Once upon a time, there was a man named Mr. Jones.
He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
He was a terror in the workplace.
He had legitimate skills, but it was his other anti-skills, related to his disorder, that
gave him his edge.
He was good at finding other people's mistakes, and hiding his.
For employees who are more sensitive, or had major responsibilities like children and a
mortgage, their natural alarm would never turn off until they got sick.
It was just another day for Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones was also skilled at toxic gossip, where everything a target says is twisted
out of context, and used to make other employees hate the target.
Those who listened to the gossip know that they better join in, or they will be a target
next.
This pattern has been going on for years, and Mr. Jones was able to eliminate many talented
competitors who could out shine him.
But this is survival.
Anyways, his bosses were really no different, and Mr. Jones's subordinates benefited by
helping him.
"If you want success, you have to imitate success."
Workplace culture starts from the top down.
What Mr. Jones didn't expect, is that targets are getting wise about this disorder.
They hire psychologists to teach them how to use boundaries, and to gain leverage in
the organization.
Mr. Jones is really good at making up stories to defend himself, but this time his targets
are actually documenting his stories, and over time stories based on lies, never add
up.
As the stress mounts on Mr. Jones's subordinates, the morale and quality of work start decreasing.
And there are complaints to Human Resources about Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones's boss, Mrs. Money, is not happy with the complaints.
Some of Mr. Jones's lackeys are now complaining about him as well.
Since they believe that success must be imitated, then they should imitate Mr. Jones and his
tactics.
Mrs. Money makes an ultimatum.
If Mr. Jones wants to keep his job he has to go to therapy.
Welcome to the last episode of this Narcissistic Personality Disorder series.
In the beginning, we looked at Freud's contributions from On Narcissism, where we see a self-love
aimed at an Ego-Ideal, which makes all the important people in the narcissist's life,
a means to an end, which is to achieve the Ego-Ideal.
As the child grows up, the True Self is never developed, and a mask used for the public,
is identified with, which is the False Self.
As the False Self is challenged in a competitive ruthless environment, the Narcissist learns
from trial and error, how to use politics, and leverage, to get his or her way.
So far we have looked at how inhuman the narcissist is.
The robotic quality and lack of empathy, but the narcissist is a person.
When someone is far away from the narcissist they can feel sorry for their bad childhood,
but when you are a victim, it is impossible.
With a society that demands unrelenting standards from the populace, then this robotic nature
can be exploited for productivity.
The consequences unfortunately are damaged selves with Post-Traumatic Stress, and no
skills for maintaining intimate relationships.
As divorces mount, and companies grow tired of the complaints, the narcissist is cajoled
into therapy.
For the narcissist, they often have little contact with their True Self, until they face
death and sometimes not even then.
If they do have a chance to confront the True Self before death, it is with a therapist
trained in dealing with fractured selves.
If anyone thinks that Psychologists have an easy job, they'll have to change their mind
after seeing this video.
What therapists often find when they meet a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder,
is someone who endlessly idealizes and devalues people, including the therapist.
They may make derogatory comments about the decor of the therapist's office.
They may have made an extensive investigation of the therapist's credentials, and relationship
history, to load up their machine gun of devaluation.
This is where we have to introduce Transference, which in psychology is a highly complex web
of attitudes that people project onto each other, based on past experiences with other
people.
Counter-transference is the reaction of the transference of others that therapists encounter.
Therapists can be so effective by the negative put downs, a devaluing transference, that
they unconscious try to speed up and terminate the session with the narcissistic personality
disordered individual.
There can also be idealized transferences projected on the therapist, then the therapist's
need to help gets manipulated, and the therapist thinks that the patient is getting better,
when really they are just getting attention.
To avoid these entanglements, the psychologist has to put a light into the patient's thinking,
and parse out how these projects are defenses developed in childhood to protect the self.
The ideas of people, or fantasies of people, have to be seen for what they are.
They are human needs arising in the mind, that haven't been satisfied, then the patient
has to learn ways of communicating with people in achieving those goals of need fulfillment
in healthy ways.
When the patient is ready to let go of protecting themselves, all those grandiose dreams and
ideas come out, and the therapist has to reserve judgment of how grandiose they are.
Many grandiose ideas are so unrealistic to the person's situation in life, that they
can only cause suffering.
By allowing the patient to talk about these dreams and validating them, increases the
trust the patient has with the therapist.
What is necessary is to come up with realistic plans that can be achieved to make some of
those dreams come true.
Healthy goals that are achievable, and that meet human needs, create a self-image that
is more grounded in reality.
Until the patient becomes grounded like this, then their need to be grandiose and to devalue
others continues, because the scaffolding of self-love is not there.
In the meantime, the therapist and significant others in the patient's life, are providing
this scaffolding unwittingly.
Remember in our prior videos, the patient in the childhood needed that mirroring of
recognition and validation to bolster their self-esteem long enough for the child to internalize
this, so they can bolster it themselves as they get older.
If that doesn't take place, then the child grows up needing others to bolster their self-esteem.
Narcissists need examples of their good works to feel good about themselves, by creating
impossible and unrelenting standards onto themselves, they need to excessively bolster
their grandiose behaviour, and to devalue others to maintain this facade of superiority.
Hidden in the devaluation, is a form of projection, when they can find unacceptable features of
themselves in others.
This makes them feel less ashamed and alone in their weaknesses.
