Abstract
When I was offered the opportunity to reflect upon the state of narcissism manifest in two recent psychoanalytic works, one of which was my own book, I was of course pleased, but also more than a little intimidated by the daunting task facing me. I was further given to understand that I could include other book(s) I regarded as particularly important. I chose to add Daniel Shaw’s book on traumatic narcissism, believing that its inclusion would satisfyingly broaden and deepen the conversation between the books that I was to explore. The Diamond at al. approach is largely an object relations one while Daniel Shaw’s orientation is relational. My own is also strongly relational, but is flexibly informed by a variety of different theoretical models, dependent upon my own sense of the tools/conceptions that best capture a given clinical reality.
Since its inception, perhaps beginning with Rank’s (1911) and Freud’s (1914/1957) initial attempts to grasp what it is, narcissism has challenged those clinicians who have tried to capture its essence. As I noted in the beginning of my book, it is a construct that has sorely tested any who would attempt to penetrate it. While some writers have wondered whether it was possessed of sufficient utility to be worth the heroic efforts directed toward understanding it (see also Auerbach, 1990; Hinze, 2017; Meissner, 2008; Smith, 1988; Taylor, 1992; Teicholz, 1978), clinicians have persisted in their efforts to make sense of it, beguiled by a set of ideas and, perhaps mysteries, that somehow seemed foundational to an understanding of the human condition. It is in this context that I and my intrepid companion authors approached the study of narcissism, hopeful that we might at least incrementally offer greater clarity to the elusive domain narcissism occupies in our practices. I will argue, hopefully not from a position of hubris, that we are indeed beginning to consolidate our appreciation of what we think narcissism might be, though it will be quite apparent to the reader that “narcissism” is still riven with nodes of significant disagreement and areas of confusion.
To simplify discussion, I will initially focus upon a form of narcissism, grandiose narcissism, that originally gave rise to our interest in understanding pathological narcissistic adjustment. I do so because our understanding of grandiose narcissism is for the most part coherently represented across practitioners, including the three books that are the focus of consideration in this article. Later I will attempt to highlight some of the pronounced differences in formulation that have emerged between clinicians in their conceptions of vulnerable narcissism.
Due to the relative brevity of this book essay, only some of the prominent themes that are associated with work on narcissism can be touched upon here. A more thoroughgoing and nuanced appreciation of this subject can be realized through careful appraisal of the three books that we are exploring. The reader will find that as I wander through my consideration of both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism I will touch upon a variety of topics that have played a foundational role in our understanding of narcissism. Because the format of this book essay is a comparison and contrast structure, I will move through subject matter organically, allowing foundational constructs to present themselves as they emerge in the flow of the discussion.
Diamond et al. and I would regard narcissistic pathology dominated by investment in grandiosity as pathology that unfolds more or less across a continuum extending from healthy narcissistic adjustment to the most severe, destructive narcissistic personality structure, malignant narcissism. Dan Shaw, in private consultation, conveys that he is only writing about traumatizing forms of narcissism which are typified by grandiosity and the compulsion to subjugate other personalities. Within the framework of traumatizing narcissism that he has established for himself—which, for our purposes, can be considered to be consonant with grandiose forms of narcissism—he would also agree that narcissistic disorder unfolds across a continuum. He excludes from his consideration, however, other forms of narcissism that do not implicate damaging grandiosity and subjugation. In its most extreme or pathological form, Shaw’s traumatizing narcissism can be regarded as being equivalent to what other authors refer to as malignant narcissism.
I have noted that narcissism as a continuum must in some respects remain an open question, given, for example, the co-occurrence of other types of psychopathology alongside narcissistic presentation, as is well documented by Diamond et al. in their book. Whether such co-occurrence represents the development of relatively orthogonal pathology or pathology that grows out of pathological narcissism is as yet unclear, at least for me. This is an issue, I would imagine, that will become the subject of further future research exploration.
