#Borderline Narcissistic and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love Admiration and Safety

[tasteforrot]

They are continually searching for a special someone who will do for them what their parents did not, so that they can resume their interrupted emotional growth. These clients are continually searching for a reparative reparenting experience that will heal wounds left from early childhood, and belatedly supply whatever they feel they missed getting.  In Freudian terms, their issues are pre-oedipal, dyadic, and not triangulated.  That is to say, the satisfaction of the client’s needs does not depend on winning a competition with someone else for this person’s attention.  The client just wants a positive, intense one-on-one relationship who represents the primary caretaker. Although superficially the desire for this intense attachment may seem similar to the adult wish for romantic love, clients with personality adaptions want to replicate some particular aspect of an idealized parent/child relationship, not an adult romantic one.  On some level, they usually realize that it is unrealistic to expect other adults to simply reparent them in this way, so they rationalize what they need want by saying that they are looking for a mate, a friend, or a mentor - not a parent.  This desire for reparenting may be so well rationalized that these clients may be unaware of their real agenda when they enter therapy.

[hauntedselves]

Splitting in Personality Disorders

Splitting is often talked about in Borderline Personality Disorder, but it’s also a feature of other PDs as well.

Splitting refers to when something triggers a switch in a person with a PD’s view of something or someone. This thing or person can be anything or anyone, from loved ones to concepts to items to themselves.

Splitting is a psychological defense against contradiction: if someone is good they can’t be bad, and vice versa. For example, because of childhood abuse, a person sees their mother (their abuser) as entirely bad and their father as entirely good. This keeps them from having to realise that their father may have been complicit in their abuse as well, and that their mother had other factors in her life (usually having been abused as well) that influenced her decision to abuse.

BPD:

In BPD, splitting is between seeing someone or thing as either all-good or all-bad. The classic example is splitting on a loved one, so that at one moment the borderline will see them as perfect, and after the split they see them as a waste of time.

Examples of splitting in BPD:

I love you / I hate you

I’m loved / I’m hated

My relationships are safe and secure / You’re going to abandon me

I want to be part of you / I can’t stand to be close to you

You are perfect / You are worthless

I’m a good, passive person / I’m bad and too angry

NPD:

In NPD, splitting happens on themselves and their self-image. They see themselves as perfect to cover up the feeling of being imperfect. When they face shame, which they are very sensitive to, they split on themselves and go into a shame/depression spiral. Or they may split on an idealised person and devalue them.

Examples of splitting in NPD:

I’m perfect / I’m worthless

You’re superior to me / I’m superior to you

I deserve everything / I deserve nothing

You admire me / You look down on me

SZPD:

In SZPD, schizoids split on their relationships between themselves and others. They fear becoming too close to people, so they withdraw and isolate themselves. They fear that, in becoming close, they’ll lose their autonomy and independence. But they also want close relationships, because it helps them feel more connected.

Examples of splitting in SZPD:

I have no human needs / I want to be human

I don’t need relationships / I want to feel close to someone

I am a slave to others / I am of no use to anyone

I’m isolated but in control / Others are in control of me

If I let myself be close to people I’ll lose myself / If I isolate I’ll lose the ability to connect

I haven’t been able to find anything on splitting in the other PDs, but I think it’d be very interesting to see if other PDs experience similar things too!

Sources:

Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptions: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety by Elinor Greenberg (2016)

@.schizotaxic’s The Superiority Complex Defence Mechanism post

[dividedego]

Schizoid reading list

Non-fiction

The Divided Self by R. D. Laing

Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations, and the Self by Harry Guntrip

Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality by W. Ronald D. Fairbairn

Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration and Safety by Elinor Greenberg

Fiction

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

The Stranger by Albert Camus

[ngibsonl]

Download Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety EBOOK -- Elinor Greenberg

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[avoidantrecovery]

Have you ever read any books on avpd or avoidance?

It's really hard to find books on avpd that aren't targeted at clinicians unfortunately. The only one I read (that wasn't even about avpd specifically) is called "Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety" by Elinor Greenberg. But it only has a slim chapter on ShizoidPD, which is similar to avpd, but not the same. It's a great place to start, but I didn't feel like I got a lot from reading it. Especially since it's meant for psychologists.

