A Review of Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation

Abstract

H einz Kohut taught us to understand ourselves as narcissists, all, more or less, vulnerable to fragmentation depending on our early relational luck and later selfobject resources. Thinking developmentally, he stretched the reach of our empathic grasp, and thus of psychoanalysis, to include treatment of many sufferers1 previously excluded as unanalyzable. Now comes Daniel Shaw (2014), writing in his own firm voice but with resonances also from Ferenczi, Suttie, Balint, Fairbairn, Loewald, and Winnicott,2 describing the narcissist run amok. He tells us that, when despotic parents, cult leaders, totalitarians in political systems, or authoritarians in psychoanalytic institutes wreak their havoc, the next generation will need our care and understanding in ways quite specific to these “relational systems of subjugation.” This book belongs on my shelf between Leonard Shengold’s Soul Murder (Shengold, 1989) and Bernard Brandchaft’s pathological accommodation work (Brandchaft, Doctors, and Sorter, 2010). To these irreplaceable resources, Shaw adds not only his extensive studies of the precise mechanisms of soul destruction in cults and cult-like groups (such as allegedly therapeutic cults and the large group awareness trainings