THE DEPENDENT SELF IN NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER IN COMPARISON TO DEPENDENT PERSONALITY DISORDER: A DIALOGICAL ANALYSIS (1/2)
https://www.reddit.com/r/zeronarcissists/comments/1gu223s/the_dependent_self_in_narcissistic_personality/
created by theconstellinguist on 18/11/2024 at 10:48 UTC*
6 upvotes, 1 top-level comments (showing 1)
- *THE DEPENDENT SELF IN NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER IN COMPARISON TO DEPENDENT PERSONALITY DISORDER: A DIALOGICAL ANALYSIS**
Salvatore, G., Carcione, A., & Dimaggio, G. (2012). The dependent self in narcissistic personality disorder in comparison to dependent personality disorder: A dialogical analysis. *International Journal for Dialogical Science*, *6*(1), 31-49.
- *Link**: http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/salvatore2012.pdf[1][2]
1: http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/salvatore2012.pdf
2: http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/salvatore2012.pdf
- **Full disclaimer on the unwanted presence of AI codependency cathartics/ AI inferiorists as a particularly aggressive and disturbed subsection of the narcissist population:*** https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer[3][4]
3: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer
4: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer
- *The insight that narcissistic personality has a core dependent personality disorder construct is just emerging.**
1. In spite of these adaptive manifestations, dependency can be maladaptive. Psychiatric classification has generally labelled dependency “Dependent Personality Disorder”, but empirical evidence supports the notion that maladaptive dependency symptoms are positively related to the majority of DSM-IV PDs from all three clusters. A disorder in which only a few thinkers have noted the presence of severe aspects of unhealthy dependency is Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
- *An ethical, consensual analysis of diary fragments of individuals with DPD and NPD was used to derive this connection.**
1. This is completely lacking in the DSM description of the disorder. In this paper we highlight maladaptive dependency features in NPD and comparing them with unhealthy dependency in DPD. Our analysis will make use of diary and session fragments involving patients with severe manifestations of both NPD and DPD, and will be carried out within the framework of Dialogical Self Theory.
- *Unhealthy dependency is characterized by intense, undermodulated strivings exhibited without the necessary reflexive effort.**
1. In spite of the adaptive value of relying on others, dependency can be maladaptive. Bornstein (2005) distinguishes between unhealthy and healthy dependency: the former characterized by intense, undermodulated strivings, exhibited without the necessary reflexive effort across a broad range of situations and the latter by strivings – even intense – exhibited selectively (i.e. in some contexts but not others) and flexibly (i.e. in situation-appropriate ways).
- *Bornstein describes four different types of unhealthy interpersonal dependency; cognitive, motivational, affective, and behavioral.**
1. Bornstein (1992, 1993, 1996) described an interactionist model of unhealthy interpersonal dependency, according to which dependency consists of four primary components: cognitive, i.e. a perception of oneself as powerless and ineffectual and of others as powerful and potent; motivational or a strong desire for guidance, approval and support from others; affective, i.e. becoming anxious when required to function autonomously; and behavioural, displayed in the use of an array of relationship-facilitating self-presentation strategies to strengthen ties to others, such as ingratiation and supplication.
- *Dependent Personality Disorder is an excessive need to be taken care of, submissive and clinging behavior, and fear of separation. The hypothesis is a core dependent personality can be rejected when it is still not entirely pathological (such as slightly extra dependence than is normal on a child, but children are still meant to be very dependent in just this way at an early age) was rejected.**
- *In its place narcissistic personality disorder began taking it the opposite direction with hyper-independence and avoidance behaviors to act as a way to reject the rejected dependent child who was merely slightly more dependent than usual when it was still appropriate to be.**
- *However, there are other hypotheses and this may just be one way in which in this develops, but other ways can develop, such as the parent actively encouraging this dependency and not allowing it to be resolved properly to ensure their place as the family celebrity or the deeply needed/admired parental archetype or some other similarly deeply dysfunctional narcissistic expression.**
- *For instance, parents that grew up as objects of adulation may never outgrow it and start encouraging their child and spouses to continue to recreate the “temple of adulation” they received as a child.**
- *Now it has grown pathological and the narcissistic parent who grew up an object of adulation may try to enforce dependence or prevent real independence from happening because this “temple of adulation” is at threat.**
- *This calculus is deeply and profoundly selfish in nature, as most narcissistic calculus tends to be. But this is a separate path to developing NPD from the child who naturally was more dependent genetically even though the overlaying NPD personality disorder as an internalization of the paternal rejection of this smaller self may be the same.**
1. Psychiatric classification has generally labelled dependency “Dependent Personality Disorder” (DPD; American Psychiatric Association, 2000), in which the fundamental dimension is a pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of, leading to submissive and clinging behaviour and fears of separation in a variety of contexts.
