Warning: this post contains references to trauma, neglect and abuse
If we were to go back to 1968 and visit the London Dorchester Hotel, we might find Ward Landrigan knocking on the door of the penthouse suite. Ward, still in his 20’s, works at Sotheby’s auction house in New York as head of jewellery. He is at the hotel because the occupants of the penthouse suite have purchased the previous day the famous 33.19 carat Asscher-cut Krupp diamond. The winning bid was $305,000. The buyer called and requested the stone to be delivered immediately from New York to London. The door of the suite is opened by actor Richard Burton. After confirming that Ward has the diamond, Richard asks for the box and calls over his shoulder, “Elizabeth, come here!”. Elizabeth Taylor-Burton rushes out from the bedroom and is handed the open box. “Oh shit!” she shouts, and tackles Richard to the floor, knocking over a side table with a lamp on it. Ward looks on from the doorway thinking “This is so Hollywood”. After Elizabeth’s death, the diamond will sell at auction for $8.8 million, renamed the Elizabeth Taylor diamond.
In part A, I explored how Elizabeth’s childhood was dominated by experiences of her own internal needs and wishes being unseen or denied. They were replaced according to the personal ambitions of her mother, Sara. This pattern in her childhood was combined with persistent scrutiny, criticism and praise of external features and performance. According to the map of narcissism, childhood experiences of vulnerability and judgment have been overwhelming. And so the child grows up needing strategies to find distance from feelings of vulnerability and shame.2
On the same map of narcissism2, strategies can be found by the child, as ways to escape experiences that have become intolerable (see theory post). Here I will look at some of the strategies Elizabeth found. Some were helpful and healthy. The adult Elizabeth said that “riding a horse gave me a sense of freedom, because I was so controlled by my parents and the studio when I was a child”. But the strategies that appear on the map of narcissism can have unwanted side effects.
The map of narcissism2*
Adored: like emeralds
At the age of 74, Elizabeth was taken to Hawaii on holiday by her friend and manager Jason Winters. When Jason’s family decided on a ‘swimming with sharks’ experience, they assumed this would not be something for Elizabeth (who was often using a wheelchair). But despite Jason’s concerns, she insisted that she wanted to join them. She was told by the dive instructor to take off her diamond bangles, because the reflected light might attract an overwhelming number of sharks. Elizabeth replied, “But isn’t that the point?”1 Even with sharks, Elizabeth loved the power of jewellery to attract attention. In a broader sense, these were not her first sharks. She kept the bangles on.
In narcissism, the child has not been noticed emotionally and has learned to be valued through external appearance, possessions or achievements. In order even to know who they are, they need to look at these things themselves. Elizabeth wore her jewellery in the pool, in bed, and much of it travelled with her. Elizabeth had a huge drive to be admired. I think the size of this need meant that she was drawn to men who lavished her with adoration in a way that sometimes betrayed that there was a flip side. We sometimes call this ‘love bombing’, and whilst it can be a sign of narcissism in the bomber, narcissism in the bombed can be part of the equation. Elizabeth’s need to be adored was too great.
To Elizabeth, gifts of jewellery were an expression of admiration and value. Elizabeth’s son, Chris Wilding said of Elizabeth’s unquenchable hunger for gifts, “I think it was, ‘do I still have it? Can I still charm people?”1 But jewels were also a more reliable way to achieve a feeling of being highly valued – even after the man had gone. Whilst some of these men had both idealised and devalued her (sometimes violently), the diamonds expressed only the ideal. We can measure Elizabeth’s drive for stardom in her filmography. The measure of her hunger for gifts of jewellery is simpler: She amassed the most valuable private collection of jewellery in the world. After Elizabeth’s death the eight-hour auction of her collection raised $114.2 million. She once said of the Krupp diamond “I know it’s vulgar, but would you have me any other way?”1
On airline note paper, Elizabeth once wrote a note to husband, Richard Burton, thanking him for the ‘Tuesday diamonds’ and the ‘Friday emeralds’. But the note asked him to show his love less lavishly and more genuinely. The problem was that her husband probably did not know how to do this. And she had not noticed this flaw in him until she was heavily committed. Chris Wilding noticed that Richard was “awkward in situations of emotional intimacy”1. From a distance, he could see things his mother could not.
Elizabeth and Richard Burton as Cleopatra and Mark Anthony
Performance: as captivating as rubies
Feelings of shame and vulnerability are difficult for all of us but impossible for some. Performing can be discovered specifically as a way to find distance from such feelings simply because it provokes admiration or idealisation, which tend to make us feel something opposite. According to narcissism theory the family exposes the child not only to traumatic emotional experiences, but also intense experiences of admiration of external qualities: physical appearance, talents, performance and power2. In a mine field of impossible emotions, the child is offered this escape route. It is this escape route that we call narcissism.
