Kernberg And Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Kernberg, Object Relations, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Introduction
Throughout time, humans have wrestled with questions of motivations and subsequent behaviors towards other individuals. Embodying this phenomena, the ancient Greek, Aminias, portrayed a young man named Narcissus, who on day walked by a stream and fell in love with his reflection. To the young man’s detriment, Aminias ended Narcissus’s tale by portraying him marveling at his image as he pined away, and finally, marveling at his image in the River Styx. Freud borrowed this tale to describe people who surpass the preserving action of self-love and internalize their libidos by focusing its attention on their ego (1920). Freud claimed that although this is a normal
Furthermore, the child internalizes their caretaker(s) as objects, which stays with the child well into adulthood. As such, when the child needs are met and when they are denied by their caretaker, the child interprets the caretaker/object as two (or more) separate entities (Flanagan, 2011). As the child becomes able to grasp that, indeed, the caretaker has positive and less than positive qualities, object relations holds that this ambiguity allows the child to mature. Finally, when the child grasps this ambiguity, either through the process of nature or nurture, the child can mature. Taking object relations in a direction that ‘smacks’ of the later created Attachment Theory, Winnicott theorized that since the idea a child’s successful maturation is extremely important, the child-caretaker relationship has primacy. Thus, Winnicott coined the phrase of “good-enough mother” which referred to a mother who pays enough attention to her child and does not punish it for displaying dissatisfaction. Furthermore, Winnicott added onto Klein’s idea of internal objects (conceptualized object within a child’s mind) and hypothesized about the existence of intermediate objects–objects which a child can manipulate and bring into its mouth or through other bodily functions (Winnicott, 1953).
Enhancing Contemporary Object Relations Theory, Kernberg reconciled Freudian drive theory with the Klein, Maher, and Jacobson braches of object relations (Palombo, Bendicsen, & Koch, 2009). Using Klein’s theory of development, Kernberg further developed her ideas and contributed information of abnormal development of humans (Palombo, Bendicsen, & Koch, 2009). Similarly, Fairbairn enhanced the theory by explaining that, as children, people internalize their caretakers, even when they can sometimes disappoint and act harshly to a child. As it is difficult for a child to rationalize that someone who cares for them can also disappoint, the child’s egocentric nature internalizes the ‘bad treatment’ to mean that the child is bad (Flanagan, 2011). The relationships with these early caretakers (objects) are internalized and carried forth as aspects of their personalities. Those who were treated poorly–e.g. abused, neglected, or undifferentiated from/by the caretaker –have troubles holding opposing viewpoints of objects. Subsequently, these people tend to ‘split’ their perceived negative attributions and project them on to external objects; this process is known as splitting (Flanagan, 2011, Kernberg,