[FRIAM] narcissism

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I have not read Kernberg's "Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism". The kindle copy seems to be $75, which is out of my price range for almost any book. If the libraries open up soon, I can probably get my hands on a copy.

Regardless, I *do*, right now, have access to almost every scientific journal article. Add that to the tendency of journal articles to include more data, and more easily analyzable data, and a broad time span, I much prefer articles to books, anyway. With articles, I can track how hypotheses about underlying mechanisms seem to be different from, say, 1975 to today. The DSM 5's "alternative" section is very helpful for that, as well. And I'm sure some books do it. But it's not that dynamic. The book had to be published at some point. Even with editions, it's a lot of work to publish a new edition. Add to all that that articles can be more obviously peer-reviewed. I can complain about peer review as well as the next yahoo. But it's still something to consider.

So, if you know of any (relatively new ... say, > 2000) articles that argue for vulnerable and grandiose narcissism being 2 phenotypes of the same generators, then please send them along. If you don't have any relatively modern *data* arguing for your position, then I'd claim you're speaking with unjustified authority and may want to soften your language a bit. ... maybe just for talking to jerks like me, at least. 8^)

As for Trump, I've *already* said that his narcissism interferes with his competence. I said that explicitly. I've even said it more than once. But it seems irrelevant to how we compensate for the situation we're in. I don't think I said *independent*. I'm sorry if I did.  Irrelevant and independent are different. My point was to find something we can *act* on. And I don't think we can act on his narcissism. But we can act on his incompetence.


On 4/29/20 12:21 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Have you read Kernberg?  I would do that first and I would claim that he should dominate me and the others with respect to his/their/my credibility.  My knowledge, such as it is, comes from informal conversations with senior psychoanalysts in Pittsburgh.  Ragins, Schachter, Ratey, McLaughlin, et al.  And my wife who is not a senior analyst but was a student of all those.  She is reticent to talk about these issues but clearly knows more than I do.  
> 
> Do you still deny that Trump's narcissism interferes with his ability to be president?  You seem to think it's independent of his incompetence.  I don't think so.


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