All the majors in my main department take certain required classes together. This semester two such classes were given, one by me and one by the Blackguard.
This week the Blackguard visited me with a magnanimous air. “My students really enjoyed your class,” said he. I understood I was meant to be grateful for his approval.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
So what you should do is what is not expected. You reply, “My students found yours acceptable, but there were a few aspects that they thought might be improved.”
Ahahaha, Jennifer, that’s MUCH better than what I was going to suggest.
Well, if I said that it would be true, except insofar as I don’t ask my students for information about other peoples’ courses the way some of my colleagues, including the Blackguard, do. But it would just mean engaging, giving him an opportunity to talk more, so what I really did was just raise an eyebrow and say, “Of course they did — what do you expect?”
Man, the long knives are sure out.
You mean me and/or the Blackguard? Tell me more. I’ve seen a lot worse than the Blackguard.
It seems, though, as if you are in direct competition. Why shouldn’t he think that his students would like your class? Is he saying that this surprises him, considering?
We are fighting over my right to my time and energy. We’re not supposed to be in competition but collaborating, and I am way senior to him.
However, he is intent upon gaining emotional control of me in some way. He wants me to feel dependent upon him for approval and so on. These are the same tactics my ex the Englishman used to keep me in a relationship. This person wants me to vote yes on his tenure and so on, and rather than just do his job (that’s all he’d have to do) he does lots of things to try and make me feel weak so he can then tell me I am a poor victim and only he approves of and appreciates me. This has been done already by various family members and then by that Englishman, and I recognize it in the Blackguard. I see it and it is not necessary, yet just seeing it makes me angry because I know what it is.
He tries to define my job. “I think it is very necessary that X be done, but since I don’t want power [meaning work], I want you to do it.”
We need to retain somebody, and this Blackguard is far from the most destructive person on the faculty. This is why I am in conflict about him — I’d love to just vote him out and try someone new, but that has happened before with a similar person and doesn’t make us look good, and the truly destructive types are a couple of deadwood fulls.
Also, he doesn’t mistreat everyone — he’s nice to the tenured faculty who aren’t in Spanish — so I may have to put up with him forever.
So my problem is, I’d like to teach him to get civilized and start acting like a person, but he is almost as old as I am and I doubt he is able to change now. Meanwhile, I don’t know whether to vote yes or no on him; reason says yes and intuition says no. Finally, I realize that I may be stuck with him forever, so I am trying to keep my space free of him.
Yet he keeps invading. So what it comes down to is, we’re not competing about Da Job but we are fighting over my space. That being my Deepest Psychological Issue, it is very fraught for me.
That comment, that we seem to be in direct competition, is a helpful insight. Thank you!
P.S. Also — direct competition. It is true that he set up competition with me as soon as he arrived. This is unwanted competition on my part but since the tenured people in power tend to believe everyone but me, I am aware that rumors will fly that I am competing and it makes me nervous. One of the deadwood fulls also feels competitive with me and started announcing the competition even before I arrived. The Blackguard and this deadwood full are locked in mortal combat, they are total enemies; the deadwood full has done me a lot of harm over the years and the Blackguard has correctly shown me that it would be smarter of me to fight back than just to try to rise above it; the Blackguard is afraid this deadwood full will get him fired and derail his career; he wants to make sure that I am not neutral but passionately on his side; he is trying to convince me that he is my defender against this deadwood full.
The deadwood full tells the majors we younger people are crazy and gets our classes emptied, so that we are stuck in the lower division. Somehow this semester our classes were not emptied and this is why the fact that the upper level courses went well (better than with the deadwood full, who gives independent study to the stragglers after getting regular classes canceled) is news.
The thing is that I’m a natural ally of the Blackguard. He does not need to mistreat me so as to get me on his side — in normal circumstances I would BE on his side. He’s alienating me by behaving in this way.
Also: bingo. You hit it on the head with that word competitive. I come from a competitive family but I never liked that aspect of those people, and I did not experience school as competitive: I found it challenging but collaborative, and I was a lot happier with that than I was with the competitive atmosphere at home.
