Self is incrementally expanded as the parasite drains self from those not entitled to it. To him it is given, by faith and action, from birth. To her it is denied, by faith and action, from birth. His is never big enough; hers is always too big, however small. As a child, the first self he drains is that of his mother—whatever she has of it is reserved for him. He feeds off her labor and her qualities. He uses them up. She is devoted, more or less; but the more is as much insult as the less; and nothing is ever enough unless it has been too much; all of this regardless of what or how much it has actually been. As the boy matures, he is encouraged to make the treacherous and apparently devastating ‘‘normal adjustment,” that is, to transfer his parasitism of the mother to other females, who have more succulent selves to which they are not entitled. In the course of his life, he reenacts this grand transition as often as he wishes. He finds the qualities and services he needs and he takes them. Especially he uses women, as Virginia Woolf described in A Room of One's Own, to enlarge himself. He is always in a panic, never large enough. But still, his self is immutable however much he may fear its ebbing away, because he keeps taking, and it is taking that is his immutable right and his immutable self. Even when he is obsessed with his need to be more and to have more, he is convinced of his right to be and to have.
