The Traumatic Effects of Narcissistic Parenting on a Sensitive Child: A Case Analysis

Abstract

AbstractThe discipline of psychology and its sub-disciplines ofsocial, cognitive, and industrial psychology undertake toidentify taxonomies that help to identify, understand, andexplain human behavior. In consideration of the traumaticeffects of narcissistic parenting, this paper will discuss asingle case analysis of patient A. In light of this patient’supbringing, I will discuss two main personality theorists,Freud and Jung, to describe patient A’s self-reportedpersonal identity, as he understands himself. I willdescribe the milestones that helped to formulate hisbeliefs, values and behaviors, familial and interpersonalrelationships. The goal I will accomplish is to formulate adevelopmental assessment to support my theoreticalperspectives of patient A.Keywords: Psychology; Self-assessment in psychotherapy;Narcissistic parenting; Personality development;Childhood trauma

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A Case Analysis
Rivka A Edery*
Private Pracce in Psychotherapy and Counseling, USA
*Corresponding author: Rivka A Edery, MSW, LCSW, Private Pracce in Psychotherapy and Counseling, USA, Tel: (361) 704-4051; E-mail:
rebecca.edery@gmail.com
Received date: 01 January 2019; Accepted date: 10 January 2019; Published date: 17 January 2019
Copyright: © 2019 Edery RA. This is an open-access arcle distributed under the terms of the creave commons aribuon license, which
permits unrestricted use, distribuon and reproducon in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citaon: Edery RA (2019) The Traumac Eects of Narcissisc Parenng on a Sensive Child:
Abstract
The discipline of psychology and its sub-disciplines of
social, cognive, and industrial psychology undertake to
idenfy taxonomies that help to idenfy, understand, and
explain human behavior. In consideraon of the traumac
eects of narcissisc parenng, this paper will discuss a
single case analysis of paent A. In light of this paent’s
upbringing, I will discuss two main personality theorists,
Freud and Jung, to describe paent A’s self-reported
personal identy, as he understands himself. I will
describe the milestones that helped to formulate his
beliefs, values and behaviors, familial and interpersonal
relaonships. The goal I will accomplish is to formulate a
developmental assessment to support my theorecal
perspecves of paent A.
Keywords: Psychology; Self-assessment in psychotherapy;
Narcissisc parenng; Personality development;
Childhood trauma
Introducon
Over the past one hundred years or so, the subelds of
psychology; social, cognive, and industrial psychology, have
made great strides in helping us understand that
notwithstanding our similaries, each person is unique. This
uniqueness is not just a aery or cliche, but based on
personality development, heredity, milestones, family, culture
and society in which people are raised and inuenced by.
Seeking to understand Paent A and the scope on his
personality (his unique psychological forces) including his
historical paerns of interpersonal interacons, is best
understood in a social context. The rst, primive social
context is childhood, specically the rst ve years of
development. Paent A described himself as being a friendly,
agreeable, playful and conscienous child. He also stated that
because of the intense cold and fearful childhood
environment, he defended himself by being overly responsive,
tolerant of abusive language and behavior, accommodang
and highly fearful [1-3].
From speech, percepon, and interpersonal interacons
with his primary caregivers, he had to protect himself and
cope with early childhood trauma. Given the narcissisc and
personality disorders of his primary caregivers, his main
objecve was to survive being a used child. Instead of having
his basic needs met, his parents used him to sasfy their needs
and every whim. Oen met with frightening, intense, sudden
rage, overt sexual, physical, emoonal and mental abuse, he
developed a coping orientaon, to include cognive processes,
both conscious and non-conscious.
Sigmund Freud
Freud is heralded as the most inuenal personality
theorist. He envisioned and devised an intriguing model of
developmental stages, drives and psychic structures. As a
highly gied observer of human behavior, the unconscious
aspect of his complicated explanaons of personality have
helped many people understand human behavior.
According to Freud, the child develops a superego around
the age of ve years old. This superego is responsible for
providing the person with an understanding of what is
acceptable in society and urges the person to value moral and
ethical decisions. The ego mediates between the id and the
superego and indeed protects the conscious mind from 'baser'
sexual and aggressive urges through defense mechanisms and
repression. Thus, a healthy ego enables a person to be raonal
and logical as well as establish boundaries for the id and
superego.
In his introducing the unconscious, a hidden, buried,
mysterious underground, where everything seems to take
place, Freud made the study of human beings and personality,
truly fascinang. His work helps the clinician to see how some
trauma experiences and memories become repressed and
buried, as part of the whole system of defenses, as a survivor’s
toolbox. Specically, and because of the terrible physical,
emoonal abuse and neglect, Paent A became very well-
defended, resistant and fearful in order to protect himself. He
was faced with limitaons due to the ongoing trauma. Ulizing
Case Analysis
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DOI: 10.21767/1791-809X.1000626
Health Science Journal
ISSN 1791-809X Vol.13 No.1:626
2019
© Copyright iMedPub | This article is available from: www.hsj.gr 1
The Traumac Eects of Narcissisc Parenng on a Sensive Child:
A Case Analysis. Health Sci J Vol.13.No.1:626.

