I've dealt with a few people having a narcissistic personality trait / disorder.For me it's interesting to see the defense pattern they adopt through rationalization to defend their self-image and to avoid changing their beliefs (confirmation bias). The pattern seems to be almost identical in the various subjects.My question is: could be functional to these subjects to read a book which tries to change their beliefs? At least could it be used to speed-up the therapy?It could be described as follow:The subject feels ashamed, weak or bad on some area. He develops the belief to be superior to others on another area (strong, very rational).The subject feel a strong need to defend this superiority. Any attempt to change his belief is perceived as an aggression.The strategy of defense include: use of cognitive distortion to confirm his belief, discrediting of the other idea, personal offence or provocation, getting annoyed and emotional, focusing on everything but his error / responsibility / distorted beliefThe subject usually raise the level of the argument in an emotional way. He appears completely stubborn or use verbal strategy to obstacle the interlocutor. He appeals to any formal argumentative error.The subject claim to be unique and use typical excuses connected to relativism like: why should I change?. But actually he use relativism only when it comes to be useful to justify his own belief. Otherwise his beliefs appears very absolute and dichotomic.Is it correct to suppose that million of narcissists share the same defensive pattern? Has it been already studied?
Can reading [self-help] books aid in therapeutic treatment of the narcissistic rationalization pattern?
clinical psychology