Enter Ghosts: The Loss of Intersubjectivity in Clinical Work With Adult Children of Pathological Narcissists

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between narcissism and intersubjectivity through the lens of clinical work with adult children of pathologically narcissistic parents. Exposure to parental narcissistic pathology constitutes cumulative relational trauma, which subverts the development of intersubjective relating capacities in the developing child. This trauma is inherited and bequeathed intergenerationally. The paper focuses on the interpersonal dynamics of narcissism, which are conceptualized as “the pathological narcissist's relational system,” describing the need to establish complementarity in relationships through coercive projective processes, and through the adoption of the “complementary moral defense.” Clinical material highlights the loss of intersubjective functioning typical of the relationships formed by adult children of pathological narcissists, and the inevitability of episodes of mutual dissociation in analytic work with these patients.

Notes

I thank Lewis Aron, Victoria Barlow, Philip Bromberg, Linda Jacobs, Juliet Musso, Cynthia Shaw, and Melanie Suchet for their support and helpful suggestions. I am especially grateful to Jill Salberg for her close reading of many drafts, and for her persistent encouragement.

An earlier version of this paper was presented in 2008 at the 28th Annual Spring Meeting of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association entitled “Knowing, Not Knowing, and Sort of Knowing: Psychoanalysis and the Experience of Uncertainty.”

¹In “Traumatic Abuse in Cults: A Psychoanalytic Perspective” (Shaw, 2003b), I refer to this dynamic in the context of cults, in which there is a narcissist leader, and subjugated, controlled followers. Also see, regarding the “Sullivanian” psychotherapy cult, Shaw (2005a).

²Of special importance to me in Kohut's work on narcissism are his essays “On Leadership” (1969/1990b) and “Creativeness, Charisma, Group Psychology: Reflections on the Self-Analysis of Freud” (1978/1990a, pp. 825–832)—essays that emphasize the characteristics of pathological narcissism in relational systems.

³For a fascinating depiction of the fate of this character type at its most extreme, see Robert Jay Lifton's (2000) account of the Japanese guru, Shoko Asahara, who led his follower group of accomplished professionals in the science fields to release sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system. Forced to appear in court and stand accused, Asahara quickly decompensated to florid schizophrenia.

⁴I use the term “ghost” here with appreciation for Fraiberg et al.'s (1975) application of the metaphor in the context of intergenerational trauma. Also see Bromberg (2003).

⁵See Benjamin (2009a, 2009b), and Sedlak's (2009) discussion, papers I read only after completing this paper. Benjamin makes an eloquent case for the analyst's need to change (I would add “and grow”) as essential to the analyst's ability to facilitate the patient's change.