Mental Health Support

Creating a public discussion that is simultaneously supportive for both dx'd mentally ill and non-dx contacts is extraordinarily challenging. That sort of problem is one of the reasons I think there are often separate forums for dx and non-dx at many psychology blogs.

I personally think it may be impossible to have a balanced discussion when dealing with NPD.

MHSG doesn't maintain a separation of dx and non-dx. The difficulty with that is dx'd and non-dx'd wander through the same threads.

And they can stumble across threads that present a person's opposite circumstance.

That experience can be, as they say in the psychiatric industry, 'quite arousing'.


So as a rhetorical tool, to make readers of this group at least consider something of the other side in this thread, I ask:

1) Was a mother evil or was her evilness a consequence of the dysfunction that typified her personality disorder?

2) How could we tell? Does it matter?

3) For the purpose of making one person feel supported, should other persons be labelled evil when that evilness originates in a mental disorder?



Transference is a powerful thing, and a discussion about a stranger, can suddenly become painfully redirected to/by an unintended person.

I want to be clear, I think grandiose narcissists are difficult to be around. I think grandiose narcissists are often aware that people find them difficult. And I don't want to diminish the reality that non-dx persons who encounter and are closely associated with a dx'd NPD can suffer greatly from the presence of the narcissists dysfunction.

But before this thread spins ahead using stigmatizing adjectives about NPD's I think it's important to think about a minimum number of basics about NPD.



Narcissism is an Axis II disorder that grows out of a dysfunctional sense of self. It's a chronic mental disorder.

In general, a person with NPD is very insecure about self, and struggles, sometimes in a grandiose fashion, but usually in vain, to defeat that insecurity.

Several forms of narcissism are recognized by the experts, but only "grandiose" narcissism is included in DSM-IV-tr. Non-psychologists attribute other forms of narcissism to less stigmatizing labels.


The literature on narcissism is almost 100 years old. That literature claims NDP is a developmental mental disorder that begins with a "narcissistic wound"... a wound to the developing self-image during infancy.

We see narcissists as difficult, impossible, even evil, but according to the experts, it's due to a psychic wound, just as much as is PTSD or the experience that causes similar developmental arrest in Borderline PD.

The narcissistic wound is thought to happen earlier in narcissists than in borderlines, supposedly in infants younger than 2 years who are still in the early stages of self-development. The narcissistic wound is thought to arise from insults such as neglect, inconsistent parenting, or abuse. Whatever its cause, that wound creates a life-long psychic scar that forever cripples the NPD's development of a healthy self-image.

It's very hard to call a baby evil. By comparison it's easy to call an adult co-worker, boss, or family member evil. But according to the experts when our personal NPD nemesis was an innocent infant he/she suffered a serious disabling narcissistic wound.



Unfortunately, there are no very good treatments for NPD. Psychoanalytic approaches suggested to treat it require YEARS. That's generally way too expensive for the masses served by insurance subsidized modern psychology.

An NPD might get 10 or so sessions of talk-therapy to try to develop in the NPD an awareness of the disorder's presence and its symptoms. And a person might learn tactics/skills to combat the dysfunction brought about by failed self-development.

That is the NPD might learn some coping skills if they can get past personal denial and endure the pain to their crippled self-image that comes with a diagnosis which itself pathologizes the NPD's life-long efforts to overcome the tremendous, socially debilitating insecurity about their self.