Richard Sennett has also traced the gratification crisis to a narcissistic disturbance and the absent relation to the Other: As a character disorder, narcissism is the very opposite of strong self-love. Self-absorption does not produce gratification, it produces injury to the self; erasing the line between self and other means that nothing new, nothing “other,” ever enters the self; it is devoured and transformed until one thinks one can see oneself in the other—and then it becomes meaningless. . . . The narcissist is not hungry for experiences, he is hungry for Experience. Looking always for
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