Whatever mode of therapy you’re using, it’s beneficial to keep influencing clients to install missing capacities in their personalities and take responsibility for problems stemming from maladaptive personality traits. It’s always a good idea to help people be more flexible, adaptive, and appropriate. This is both especially difficult and crucially important with personality disorders.
In the 57 years I’ve been studying psychology there have been three schools of thought about where psycho/emotional/social suffering comes from—nurture, trauma, and nature.
An Integral understanding of personality disorders, and how they fit into the mass formation distortions that currently seem to be happening everywhere.
Joseph Campbell studied 114 cultures to find common mythic themes, and a central one was the Hero’s journey—how people are challenged, meet challenges, and are transformed by their struggles. We are on different Hero’s Journeys all the time.
One of my favorite definitions of love is to be at-one-with. Developmentally, when it comes to self-love, we progress through stages.
Narcissism is characterized by self-absorption, self-centeredness, the objectification of others, and a constant hunger for attention and praise—narcissistic supply. People with pathological narcissism—seeing others as merely objects for gratification—can also hunger to enjoy the suffering of others. This is where narcissism sinks into psychopathy.
Narcissism is characterized by self-absorption, self-centeredness, the objectification of others, and a constant hunger for attention and praise—narcissistic supply. People with pathological narcissism—seeing others as merely objects for gratification—can also hunger to enjoy the suffering of others. This is where narcissism sinks into psychopathy.
An Integral understanding looks for deeper dynamics and practical approaches to identifying and addressing narcissism and gaslighting, and positions these problems as developmental challenges for everyone concerned—those dealing with narcissism as well as those suffering from narcissistic wounds.
Suicide has been in existence as long as self-aware consciousness has been in existence. The gift of self-aware consciousness included the capacity for humans to anticipate and understand the inevitability of their own deaths, and all gifts come with a price.
I’ve looked with interest at the rise of coaching as a discipline over the last twenty-five years. I love the movement and admire all the men and women who are called to help others in their lives. People are by nature social, and everything we do, any developmental progress we make, involves intimate connections with other people, and we all do better with wise guidance.