[FRIAM] narcissism

[Frank Wimberly]

I think I said that person's with NPD are almost psychotic.  I checked with
my wife, a very experienced clinician, and she says that is not correct.
But she also says that there are not two types.  One interesting thing that
she said is that her mentor, a training analyst, said that after treating a
narcissist for many years you can uncover a severe obsessional personality
at which point you have to start again to treat that.  That implies a
treatment length that only someone like Woody Allen can afford.  I'm not
saying that he's a malignant narcissist.

I am speaking over my head but obviously DSM-V may oversimplify.

My wife says that the book I mentioned, "Analysis of the Self" by Kohut is
not as good as "Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism" by Otto
Kernberg.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 12:12 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Waco
> https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/waco/s01
>
> I don't know much about Koresh or the Branch Davidians. I remember
> watching it (and the Ruby Ridge coverage) on TV back then. (I was pretty
> libertarian back then ... but that was back when the word "libertarian"
> meant something ... it's a useless word these days. So my understanding of
> these events was heavily biased by that.) This TV show does a good job, I
> think, of showing Koresh simply edit out his abuse of the flock while
> maintaining an air of authenticity in other domains. And the supporting
> character (Paul Sparks/Steve Schneider) states it explicitly when he says
> something like "I wish God had chosen someone else" or somesuch ... because
> Koresh was such a jerk.
>
> My conscious attempt to empathize with everyone, in every context, no
> matter how deplorable it might be, prevents me from accusing someone like
> Koresh of *rational* manipulation. I tend to think his manipulation of
> others is the *same* as his manipulation of himself. In programming, we use
> the term "reflection" or "introspection" to talk about an object
> manipulating itself in the same way it manipulates other objects (and vice
> versa). In some circles, it's called "reflexive", which I think is
> misleading. The idea is that you treat yourself as other or you treat
> others as yourself.
>
> When I hear descriptions of narcissism, this self-other mixing seems
> absent, which makes all the descriptions of narcissists seem cartoonish and
> wrong. They portray narcissists as hyper-rational, manipulate others to get
> what you want, sociopaths [†]. But if all people do a little bit of
> self-manipulation as well as other-manipulation (and it's the same
> tools/anatomy that does the manipulation), then narcissists are *not*
> hyper-rational sociopaths. They can't be if they *feel* hurt by the words
> of others, insecure, self-important, grandiosity, etc. If they have
> feelings at all *and* they manipulate their self like they manipulate
> others, then they can't be these hyper-rational sociopaths. It's either a
> contradiction or a paradox that needs resolving.
>
> We can see this in the DSM 5 _Alternative_ model. The 1st two trait
> categories (section A, 1-4) are other-centric, whereas the 2nd two are
> self-centric. Section B's categories seem to flip too, where grandiosity
> seems self-centric and attention seeking seems to be other-centric. It
> leaves me wondering if there are really 2, fundamentally different types of
> narcissism, that driven by an external locus vs. that drive by an internal
> locus, where the former cares deeply what others think/feel and the latter
> is totally apathetic to (or denies outright) others' thoughts/feelings. If
> that's plausible, then former-type narcissists would (as Frank said last
> week) live horrifying lives, but the latter-types might get a bit
> frustrated by the complexity of the machine they have to live inside, but
> could live very happy, solipsistic lives.
>
>
> [†] By "sociopath", I mean something like: someone who doesn't mirror the
> feelings of others in themselves. Sorry if that's non-standard. I'm using
> it because I don't have a better word for such a person.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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