Sadly, there aren't many self-help type books for avpd specifically or meant for people suffering with avpd. So I stick to the ones for trauma and cptsd more generally. One book I like is "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk, I think most know this one. Another good one is "Complex Ptsd: From Surviving to Thriving" by Pete Walker.

Another one I plan on reading is "My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies" by Resmaa Menakem. The only thing I'm a bit skeptic with about this one, is the writer seems to tackle resolving white people's racial trauma as well with this book, which is all good. Just not for me LOL

[wolveshowlingatnight]

Schizoid Existential Dread - Explanation by Elinor Greenberg

The Schizoid Dilemma

When you grow up in an oppressive and abusive home where you are treated as a thing and not a person with rights and feelings, you are likely to feel that you have only two choices:

A Master/Slave Relationship: You can be in a relationship, but that means (based on your childhood experiences) that you agree to be treated as a thing and the other person has the right to dominate you and dictate the terms of the relationship. No negotiation is possible.

Complete Isolation: You become completely independent and give up even attempting to make intimate connections, or you settle for partial relationships, or even fantasies of relationships that exist mainly in your mind. No real connection is possible.

(My understanding of Schizoid phenomena is primarily based on the work of Ralph Klein, MD who wrote extensively and exquisitely clearly about the Schizoid Disorder of the Self in, Disorders of the Self: New Therapeutic Horizons—The Masterson Approach, NY: Brunner/Mazel, 1995, pp. 3–142, and who was my teacher at The Masterson Institute and later my colleague).

Existential Dread and a Sense of Meaninglessness

When people with Schizoid adaptations choose isolation over becoming someone else’s puppet, they can go too far. At a certain point it is a bit like a person suffering from anorexia who once chose not to eat, but now cannot eat.

As Schizoid individuals move further and further from the possibility of connecting with other people, life starts to feel increasingly meaningless. If this continues, they begin to feel what they describe as “existential dread.” They fear becoming so disconnected that it is as if they are dead while they are alive and they will no longer have the ability to reconnect.

The Dream of Drifting in Deep Space

Many Schzoid clients report remarkedly similar versions of the same nightmare that metaphorically represents this isolated and disconnected state:

I am in a space ship and I suit up to make a needed repair to the outside of the ship. I am connected to the ship by my air hose. I am crawling over the surface of the ship when I lose my grasp on my handhold. I drift off into space wth only my hose still connecting me to the ship. I am terrified that any moment my hose will break and I will drift off into deep space. I will have no sense of whether I am upright or upside down. I will die all alone screaming for help, but no one will hear me. I wake up terrified.

This same theme often pops up in science fiction movies.

The Existential Philosophers

Many of my Schizoid clients are attracted to the writings of the Existential philosophers. They identify with Jean Paul Sartre’s statement that “Hell is other people” and Franz Kafka’s books, such as The Metamorphosis where a man becomes a cockroach, and The Trial, where a man is prosecuted for an unknown crime by a remote and unreasonable bureaucracy.

The Existential Crisis

The hallmark of severe Schizoid disorders is an existential crisis: life ceases to have meaning, there is nothing of interest to look forward to, and the person questions the whole point of living. This is accompanied by feelings of despair. Sometimes these clients become preoccupied with death and dying.

One client could no longer function. All he reported doing all day was looking at everyone he met and wondering: “When will this person die?”

Punchline: Because only my Schizoid clients report having existential crisises (never Borderline or Narcissistic clients), I consider existential angst and a preoccupation with death and the meaningless of life one of the signs that I am dealing with a profoundly Schizoid client.

Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP

In private practice in NYC and the author of the book: Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety.

www.elinorgreenberg.com

Source

[roguesurvivor]

Narcissists By Rebecca Fischbein

When Lisa* met Adam* in graduate school, she thought she’d hit the dating jackpot. “He was very wealthy, very charismatic, and at first he was very charming,” she says. “He was constantly showering me with gifts, fancy dinners, and romanic nights out. He was playing by this 1950s courtship rulebook.” But over time, Lisa says, Adam became condescending, controlling, and cruel. He criticized her working-class background and tried to mold her in his image. He learned her insecurities and trigger points and used them against her. He made her write him an apology letter every time they had an argument. Ultimately, he became physically and sexually abusive. It took Lisa years to escape him.

“I was in my mid-20s, a hopeless romantic, painfully insecure,” she says. “Here was a guy who was charming and handsome and going to help me fit in. I was so eager to please.”

