantasy w/ 2 Philosophy Experts

8. Perverse Fantasies: More Common Than We Thought

9. Perverse Fantasies: You're Not Alone

10. The Gardener of Desire: Women's Sex Fantasies

11. Women's Top 10 Sexual Fantasies

12. Male Sexual Fantasies: Fantasy, Masturbation, and Sexual Attitudes

13. Indian Men and Their Wives' Sexual Fantasies

14. Sexual Fantasies of Child Molesters

15. Thinking About Sexual Fantasies Lessens Pain

 

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You Are Loved

*************

You Have Worth

**************

Whatever may have happened in your life...
Whatever road you may have gone down...
There will always be SOMEONE willing to
Believe in your GOODNESS.

Whatever things you may have done,
there is always SOMEONE willing to
STAND by you.

Whatever choices you may have made,
there is always SOMEONE willing
to UNDERSTAND.

Whatever sorrow you may carry,
there is always SOMEONE who is willing
to EASE your burden.

Whenever you feel you are lost,
there is always SOMEONE willing to
SHOW YOU the way home.

Whenever life feels like it's going too fast,
there is always SOMEONE willing to
help you to SLOW DOWN...
there is always SOMEONE ready
to help you to...

 

When I eventually came to an understanding that events which brought me sorrow could be used to teach me, and when I finally learnt to believe in my goodness...

I crossed a bridge.

The bridge I talk of is one that brought me to a recognition of self-worth, self-love, and of a right to express Self-Love as a natural expression of my humanness.

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continue story below

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In this book, I talk about how I turned my life around after the breakdown of marriage and the loss of other chances of happiness, but it's greater purpose is to share with you, and for you, the way in which I restored peace into my life. It is about understanding of self and of others. It is the way in which I re-discovered myself, and how I came to understand the many different aspects of human nature that combine to form the individuals that we are. It is about developing Awareness, Gentleness and Forgiveness. It is Hope; it is my Hope which has allowed me to unmask myself and the world in which I live, and I now pass it on to those who have traveled down various difficult or melancholy roads in an attempt to share what I have learnt.

Though there are many ways in which our lives can be shaken, there is a universal solution that will take us back to happiness. This comfort comes from a knowledge of Self-Worth and Self-Love, and the recognition of the good nature that is a fundamental part of each of us. So often we labor with our mistakes as if they require some sort of ongoing penance, but such thinking is born of an ignorant perception which keeps us from seeing the opportunities for growth that are available every time we misread a life situation and bring pain to ourselves.

It is my desire to share my experiences and thoughts, to hopefully give to you an understanding of Love and Fear which I find has dramatically transformed my life. Through a feeling of faith and confidence, I truly know that you also will be able to find a most perfect understanding of your own situation and your own truth. It is a way in which I am able to give the world a gift, since I am so lucky to have so many.

Although events, people, choices and actions can bring disillusionment or pain, be believing that through it all, you are still deserving of the same chances for a good life that you would wish for anyone else to have. This good wish you have for others, illustrates this goodness within you that I believe in. It is your map on your road home.

In our hearts, most of us can be sure of having a simple desire to lead a happy and content life, but life brings about complexities which in turn will bring about various responses unique to each person. Understand that the way you react to a particular event is a reflection of your thinking, and that your thinking is related to all your experiences. By saying this, I am not advocating that we can or should deny any responsibilities for our actions, but it is important to know that the INNATE quality of Love within Human nature, can, at times, become hidden by a veil of deception brought about by various experiences and inaccurate perceptions from not knowing all other aspects and details of an event in our life. Exposure to any such circumstance, whether it be only once or repeated many times, can obscure our vision of Inner Truth as we get led down roads that we might wish we had never ventured (chosen or otherwise).

Through any mistakes or misfortunes, we can then learn of situations, ourselves, and of other people. Through any suffering that comes our way from such problems, we are also able to extract value by observing the life action of Cause and Effect. That is, whatever Action we perform, we must expect the appropriate Reaction to come back to us as a natural response to our choices. (Further aspects of this thinking are discussed in the chapter, The Mirror Action of Life.)

In wanting to learn, we will learn. In wanting to grow, we will grow. So through any event that awakens us through pain, we then acquire an impetus to carry us through the process of change. Our pain then becomes our power in a newly born quest for Love, Happiness, and Peace. Since our desire for goodness carries great merit, we will strive like we've never strived before as old ways of living are cast aside from the awakening to a way of thinking which has kept us from the Love we have been searching for.

CONTEMPLATION:

The Love that has seemed to elude you,

Has always been within you.

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next: Getting Off the Roller Coaster The Struggle of the Ego