This dynamic creates opportunities for rage if the world exposes weaknesses in the narcissist.
Shame being the unconscious feeling, before the rage.
This rage can continue in a clinical setting because the patient's need for validation,
by showing off, can backfire and irritate the therapist, thereby denying what the patient
wants.
Projection can be very forceful when the patient tries to make the therapist fit a role, that
is a mental representation in the mind of the patient.
Most human beings, including therapists, need some validation, but therapists say of the
experience of treating narcissist patients, that they feel ignored, like they are only
there to play this role for the narcissist's validation.
A series of yawns, and displays of boredom, from the therapist, can in turn cause irritation
in the narcissist, and motivates more devaluation of the therapist.
If this cycle persists, then they therapy may be a dead end.
These experiences are similar to what the child went through with their caregivers.
Another vicious cycle can be a therapist doing a Reaction Formation, which is feeling a particular
way but trying to hide that feeling by expressing the opposite emotion.
The therapist may come across as glib and false in trying to idealize the patient to
disguise their irritation from all the devaluation they got from them.
The patient may become angry because they are not getting the results of the devaluation
like they expected.
Which is an emotional demonstration of the therapist feeling incompetent.
Then the narcissist continues devaluing, while the therapist continues providing empathy.
When the unexpressed negative emotions build up in the therapist, then they may get angry,
and try to show off their knowledge and intellect to try and demonstrate their authority.
The narcissist patient can enjoy a "gotcha moment", and point out that the therapist
is the same as them.
Therapists need to recollect themselves.
They can do this by reminding themselves that all this contempt is based on the patient's
feelings of inadequacy and envy.
The therapist's position and knowledge is a threat to the patient.
So they naturally perform a leveling practice with the devaluation to prove to themselves,
that there is nothing to envy in the therapist.
Their credentials, their office decor, and other areas of weakness to mock, are used
to dissipate the anxiety feelings of envy and inferiority, that the narcissist has.
When someone is an omnipotent God, then they have nobody to envy, and no feelings of shame.
This is how the self-narrative of the narcissist is maintained, and how that narrative becomes
more and more distorted.
Once the therapist understands this, they can shake off those same feelings of inadequacy
and envy that were just projected.
Understanding and consciousness is what awakens the therapist to what's going on.
On the other hand, if a therapist is considered, "The Best", then the narcissistic patient
my just enjoy basking their abilities, knowledge and empathy, as a form of attention supply,
with no need to develop further.
A Mutual Admiration Society.
If the therapist is not careful, they may think it's just a patient's good sense, that
they can recognize their value.
The therapist can snap out of it, by noticing that the patient is basking in this idealization.
We are in the difficult part of the therapy where the therapist is stuck between idealization,
and devaluation, and must interpret what is happening to help the patient.
This is the omnipotence/control factor in relationships with narcissists.
Therapists can feel subjugated to comply with both these tendencies, for fear of punishment,
from more devaluation.
Like an addiction, the vice of needing attention, leaves the therapist in utter exploitation.
In response, therapists have to be able to control their outbursts, and allow themselves
to be used in service of the therapy, because patients don't have the skill of self-satisfaction,
and need others to provide it.
Therapists have to move into interpreting and communicating how narcissistic tendencies
are counter-productive in their relationships.
The patient gains knowledge, while seeing these transferences happen in real time in
therapy, and outside therapy.
This is a form of understanding boundaries for both the patient and the therapist.
When boundaries are absent, both the patient and therapist are wanting each other to behave
in a particular way, limiting the autonomy that is necessary for patient recovery.
Recovery requires the patient to have a realistic assessment of their skills and attributes,
without enormous pain from the self-criticizer of the super-ego.
They learn to tolerate their True Self.
As they accept their good and bad parts of themselves, they are more empathetic towards
others and their struggles.
This way they have more freedom of choice, and can enjoy their lives more without the
need for constant narrative control, which is draining and impacts pleasure and happiness.
To be a source of happiness to oneself, unshackles the dependency on others for validation.
When one can tolerate failure in oneself, then one doesn't need to blame the world.
This is due to the ability to self-soothe, and parent oneself.
As delightful as this outcome is, it is mostly patients who have less severe narcissistic
tendencies, that benefit the most from treatment.
Firstly because they have enough awareness from others that they need to change.
Secondly, they have some sense of self that was developed in the past, and thirdly, they
actually look for help.
For more severely narcissistic patients, they require force from others to go into therapy.
Therapy rarely works on them, and is geared more towards using their narcissistic tendencies
in favor of treatment.
For example, the carrot is that their improved behaviour will give them more of what they
want, and the leverage that the therapist has is to remind them of their relationship
losses, and the threat of loneliness.
When narcissists want to go to far, then they have the tools to redirect their energies
towards goals that serve them.
The worst outcome is when the pathological narcissist uses what they learned in therapy
to hurt others with more accuracy, and remaining with The False Self.
When you have a culture that rewards narcissism, it's easy for the patient to continue being
narcissistic.
From birth the narcissist is trained into a shell of a person, that is just there to
perform for society, accept they never leave the stage.
The sad loss, is for the patient to never really know themselves throughout their entire
lifespan.
With an increasing reliance on reactions from others, a narcissistic culture becomes made
up of people feeling empty, because they can't really know others True Selves, or know their
own True Self.
For more infomation >> Why Heroin Addict Says She Left Treatment Early – Is She Sober? - Duration: 3:05. 
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