Customer Reviews

The Emerging Self: A Developmental Self & Object Relations Approach to the Treatment of the Closet Narcissistic Disorder of the Self

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Masterson is one of the few theoreticians [come] practitioners to offer a coherent and self-sufficient theory of personality disorders, including the narcissistic one. This book encourages diagnosticians to diagnose pathological narcissism, even when the presenting signs are misleading. Masterson believes in the unacanny ability of pernicious narcissism to disguise itself and manifest in numerous, uncharted, ways. His is a road map backed by impressive amounts of research and practice. The only drawback is that it presents only the views of the psychodynamic [come]object relations school of psychology and largely ignores advances in other fields. Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited".

I'm not surprised that it's Sam who is the only other reviewer (so far?). As a former computer programmer, I love the flowcharts explaining who's on first, what's on etc., of each of the main brain patterns.

The first 3-4 chapters and the last few give detailed explanations of what we're doing in therapy and how, slicing it thinner than Emeril.

The taped supervisory sessions could make you puke, if, like me, you're a patient who's been struggling with her therapists' countertransference for far too long.

Need to be fluent in self-object jargon (which, after a year of self-study, I am). Also, unclear to me, on first reading of patient sessions, tone or intent of JM's comments (not 'interpretations'), but that's likely(!) my defense...