Though Adam has not been clinically diagnosed, to Lisa’s knowledge, he exhibits classic characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which the Mayo Clinic defines as “a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.” What we tend to think of as “narcissism”—vanity and extra-heavy doses of self-confidence—is a spectrum, and people can tip more heavily toward one end or the other. But someone with NPD is more than just self-interested and self-obsessed.

“It’s a lifelong pattern that a child started in childhood to cope with a certain family environment,” Elinor Greenberg, PhD., the author of Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration and Safety, says. “In adulthood, they overvalue achievement, they do not understand love, they have low emotional empathy.”

Julie L. Hall, a journalist and the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free, characterizes narcissists as individuals who, to repress feelings of shame and inadequacy in childhood, take on an exterior persona designed to insulate themselves from criticism. “They miss out on numerous developmental milestones,” she says. “They do not form a secure sense of identity and self-esteem. They do not learn good emotional regulation, they do not learn to self-reflect, they do not learn emotional empathy. They do not develop a complex, mature sense of their own universe or the emotional lives of others.”

People with NPD are not able to see other people, which means they do not make for good romantic partners. Many can become abusive, emotionally or otherwise. If you’ve inadvertently entered into a relationship with a narcissist, it can be hard to figure out what’s going on at first. Here are some signs to help you out.

They put you on a pedestal (at first)

Narcissists see everything in black and white, including people. People are either “good,” which means they’re idealized, or they’re “bad,” which to a narcissist essentially means they’re garbage. If a narcissist is pursuing you as a romantic partner, that means you’re in the “good” category, and you’ll likely find that they shower you with compliments and charm to win you over. They’ll make you feel wonderful, special, and, ironically, seen right off the bat.

“Narcissists become infatuated. They tend to idealize a potential partner or love interest,” Hall says. “It can seem like you’ve met your soulmate, like, ‘Wow, I connect so much with this person.”

Narcissists may also try to alter themselves in an effort to mirror your personality. “They may suddenly share the same interests as you, and agree with you and your core values,” Hall says. “These are not necessarily things the narcissist is or believes, but they’re trying on your identity, and showing you what they think you want to see.”

But once you get deeper into the relationship, a switch gets flipped. “In the beginning, you’re getting all the wonderful things from them and they don’t even notice your flaws,” Greenberg says. “As you come closer, and they’re not just in chase mode, suddenly they’re going to see all these things about you they didn’t see before, that bleed through their image of you as perfect and special.”

Many of us idealize our partners in the beginning but recognize that everyone has flaws, and eventually the idealization gets swapped out for love and trust. But with a narcissist, there’s no substitute. “You flip into ‘all bad,’” Greenberg says. “That’s when they start their construction project.”

They try to “fix” you

Greenberg describes narcissists in search of a romantic partner as “looking for piece of cheese with no holes.” And since everybody has holes, that mission is doomed from the start. Once the narcissist sees those holes—which can be as minor as, say, you unloading the dishwasher in a way they don’t like, or mispronouncing “bagel,”—they can either “fix” you or dump you.

“You’re like a building under construction to them,” Greenberg says. “They feel like the Prince in Cinderella.”

Lisa experienced this with Adam. “He knew my background and upbringing and gave me tips on how to hide it,” she says. “One time, I mentioned I learned piano as a kid and that I wished I could go back and learn it. He said he would get me piano lessons for my birthday, because, ‘I think it would look better for you if you were a classically trained musician.’”

She adds, “It was like The Princess Diaries, where I was going to be this middle-class, out-of-place kid, and he was going to build me into this perfect little partner. I was this blank slate that he was just going to make his masterpiece.”

They have no boundaries and a sense of entitlement

One of the defining characteristics of any personality disorder is a lack of boundaries, emotional or otherwise. People with NPD are no exception.

“They often feel entitled to violate boundaries most of us accept and abide by,” Hall says. “Sharing intimate details about other people you don’t know about, wanting to get more committed really quickly, promising things or wanting promises from you like commitment, marriage, having kids together right away. Things that are really premature before you’ve had a chance to get there.”

Hall says narcissists just feel entitled in general. They can’t abide by the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. “A narcissist walks around with very unreasonable expectations,” Hall says. “They feel entitled to get things other people shouldn’t get.”

