Narcissism In Butterfly

Doreen M Nor’s “butterfly” is a short story depicting an inept teenage girl’s love-hate relationship with her male classmate. The core of the story revolves around the main protagonist, a young lady who is being mistreated, subjected to ridicule at a night prom. A series of complex behaviour and emotion can be observed within the protagonist as the story develops. Doreen’s depiction of “butterfly” signifies the transition of a normal, sensible butterfly into an impulsive one through some of the psychoanalytic key concepts: narcissism, denial, psychological projection and regression.
Nina’s narcissism could be resulted from her parents’ narcissistic way of parenting. Psychoanalytically, narcissism can be simply defined as Self-centredness

Nina tries to repress herself from further getting hurt and avoid help from Rashid as she tells him “Frankly, Rashid, I’d rather be with this cat than with you” (Doreen, 2004, p.187).
When ego comes into play, Nina denies the facts that are true in her mind in order to show reluctance to give in her own ego. For example, she does not acknowledge using the dead cat for biology class even though she has thought about the idea (Doreen, 2004, p.186). This type of defense mechanism will bring more harm than good in the long term, given that Nina might still need to face Rashid in school. Despite her compulsion of ideas or memories into the unconscious in which she might hide them perfectly but in the future they will also create anxiety.
A relationship with a narcissist can be agonizing when the accusations that a narcissist tries to project on you even when he or she is the one who makes the mistake. In this case, Nina is identified as someone who practices psychological projection or blame-shifting where she attributes her own unacceptable thoughts and feelings onto Rashid. She masters the art of manipulating and tries to destroy her fragile sense of self by attributing the responsibility to Rashid for running over the cat (Doreen, 2004, p.186) and does not admit her mistake for distracting him when he