Actor Robert Wagner, who dated Elizabeth, saw how Elizabeth was always confused as a child about whether she was valued by her parents for who she was, or for how she performed.1 Acting can be a way to feel valued - to be cared for. But there is something else: acting can also help a person to find distance from their own personal vulnerability altogether. 3,5 As Elizabeth put it,
“Some people act by charts or by the Stanislavski method. I can only do it by forgetting myself completely”4.
In Elizabeth, we can call this “forgetting myself” a part of her acting talent. But it may have fundamentally been an escape from vulnerable feelings that had never been safe to experience. This idea might make sense when playing a powerful non-vulnerable character, but actors often play vulnerable characters. How does that work? How this might work is through something psychologists call ‘projection’. Even if the actor is imagining the vulnerability of a character they are playing, this still offers distance from their own vulnerability. In effect, the acted-out character becomes a place to put the vulnerability they cannot tolerate in themselves. It will help, perhaps if the characters vulnerability is dramatic or severe. And what do we find in cinema and theatre, but lead performances of dramatic vulnerability or dramatic power? In either case, in throwing themselves into the part, for the actor I think there is a kind of relief.
I have said previously that there is more than one kind of empathy, and actors may excel in some and struggle with others (see actor empathy post). Elizabeth described a kind of empathy for the vulnerability in her characters:
“I tried to become them and think, well now what are they upset about?...Why are they crying?”1
It seems that Elizabeth was easily mentally absorbed with the idea that someone else was crying. Vulnerability in Elizabeth herself, was something more difficult. This is something specific I have found across all of the icons I have read about – something fundamental to narcissism5.
Elizabeth and first husband Conrad Hilton. The marriage will last weeks and leave Elizabeth physically and emotionally traumatised
Denying vulnerability: hard as a diamonds
In her 70s Elizabeth was preparing to appear at the Kennedy Centre Honours to accept an award. Her health was deteriorating. As she got out of bed that morning, she collapsed onto her ankle and heard it crack. She let out a scream of pain. She had been anticipating the event for weeks. She couldn’t cancel. Remembering this day, she later said,
“I kept saying, I am strong, I am strong, I am brave, I am brave, I am brave, I am strong. And I got dressed and made up, had my hair done, and all the time my foot is getting bigger and bigger. You cannot see one trace of pain in my face [during the event]. I kept saying to myself, I am strong, I am strong, I am strong, I am brave…like a mantra, and with that mantra, I managed to get through the evening”.1
Whilst we read about narcissism as a lack of empathy for others, equally central to narcissism is a distancing from vulnerable feelings in the self. Psychotherapist Alexander Lowen connects this with the acting persona which he calls an ‘image’:
“Absence of feeling is the basic disturbance in the narcissistic personality, and the one that allows the image to gain ascendancy”5
In some situations, of course, being able to put vulnerable feelings to one side is a strength. And it can improve performance if we are able to push ourselves when others give up. However, Joseph Mankiewicz, director of Suddenly Last Summer, described how Elizabeth could be “…brought to her knees by her own demands on herself.”1
If we are compelled always to put vulnerable feelings aside, then the strategy gets applied also when it is unhelpful. Elizabeth had a problem with needing people and with taking her own vulnerable feelings seriously, and I think this was one of the things that caused her intimate relationships to break down. Whilst she was having an affair with journalist Max Learner, Learner mentioned to Elizabeth that, if they got married, he would be able to introduce her to a lot of high-status people. She responded with a particular tone about how much she needed him:
“Fuck you! I see these people now without you. I attract them myself. I sure don’t need you to attract them for me.”1
Again, in narcissism specifically, and in no other mental health or psychological problem, the denial of need for others is a core feature – one that is a major barrier for getting help. Despite agreeing that her childhood had been traumatic, Elizabeth never sought therapy.
Elizabeth and Richard filming Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf?
