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In this article we suggest that current controversies around the psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism, omnipotence, specialness, and so forth derive from reliance on a single-track developmental model. A single-track model, used implicitly or explicitly by almost all psychoanalytic theorists, posits that normal infants and children function in ways that would be considered pathological in later life. This way of thinking is contradicted by modern infant and developmental research. Additionally, it contradicts common-sense experience and is, therefore, not a useful model for parenting. On the other hand, Freud and many other writers also posited a dual-track model, which simultaneously allows for both healthy and pathological choices throughout life. In this article, we describe some of the ways in which a dual-track model, which we have elaborated astwo systems of self-regulation, can be usefully applied to theory, technique, and applications with all those involved with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Richard Wagner was a genius. About this there is little doubt among musicians and musicologists. It is also a judgment with which Wagner, himself, would have readily concurred. There was also little doubt among those who knew him that he was a scoundrel. As a genius, he felt entitled. The two-dimensionality of his character stands in sharp contrast to the complex, three-dimensional characters that populate his operas. However, his evil characters are all Jews, and his anti-Semitism reigned supreme in his life and art. His creativity died with him, but his grandiosity, entitlement, and anti-Semitism metastasized to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and found a welcome home with Adolf Hitler. In this article, I describe Wagner’s early life, his near-death experience shortly after he was born, his recollections of his cold mother, his unclear paternity, and his self-aggrandizing autobiography in which he depicted himself as having had the childhood and parents that he felt would have befit the extraordinarily creative person he considered himself to be. Nevertheless, his impact on the musical world was revolutionary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that grandiosity, on both the individual and the collective level, is in part a response to dramatic cultural changes, particularly the solidification of neoliberalism in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which led to vast inequalities in income and to the increasing privatization of formerly public goods and services. Along with the income inequalities that have produced a lot of parental anxiety about their and their children’s class status, neoliberal practices have encouraged a denial of dependence and interdependence. This, in turn, has produced fragile self-states marked by, for example, oscillations between grandiosity and self-deprecation. The article looks first at the kinds of problematic relational dynamics that ensue from class inequalities and then goes on to explore connections between neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and narcissistic self-states. I suggest that manifestations of omnipotent grandiosity on both the individual and large-group levels are not reassertions of early states but, rather, are breakdown products of large-group and small-group relational failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not uncommon for analysts to feel envy toward patients who have achieved significant rewards or acclaim for their work. Highly successful individuals in all fields often display both narcissistic and manic qualities. Analysts all too often destructively exaggerate these qualities into the realm of the diagnosed pathological as one way of dealing with this envy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the therapeutic process of a patient thought to be suffering from an idealistic perfectionism. After extensive research on topics of specialness, indulgence, and grandiosity, concepts such as Kernberg’s vision of narcissistic disorder and Kohut’s vision of self-disorder are used to assess the patient’s progress in treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins with Freud’s struggles in dealing with the concept of transference. His struggles were particularly acute with certain types of narcissistic patients. The view presented is that Freud, in some ways, was prototypic of the type of struggles that contemporary analysts have in allowing transference manifestations to effloresce. Kohut is seen as advancing the struggle and setting a new boundary for analyzability that allowed analysts to begin to move into the patient’s world. Bach, Winnicott, Bion, and Klein are then pictured as moving the boundary in a manner that allowed for a greater range of patients to survive in the analytic situation. The difficulties in allowing the transference, and particularly narcissistic and fragmentary transferences, to unfold are discussed in the light of several clinical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]