Narcissists can have big “May I speak to the manager?” energy. They might mock or criticize other people behind their backs. They may be rude to or yell at servers. And they walk around believing and/or telling people they’re better than everyone else.

Lisa says that Adam, for instance, would wear a necklace with a formula engraved on a tag. He claimed he invented it, and that it was the “formula for the universe.”

“He said, ‘I solved the universe. This solves everything. And when someone questions my power, I just remember I’m more powerful than them,’” Lisa says.

They don’t hold back in a fight

It’s healthy for couples to argue sometimes. But when narcissists get into spats with their partners, their lack of empathy can lead to a nasty fight.

Greenberg says narcissists often do not have “object constancy,” which is the ability to maintain positive feelings for someone even in times of conflict. “Object constancy is what keeps people from abusing their mates,” she says. “People with object constancy can remember that they love you even when they’re mad at you.”

But narcissists can’t always do that. “If you’re in a fight with someone with no emotional empathy, who can’t remember they love you, they will hit below the belt,” Greenberg says, “All bets are off. They can say vile things to you.”

Narcissists love to argue—winning an argument is another way for them to prove that they’re better than other people—and they know how to push your buttons. They also tend have extreme emotional reactions. So if your partner is frequently hurtful, even over minor infractions, that’s a red big flag. And what comes after a fight can be a red flag, too:

They never apologize

Narcissists are incapable of self-reflection, which means that they rarely recognize when they’re in the wrong. So if your partner tends to sling throat-cutting insults at you during a fight and doesn’t ever meaningfully apologize for it, well, you might want to reassess the relationship.

“Being able to see that people have good and bad qualities, able to see that in themselves and other people, that’s something an NPD person can’t do,” Hall says. “They’re unable to look at things from an emotional perspective beyond themselves.”

If they do apologize, it can be more of an insult in of itself. “Sometimes narcissists throw out faux apologies with the narrative that you’re really too sensitive,” Hall says. “They’re unable to see things from your point of view, or validate your feelings as being legitimate.”

They turn their exes into villains

Here is a big one: If your partner or prospective partner has a narrative in which everyone they ever dated was “terrible,” “horrible,” and solely responsible for the destruction of the relationship, that’s a massive red flag. Sometimes someone does date a couple of assholes, but generally most people are able to reflect upon the ways in which both parties contributed to a relationship’s demise. Narcissists can’t accept criticism, can’t see the middle ground, and can’t self-reflect, which means they’re unable to recognize their part in a breakup. To protect their fragile egos, they are “good,” which means the ex must be “bad.”

“They often have a really negative assessment of previous relationships,” Hall says. “They pathologize and villainize their exes. The other person is a ‘jerk,’ an ‘asshole,’ a ‘disappointment.’” Basically, they don’t learn from relationships, and they’re constantly externalizing anything negative.

They gaslight you

With no boundaries, empathy, or checked egos, narcissists delight in manipulating people. It’s one of the ways they can feel superior than others, and it’s another method of proving to themselves that the rules don’t apply. It’s hard to tell if someone is gaslighting you—the very nature of gaslighting, i.e. psychological manipulation to make someone doubt their own feelings and lived experience, is set up to slowly chip away at your conviction so you think you’re the problem. But if you start to sense that your partner is manipulating you, get the hell out.

Lisa says Adam would frequently gaslight her. “We would be out at a bar or restaurant or something, and I would see him put his hand on the small of a woman’s back, and touch her ass or something,” she says. “In the car ride home, I would say something and he would freak the fuck out.”

He would deny it, they would argue, and in the end, Adam would manage to convince her that she was in the wrong. “The rule was that every time we got into an argument, I would have to write him a letter giving him an outline of how the argument began, who said what, and that I was sorry,” Lisa says. “At the end [of the letter], I’d be like, ‘You’re right, I didn’t see that, I must have been drunk.”

Narcissists do not truly understand or care about your emotional experience, your pain, and your personhood; moreover, they always have to be Right, and if you oppose them or call them out on their shit, that means you’re Wrong. That means they can pretty much do whatever they want without remorse, and they may do what it takes to convince you that their misdeeds are your fault.

If you’re dating someone who exhibits a number of these signs, consider confiding in someone you trust—friends, family, a therapist—and cutting ties. Narcissists can sometimes mitigate their worst impulses through therapy, but people who lack empathy have to do a lot of work to gain it, and they inflict psychological and emotional damage upon others in the meantime. You deserve better.

