violence in the district

This summer, I have the pleasure of interning as an investigator with a criminal law internship program, thanks to the summer enrichment fund. There’s never a dull day on the job here in the District of Columbia, where there’s no shortage of alleged murders, rapes and assaults to keep me occupied.

My blog, lconquersdc.blogpot.com, chronicles some of my experiences and many of my thought processes.

Uni love,

Lisa M.

Summer with Narcissism

Hi all and welcome new Unis!

For those who don’t know me, my name is Yeney Hernandez and I am a rising senior Uni from the Trinity School of Arts and Sciences. I am majoring in Psychology and English. For my Psychology graduation with distinction thesis, I am working in the Leary Lab within the Social Psychology department on a very interesting and (slightly self-centered) topic dealing with Narcissism and romantic relationships.

For the past 8 weeks, I have been attending seminars and working one-on-one with my graduate adviser, Marie-Joelle Estrada (a brilliant Doctorate candidate whose relationship psychology book collection would give even Lily library a run for its money!) to develop an instrument to assess relationship interactions and maintenance mechanisms, as well as individual “degrees of narcissism.” Since we are not working with a clinical sample of people suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (a very small portion of the population are ever diagnosed with this truly debilitating psychopathology, less than 1 per cent!) we will be able to see how people with “normal” levels of self-absorption view relationships and, most importantly, how their relationships affect their partner’s conception of the relationship. If this sounds a bit complicated to you–and trust me, you are not alone in this!–just think of a situation in which maintaining a romantic relationship with someone has caused you to have to “humble” yourself or put the interests of the relationship before your own ego. Imagine how difficult it was for you (or, perhaps you are imagining a close friend who has told you about their trials in love) to put these feelings aside. Now imagine how difficult it would be for someone who’s entire world revolves around an inflated self concept, people who are not only higher than normal on vengeance, self-promotion and relationship-switching (alternating partners and often cheating on individual partners).

So yes, that is what I have been working on for the past 8 weeks (well…maybe a bit longer). Its a lot of reading, a lot of math (a real treat for statistics-loving me! Not really…) but, like L’Oreal…Its SO worth it!

–Updates to come,

Yeney Hernandez