The aggregate of authors who contributed to the books being discussed would generally agree that individuals who present grandiose narcissism have organized their personalities around a sense of grandiosity that becomes more intractable and unyielding the more pronounced their narcissistic pathology is. Intractable grandiosity creates a solipsistic existence, one in which the severely narcissistic person would find themselves increasingly isolated from sustaining human connection. Both Diamond et al. and I expressly underscore our appreciation of narcissism as a defense against relatedness. Such an appreciation, I think, is strongly implicit in Shaw’s formulation, as we shall see momentarily. I specifically see narcissism as a defense against love and the entanglements it creates; in other words, an impairment in our ability to receive love, not just to give it. Genuine expressions of love directed toward the grandiose narcissist evoke strong defensive counter response meant to eviscerate the other’s loving impulse: humiliation, shaming, mistrust, accusation, etc. Kernberg, who is part of the Diamond et al. group and who has played a pivotal role throughout his career in deepening our recognition of what narcissism is, has repeatedly emphasized that an obdurate investment in grandiosity means that one must turn away from the vulnerabilities, flaws, and needs that so define the human condition. How, Kernberg wonders, can anyone love a self riven with imperfections (as the human self must be) when grandiosity becomes disproportionately important to them? In his terms, then, narcissism does not represent an excess of self-love, but rather an investment in a vastly distorted version of the self that the narcissist idealizes (Kernberg, 1984). Elsewhere, Kernberg (1975) has suggested that the more healthy self-love one enjoys, the more love one has to give others. Clearly, for him, narcissistic adjustment implies that impairment in the capacity to love an authentic self must impair our capacity to give it. Although I am not aware that he has suggested narcissism stands in the way of our receptivity to love, I can guess he would likely endorse such a conception.
Returning again to Daniel Shaw, his commentary in his book places meaningful emphasis upon psychotherapy as an act of love directed toward people who have been severely wounded by grandiose narcissists, whom he characterizes as having been compelled to attack, subvert, and even annihilate the other’s subjectivity. Is it too far a journey from this point of departure to suggest Shaw understood that people who are so wounded that they feel compelled to deconstruct another personality would find it difficult to accept love themselves? Letting others love one would surely imply that the traumatic narcissist feels drawn to confirm the other’s value and is prepared to make at least some investment in their growth and their expansion as a personality, activities and desires very much outside the reach of someone who irresistibly subverts personhood.
All three books explore the origins of grandiose narcissistic pathology. In broad terms, there appeared to be consensus that early, formative environments which relentlessly turned aside a child’s needs and vulnerabilities while exploitatively prioritizing parental need could set the stage for narcissistic adjustment, especially if the child was valorized as being special or possessed of unique capabilities that set him apart and above others around him. Shaw also underscored the importance that shame imbued early experience played in driving individuals to disavow their vulnerable human parts and retreat into a citadel of delusional omnipotence. It was his belief that an intolerance of shame drove the traumatizing narcissist to subjugate others. All these formulations, obviously, highlight the role that pronounced, prolonged relational trauma plays in instigating grandiose narcissistic adjustment.
Drawing on my own growing up experience, I conceived of circumstances in which the threat of annihilation of personhood (which Shengold, 1989, referred to as “soul murder”) impelled an identification with the severely pathologically narcissistic parent who called upon a child to emulate their prerogatives. In the chapters that I wrote about Vladimir Putin (Wood, 2024b), I identified another set of circumstances that appeared to contribute to a profoundly narcissistic orientation: a brutal, threatening environment that occasioned the threat of both bullying and repeated physical assault seemingly eventuating in reliance upon dominance, strength, and omnipotence as a protective haven. Diamond et al. provide extensive examples of etiologies in the rich casework that they documented in their book reflective of relational trauma and threat.
The import of these varied formulations would appear to be the emergence of an individual who expects others to derogate his needs, placing their own needs first; who is profoundly mistrustful and paranoid (unalterably so the more narcissistic an individual is); and who makes himself feel safe through rapacity, invasion, and diminution of the other, doing unto them before they can do unto him. Diamond et al. and I see such individuals as being beset by raging, unquenchable appetites, turning toward dominion, money, fame, power, and notoriety to try to fill themselves. I view out-of-control appetites as arising because, without the sustenance that genuine human connection and love provide, such individuals would find themselves starving, desperate to find a way to fill themselves and assuage poorly appreciated pain that their grandiose narcissistic existence created for them. Neither being able to share their vulnerable human parts with others nor being able to give and take pleasure in generativity, in other words, meant that they could never get that which might have truly satisfied them. I argued, as did the other authors, that it is through our appreciation of fallibilities and imperfections we manage to touch each other in meaningful ways. Shaw highlighted this process in his discussion of his psychotherapeutic work. Acknowledging his errors with patients even though it might cost him some of his analytic dignity to do so was reparative. So, too, he felt, were his efforts to actively repair injury he had caused them.
