Response 1

My colleague’s discussion centered on narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). From the onset, it would be prudent to point out that as my colleague observes, NPD manifests itself in terms of lack of empathy as well as consideration for other persons. Further, persons with NPD often possess a strong desire for acknowledgement, admiration, and affirmation. This effectively means that such persons could appear rather demanding, selfish, and even manipulative. Towards this end, my colleague is categorical that the disorder could negatively affect romantic, personal, or even professional engagements/relationships. It therefore follows that the relevance of treatment interventions cannot be overstated.

The treatment option that my colleague has assessed is psychotherapy – with the specific kinds of psychotherapy mentioned on this front being inclusive of family or marital therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and psychodynamic therapy. Towards this end, the alternative therapeutic approach that I would suggest is mentalization-based treatment. This has been described by Ronningstam (2020) as an adjustment of evidence-based psychotherapy. As the author further points out, this particular approach was at first instance developed for borderline personality disorder but “has been adjusted to treat pathological narcissism, i.e., MBT for PN” (Ronningstam, 2020, p. 33). The focus of this particular therapeutic approach happens to be enabling persons to set aside their own feelings as well as thoughts from the feelings and thoughts of persons around them. In basic terms, mentalization could be defined as the ability of a person to properly comprehend and understand feeling as well as behaviors and their association with own mental states (as well as those of others). In that regard, in the words of Drozek and Uruh (2020), mentalization-based treatment “works to strengthen patients’ capacities to mentalize in the context of attachment relationships, under the assumption that improvements in this capacity will result in functional improvement” (178).

References

Drozek, R.P. & Uruh, B.T. (2020). Mentalization-Based Treatment for Pathological Narcissism. Journal of Personality Disorders, 34, 177–203.

Ronningstam, E. (2020). Introduction to the Special Issue on Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Journal of Personality Disorders, 34, 1–5.