[tortuga-aak]

Whether a narcissist decides to cut someone out of their life depends on 3 basic factors

Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

This post by Elinor Greenberg originally appeared on Quora as an answer to the question "Do narcissists ever discard people permanently?"

The answer depends on three factors, and it also depends on the type of narcissist the person is.

  Whether a narcissist discards you permanently depends on three basic factors:

Whether they have an alternative source of self-esteem building narcissistic supplies.

What their relationship style is like.

Whether you want to be discarded permanently.

As one narcissistic client told me: “People are very interchangeable for me. They are like hamburgers or tissues. I need them for what they do for me, not because I like them for themselves. If one won’t give me exactly what I want and I have the opportunity to upgrade to a different, better person (better is defined as higher in prestige), I will do it in a heartbeat!”

Having said that, narcissists come in different flavors.

Here are some common types and how they react after they have discarded someone. I sometimes say “him” for the sake of brevity, but there are female versions of these types as well.

Recyclers are people who cycle among the same small group of people over and over again

When they become disenchanted with one person in the group, they immediately move on to the next. Eventually, everyone disappoints them and the first person starts to look appealing again, and they reach out to her again for connection. Recyclers tend to value familiarity. They become nostalgic about person A, when they become angered or disappointed with person B or C. They will likely cycle among the same group of people until someone moves away or dies.

Romantics imagine that they are in love with you and are capable of elaborate and very convincing courtships

In them, the two of you are the very picture of perfect love. In fact there are likely to be many pictures of the two of you posted on whatever internet sites they frequent because it is so important to narcissists that everyone sees you as the perfect couple.

Romantic narcissists may even plan a wedding with you and encourage you to start thinking of names for your children. But…after a while the novelty of enacting the loving couple wears off and they lack the ability to stay emotionally connected to you once things are less than perfect.

They may leave you suddenly and rationalize it in any of a number of ways. Two common ones are:

You aren’t who they thought you were. This explanation allows them to relieve themselves of any blame. It is your fault that things did not work out, not their inability to stay committed. Now that the narcissist knows you well enough to see your flaws (and in a narcissist’s mind, to be flawed is to be worthless) there is no point staying with you. The truth is that they were never actually in love with you; what they were in love with was the idea of being part of a perfect couple that everyone envied. The emphasis here is on “perfect.”

Yours is a doomed and tragic love. The relationship did not work out because tragically it was doomed from the start by forces beyond the two lovers’ control. This version of why they are leaving is based on all the romantic and doomed lovers of literature and cinema. Think of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or Allie and Noah in The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. This scenario appeals to a narcissist because he gets to be as romantic and sentimental about the two of you as he likes, but does not ever have to subject this love to the real tests of everyday life. The lovers in his fantasy are always tragically parted before anyone has to buy the toilet paper.

Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

Novelty seekers get bored very easily

One man told me that he lost interest immediately after sex. Another said that he could not sustain a relationship for more than two weeks. Many of these narcissistic men are simply what I term “trophy hunters”: once they have “gotten” you, they immediately lose interest and leave to hunt someone else.

They love the excitement of the chase, not the actual relationship. You will rarely see them again unless they find themselves up late one night, bored and horny. Then suddenly you will find a text from the guy on your phone. He will try and draw you back into a relationship that lasts until he feels satisfied or the sun comes up, whichever event occurs first.

Grudge holders rarely return to prior lovers

Their personal history is full of splits with people whom they now hate and refuse to talk to, often over events that they have mostly forgotten. The details are vague, all they remember is that they want you to suffer. And that is exactly what they imagine is happening in their absence.

They get more narcissistic supplies for their shaky self-esteem by cutting you off totally, than they ever get in a real relationship. Often this is a family pattern: their mother has a sister she has not spoken to in twenty years and their brother and sister hate each other as well. In fact after years of messy feuds, there are very few intact relationships in this narcissist’s family. Holiday dinners are very small and not very cheerful.

The essential question to ask yourself is “Do I want this person back in my life?”

As you can see from the above, many narcissists are quite willing to come back for as long as it suits their needs, while remaining oblivious to yours. If you cannot realistically envision a good future together that does not involve the narcissist suddenly becoming different, you might want to stay “discarded.”

