Narcissist Through Outside The Room

The frame of treatment is one of the key words in psychoanalytic psychotherapies. Contemporary psychoanalytic schools show a deep respect for the patient’s unique subjectivity regardless of the severity of the condition, and this respect alone has a tremendous psychotherapeutic value. Many patients feel deeply understood perhaps for the first time and only in the therapy room. However, therapists encounter pathological personalities in their daily life, outside of the frame of treatment, too, and witness the highly destructive impact of personality pathologies, particularly narcissistic ones, on other people and the society. In this regard, the circumstances in the therapy room and the external world are quite different. In the room, the therapist does not judge the client, not claim to “guide” them, not sympathize with the narcissist’s victims, nor address their destructive behaviors directly. In the eyes of the therapist, no matter how much harm they caused to others, they are the victims who are not fully settled in the real world as their psychological birth has been thwarted. Hence, they cannot even recognize the severe damage they inflict on others. The therapist focuses on this aspect, trying to hear the silent cry for help behind the contemptuous glare of the narcissist. However, outside the room, observing the heavy damage caused by other narcissists who are not their patients does affect the therapists. Even though they may not react as harshly as others may, they now empathize and even sympathize with the narcissist’s victims