I am not saying people at school didn’t compete for grades and things, especially in science classes, I am just saying people didn’t compete over ownership of each others’ beings or over the nature of reality. At least not as I experienced things.
However, this seems to have been part and parcel of graduate school for a lot of people. I did not notice this until I became a professor and I never really understood it. Anyway, now I am in two battles over competition: with the Blackguard and with his enemy. Both want to compete with me and I do not understand it. Both keep trying to elicit competition. Both keep getting offended when I try to elicit collaboration instead. In that situation I *really* think I should just cultivate my own garden. My doing that also upsets the Blackguard very greatly.
I should REALLY get better at not allowing myself to be engaged at all; this would be easier if the history of destructiveness of that deadwood full, enemy of us both, were not so real. The answer, nevertheless, is to not allow myself to be engaged at all, because the Blackguard is using the history of that deadwood full’s activities against my peace of mind.
Probably this is as far as I can go in understanding what’s happening here. But you are so strong; you will prevail.
I am always fascinated to hear that I’m strong but it is what people who have no vested reason to note anything in particular have always noticed.
You don’t need to understand more — the comment on competition was SO revealing. Now I know:
a) that the B. is going to my ROOT ISSUE — invasion of physical and mental space — and that is why he gets to me
and that
b) his method is to try to engage me in competition (which I don’t see because there’s nothing to fight over, we’re not IN competition over anything, he has his own job, field, office, salary, family, country, friends, etc.) but still he is managing to engage me in some kind of competition, probably via triangulation with that deadwood full. Therefore the strongest defense is awareness of COMPETITION and refusal to engage it.
Hmmm…. he’s also trying to argue with me over what reality is and should be, and how much control I have over it. He, like one of his predecessors, wants me to try to take more control over what happens than I believe I could successfully do, or than I am willing to put energy toward (energy I could more usefully put toward my own life).
[Also, I keep finding out that I am an intimidating person because I have accomplishments and skills I am modest about and more intellectual power than I use. I tend not to realize that this intimidates some people. I do not mean to send them into tizzies by being who I am, but I sometimes do. This may be part of what is going on. I tend to forget I am intimidating because many people are not intimidated, and many who are initially come to realize that I do not bite unless I am actually bitten. But I may be very intimidating to the Blackguard, although there is absolutely no real reason for it; therefore I may symbolize to him something that “delenda est;” therefore I should realize that if I am a psychological windmill at which he is tilting, no amount of real world negotiation will help. That would mean I should just protect myself and be professional. That is of course my default attitude and it is the attitude the Blackguard is trying to destroy, because he would rather have me as vassal and pawn.]
Again, your perception of direct competition is infinitely helpful.
P.S. Note to self: see this blog, via Jennifer, 3d post or so down, on character assassination.
http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/
It is a fact that the Blackguard seeks power over others via character assassination and also flattery (quite transparent, he doesn’t do this well, he compliments people for things they have no doubt they do well), and by telling everyone they are victims of character assassination. One must keep this firmly in mind and remember that he may only _look_ less dangerous than the deadwood fulls.
Apparently the woman who wrote that site died recently:
The above link is to her ‘blogspot’ contains a few non-active links because Kathy died unexpectedly at only 56 years old. Kathy was a fully fit professional tennis coach and writer on NPD, and although Kathy’s Death Certificate said ”Natural Causes”, there has been much speculation that her death was not an accident. http://www.facebook.com/l/3f007;narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/2008/05/kathy-krajco.html
Kathy had hundreds of thousands of readers on her blog where she cites abuse by her NPD sister who lived across the street from the house where Kathy died. Kathy spoke on her blog of her sister poisoning her dog as well as physical assaults on Kathy. Kathy also wrote about her sister ignoring her mother’s pleas for pain medication only hours before her mother’s death and there are now questions about the sister’s beneficial interest in the Will of Kathy and their mother.
This link http://www.facebook.com/l/3f007;narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/search/label/Kathy%20Krajco%20Save%20Project mentions how people are organising to gather Kathy’s internet writings and preserve them on-line.
Very interesting. And she’s astute — what I’ve seen of the blog is great.