Narcissism and Its Discontents: Diagnostic Dilemmas and Treatment Strategies With Narcissistic Patients

This is an excellent, comprehensive, and timely contribution that can help clinicians integrate the accumulated scholarly, clinical, and empirical accounts on narcissism and its pathology. --Elsa Ronningstam, Ph.D., Associate Professor (PT), Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and Clinical Psychologist, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts

In this marvelous new book, Gabbard and Crisp help us understand the many faces of narcissism in the context of an upheaval of social change. Then they invite us to sit at their sides while they, master clinicians, show us how to reach and help those whose narcissism has led them from success to great peril. And how to do so with compassion, even when the going gets rough. Take a seat. You will not regret it. --John M. Oldham, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Barbara and Corbin Robertson Jr. Endowed Chair for Personality Disorders, Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

Compassionate, clear, and wise, this book reflects perspectives that can come only from extensive clinical experience, combined with both illustrative vignettes and elegant prose. Clinicians will find it as absorbing to read as it is instructive to their practices. --John G. Gunderson, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and Director, BPD Center for Treatment, Research and Training, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts

Integrating contemporary research with psychoanalytic theory, Narcissism and Its Discontents offers clinicians strategies for dealing with the complex situations that can arise when treating patients with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). The very act of defining narcissism can be a difficult one, owing to the pleomorphic nature of NPD. This guide recognizes the challenge and provides a number of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic approaches -- including transference and countertransference -- to adjust treatment to the patient rather than constraining clinician and patient by strictly adhering to a manualized treatment.

A chapter on the cultural aspects of narcissism addresses the recent societal fascination with NPD in the discourse on politics and celebrity, particularly in the age of social media. Regardless of the treatment setting -- psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, partial hospital, or inpatient -- clinicians will find a wealth of approaches to treating a diverse and challenging patient population in Narcissism and Its Discontents.