Enter Ghosts: The Loss of Intersubjectivity in Clinical Work With Adult Children of Pathological Narcissists

This paper examines the relationship between narcissism and intersubjectivity through the lens of clinical work with adult children of pathologically narcissistic parents. Exposure to parental narcissistic pathology constitutes cumulative relational trauma, which subverts the development of intersubjective relating capacities in the developing child. This trauma is inherited and bequeathed intergenerationally. The paper focuses on the interpersonal dynamics of narcissism, which are conceptualized as “the pathological narcissist's relational system,” describing the need to establish complementarity in relationships through coercive projective processes, and through the adoption of the “complementary moral defense.” Clinical material highlights the loss of intersubjective functioning typical of the relationships formed by adult children of pathological narcissists, and the inevitability of episodes of mutual dissociation in analytic work with these patients.