ways, he will praise it on every possible occasion as “the best car on the market,” and what seems more absurd still, he will very likely think it the best car on the market. It is the same with his house, his books, with his relations, with everything that is even distantly connected with him. He will speak in high praise of them all, and be anxious, at all times, to show them off, and to uphold their virtues to all comers. The Narcissist, indeed, rationalises about things in general considerably more than most people. The fuller meaning of rationalization and its methods of working, however, we shall leave till later on. FOOTNOTE: [5] Homo-sexuality--sensual love for a person of the same sex as oneself. CHAPTER VIII THE IRRITABLE TEMPERAMENT Irritability is not merely that quality in a person which makes his friends carefully guard their every word, lest inadvertently they should cause an outburst of temper, in its fullest sense it means over-sensitiveness to unpleasant stimuli, followed by over-reaction of any kind whatsoever. Thus, if a person by accident damage his clothing, his over-sensitiveness and over-reaction might result in an oath, in abusing the nail which tore his clothing or in abusing the workman who put the nail in place originally. It might again result in a feeling of depression, with anger displaced on to anyone who was present during the next hour, on the smallest pretext; or in an over-sensitive woman, it might result in an outburst of tears, or perhaps merely in volubly deploring the accident for half-an-hour with the next visitor who called; or she might merely “worry” about it, and keep turning the memory of it over and over in her mind, refusing to allow the fact to separate itself from her fancy. All these various results, with many others which may be imagined, can be gathered together under the one term “irritability,” or the term “over-sensitiveness” would do equally well. This irritability or over-sensitiveness may apply to material things or to purely mental ones. Narcissism may lead to an irritability of the body, and again it may lead to irritability merely of the mind. When Narcissism leads to an extremely sensitive body, it reacts to pain of every sort, however mild, as though it were acute. The omnipotent mind cannot bear to have its body disturbed. I gave an example a short while back of the lady who could not take a fly out of my eye, because her own eyes were so sensitive. Not only was this particular lady sensitive as regards her eyes, but at that period she was as afraid of the dentist touching a tooth as if it had been a serious abdominal operation. Pain of any sort or even slight accidents involving practically no pain, were reacted to as though they had been overwhelming misfortunes. Here we had an excellent example of one in whom Narcissism had produced extreme irritability of a physical nature.[6]