What is a selfobject? http://bit.ly/2E4fldP

Azula papers I did years ago, final part

Azula would probably fit under the narcissistic personality category. Narcissistic people constantly need people’s opinions to tell them how good they are (McWilliams 1994). If other people think of them well, narcissistic people feel good about themselves but only temporarily. If they feel that they are thought about poorly it feels like the end of the world for them. Typical people do also have their pride enhanced and crushed by others’ judgments as well but narcissistic people take it to the extreme. They are preoccupied constantly about how others think of them. Despite all the praise that they may get, deep down they feel that they are unloved .

           Azula, a princess, has quite a lot of power. She can order around guards at a whim. She constantly has her needs taken care of by her maidservants and hears a lot of praise from her supporters. McWilliams gives an example of a man described by Ernest Jones who showed such characteristics such as feeling omnipotent, over evaluating his creativity and not easily emotionally read. Azula similarly wants to show just how powerful and fearful she is by her firebending prowess, how much of a military tactician she is by successfully planning and executing that plan to take over another nation and there are times when her enemies cannot easily read her, at least early on in the show. This is confirmed by her ability to use a top tier firebending technique called lightning bending which, as her uncle told to her brother, can only be used when one does not feel any emotions at the moment. Azula is also considered a good liar, as even one of the heroes, who is able to feel when someone is lying, is not able to tell if Azula is honest or not.

Yet she has a fear that her friends will leave her, so she uses fear tactics to keep them with her. They appear to not mind this at first and do follow out Azula’s plans on how to take down the heroes and the other opposing nations that threaten the Fire Nation’s empire which confirms to Azula that she is good at what she does. Azula nearly breaks down when her friends betray her to help the heroes escape a maximum security prison meaning she does need the opinions of others to have the feeling that she is indeed amiable, competent and is able to control others including her friends. Though she does not like her mother, Azula hallucinates about her mother in her mirror, telling her that she does indeed love her. This shows that Azula did want her mother to outright tell her that.

McWilliams mentions about analysts who believe that narcissism stems from early disappointments in the relationship (1994). Her mother did not think too well of Azula and ran off when Azula was very young. Therefore she did not give much to the relationship. Also sometimes there is a higher chance one becomes narcissistic if he or she is used by a parent or other family member as an extension of himself or herself. Azula’s father, Ozai, may have likely used her for that purpose. He is proud of her firebending skill and is not too happy about his son’s lack of talent. Ozai himself is no slouch at firebending so he sees himself in his daughter. Perhaps Azula unconsciously fears failing and being shamed like her brother. McWilliams gives an example of a son not seeing what is wrong with his father’s position in only choosing a doctor or a lawyer as a career choice because he was treated like an extension his whole life. Likewise Azula does not see anything wrong with success as an only option and can not stand the thought that others do not support her endeavors.

People use selfobjects in order to get a sense of identity by defining who they are by having selfobjects approve or admire them. According to self psychologists, everyone uses selfobjects. The difference between normal people and narcissistic people is that due to moral reasons, normal people do not want to use people for just what they can do for the relationship. Narcissistic people may only see others just for that purpose and nothing more. Azula does consider them her friends, but she mostly uses them to reassure herself that she is lovable and capable of many things. She gets devastated when they leave her. Some believe that those who use others for this purpose were due most likely to being used themselves. When Azula and her brother were showing off their firebending skills early in their childhoods, Ozai saw his daughter as an extension of himself due to her talents and pushed Zuko, his son, away for his failures.

Narcissistic people have defenses in order to maintain their self-esteem. Two of them are idealization and devaluation and normally they complement each other. Azula idealizes her capabilities to control others, plan and execute those plans. She also idealizes her father. People with narcissism may boost their identity by seeing another as perfect and connecting with them as Azula does with her father. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Azula devalues her enemies, her uncle, her brother and later on her friends for leaving her. She tells the guards to let them rot in prison showing that in her eyes they are now at the level of some of the worst criminals.

With all her issues, how well is Azula functioning? She does not seem to need the opinions of everyone in order to function. She must know that her enemies do not think too kindly of her. Then again, she does not need to care about the moral consequences of killing them as they are dehumanized in the eyes of the Fire Nation. She is also only betrayed by two people. Does she really need to care about their opinion so much? After all, she has guards, maidservants, and her father to back her up. It does seem that her friends mean a lot to her. She is fearful that her guards and maidservants are out to get her and may plan an assassination attempt. If her friends left her, what is stopping others from doing unspeakable things to her?  Azula therefore is barely able to take stressors well.

She still has her firebending expertise. Even that is undermined when her brother triumphs over her in the final duel. She gets chained up at the end and viewers witness her breakdown. She cries, screams and breathes out fire out of anger as her brother and one of the heroes watch her and sigh at how far she has fallen. I would say that Azula is on the neurotic level. Those who are neurotic normally can understand the difference between reality and fantasy. She is able to pass as a functioning individual, at least in her society but she does have issues with anxiety and how others think of her. Azula is able to understand that the reality is that she lost and the heroes won and that she is not in a fantasy world where she still all powerful.

True Companion

Sherry Turkle claimed that robotic companionship is not as good as the roboticists proposed before. She has discussed the harms of this kind of companionship toward children and adults with the examples of the AIBO robot dog and the sex robot Roxxxy respectively.

Robotic companionship might be more dangerous to children than adults as Turkle believed that growing up with robots in roles traditionally reserved for people is different from coming to robots as an already socialized adult. Children need to be with other people to develop empathy and mutuality; interacting with a robot cannot teach these. The fact that children can not learn empathy through interacting with robots is because the first thing missing if you take a robot as a companion is alterity, the ability to see the world through the eyes of another. Without alterity, there can be no empathy. Relational artifacts which refer to sociable robots here are only the selfobject of people that is cast in the role of what one needs. There is no alterity as robots just mirror the thoughts and needs of the people. What’s more, if you don’t feel different from others, it would be hard for you to have a sense of sympathy for others.

