"The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists"

I have a book recommendation in the personality disorder category. 

We often talk in our classes about how people can have distorted perceptions of reality, and especially how the human brain works (or fails to work).  It is important for us to understand personality disorders as perhaps not a "flawed" normal human brain, but as a completely different category or type of human brain with an impaired ability to feel empathy.  This lack of empathy creates all sorts of problems for the rest of us who do experience empathy--and because we are constituted in an essentially different way--can be tricked and harmed by folks with personality disorders. 

 

Personality disorders are not mental illness.  They represent behaviors that deviate from expected societal norms and include such types as sociopathy/psychopathy, borderline personality disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.  I am currently interested in learning about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists, by Eleanor Payson, describes the various characteristics and behaviors of the NPD in the context of fairy tales.  One of my favorites is her description of the typcal NPD mother using the Rapunzel story.  The NPD is distinguished from other personality types mostly by a single characteristic:  "It's all about me."  The NPD mother sees her children as an extension of herself and grooms her children (or a select child or children) to be just like her and/or to satisfy her goals and needs that she then experiences vicariously as though they were her own.   Another NPD characteristic, and the feature perhaps at the bottom of all the other issues, is a serious lack of self esteem, so that if the child fails to fulfill the NPD mother's expectations, she becomes enraged and destructive, and may even alienate herself from the child.  A typical pattern is complete absorption in the Other followed by complete rejection and/or rage.  

A "stage door mother" is often an NPD mother.  She needs the child to succeed as a virtuoso violinist not because it is in the best interest of the child, but because she is so empty inside that this is the only way she can feel whole.  She perceives the child as an extension of herself.  But if the child fails at the mother's goals and thereby does not satisfy her need to be filled up, then she may abandon the child emotionally.  The child is no longer of any use to her.  And the NPD mother can seriously damage her child.  Worst case scenario:  she succeeds, and produces a mirror image of herself--another narcissist.  

The witch in the Rapunzel story tricks the real parents into giving her their child.  She then locks Rapunzel away in a tower, and spends every night "grooming" the little girl by combing her long golden hair.  But we all know this finally backfires when Rapunzel breaks free of the witch's bonds.  The moral of this story seems to be that one can get free of the NPD mother and individuate.  One can become whole again.

This is a fascinating book.  Read it from the beginning so you don't miss the part that keeps you from believing you're the NPD yourself--a very enlightening and reassuring section of the book.  I am reading it on my Kindle.