Attracted to vulnerability in others: flawed diamonds
Elizabeth became hard; insensitive to her own vulnerability, need for others and also physical pain. Another child star, Jill Schary, thought the young Elizabeth “a princess. A little girl from England who had a kind of elegance and superiority”. When left with the chief of Universal Films at the age of nine, she showed him her dolls. When she was initially rejected for National Velvet, she fought the decision. When she fell off the horse and injured her back, she hid her pain. But when this same young Elizabeth visited a boy in an iron lung in hospital, she wiped away tears. What was different about this boy she was meeting for the first time? If narcissism is a phobia of vulnerability, we can disconnect from vulnerability in ourselves, or we can locate vulnerability in others and so feel invulnerable. Even as a child, Elizabeth was learning to do this – whether she was acting the part of the person or visiting them in hospital.1
Biographer Kate Andersen Brower says that Elizabeth’s “important relationships were with men whose mojos eclipsed her own”. Yes, but i think this is one side of the story. She was consistently attracted to a particular kind of man for friendship: people like Rock Hudson, James Dean and Montgomery Clift. They were all gay actors, at a time when this meant marginalisation and stigma. But looking under the surface, it seems that there was something particularly vulnerable about these men and I suspect that she found this attractive (remember her mother had demonstrated the same strategy). After a night of confiding in Elizabeth his most sensitive secret (that he had been abused as a child), “Jimmy” Dean could not look at Elizabeth the next day on the set of Giant. He soon afterwards died in his Porsche 550 Spyder, but friends had worried for some time about his reckless driving. The same fate nearly visited Montgomery Clift. At the scene of the crash, only one person could clamber into the car wreck and hold up Montgomery’s smashed face, putting their feelings aside like a paramedic. It was Elizabeth. The first time she had met Clift, she “thought she would find him intimidating, and she was delighted when she discovered how…fragile he was.”1
Increasingly, the experience of marginalisation and condemnation gay men experienced provoked powerful compassion in Elizabeth. Over time, she became a campaigner and advocate. The tangible results of this compassion can still be seen today in HIV charities, changed attitudes and impacts of HIV research. Can the need to focus on vulnerability in others be a strength? Yes. Ask your doctor. But as with the denial of feelings in ourselves, it can also carry side-effects.
When Elizabeth first met actor Richard Burton, she was intimidated by his voice and presence. But it was years later, on the set of Cleopatra, that Richard asked her to lift up the arm that was holding his coffee cup, because after a three-day drinking binge he was shaking uncontrollably. Now, vulnerability provoked a different kind of interest in Elizabeth: she would marry him twice.
Actress Carrie Fisher, daughter of Eddie Fisher who married Elizabeth, described in Elizabeth a “rampant empathy”. As a description of a woman who stole her father from her when she was a child, this is generous. She was focussing on something genuine in Elizabeth, whilst ignoring something that had impacted her personally. But this post is not about Carrie Fisher. Having studied the lives of Brando, Chaplin and Savile, I am cautious about thinking of this iconic actress as simply empathic. Empathy is a complex thing. Author Kate Andersen Brower describes Elizabeth as,
“ a lioness who wanted to guard and protect so many people – mostly those she saw as outsiders – that sometimes her own children were left feeling neglected.”1
Her empathy may have been rampant, but it was selectively rampant, and those closest to her sometimes lost out. The same was true for Brando. Empathy can also be for oneself. But George Hamilton, Elizabeth’s one time boyfriend, thought
“She had the strength of a lion and the ability to fight when it was for someone else…but she did not always take care of herself.”1
Actress Demi Moore thought of Elizabeth that the “level of compassion she had was parallel to the level of pain she experienced”. I think Demi was on to something.
Mother of desires
Narcissism can be thought of as a consequence of emotional trauma and neglect. The map of narcissism is quite specific about these early experiences. There is no pair of roles called “controlling to controlled’ or “exploiting to exploited” or “attacking to attacked”. But these were all features of Elizabeth’s childhood. In fact, across the list of great icons I have chosen to explore, overt abuse and exploitation in childhood has been more a consistent factor than I had expected. Compared with the basic map of narcissism, it is often more complicated and more traumatic than the experiences thought to bring about narcissism alone.
Elizabeth’s stardom, her persistent attraction to vulnerability in others, her apparent toughness and her need for lavish gifts and jewellery do all fit together on the map of narcissism. What they share is the distance they create from vulnerability and dependence in Elizabeth herself. It seems that this vulnerability, in the smallest version of Elizabeth the child, had never been properly seen or respected. It seems that even on the day of her birth, her future desires had already been decided by another mind.
Before finding performance as a way to free herself from judgment, control and emotional neglect, Elizabeth found horse riding. The common benefits of these two activities was not lost on her when she said, “I loved being given the chance of maybe becoming an actress. And I took it, I took it between my teeth, like a horse does. And I ran, and it seemed to work.”1
Elizabeth with her co-starring horse King Charles filming National Velvet. She kept the horse as a gift from the studio.
Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own unless otherwise stated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution I have been employed by. The content here is for information and should not be interpreted as advice.
*Ryle did not apply this approach only to narcissism. If this mapping approach has been used in your own therapy, this does not mean that you have narcissistic difficulties.
Notes
1. Andersen Brower, K. (2022). Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon. Harper Collins.
2. Ryle, A. & Kerr, I.B. (2002). Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Wiley.
3. Diamond, D., Yeomans, F.E., Stern, B.L. & Kernberg, O.F. (2022) Treating Pathological Narcissism with Transference Focussed Therapy. Guildford.
4. Taraborrelli, J.R. (2006). Elizabeth. Pan.
5. Lowen, A. (1997). Narcissism. Denial of the True Self. Touchstone.