“We all need a healthy amount of narcissism,” says licensed psychotherapist Jay Reid. To avoid being felled by any of life’s inevitable assaults on our self-esteem, there needs to be a sense that your individual worth is independent from external realities and beliefs, the therapist explains. But, when the feeling of I-am-important veers into the territory of pathological narcissism, the ground becomes fertile for narcissistic abuse.
According to Reid, this “extreme” form of narcissism conceals a fragile sense of self-worth, leaving the person affected on a quest for validation. In pursuit of this, the narcissist typically “feels entitled” to demand that others “reflect back their [perceived] self-importance”. Combined with the defining absence of genuine empathy, Reid cautions that unaddressed parental narcissism “bodes poorly” for the children who grow up under its auspices.
