RL ON PL'S TAKE ON MADOFF'S PENIS!

Here's "RL":

Ok, PL, I'll take the bait. Your conclusion please? Enjoying your blog as always!
p.s. The reason I ask, aside from gobbling anything Madoff-related and enjoying your clinical take on such things...is that I once had an affair with a similar 'case': not a thief, but a mythomaniac, a tinily endowed master seducer-liar. In retrospect, I couldn't avoid making a connection between his micropenis and his narcissistic manipulativeness: he was basically all sizzle and no steak! But the sizzle was very compelling. for awhile. (alas, for anyone who got involved with him). cheers!


Here's PL:

OK, RL, thanks for asking. Here it is - "Phallic Narcissism," which is very prevalent in the Psychopathic Character Structure, though not exclusive to it, derives from the "phallic stage" of development, around 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 years old, that time when little boys love to run around showing off their newly charged up penises. Said boys are very proud of their genitalia at that age, and aggressively in love with themselves sexually (thus the "narcissism" label). It's a time when masturbation is usually discovered, opening up a whole new world to the child.

What's supposed to happen, however, is that after the phallic stage passes, the little boy begins turning his need to love to the outside world, towards others. However, if enough wounding has occurred emotionally to the child during the phallic stage, in essence, he will never stop being obsessed with his own penis and potency. Such a child, growing into a man, will obsessively need to overcompensate for any feelings of inadequacy by being extraordinarily aggressive or dominating or acquisitive to a degree that can become sociopathic, as in Madoff's case. The fact that he actually had a small penis, according to Sheryl Weinstein, would exacerbate the problem, but it isn't the cause of it. As I've heard many times over the years from female patients in therapy, size rarely matters to the woman as much as it matters to a man, since we all have a little bit of phallic narcissism left over from those days.

So, that's the skinny on the "sizzle without the steak," RL. Take care... and don't forget the A1.