I blame the naivety of the feminist movement for this all too common occurrence, in its quest for equality for women [a good thing] it constructed a stereotype of man as oppressor and woman as victim. Her testimony as truth and his testimony as fiction in a new type of chauvinism [a bad thing] to replace the old order. This has handed immense social power to the pathological narcissists and female chauvinists amongst us and is the antithesis of equality. Naturally it is the goal of the female pathological narcissist to seek positions of power over other people in order to exact the pleasure that they receive from achieving their aims.

If only people would trust to reason more and less to political narrative and emotional judgements in examining truth and morality.

I think I may disagree with your husband in the nature of pathological narcissism in that I believe it to be mental illness rather than personality trait, even that it can be genetically inherited and widespread as the sufferers can outwardly function normally in society and many types of “social crime” can be committed over lengthy periods without incurring the wrath of the state and thus expose their pathology to critical scrutiny.

Thanks for correcting my many errors.

I agree with you. My point was only that the sister’s character was pathological and it wasn’t clear in the story. To McEwan’s credit, I must admit that this kind of people live among us, wreck our lives and we barely notice that they are mentally ill. They don’t notice it themselves. They think that they are doing the right thing. My huisband, who is a psychiatrist, told me once that he doesn’t consider these people as mentally ill, he simply consider them as devoid of humanity and having a permanent moral failure, the kind of psychopathic killers. He tells me that his patients have humanity because they seek help, they know that they need help. Not the others.

We have been in a legal deadlock with a female colleague to my husband who is of this kind since 2002. The year my husband ginaed a five year tenure at the university, opening the way for permanent tenure, she nearly destroyed his career with lies. He lost his medical practice permit in Quebec (she was able to do so because he has a temporary permit as a foreign trained doctor and because she was elected at the body of the college). My hsband has to take a medical practice in Ontario, 200kms away from home and be away two days a week from home while keeping his university position. Many people stood with us but she was the hierarchy both at the hospital and the college and she didn’t listen. She even asked a former student to my husband to tell lies about him in court in exchange for a job. The student left Canada and didn’t want to testify against her because of fear.

We went to court against her asking for raparation and restoration of rights. She had a female lawyer and the judge was a feminist. The story that was told in court was that of a porr female executive having to deal with an intransigent man (my husband). I have never heard in all my life such a big amount of lies. We lost because the judge saw in her a poor woman. She, and her lawyer were able to convince the judge that the rights question was secondary. So it was a character assassination. Can you imagine ? We went to court for reparation and justice and we were told that it was my husband’s own fault what happened to him because he was intransigent ?

We are appealing. At least in the appeal court three judges and not only one will ahve to review the judgement. Our lawyer (by lack of chance, a man), one of the best lawyers in Canada couldn’t believe what happened. he said that he saw many incompetent judges in his career but never a judge so onesided.

The pervert narcissic people have power, yremendous power, on other people. Not everyone. They can play the autority role and switch to the victim role in a matter of seconds, clouding other people’s judgements. She played well in the court. The whole process was painful to us but we will never stop seeking justice and we will never forget.

Sorry for having told so much. This is recent. One day we will tell our story in full…For the time being we are recovering.

I definitely need a holiday.

On the contrary Sophia, this issue I must sadly disagree with you but will add that it is to your credit that you cannot believe it to be possible. I have personally known women, perhaps by twist of fate they were all women, who were indeed endowed with just such a perverse narcissism and even cruelty. Of course they concoct a finely woven web of lies to tell themselves so that they can kid themselves that their spite and jealousy was justified, they simply repeat their mantas until they can no longer tell reality from their fiction, so in the end they believe themselves to be good people.

In that respect the story was very real to me.