- *Borderline, histrionic and avoidant personality disorders coincide with DPD and are other directions DPD can go as opposed to a rejecting narcissistic expression. NPD and Borderline also are relatively high in their comorbid instantiations.**
1. This pattern provokes subjective suffering and interpersonal malfunctioning (Carcione & Conti, 2007). A more fine-grained analysis shows that many other personality disorders (PD) feature aspects of unhealthy dependency, with borderline, histrionic and avoidant being the most obvious examples and all of them co-occurring frequently with DPD.
- *Dependency is typical human functioning up to a point, in the same way many of the behaviors of narcissism are relatively acceptable for a short time in childhood, but cannot be allowed to rigidify into the personality long term.**
1. These data suggest not only that current DPD diagnostic categories lack discriminant validity (Bornstein, 1998) but also confirm Bowlby’s intuitions that dependency is a typical human functioning and malfunctioning dimension (Benjamin, 1996; Fernandez-Alvarez, 2000).
- *Narcissists show pervasive grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, disdain and envy. They are prone to anger especially when they feel that their right to unilateral admiration and celebrity wherever they have found it is threatened, immediately getting aggressive and challenging overtly or covertly, sometimes to unbelievable degrees.**
1. A disorder in which only a few thinkers (Kohut, 1971, 1977) have noted the presence of severe aspects of unhealthy dependency is Narcissistic PD (NPD). This is completely lacking in the DSM description of the disorder (2000), which stresses the pervasiveness of grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, disdain and envy. Kernberg’s description contains similar features and pinpoints a grandiose and envious individual, prone to anger and seeking others’ attention and admiration (Kernberg, 1974, 1975).
- *Narcissists are very good at performing self-reliance, independence, and unable to form attachment bonds, but their covert actions show that they are not really any of these things and when examined on their cognitive principles reveal a congruence with Dependent Personality Disorder. They are unable to pull themselves away from the other befitting the Dependent Personality and perform and express non-caring, or uncaring when they do not show an ability to stay intrinsically motivated for long at all.**
1. NPD sufferers are often seen as self-reliant, independent, unable to form attachment bonds and, at the end of the day, not needing others’ help when in distress.
- *Narcissists perform independence and not needing others but deep down are constantly looking for signs they factor greatly into the lives of others and often hold relationships hostage through soft-blocking or non-responsiveness to see exactly what type of relational extortion they can get away with.**
- *They are constantly doing this “pricing” process of their worth to others and that is what is behind the nonresponse and the abuse, to see just how valuable they are to them and what they can extort them relationally at.**
- *They are therefore not actually autonomous or independent and are instead deeply threatened by intrinsic motivation in others because it means they are not receiving the codependence they desire from that person to bolster their ego. They struggle to accept that some people truly are autonomous and independent and intrinsically motivated, unable to stop projecting their own psychological state of codependence onto them because they have never had an experience outside of it.**
- *They continue to try to assert this relationship and codependence long after the relationship has been terminated by the other side due to these violating and deeply damaging antisocial features.**
1. Clinical observations and social psychology research suggest instead that NPD patients tend to fall into fragmented (Kohut, 1971, 1977) dissociated or angry (Dimaggio, Semerari, Falcone, et al., 2002; Dimaggio, Nicolò, Fiore et al., 2008) states when they consider others are not supporting their plans or they feel rejected. Without support from others they tend to become passive or shut-off and thus unable to pursue their life goals (Robins & Beer, 2001). This leads us to think that many aspects of narcissism pathology can be seen to be unhealthy dependency and that, once issues more closely related to grandiose aspects of the self or self-esteem have been dealt with successfully, the main goal of psychotherapy should be to promote autonomy and a stronger sense of personal agency (Dimaggio, in press).