Kernberg (1970) has movingly described the devastated internal landscape that inexorably escalates itself as the ghosts of the people the narcissist has hurt and exploited pile up inside and around him. The implication is that the more profoundly narcissistic one is, the more profoundly ruinous one’s inner life becomes, populated with evermore threatening specters who confirm threat of harm and the imminence of danger and assault. The only offset for the narcissist is his vastly disproportionate elaboration of his own value and importance. I very much agree with Kernberg and the Diamond et al. group; their description accords with the shifts in my own phenomenology growing up with a malignantly narcissistic father which I described in my first book, A Study of Malignant Narcissism: Personal and Professional Insights (Wood, 2023). I eventually came to understand that my interior, replete as it was with imagery that reflected the rage, personal devastation, and terror I was experiencing, provided me with a window into what my father’s private experience must feel like. This formulation also very closely reflects my experience working with severely narcissistic patients whose deeply misanthropic posture and expectation that others were as exploitative as they were only seemed to have grown and consolidated itself throughout their lives. I don’t see complementary efforts in Daniel Shaw’s work to attempt to articulate the phenomenology of destructive grandiose narcissism; his concerns largely center on efforts to elucidate the pain that the traumatic narcissist causes in those closest to him.
Diamond et al. and I believe that living with such a devastated interior means that the grandiose narcissist inevitably occupies a projected world, one in which the immensity of their own cynicism and their hatreds must inevitably dominate their perception of the world around them. Shaw’s version of traumatizing narcissist was not aware of what they were doing or why they behaved as they did. Acts of cruelty that emanated from their attempts to expel their own badness onto others were not deliberate, but instead informed by a delusional conviction in their own righteousness. Such righteousness meant that the traumatizing narcissist was unable to experience themselves as destructive. Impaired empathy, presumably, grew out of their engagement with grandiosity and their efforts to safeguard it.
Somewhat in contrast, Diamond et al. saw cruelty as ego syntonic. The grandiose narcissist could enact cruelty unselfconsciously and ofttimes in the company of a strong sense of entitlement, unmoved by concern for the damage that he was causing or even gratified by it. Eventually, as an individual becomes increasingly vested in grandiosity and narcissism, a combination of dissociation, detachment from others, manic defenses, imperviousness to depression, and expanding entitlements and envy could result in a casual dispensation of death, as Kernberg (2003) suggested in an earlier paper. It becomes possible to take life, in other words, without feeling anything when one does so.
My own position is closer to the Diamond et al. group’s: I endorse the dynamics they have articulated that incite acts of cruelty. Like them, I believe that dominating and deconstructing others may be a source of gratification. I would suggest, however, that enactment of cruelty may be a deliberate strategy that confirms/projects omniscience and power. I also see it as a way of generating engagement that simulates aliveness, offsetting the inner deadness that informs the existence of someone who is struggling with severe forms of grandiose narcissism. Somewhat similarly I see reliance on many of the defenses that characterize grandiose forms of narcissism, including splitting, projective identification, and blame shifting, as variously either conscious and/or unconscious maneuvers, depending upon the context in which they are used. Finally, I think all of the authors concerned would endorse cruelty as a means, whether consciously or unconsciously, that the grandiose or traumatizing narcissist relies upon to instill fear and compel subjugation.
The strong implication of such a formulation is that individuals who could be described as grandiose narcissists must be envious of the decency that others possess and of their capacity to both love and be loved. Envy plays a central role in the Kernberg group’s formulation, as is manifest in their most recent and previous works. Kernberg (1970) famously commented that as he worked with severely narcissistic individuals what emerged was “a picture of a worthless, poverty-stricken, empty person who feels always left ‘outside,’ devoured by envy of those who have food, happiness, and fame” (p. 58). In earlier work I suggested that severely narcissistic individuals attempt to hide their devastated humanity, making strenuous efforts to turn their own and others’ gaze away from it by inviting others to absorb themselves with the inflated, idealized self which the grandiose narcissist proffers. I believe envy drives people presenting the most severe form of pathological narcissism, malignant narcissism, to employ defenses that, in part, serve to deconstruct others’ decency and morality, moving others ever closer to the malignant narcissist’s psychopathic realities. Kernberg’s (2003) past comments about malignant narcissistic leadership strongly imply to me that he would endorse a similar position.