AIBO is a series of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony. With a price tag of $1,300 to $2,000, AIBO has entered the market which can provide companionship to the owners and can be seen as a harbinger of the digital pets of the future. AIBO presents that it has its own feelings as it can express its negative emotion through flashing its eyes with the color of red. People can pet AIBO, can play with it and even talk their thoughts to them. However, children are learning a way of feeling connected in which they have permission to think only of themselves while enjoying the companion of AIBO because AIBO permits children attachment without responsibility which is different from the traditional animal pets.

Robotic companionship is also not true companionship towards adults. Roxxxy, termed a “sex robot” is a full-size interactive sex doll which was built and designed by Douglas Hines. Roxxxy is not limited to sexual uses as she can talk to you, listen to you and feel your touch. The robot's vocabulary may be updated with the help of a laptop and the Internet. Roxxxy might be more attractive to the less social people than others as Chapman (2015) has found out that, “Socially disconnected people have a stronger tendency to anthropomorphize robots.” However, Turkle believes that Roxxxy can bring more harm than goodness to people because there is no true love or true companionship between them. 

From my point of view, I agree with the author’s stand. I also think the robotic companionship is not that good and it might make people become more fragile and isolated. Dependence on a robot presents itself as risk free. However, when one person becomes accustomed to “companionship” without demands, life with people may seem overwhelming for that person. Although dependence on a person is risky, which makes us subject to rejection, it opens us to deeply knowing another. Robotic companionship may seem as a sweet deal, but it consigns us to a closed world—the loveable as safe and made to measure.

References:

Arendt, M. (2015). My dear robot – anthropomorphism and loneliness. Sara Coleridge.

Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl4IDI86p_0

Azula papers I did years ago part 3

          Kohut talked about normal narcissism, a certain time in life when infants first experience themselves and their beloved, usually their parents, as omnipotent who all have the power to do anything they want shall they will it (Mitchell & Black 1995). Later, rather than telling the children outright that their outlook on life is false, they learn for themselves, step by step that they and their parents are limited in the power they have. They then learn to adapt to disappointments, not overreact and develop coping skills against the stresses of life. Azula, being a princess, most likely had access to maidservants as an infant so she had no problem with thinking that she is all powerful. It is pretty reasonable to assume that she fantasized herself as a very powerful Fire Lady and had imagined that all her subjects are obeying her without question. We also have her father whose lineage managed to wipe out an entire nation, he himself conquered another nation and he also already ruled a country before that. Though she had it all, Azula shows everything but healthy narcissism. She falls into despair right away if her plans backfire, showing behaviors such as instantly throwing her childhood friends into prison or dismissing her servants. She appears to show self-aggrandizing narcissism instead, thinking of herself as the authority on everything and everyone has to fear her. She may have not had the experience of learning that she is not all that powerful like most other children because maybe nearly all her childrearing was done by servants rather than her parents. Her father is busy ruling a few nations and her mother seems to not be at all close to her, choosing to be with her brother instead so she did not get the necessary attention from her parents except when she showed off her talents to her father.

Azula also has difficulty expressing concern for others. The Fire Nation managed to occupy a city named Omashu. The king there gets imprisoned and now all the people are under the rule of a Fire Nation governor. The heroes devise a plan to fool the Fire Nation occupants into believing the original residents of the city had an incurable epidemic and the governor releases the citizens from the city as a result. Unfortunately the governor’s child wanders out as well. The heroes agree to give the governor’s family back their son in turn for the king and the family accepts. The governor also has another daughter named Mai who is Azula’s childhood friend. Azula decides to be the one who will do the trade because she fears that the governor will mess up again as he did when he was tricked into releasing all the citizens and she takes Mai along with her. They both meet up with the heroes to do the trade. Azula then says that the deal is off because she considers trading a powerful king who can control elements of the earth for a two year old child unfair and she does not seem to care that this is her friend’s brother.

Oddly enough Azula barely talks about herself despite thinking she is all mighty. Instead she tells everyone about her father’s supremacy. She tells the governor that her father Ozai trusted him with Omashu and he failed him. She decides to rename the city New Ozai after her father. Maybe she is really talking about herself after all, but indirectly. Kohut talked about selfobject transferences which he defined as a phenomenon when people see other objects or people as extensions of themselves (Mitchell & Black 1995). Kohut talked about three types of this transference and one of them is called idealizing transference. Idealizing transference is when a person regards another as powerful and the person feels proud to be connected to this impressive entity. Azula is honored that she is the daughter of a ruler and therefore thinks she is glorious as well.

Another kind of transference is mirroring which is when a person needs another to understand and acknowledge her and reflect back her experiences (Mitchell & Black 1995; Rowe). Azula’s father did acknowledge her fire controlling talents and military plans but that was not sufficient enough for her wellbeing. She needs someone who really understands her motives and struggles and she did not get an actual person to do that. What she gets is a hallucination of her mother who recognizes her need to use fear to control people and that she is indeed loved by her mother. She sees this hallucination, amusingly, in a mirror. A third type of transference Kohut mentioned is the twinship transference, which is when one wants to feel a likeness to the selfobject (Mitchell & Black 1995; Rowe). The selfobject shares “similar ideas, values and goals” (Rowe, p. 47). Indeed, Azula and Ozai similarly are controlling and will do anything to get what they want. Her father likes Azula’s idea of eradicating the entire Earth Kingdom, just like his grandfather wiped out the Air Nomads, the only nation that is a threat to the Fire Nation and decides to go with his daughter’s plan.