As a clinician, I am hoping to enlighten my lay and professional readers from a compassionate and objective perspective.
Narcissism.
It seems like you can’t turn on the television without running into someone (whether it be a character, a politician or celebrity) with narcissistic tendencies.
But what about real life?
How can you tell whether or not someone is a bit selfish or if they are displaying narcissistic tendencies? And what are you supposed to do in that situation?
Parents need to understand the transition in men – from normal to pathological narcissism – early in their child’s development.
This book aims to help you (a casual reader or someone working in the field) identify and deal with narcissists in everyday life.
So, I really was intrigued by this concept.
It feels like the word “narcissist” is thrown around by so many people for every little infraction that I was extremely curious what the actual, diagnosed condition entails.
They don’t understand why others don’t always view them as importantly or as favorably as they view themselves.
And this book did not disappoint there – it provided an extremely detailed overview and many examples of behavior typical to narcissists.
However, as someone who is more of a casual reader, though who has read some papers in this field (and many more papers in my actual field), this book was a bit…difficult to get into.
I think it was mainly because most of the book read like a publishable paper – complete with highly specific jargon and a clinician’s eye to the issue.
This book goes into some detail about raising children without narcissistic tendencies, but not as much as I would have hoped.
Some Thoughts on How Not to Raise a Narcissist…
2. Set reasonable limits on your child’s behavior during his first three years.
I was curious about specific activities or specific strategies to employ, but for the most part (like the quote above), things seemed a little up in the air (i.e. what exactly is a reasonable limit?).
The end of the book goes into specific case studies of clients that the author has worked with. I was really excited to start that section, only it didn’t pan out the way I expected.
The author does a lot of telling in this book. It makes sense that her default mode of communicating her take on narcissism and her case-studies is telling, since she’s the sole authority on the matter.
But telling takes away a lot of the enjoyment of reading a story, and it prevents me from really sinking in and enjoying the tale. In addition, the tone of the book come off as cold at times.
After knowing him for several months, I decided Carver was not a full-fledged narcissist but belonged somewhere on the spectrum. He was seemingly grateful that I was his therapist and usually came on time…
I think if the tone was less authoritarian, less technical and less clinical, I would have loved this book.
I feel like this would work really nicely as a pocket-book for someone in the field. It’s an absolutely fascinating subject, but without injecting emotion and empathy towards the subjects, it was too much of a textbook for me to actively enjoy.
I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Interested in this one from Laurie Hollman? Buy it here: Amazon
Miranda Reads 