I don’t see the corresponding emphasis one finds in my own work and in the Diamond et al. group’s work on the importance that envy plays in grandiose narcissistic dynamics in Shaw’s formulation. Shaw’s (in press) more recent work on traumatizing narcissism, however, does place somewhat more weight on envy. I do think that Shaw’s focus on our capacity both to give and receive love as foundational to human development and growth facilitates identification of deep envy in someone who is a traumatic narcissist. After reading my first book, my colleague Ian Hughes (personal communication) commented that he now understood that evil could be defined as envy of love. Certainly in this sense, in the importance we attribute to the function love serves in our development and maturation, Shaw and I are very much on the same page.
Diamond et al. offer us a framework we can use to classify higher and lower levels of pathological narcissism, ranging from higher levels of function through borderline adjustment and, finally, at the lowest level, malignant narcissism. The critical variables which mediate distinctions between the various levels include deteriorating capacity for relatedness with others, for moral functioning, and for mitigation of aggression and envy. In their discussion of the distinction between levels of function, they suggest malignant narcissism itself may be characterized by varying levels of successful personal integration.
Setting aside what, for me, are some problems which emerge with their larger classification scheme, particularly as it is applied to grandiose versus vulnerable forms of narcissism, I did want to take a moment and affirm the usefulness of the levels of function argument they are making about malignant narcissism. I recently participated in a study undertaken by psychologist Robert Gordon (2024), which relied upon the 12 critical functions of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Chart–2 to evaluate the psychological health and integrity of individuals through distance assessment. Gordon’s work (Gordon & Bornstein, 2018; Gordon & Stoffey, 2014) and that of his colleagues with this instrument demonstrates its reliability, utility, and validity. He asked 50 experienced psychoanalytic clinicians to evaluate the psychological well-being of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. Relying on biographical and, in the case of Putin, autobiographical analysis as well, I have previously published material (Wood, 2024a, 2024b) that would appear to substantiate a diagnosis of malignant narcissism for both Putin and Trump. The results of the Gordon study were startling. Rating each leader on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 representing healthy functioning, cumulatively the group produced a consistent and statistically significant set of outcomes: Trump, whose ratings varied between 1 and 2, was functioning at a significantly lower level than Putin, whose ratings fell in the 2 to 3 range, while Zelenskyy earned ratings in a healthy range, attaining 4’s and 5’s. To my mind, the results of this study appear to provide at least tangential confirmation for the assertion that we now have psychometric means to distinguish between different levels of malignant narcissistic functioning. I am grateful to the work that Diamond et al. have done in this arena. Daniel Shaw’s work with traumatic narcissism and my own work with malignant narcissism and, in my case, the broad concept narcissism, does not provide formal, articulated frameworks to distinguish level of function, though each of us identifies a variety of different dimensions/constructs which would allow such differentiation.
Lastly, in this very brief discussion of grandiose forms of narcissism, I would like to highlight all of the authors’ commitment to the importance relational patterns play in our efforts to understand destructive forms of narcissism. The title of Shaw’s book, which includes the phrase “relational systems of subjugation,” immediately conveys his dynamic orientation. Diamond et al.’s reliance on interpretation of dyadic relational pairs that their narcissistic patients play out in transference and countertransference reactions also affirms the critical function relationality fulfills for them. I, too, would subscribe to the idea that it is through an understanding of relational patterns that patients repetitively reenact that we find ourselves in a far stronger position to understand not only the nature of their trauma but the psychodynamics that derive from it. It has been through such an approach that I was able to discern that the more severely narcissistic one was, the more likely one was to contrive a social presentation, imitating relationality rather than living it in response to the felt music of genuine human connection. This understanding derives, in part, from a premise that all of the authors would agree upon: namely, that any relationship the severely pathological narcissist establishes is likely to be transactional rather than based upon a deep and abiding concern for the other.