All you have to do is never answer any of their texts or phone calls or respond in any way to their attempts to entice you back to serve their needs. The ball is in your court once they contact you. You get to decide what to do, not them. And, late at night when you are lonely and feel yourself weaken, you must never ever text them for any reason.

If they are bored and lonely too, they will answer and the whole thing will start again and end in exactly the same painful way as before.

Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP is in private practice in NYC and the author of the book "Borderline, narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration and Safety."

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[tasteforrot]

The Schizoid Era

To my mind, the “Age of the Schizoid” extends from the 1990s to the present.  It is now easy to avoid face-to-face interpersonal intimacy without appearing unsocial or odd.  Right now, the cultural field embraces the use of new technology, such as the computer and its various manifestations, which allows us to avoid direct contact with others.  Instead, it supports various types of more distant and controllable forms of intimacy, such as communication by email, texting, on-line chats, etc.  Individuals who have made Schizoid adaptions and who fear intrusion from others now have many ways of relating to others that can feel safer than face-to-face, in-person communication.  At one time, I could almost diagnose a Schizoid adaptation by the person’s unwillingness to speak with me on the phone; now even I prefer email or texting in most circumstances.  In addition, many high profile jobs now are based on either inventing new computer applications or work with existing ones - as opposed to work with other people.  This shift further supports the invisibility of those who have made Schizoid adaptations.

[hauntedselves]

Do you know of any psychology books that may be good to look into for someone who wants to learn more about personality disorders? I am looking for books that specialize in one specific personality disorder, which disorder does not matter to me but I am looking for books that don't demonize them, they're hard to stomach and I have trouble differentiating the biased from facts. (And don't want to spend money on books that do that)

Distancing: Avoidant Personality Disorder by Martin Kantor

The Essential Guide to Overcoming Avoidant Personality Disorder by Martin Kantor

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder by Grant et al.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder: Understanding the Overly Rigid, Controlling Person by Martin Kantor

Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self by Harry Guntrip (1969, so pretty old but referenced a lot in schizoid research)

Treatment of Schizoid Personality by Zachary Wheeler

The Divided Self by R.D. Laing (about SZPD)

Split Self and Split Object: Understanding and Treating Borderline, Narcissistic and Schizoid Disorders by Philip Manfield

Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of DSM-5 Personality Disorders by Len Sperry

Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptions: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety by Elinor Greenberg

Cognitive Behavior Therapy of DSM-5 Personality Disorders: Assessment, Case Conceptualization, and Treatment by Len & Jon Sperry

Disorders of Personality: Introducing a DSM/ICD Spectrum from Normal to Abnormal by Theodore Millon

Handbook of Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment by W. John Livesley & Roseann Larstone

Personality Disorders in Modern Live by Millon et al.

The Empty Core: An Object Relations Approach to Psychotherapy of the Schizoid Personality by Jeffrey Seinfeld

Disorders of the Self by Masterson et al.

The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know About Living with BPD by Alexander L. Chapman & Kim L. Gratz

The Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders by James F. Masterson

Treating Dissociative and Personality Disorders: A Motivational System Approach to Theory and Treatment by Antonella Ivaldi

I haven't read all of these so I can't vouch for lack of ableism, but these are the books I have saved.

Kantor and Millon are ableist but also very knowledgeable, Wheeler seems good from the bits I've read, Sperry is good and not as [overtly] ableist as other writers, Masterson is seen as the absolute expert (along with Millon) but I haven't read him so I don't know if he's ableist or not, and Greenberg is the only non-ableist writer I've read on PDs (though even she is a bit ableist towards NPD at times).

I'll add all these to my drive (linked in my pinned post) so people can download them! (z-lib is a great site to find books if you're not opposed to 🏴‍☠️)

[hauntedselves]

Greenberg’s NPD Subtypes: The Covert Narcissist

Want to be as open and direct as exhibitionist narcissists but are too afraid of rejection

Usually have experienced rejection and humiliation in childhood which makes them conflicted about attention (scared of it but craves and needs it)

Their dilemma is “how do I feel special without opening myself up for attack and humiliation”

Usually attach themselves to an idealised person, organisation or idea in order to share in their admiration

Vulnerable to criticism; if shamed they devalue and may discard people

Subtypes of the Covert Narcissist

The Perfect Secretary to the Great Man: makes serving the idealised person (IP) their entire life and feels special by their association with them; ‘acts of service’ as their way of being admired

