It’s tempting to blame the parents when a child grows up to develop NPD. However, there may be other factors that contribute to this outcome or make NPD less likely.
James F. Masterson (1926-2010), an object relations theorist and personality disorder expert, taught that three factors come together to determine whether a given client will develop a personality disorder, and which are the most likely: nature, nurture, and destiny. By this, he meant that poor parenting alone doesn’t fully explain why some children develop one set of problems, while other children in similar circumstances develop a different set. Let’s take them one by one:
Note: In this post, I use the terms “narcissist” and “narcissistic” as shorthand for NPD.
Nature
By nature, Masterson refers to innate disposition. For example, some people are simply born with more emotional empathy than others. Emotional empathy involves the ability to feel some of what others feel, whether it’s joy, sadness, or pain. If we have emotional empathy, we are more likely to feel pain instinctively when we see someone accidentally hit their finger with a hammer. If you are born with high emotional empathy, you are less likely to become a narcissist because you find hurting others very painful on a personal level.
Nurture
Nurture refers to how a person’s parents and other caregivers treat the child from birth onwards. For example, people with personality disorders do not have “whole object relations” or “object constancy,” even though they are born with the ability to have both. Whole object relations (WOR) is the ability to see oneself and other people in a realistic, stable, and relatively integrated way that simultaneously contains traits of liking and disliking. Object constancy (OC) is the ability to maintain that integrated image when one feels hurt, disappointed, angry, or physically distant from another person.
We develop WOR and OC mostly from the way our family treats us and how we observe them treating others. If they “split” and sometimes treat us as all good and sometimes as all evil, it is nearly impossible for us to learn to integrate these two conflicting views into one coherent picture of ourselves. Fortunately, these abilities can be developed as adults with a little hard work and appropriate psychotherapy. “All good” to a narcissist means perfect, special, idealized, and deserving of special treatment. “All evil” means worthless, flawed, and entitled to nothing.
Family Values: If your family has a narcissistic value system, you are more likely to adopt their standards because of a combination of the following factors:
Children want to please their parents
Young children see their parents as god-like figures who know everything
Children do not want to be scolded or punished
If parents are narcissists, they are likely to be hierarchical and highly focused on status and achievement. They are unlikely to teach or reward kindness and compassion—unless they get their narcissistic supply from appearing to be kinder than they are.
Love is conditional: In this type of family, there is no such thing as unconditional love. Unconditional love requires fully objective relationships. Instead, children of narcissistic parents feel loved and cherished when they please their parents, and unloved and unloved when they do not.
Type of narcissistic parent: All narcissists devalue or idealize their children, but some are worse parents than others. For example, malignant narcissistic parents enjoy destroying their children’s self-esteem, while grandiose and spectator narcissists may reward their children with positive attention when their accomplishments reflect well on the family.
Children with schizotypal personality disorder: If parents are particularly abusive, neglectful, and intrusive, their children may develop schizotypal personality disorder rather than narcissistic personality disorder. This means that they learn to defend against abuse by detaching from whatever is happening to them, leaving their bodies behind, and going into their minds. As a result, they tend to develop a very rich fantasy life. They are also likely to grow up with little or no basic trust in others. This can lead them to become socially avoidant and very independent. Personal safety becomes a primary concern.
Children with Covert Narcissism: If children are punished for seeking attention for themselves, or if they are not naturally aggressive, they may develop Covert Narcissism. Instead of showing themselves off to be admired, they may feel special by pleasing people they consider ideal.
Children who become dependent: Some children raised by narcissists do not qualify for this diagnosis, but because they were never encouraged to develop or trust their own opinions, they may have difficulty identifying what they truly like and dislike as they grow older. They may solve this problem by associating themselves with more assertive people who are willing to take responsibility for life decisions and tell them what to do next.
The Narcissistic Inner Voice: We all have an inner voice that is like a programmable app. It is designed to absorb our understanding of what our parents and culture reward and punish and then guide us through life. At its most effective, it rewards us with pride when we succeed or follow its value system, and punishes us with shame and guilt when we don’t. Children who grow up in narcissistic homes, even those who don’t become narcissists themselves, are still susceptible to internalizing a harsh, devaluing, perfectionistic inner voice that supports the values of their narcissistic parents.
Borderline Children of Narcissistic Parents: I have several clients who qualify for a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder who have internalized their narcissistic parents’ belittling of them. They can never satisfy their oppressive inner voice, which is modeled after their narcissistic parents’ criticisms. As a result, they have extremely low self-esteem and believe they are unworthy of love. They blame themselves for everything that goes wrong in their relationships. When they try to move forward in life, their inner voice tells them some of the following things that discourage them from trying:
You don’t deserve success
You’re doomed to fail
Don’t try
Everything that happens that’s bad is your fault
Instead of being motivated to do more by their inner voice, they lose motivation. This often leads to an attitude of “What’s the point of trying? I’ll just fail!” This leads to avoidance behavior and low self-esteem. Ultimately, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Although these clients are not inherently narcissistic, because they have internalized a narcissistic inner voice, some of these clients choose very narcissistic solutions to their problems. For example, a very intelligent man from a wealthy narcissistic family told me some version of the following. Note the combination of grandiosity and inadequacy.
- I should be the best
- Billionaires are the best
- I should be a billionaire
- I can’t be a billionaire
- I’m a loser
With this kind of inner guide, there is no inner peace or sense of satisfaction, only self-imposed pressure. One client phrased his dilemma this way: “I have only two real choices: give up, admit that I’m a total loser, and kill myself—or become a billionaire. If I become a billionaire, no one will dare mess with me.”
Fate
By “fate,” Masterson means all the unintended events that affect young children at crucial times in their development. For example, Margaret Mahler (1897-1985), a psychoanalyst and researcher in infant development, puts forward her theory of the influence of parenting during the first three years of children’s development in the book she wrote with Fred Payne and Annie Bergman, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (1975). Mahler emphasizes that very important developmental stages occur during this period that relate to the ability of young children to separate from and identify with their mothers. If the mother is not available enough during this period—for whatever reason—this will have a negative impact on the child. If someone, such as an aunt or a grandparent, steps in as a substitute for the mother, the disaster can be avoided or at least minimized.
Many things can happen that separate young children from their mothers without anyone being responsible, such as illness, war, death, divorce, postpartum depression, or even just having too many young children competing for the mother’s attention. Depending on the developmental stage at which the mother’s unavailability occurs, different outcomes can occur.
Bottom line: When doctors and theorists look at why one child develops narcissistic personality disorder while another develops a different set of problems, most do not simply blame the parents or bad genes. It is generally recognized that a combination of three things contribute to a child’s personality: the child’s innate temperament, how the child is raised, and the consequences of unintended and uncontrollable events that negatively affect the child.
