History of Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Historically, narcissism was associated with someone who had sexual perversions or excessive masturbation issues. There was a Greek myth in which a beautiful young man named Narcissus made of the Gods angry and she cursed him to fall season deeply in love with his own image; this is where Narcissism gets its name. (Wade & Tavris, 2008) Havelock Ellis, was the first ever to use the word "narcissus-like", in 1898, referring to abnormal masturbation. (Wikipedia, 2010) Sigmund Freud was the one who brought it to the for-front of the first psychiatric society. He was the first to acknowledge Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a psychiatric disorder. Narcissistic Personality Disorder was put into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, in the model known as DSM III-TR. (Research Daily, n. d. )
Etiological Differences
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is more relevant in men. Almost 75% of individuals identified as having NPD are male. You will find no cultural distinctions. The starting point of Narcissism was believed to begin in infancy, youth and early adolescence, commonly brought on by mistreatment or trauma from a parent or guardian or authority amount, but it was exacerbated by the starting point of increasing age. (Vaknin, n. d. )
Symptomotology
Symptoms include but are not limited by: grandiosity, dependence on admiration and sense of entitlement, may feel excessively important, exaggerate successes, demand compliment and admirations, may have fantasies of endless power and success, love or beauty, they feel that they are only understood by individuals who are like them, and most often think they are simply superior for some reason to everyone else, arrogant, has a feeling of entitlement, shows no empathy, will take benefit of others to make themselves better, jealous of others, but thinks many people are jealous of themselves. They established unrealistic goals, have a delicate self-esteem, are easily hurt and rejected, but appear hard minded and unemotional. Due to an actual inferiority, they overcompensate and are angry at others who have more or receive compliment, respect or attention. (Heffner, 2004) (Mayo Center Staff, 2009) (Vaknin, n. d. ) Five or even more symptoms must be present to detect someone with narcissism. (Vaknin, n. d. ) No cardinal symptoms are regarded. However, grandiosity is usually within most all conditions of NPD.
Biology of the Disorder
There are no specific regions of the brain that are associated with this disorder. There will not appear to be neurotransmitter abnormalities either.
Treatment
According to the Mayo Medical center, there are three treatments usually associated with narcissism. They include: cognitive behavioral therapy, family therapy, and group remedy. Cognitive therapy is designed to help one identify their mental poison and actions and replace them with positive ones. Family remedy brings everyone together to explore problems at home and tips to resolutions. Group remedy works with an organization of folks with the same issues and everyone discusses their issues with the desire of learning from others errors. (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2009) Medications may be recommended, nevertheless they are usually used to treat symptoms the individual may be suffering from combined with the narcissism, for example, mood disorders. (Vaknin, n. d. ) The prognosis is poor. (Vaknin, n. d. )(Heffner, 2004) It does not show up that any treatment is way better for helping those with NPD. There is no recorded remedy.
Application
Modifying cure plan for someone with NPD would be difficult. One of the alterations would include unnecessary praising for pursuing steps, taking their medication and complying with doctors purchases since they need compliment. Another modifier would be to make them feel overly important in their treatment, by listening to their thoughts and reward their ideas. Do not discourage or make them feel unimportant in their own treatment.
Research
Treatments for NPD are almost no-existent. So no research articles regarding treatments were found. However, in an article titled Refining the Construct of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Diagnostic Standards and Subtypes, research was done to increase the Narcissistic Personality disorder into sub-types.
The research was a correlation study. The information gathered was predicated on a series of questions the research workers prepared for Psychologists to allow them to answer about their specific patients. There is nothing to be handled or manipulated so that it was not an test. Nor was there one specific person studied as with the case studies. The hypothesis, there tend to be more specific subtypes for the analysis of NPD than what's listed in the MSD-IV.
The individuals were psychiatrists and psychologists with at least 5 years of post-training experience, drawn from the regular membership registers of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association. The research designed included a list of standards: patients they reported on needed to be at least 18, cannot have a MSD-IV identification, and had to have some kind of personality design that was caused by stress or dysfunction. Their patients cannot be psychotic and had to be popular to the clinician. There were a total of just one 1, 201 patients whose clinicians participated in the analysis. (Russ, Shedler, Bradly, & Westen, 2008)
The clinicians then completed a number of tasks: an application to determine demographics, diagnostic and etiological factors, the Shedler-Westen Evaluation Procedure-II, an Axis II criterion checklist, and lastly a personality disorder build rating graph. The tasks were completed and have scored, each test with its own group of values linked to a report. (Russ, Shedler, Bradly, & Westen, 2008)
It discovered that 225 patients fit the DSM-IV criteria for NPD predicated on the axis II checklist (five or even more diagnostic criteria checked), 122 of the patients fit the DSM-IV requirements based on the personality disorder ranking chart, and another 101 received the identification of NPD based on both exams. Narcissism is much more complex than the DSM-IV conditions suggest. (Russ, Shedler, Bradly, & Westen, 2008)
Since Narcissistic Personality Disorder is minimal researched personality disorder, more must be done to help earn the fight against this disease. Because NPD it is so wide, Treatment is not often effective. More research must be done to subtype the disorder with the expectations of finding some kind of alleviation treatment. Another research study could be an experiment with 100 people who were diagnosed using DSM-IV guidelines. Randomly ask them questions to decide which subtype they would fit. From that subtype, each subject matter could take part in group as well as individualized remedy and medicinal remedy because of their specific type. Placebos and the latest medication can be utilized as well as different types of therapy to see what each subject responds to best. Because the techniques and medication changes from patient to patient, maybe you will see a way to subtype and preferably correctly diagnosis and treat people experiencing narcissistic personality disorders.
