Technique and the treatment of narcissistic personality disorders: Psychotherapeutic effects of inexact conceptualizations∗

Therapist narcissism.

“…Saretsky suggested that clients who are immature or borderline could cause a narcissistic therapist to experience anxiety around the issue of the therapist's own need for success, thereby contaminating the therapy and obscuring the client's issues from view. Meers (1985) cites the therapist's own narcissistic propensity to ignore countertransference and to believe that the therapist can personally treat any illness as one of the most serious technical complications in treating narcissistic patients. Miller (1981) goes into detail about the dynamics of how therapist narcissism affects the patient: The patient satisfies his analyst's narcissistic wish for approval, echo, understanding, and for being taken seriously when he presents material that fits his analyst's knowledge, concepts, and skills, and therefore also his expectations.…”