Where Shaw and I find ourselves at odds with Diamond et al. is their conception of vulnerable narcissism, which they include in their framework as a pathological form of narcissism. For them, vulnerable narcissism is informed by “hypersensitivity to rejection, a sense of unworthiness, and feelings of inadequacy in the context of covert grandiose features evident primarily in fantasies, beliefs, and entitled expectations, the behavioral expression of which is curtailed by inhibition, self effacement, and shame proneness” (Diamond et al., p. 24, citing the work of Kernberg, 1984, and Cain, Pinkus, & Ansell, 2008). They see vulnerable iterations of narcissism as sharing exploitativeness, self-centeredness, entitlement, and interpersonal antagonism with grandiose versions of narcissistic disorder. Vulnerable narcissists attempt to establish exceptionality and special status for themselves “through glorification of their distress and suffering . . . (sometimes) ceaselessly unloading experiences of maltreatment or self-loathing in the form of rigid or fixed narratives that make them feel special and unique” (Diamond et al., pp. 61, 64–65). Vulnerable narcissists react to threats to self-esteem or “to an unrealistically inflated self-image not with aggression or animosity, but with withdrawal, contemptuous dismissal, or attempts to control others” (p. 64, citing Akhtar, 2009). Diamond et al. view this group of patients as being particularly challenging to treat, demonstrating deep reluctance to separate themselves from the profound sense of injury which is such a pronounced part of their presentation.
What Shaw and I see instead of an altered form of narcissism is a group of people whose pain is reflective of the injuries they have sustained as a result of narcissistic predation and rapacity, often at the hands of an invasive narcissistic parent. In Shaw’s terms (and in mine), these are people who have endured repeated relational patterns of subjugation and threat whose sense of personhood has been disrupted and suppressed throughout their maturational experience. We would see them as individuals who have internalized the grandiose narcissist’s punishing, perfectionistic standards (“If you are unable to become that which I expect of you, you’re nothing.”) and the narcissist’s equally punishing acts of diminishment and criticality directed toward any expression of selfhood or independence of thought. We would also regard them as people struggling with significant depressive experience and, in my view, often chronic posttraumatic stress disorder as well. While we would feel that many members of this group of patients are unable to realize the kind of progress in psychotherapy one would hope for, we also recognize that many others of them can and do demonstrate significant, meaningful change as a result of the psychotherapeutic endeavor. Shaw beautifully describes the course that successful psychotherapy follows as one works with such people, moving from fear that the therapist will be attacking and will reiterate a disruptive subjugation experience to a position in which the patient, hesitatingly at first and in the company of significant anxiety, begins to express aspiration/ambition consonant with a renewed sense of agency and a rebirth of authentic personhood. It would be fair to conclude that we would endorse many aspects of the gross clinical presentation which Diamond et al. have attributed to vulnerable narcissism, but we would separate ourselves from their interpretation of the dynamics which shape this presentation. Importantly, we would also separate ourselves from the pejorative tone and attitude that appears to infiltrate their understanding of this group of people.
In the very limited space left to me in this book essay I would like to at least briefly touch upon the concept of healthy narcissism. For Diamond, Kernberg, and their group, healthy narcissism would seem to be predicated upon a sufficient repository of good enough dyadic and relational images that one carries internally to ensure that one is possessed of adequate quantities of healthy self-esteem and self-love. For Shaw and for myself, healthy narcissism extends from the formative experience of both being loved and of understanding that the love one gives is deeply valued by the people that one cares about. Healthy narcissism also celebrates, perhaps in a modestly disproportionate fashion as I noted in my book, early aspirational strivings and ambitions closely aligned with indigenous passions and talents that define us and that others have helped us discover. For me, healthy narcissism enables us to navigate our way through an essential relational task that each of us faces: our capacity to balance our need to establish connection and, at one and the same time, protect our identity. That means we must be able to allow others to enter into us and metamorphosize us through the rich interdependencies we need to establish if our connections with one another are to be rich and sustaining. Fulfilling this essential condition of relatedness means that our lived experience has helped us acquire essential trust that others will not essentially disrupt or violate our sense of personhood; it also means that we have come to feel we are possessed of sufficient resilience to be able to contain any injury others we bring into our lives might cause us. These are ideas that have been wonderfully articulated by a variety of different clinicians (as examples, see Blatt, 2008; Bollas, 1992; Ferruta & Carmody, 2012; Gabbard, 1993). Like the other authors in this group, I would suggest that healthy narcissism remains a lifelong resource and a lifelong necessity if we are to flourish and to treat each other well.
