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Reviews by Sam Vaknin Ph. D.

Personality Disorders in Modern Life by Theodore Millon, Roger Dale Davis. A multi-faceted study of personality disorders (biological, psychodynamic, cognitive, etc.) "Theodore Millon, one of the world's leading authorities on personality disorders and the best-selling author of Disorders of Personality, explores the many subtleties involved in diagnosing and treating these debilitating disorders. For each clinically-recognized class of personality disorders and its subtypes, Millon and his co-authors examine all current schools of thought--including the biological, psychodynamic, interpersonal, cognitive, and biopsychosocial models--on the factors that promote personality dysfunction. And they outline the most successful effective treatment approach for each disorder."

Disorders of Narcissism : Diagnostic, Clinical, and Empirical Implications by Elsa F. Ronningstam(Editor). Psychotherapy and its effects in the treatment of pathological narcissism. Pathological narcissism has been the topic of heated discussion for a hundred years now. Freud, Kohut, Klein, Winnicott, Kernberg - have all contributed their point of view. Roningstam belongs in this august company as a major theoretician and practitioner. This book - an anthology of writings about this intractable and maddening phenomena - is both whole and partial. It is whole is that it provides a magnificent overview and an efficient launching pad to the understanding of narcissism. It is partial in that it presents only the views of the psychodynamic object relations school of psychology and largely ignores advances in other fields. But it is a great read and provides hope that treatment may finally be getting there and breaching the narcissistic barrier.

Narcissism and Character Transformation : The Psychology of Narcissistic Character Disorders (190P) by Nathan Schwartz-Salant. An analytic - mainly Jungian - perspective on narcissism. Schwartz-Salant is one of the most thought-provoking Jungians around. He continues and extends Jung's archetypal narratives by exploring deeper links with alchemy, mythology, and other psychodynamics and object relations schools of psychology. In this book, he uses Greek mythology as an exegetic (interpretative) framework to gain clinical insights. This is not such a good idea and resorting to Kohut's work does not counter-balance this deficiency. Greek mythology is limited both by its set of characters and their interactions and by its cultural context. That it is a finished work - cast in the stone of history - makes it static and unable to cope with the dynamics of the hydra of pathological narcissism. A colorful intellectual exercise - but of very little clinical use, I am afraid.

The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern by Nina W. Brown. Not all people with narcissistic traits actually suffer from the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Pathological narcissism is a spectrum - from narcissistic traits and narcissistic transient reactions to the full blown narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Brown explores the grey area between NPD and narcissistic self-destructiveness and other-destruction. We can group these behaviors according to their underlying motivation. The Self-Punishing, Guilt-Purging Behaviours - these are intended to inflict punishment and to provide the punished party with a feeling of instant relief. The Extracting Behaviours - people with Personality Disorders (PDs) are very afraid of real, mature, intimacy. PDs interpret intimacy (not DEPENDENCE, but intimacy) as strangulation, the snuffing of freedom, death in installments. They are terrorized by it. The self-destructive and self-defeating acts are intended to dismantle the very foundation of a successful relationship, a career, a project, or a friendship. The Default Behaviors - self-defeating behaviors are intended to preserve the past, to restore it, to protect it from the winds of change, to inertially avoid opportunities. All these behaviour patterns are described here and linked psychodynamically to pathological narcissism.

The Kohut Seminars on Self Psychology and Psychotherapy With Adolescents and Young Adults by Miriam Elson(Editor), Maraim Elson. Kohut's renowned and seminally important Self Psychology seminars.

Shame: The Underside of Narcissism by Andrew P. Morrison. Shame and narcissism - two sides of the same coin or cause and effect? Shame and guilt - often experienced during childhood and early adolescence - are the two relentless drivers of the veering car of pathological narcissism. Narcissistic Shame is the experience of a humiliating Grandiosity Gap (the tormenting abyss between the narcissist's reality and his grandiose fantasies). Subjectively it is experienced as a pervasive feeling of worthlessness (the regulation of self-worth lies at the crux of pathological narcissism), "invisibleness" and ridiculousness. The patient feels pathetic and foolish, deserving of mockery and humiliation. Narcissists adopt all kinds of defences to counter Narcissistic Shame. They develop addictive or impulsive behaviours. They deny, withdraw, rage, engage in the compulsive pursuit of some kind of (unattainable, of course) perfection. They display haughtiness and exhibitionism and so on. All these defences are employed primitively (or are primitive, like splitting) and involve projective identification. This book is the best study there is of the incestuous relationship of narcissism and pernicious shame.