The Faithful Servant: their sense of status is directly related to the status of their IP; they identify with their IP’s successes and are elevated by whatever elevates their IP

The Cheerleader’s Best Friend: the “admiring shadow”, wants to learn how to be confident and popular by being close to their IP

The Student in Search of a Mentor: “perpetually unprepared to take the ultimate responsibility for decisions”, seeks out a more experienced mentor with authority; may try to get their mentor to make daily or even major life decisions for them

The Admirer: had an Exhibitionist Narcissist parent and learnt to act as a mirror in order to get approval; this carries over in adulthood to their IP; if their IP tries to correct their perception of them as perfect, the Admirer sees it as modesty and “become even more convinced of [their IP’s] specialness”

Summary:

Major Issues

Manage self-esteem by attaching themselves to respected causes or people so they are special by association

Live for approval

Direct compliments or praise makes them uncomfortable

Trouble saying no to their IP, even at their own expense

Feel overlooked and resentful but are reluctant to complain, so act out with manipulation and passive-aggressiveness

Main Goals

Please others

Find a mentor/an Idealised Person or cause

Avoid being the centre of attention

Gain approval and sense of being special by association

Difficult Times

When they’re forced to be in the spotlight

When they have to assert themselves openly

Major Defenses

Avoid being the centre of attention

Use “self-object merger”* to enhance self-esteem

* Self-object merger is when someone merges their sense of self with another person or an object to manage their self-esteem or soothe themselves

Secret Fear

Being humiliated or attacked for being assertive or standing out

Contribution to the World

Do most of the work, behind the scenes

Interpersonal Gestalt

(The primary focus for the Covert Narcissist during social interactions)

Acutely aware of other people’s specialness and their approval of the Covert Narcissist

Anything that would put them in the spotlight or feeling exposed and vulnerable (so they can avoid it)

Motto

“Let’s talk about you”

- From Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptions: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety by Elinor Greenberg (2016)  

[hauntedselves]

Greenberg on SZPD

Major issues

Difficulty feeling physically and emotionally safe around others

Childhood abuse creates mistrust

Has trouble saying no

Hard to find a comfortable distance from others

Fear intrusiveness, getting too close to others, being controlled

Dissociation, depersonalisation, existential dread

Fragmented sense of self

Main goals

Stay safe

Avoid intrusive people

Become independent

Major defenses

Keeping their emotional distance from others

Create a “false self” to interact with the world, burying their “real self”

Fragments their sense of self, dissociates

Rich fantasy life

Distances, detaches, isolates & withdraws

Looks at things logically instead of emotionally

Independent & self-reliant

Secret fears

That they are alien and unlike anyone else

They use detachment and isolation as a survival strategy, but fear if they keep doing it they’ll become unable to have any real connection

Contribution to the world

Do more than their fair share because they think it’s useless to complain and don’t realise they can negotiate

Work well under isolating conditions

Creative, due to their internal fantasy world

Interpersonal gestalt

(The primary focus for the person with SZPD during social interactions)

Highly sensitive to anything that could threaten their interpersonal safety

This includes the content of the conversation and the way it’s delivered, e.g. tone of voice, sudden movements, standing too close

Attentive to other people’s warmth and liveliness because it’s attractive and scary at the same time

Motto

“Better safe than sorry”

- From Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptions: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety by Elinor Greenberg (2016)  

[hauntedselves]

Greenberg’s SZPD Subtypes

The Loner

Live by themselves, have only a few friends, try to limit social interactions

Enjoy privacy & autonomy

Don’t feel safe enough to form close relationships

Attracted to warm, lively people but find it difficult to be more than casual friends

The Intellectual

Dissociated from emotions and body, “live primarily in their mind”

Life is built around intellectual interests

May join groups or clubs around their interests, which gives them enough social contact so they don’t feel totally isolated

Emotional detachment makes them seem to lack empathy

Usually experienced childhood trauma which caused them to retreat to the safety of their own mind

The "Narzoid”

Uses narcissistic defenses to keep their distance from people

When they say things like “everyone else is too stupid to bother with”, they’re using it to cover their fear of being close, instead of a feeling of inferiority

The Cat Lady

Often a “loving but wary” person who struggles with human relationships

Has turned to animal relationships instead

Often rescues animals, as they identify with their helplessness

Still searches for love and connection with humans but only feels safe with animals