Freud’s explanaon of unconscious principles and concepts,
allowed him to explore what he had repressed: how he
originally formulated beliefs, values, behaviors, familial and
interpersonal relaonships, with a negave, frightening spin.
In the context of Paent A’s traumac history, his own
anxiees and defenses were a safeguard against srring up the
pot of emoons inside of himself. He sought to have conscious
contact with his unconscious and with consistent follow
through with the process, was slowly able to integrate his
thoughts and feelings. This began an internal change from
avoiding himself, to responding and simply be with those
feelings.
Paent A came to see me at the age of 35 years old. He
stated that he became more skilled and willing to turn inward
and to face those fears and anxiees he had once been so
defended against. In listening to the voice of his unconscious,
he saw the power of how it revealed his personal blockages.
This connecon to his un-conscious, was very necessary to his
process of trauma recovery. One’s stability is parcularly
challenged when the traumac event has been done
deliberately. Parcularly severe is the sexual, physical, or
psychological abuse by caregivers, including harmful forms of
neglect. Surviving such trauma is not an arena which one can,
or should, handle alone. It calls for the knowledgeable and
compassionate pracce by a trained professional who, through
a developed relaonship with the client, will be able to
skillfully take him/her back through the painful experience, for
healing [4].
Our natural inclinaon is to shield ourselves from pain, and
therefore psychological damage limits the expression of life
and depression can become chronic. Paent A described not
having any support during his upbringing and was le feeling
very alone. One aspect of his personality that helped him
cope, was to be very agreeable, or what some people call a
“people-pleaser”. A tenet of Freud is that healing from trauma
will not happen unl the person has worked through the
experience. Repressed traumac experiences oen cause
problems later and in varying forms. The frightening part of
processing traumac events is the re-opening of doors to
terrible places, to facilitate recovery from the original event(s).
Within the context of a holding relaonship that is safe,
compassionate and gentle, a survivor can acknowledge what
happened, that he survived and that he is able to live a
meaningful life.
In summaon of his total personality as conceived by Freud,
the paent described his three major systems of his mind, the
id, the ego and the superego, as being at odds with each other.
The purpose of the transacons between these three major
systems, is to fulll his basic needs and desires. Due to the
severe early childhood he endured and survived, the three
systems of personality were at odds. He felt frightened,
defended, dissased, and lonely. This strongly movated him
to increase self-ecacy, as he single-handedly pursued his
educaon, career and built a healthy, solid, very producve
life. At this point in his life, these three systems form a unied
and harmonious organizaon, fueling co-operave, ecient
and sasfying transacons with his environment.
As part of his personal growth process, we co-created an
intervenon plan which included these components: 1) A
sucient and healthy support network; 2) A wide range of
eecve recovery tools; 3) An understanding that recovery
calls for a signicant amount of paence, compassion for self,
me and energy; 4) A willingness to approach oneself with
great sensivity and honesty concerning the realies of the
traumac events. In order to protect oneself from being
overwhelmed, one must be willing to consult and learn from
safe, trusted people [4].
Carl Jung
Jung asserted that there was so much more to Freud’s
theory, to include many myscal elements. For example, the
collecve unconscious common by people across generaons,
archetypes of unconscious symbols and a personality typology
based on four funcons of the mind-thinking, feeling,
sensaon and intuion. Carl Jung’s view of personality was
based on his general idea about the structure and
development of the human mind, categorized into the
conscious or unconscious mind. To Jung, the conscious mind
was one, supercial layer. Beneath this layer exists the more
archaic layers, parallel to the dierent developmental stages of
the human mind. Jung understood the archaic layers as the
collecve unconscious, the container for what he termed
“archetypes”. He dened archetypes as saved traces of archaic
ways of represenng the world, world representaons
preserved from our human predecessors [5].
In addion to consciousness and the collecve unconscious,
Jung claimed that a third layer of the mind, the personal
unconscious, was in between the conscious and collecve
unconscious layers. He posited that the personal unconscious
characterizes a structural eld of mind, containing unconscious
content, formed from the individual’s personal life process.
The signicance of Jung’s theorecal model is the relaonship
between the conscious and unconscious, both personally and
collecvely, as a unity of opposites. Jung determined the
unconscious as execung a compensatory funcon in relaon
to consciousness [5].
Man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites-
day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good
and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the
other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a
baleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it
were not so, existence would come to an end.
Paent A described himself as a highly sensive, intuive,
introverted, and deep thinker, with a fervent passion for the
spiritual element in life. A vibrant internal world, heightened
creavity, and intrigue with the collecve unconscious, are the
foundaon of his personality. His process over his adult life,
has been to carefully consider the concepts presented by Jung,
integrang them with his own experiences, beliefs, cultural
background, and personality. These ancient, me-tested
principles have become part of his personal spiritual pracce
[6].
Health Science Journal
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2019
2This article is available from: www.hsj.gr

