![]() When the narcissistic solution fails, we have the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Both the Narcissistic and the Schizotypal Personality Disorders belong here because both involve grandiose, fantastic, and magical thinking. He uses the False Self to garner narcissistic supply (attention, both positive and negative) and thus support his inflated fantasies. The Narcissistic Solution – The patient creates and projects an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent False Self that largely replaces and represses the discredited and dilapidated True Self. They "resolve" these recurrent frustrations by developing personality disorders. What happens when such an individual faces disappointments, setbacks, failures, criticism and disillusionment? Pathological narcissism is at the core of the narcissistic personality disorder." It manifests in the chronic pursuit of personal gratification and attention (narcissistic supply), in social dominance and personal ambition, bragging, insensitivity to others, lack of empathy and/or excessive dependence on others to meet his/her responsibilities in daily living and thinking. "Secondary or pathological narcissism is a pattern of thinking and behaving in adolescence and adulthood, which involves infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of others. In my book "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited", I defined pathological narcissism thus: Traumas and abuse, smothering and doting, and the constant breach of emerging boundaries yield the entrenchment of rigid adult narcissistic defenses. Well into early adolescence, the empathic support of parents, caregivers, role models, authority figures, and peers is indispensable to the evolution of a stable sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-confidence. ![]() By pretending to be omnipotent, the toddler fends off the profound feelings of isolation, unease, pending doom, and helplessness that are attendant on the individuation-separation phase of personal development. ![]() Narcissism shields the child from these negative emotions. As the infant separates from his mother and becomes an individual, it is likely to experience great apprehension, fear, and pain. Primary Narcissism is a useful and critically important defense mechanism. During our formative years (6 months to 6 years old), we are all "narcissists".
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