The Histrionic Schizoid

Presents as histrionic or borderline but the underlying reasons for their dramatic emotions are schizoid reasonings

Like all schizoids, struggle with feeling safe while being close to others, and with having physical and emotional boundaries

Emotional closeness results in fear of losing themselves, which they deal with by dramatically and emotionally withdrawing

- From Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptions: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety by Elinor Greenberg (2016)  

[hauntedselves]

Greenberg’s NPD Subtypes: The Exhibitionist Narcissist

Openly display grandiose self-importance

Expect special treatment

Fantasies of success and power

Indifferent to others’ feelings and well-being

Exploitative

If humiliated or shamed they react with extreme rage

Subtypes of Exhibitionist Narcissists:

The “Gucci” Narcissist: uses fashion and high status items and people to boost their self-esteem

The “Resume” Narcissist: chooses jobs, hobbies, friends etc. based on how they will look to other people, not on what they actually want or need

The Martyr: ‘noble sufferers’, uses their suffering to feel special and get sympathy and attention

The Superman: needs to feel & be seen as heroic & selfless, avoids any situations where they could be seen as weak or inferior

The Supermom: “a variation of the Superman, only more home centred”; takes credit for their family’s successes

The Saint: “perfect version of the Superman defense”; similar to the Martyr; neglects themselves to help others

Summary:

Major Issues

Always trying to enhance and stabilse their self-esteem and avoid shame/depression spirals

Often alienate those around them due to their grandiosity

Overly sensitive to criticism and feeling misunderstood, reacts with anger

Main Goals

Become high status

Maintain feeling special and perfect

Gain admiration and recognition

Avoid humiliation and exposure as a ‘fraud’

Difficult Times

Having to work as equals with those who they see as inferior

Loss of status; rejection

Aging, feeling less than perfect

Having to apologise or admit their mistakes

Major Defenses

Grandiosity

Devaluing others

Associate with idealised/high status people or things

Secret Fear

That they are intrinsically worthless and defective and will be publicly exposed as a fraud (creating humiliation, vulnerability and rejection)

Biggest Insult

Being called average

Contribution to the World

Start many organisations, political parties, movements

Devote enormous amounts of time and energy into causes if it puts them in the spotlight

Many are entertainers, sponsors, financial backers

Interpersonal Gestalt

(The primary focus for the Exhibitionist Narcissist during social interactions)

Details that enforce or reject their sense of being special or perfect

Highly sensitive to cues that relate to possible rejection or humiliation

Motto

“If I can’t be the best, it isn’t worth doing”

- From Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptions: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety by Elinor Greenberg (2016)

[hauntedselves]

Greenberg’s Mnemonic for NPD: SPECIAL GOD

S: Status, sensitivity & shame

Preoccupied with status and hierarchies and where they and others fall into them

Sensitive to criticism and rejection

Very vulnerable to feelings of shame

P: Perfect

Needs to see themselves and those they admire as superior

“To a Narcissist, superiority and goodness are synonymous”

E: Entitlement & envy

Expects to be treated better/as more special/high status than others

Jealous and envious of people who have something they want (possessions, status, wealth, etc.) as it draws attention away from them

C: Cold & calculating

Rarely feels any warmth towards people except those who are idealised as their superiors

Warmth is either an act or because of admiration (giving (to idealised people) or receiving)

I: Idealising & mirroring transferences

Attempts to gain positive self-image through seeing themselves as loved, appreciated, and respected by someone who they respect and love

Expects others to be totally in tune with them and their wants, needs, thoughts, feelings, etc.

A: Admiration, attention & acknowledgement

Needs to have admiration, attention, acknowledgement constantly because they are unable to internalise praise and admiration to form a positive self-image

Without it they feel depressed, empty, humiliated, angry & inadequate

“Narcissists are like a car with a leaky gas tank; they need to be refueled frequently or they stop running”

L: Low self-esteem

Continuously trying to shore up extremely fragile self worth, which is very vulnerable as it’s dependent on others

Always looking for ways to make themselves feel more important

GOD: Grandiose Omnipotent Defense

Uses sense of specialness and grandiosity as a defense against vulnerability and humiliation, which often involves putting other people down

Fears being dominated and humiliated so tries to be the dominant person

- From Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptions: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration and Safety by Elinor Greenberg (2016)