How Narcissistic Mother Subverts Her Child’s Separation: 4 Views

Narcissistic parents subvert the child’s separation because it is an internal object whose loss is anxiogenic.

Theories supported by studies:

Kohut (1977): child’s self primary dimensions are grandiose exhibitionism and idealization. The former requires parental empathic mirroring, the latter behavioral role modelling.

Consistent parental support should alternate with specific, intermittent, and nontraumatic optimal frustrations (no parental guidance or affirmation).

These mini-frustrations modulate the child’s grandiosity and render it grounded in reality and aid the internalization of parental ideals.

Overparenting and permissiveness and over-responsiveness (indulgence) no frustration, no mitigation of the grandiose self, and no separation of self from the parents.

Under-parenting, nonresponsive, or rejecting no idealized image of parent and of self to internalize. Dependence on interpersonal feedback in a fragile self.

Kernberg (1975): parental coldness, strictness, hostility, harshness, unloving, covertly aggressive cause defensive reaction to pathological organization of the self (beliefs about the self), ideal self (idealized image of self), and ideal object (idealized image of parent). There is no ideal object to internalize (no stable core of self-regard).

Narcissistic children “often occupy a pivotal point in their family structure, such as being the only child, or the only ‘brilliant’ child, or the one who is supposed to fulfill family aspirations”

Such expectations foster a chronic refuge of superiority and lifelong inflated, illusory worth.

Kernberg: parental coldness+extremely high expectations+harsh demands=narcissistic self

Object relations: narcissism result of parent’s strategic use of the child to fulfill their own ambitions, realize dreams and fantasies.

Rothstein (1979): motivational component. Parental behavior is driven by two, sometimes competing motive systems: self-focused (how does child meet my needs) and child-focused (how am I meeting my child’s needs).

Empathic systems tips toward the child-focused. Emphasis on self-focus leads to narcissistic child.

In self-focus, parental investment conditioned on child’s performance up to parental standards. Child’s narcissism is a defensive response or fixation to objectifying parenting that is aimed at catering to the parent’s emotional needs and not to the nurturance of the child.

Karen Horney (1939):

“Parents who transfer their own ambitions to the child … develop in the child the feeling that he is loved for imaginary qualities rather than for his true self”

So, the child discards the true self in favor of a parent-like idealized false self (the real parent is not available to be idealized). The narcissistic self is a manifestation of the attempt to seek approval from an idealized object.

Millon’s social learning (1981): children learn about themselves and others (mentalization) from their parents’s behaviors. Permissive, indulgent parents who set few rules, limitations, and boundaries teach the child that it is superior and entitled.

“Children that have been exposed repeatedly to acquiescent and indulgent parents will expect comparable treatment from others, and they learn to employ the presumptuous and demanding strategies that quickly elicited favored reactions … from their parents”.

Such parental behaviors models for the child that others are beneath it, weak, contemptible, and manipulable and these beliefs form the narcissist’s interpersonal core (IWM). The parents’s boundless worshipful adoration is information that the child uses to construct a narcissistic view of both self and others.

Parenting dimensions: warmth, monitoring, psychological control

Warmth: emotional and material support, nurturance, involvement, acceptance, child-centredness, and responsiveness.

Monitoring: keeping track of child’s whereabouts, actions, and social circle.

Psychological control: intrusive guilt-tripping, manipulation via withdrawal of love, possessiveness, overprotectiveness, disappointment and shame in the child.

Parenting styles (Baumrind, 1971): authoritative (high warmth, high monitoring, low psychological control); authoritarian (low warmth, high rest), permissive (high warmth, low rest). (Maccoby and Martin, 1983): neglectful (all low, absentee parenting).

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