- *Avoidance is the narcissistic response to a surge in feelings of codependence; needing someone that hard as the surge suggests hurts the vanity of the narcissist, so they reactively compensate with excessive avoidance to avoid the vanity of needing another to that degree.**
- *They perceive this to mean they are inferior and the person has skills and capabilities they do not have if they are that compelled into a feeling of needing them, instead of just engaging in prosocial, normal interactive activities without large and clunking narcissistic dysfunction that ends up terminating these relationships prematurely.**
- *This hurts their vanity deeply and they do everything to prove they have those exact capabilities that are causing the codependence surges, often showing the person who is independently motivated that they aren’t needed when they were never doing this for the other person to begin with (that they were is a deep and pervasive narcissistic delusion the most rigid cases of NPD show structural signs of being unable to transcend), betraying how deeply delusional some of their codependence and other-reference is.**
1. This may sound counterintuitive and the resemblance between the prototypical patient with overt dependent features, such as persons with DPD, who are submissive, cling to others and fear abandonment and negative judgment, and prototypical NPD sufferers, who in moments of distress tend to contemptuously shut themselves in a cocoon or an ivory tower (Modell, 1984), leaving the rest of humanity out, may not be at all clear.
- *Narcissists have a deep and pervasive sense of being unworthy, neglected and rejected and have an addictive need for constant reassurance.**
- *Some narcissists don’t feel humiliated asking for this reassurance, and others employ covert rages to get this reassurance without being seen in the embarrassing state of asking for it.**
- *This is usually what is behind soft blocking and non-responsiveness; punishment for feeling not-enough and a covert demand to be made to feel enough again. It is extremely abusive and behind their constant and pervasive failure to adapt to a more functional relational pattern behind many if not most of their deeply satisfied and collapsed relationships.**
- *Even if they last due to essentially inspiring stockholm syndrome based reactions to severe interpersonal pain by the narcissist to their partner, partners report profound feelings of misery, pain, and hate, so even if they last they are not considered successful relationships.**
1. In a narcissistic individual’s grandiosity and hypervitality Kohut (1971, 1977) sees low self-esteem, a deep sense of being unworthy, neglected and rejected and an incessant longing for feedback that denotes a burning longing for reassurance. Kohut sees a vulnerable individual, in whom the self tends to fragment owing to a lack of empathetic feedback to its affective needs early in development. Clinging to a grandiose self-image is the only choice available when faced with the possibility of the self fragmenting. In Kohut’s description, therefore, investing in a grandiose self represents an adaptive reaction to a failure to develop a healthy dependency. In a relationship an individual can experience a state of mutual idealisation and recognition, a sort of ideal cohabitation enhancing the worth, power and omnipotence of both self and other (Kohut, 1971; 1977; Ornstein, 1998).
- *Depending on the vulnerability of the narcissist, narcissists during times where they feel incompetent, anxious, and distressed will move closer to others in their dependency structure.**
- *If they are particularly bad narcissists that really struggle with codependence, disturbing actions such as anxiety assault, r*pe, stalking, hacking are seen. This is a combination of the narcissist going to this person for competence they don’t have with the situation but also being too vain to admit this person has this ability and therefore using what they feel to be a less humiliating initiation attempt to get what they want from this person; namely the feeling of safety and stability that comes with the person their behavior shows they view as more competent but their narcissism keeps them from respecting.**
- *Often this person, due to their competence, terminates them for precisely these behaviors. This shows that narcissists are dysfunctional (they have a personality disorder) and do not have a successful strategy (they do not get what they want at all, in fact, quite the opposite; relationship termination, not a deeper feeling of safety and security).**
- *They need to learn to ease into functional, proven prosocial interactive strategies to get what they want as these attempts will get them terminated or locked off permanently.**
1. When narcissists find themselves in difficult situations, they experience an unpleasant arousal, which automatically drives them to get close to others for protection.
Comments
Comment by Forward-Pollution564 at 19/11/2024 at 15:17 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I don’t know how to thank you for that sub. I was lost, I couldn’t understand people in raisedbynarcissist sub or other channels and subs for allegedly narcissistic abuse survivors, I could not relate to any of these stories as they didn’t indicate abuse by individuals with narcissistic psychopathology a least from my experience. You are the source of such profound knowledge on the topic