Narcissism & Its Discontents: Diagnostic Dilemmas & 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. Masterfully organized and written, the authors Drs. Gabbard and Crisp present a balanced summary of intersubjective psychodynamic and psychoanalytic treatment of narcissistic patients, with uniquely thoughtful and guiding descriptions and clinical illustrations of numerous specific challenges that psychotherapists can face. Informative and educational, it is a remarkably engaging resource for clinicians and psychotherapists in all stages of their career.’Elsa Ronningstam, Ph.D., Associate Professor (PT), Harvard Medical School, Clinical Psychologist, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA

In this marvelous new book, Narcissism and its Discontents, 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 won’t 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

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

This book is a gift to the profession, it should be the template for all clinical monographs. It’s a great read, hard to put down, while at the same time comprehensive, authoritative, and miraculously concise. The book is as wise as it is practical, from a general appreciation of narcissistic concerns to the bruising interactions of the clinical moment. Above all, Gabbard and Crisp offer vignettes previewing what the therapist is likely to meet and feel at every stage of the treatment and what responses may be helpful, always based on an understanding of what is at stake for the patient. The clinical section is a tour de force of expert supervision-by-text. This book will strengthen the hand of the experienced therapist, and its clear, phenomenological explanations and striking clinical vignettes will instill resilience in the beginner.’Lawrence Friedman, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill-Cornell Medical College and member of the Faculty of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education affiliated with the New York University Medical Center