Elsewhere, Jung typied this fundamental atude of human
life, by wring: “everything human is relave, because
everything rests on an inner polarity; for everything is a
phenomenon of energy. Energy necessarily depends on a pre-
exisng polarity, without which there could be no energy.
There must always be high and low, hot and cold, etc., so that
the equilibrang process-which is energy-can take place.”
Paent A has taken into account these characteriscs of
human life, living in accordance with his true nature, which
means reecng the inevitability of having both polaries
simultaneously present in his life. While his core personality
was originally shaped by terrible emoonal events, the Jungian
approach to personality, has allowed him to acknowledge his
internal losses and gains, via a spiritual perspecve [7-11].
A common theme in exploring his personality, in
understanding its development, and in thoughully seeking
personality growth, was to re-experience the past as the
helpless, terried person he was at the me. Along with this, is
the urge to slam the door on the event and with it, the
trapped memories and buried emoons. In honoring his
intuive, spiritual self, it took him beyond an identy of
trauma survivor simply coping in life, to developing a
personality that is authenc to him. What Paent A
discovered, is that by exploring and honoring an internal
spiritual systemic process (the realm of the unconscious), he
had begun to discover his personal roadblocks, and over me,
to either remove them completely, or serenely walk around
them, accepng his limitaons. He also uncovered his
strengths, gis and talents, all of which were once buried
along with his long-forgoen history of trauma. Buried
“secrets”, wounds, and gis all keep a person blocked
emoonally and creavely [7].
Conclusion
In this paper, I have shown the key factors that shaped
Paent A’s personality, involving early childhood trauma,
which included great diculty with parent-child problems in
his family of origin. With parents who exhibited mulple and
serious psychological problems, his rst ve years were shaped
by coping mechanisms, in order to survive the cold, rejecng,
narcissisc abusive environment. With parents’ personalies
that were abnormal, he idened through a so-called
existenal criterion that was a reecon of their parenng
styles: authoritarian, rejecng, and traumac to him as a child.
These parenng styles directly inuenced the formaon of his
personality type, to include introversion, kindness,
agreeableness and profound empathy for the mentally ill.
Unfortunately, high anxiety, marked by periods of intense
loneliness and depression, has been a part of his personality
development. These aspects of his personality, the “night and
day” of Jung’s approach, is what Paent A connues to
idenfy through existenal criteria. The professional help he
successfully received, helped to orient him to receiving outside
help, and in “borrowing” his therapist’s ego, he strengthened
his own. As a personality type oriented to be strictly in
compliance with other’s needs, moods, behaviors and
requirements, Paent A reports that he learned a great deal
about both the eect of personality, and the ability to heal,
grow and change.
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Health Science Journal
ISSN 1791-809X Vol.13 No.1:626
2019
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