The Narcissistic / Borderline Couple Quotes

“Being empathic by reaffirming the patients’ subjective experiences alone does not distinguish between true empathic resonance and collusion.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“The main differences between a self-psychological approach and an object-relational one with respect to deficits is that in self-psychology one strives to understand the subjective experience of the patient, putting aside one’s own preconceptions, whereas in object relations the therapist addresses the patient’s distortions and misperceptions at face value.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“Masterson, more than any other author, has clarified for us that the narcissist needs an appeal to intellectualization and seems to respond to interpretation and explanation. Masterson felt that the borderline, in contrast, responds more favorably to confrontation. While the narcissist can take confrontation to mean a personal attack or injury to the integrity of the self, the borderline tends to experience a direct statement as involvement and caring. In narcissistic and borderline pathogenesis, both approaches are important and may elicit significant responses.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“Borderline patients need to know that making contact is the healthy part of them; it is not their needs that make others turn away but their uncontrollable demands. In conjoint treatment, the process is to wean patients from blaming and attacking defenses and demanding behaviors (the infantile part of themselves), and slowly enable them to contain their own anxieties by facing their internal deficits. The therapist might say, “If you act like a baby then you will get treated like one and end up feeling more abandoned and left out.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“Feeling that we do not appreciate them or that we are being too critical, narcissists respond with hurt feelings. The borderline, in contrast, may project onto us that we are not doing enough. The borderline wants the quick fix and often tries to make us feel ashamed and embarrassed for having needs of our own (payment, boundaries, schedules.) This is particularly important because many borderlines suffer from alexithymia (are split off from their feelings) and are not aware of what they are trying to express.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“Both borderlines and narcissists want the quick fix, since neither realizes that getting things quickly and impulsively can actually detract from their value, thereby depriving the couple even further. Borderlines in the depressive position have a particularly hard time giving up their false selves and starting to reveal their true feelings. They are too busy trying to make things look all right. Narcissists find it difficult to wean themselves from those who gratify them with immediate excitement and approval.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“Borderlines, who are inclined towards feeling left out and undeserving, tend to identify with the withdrawal. Because of their susceptibility to the projections of others, borderlines do not recognize withdrawal as a maladaptive process. The identification is usually with a split-off aspect of the self that is shrouded in confusion.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“The archaic injury is a term Kohut (1971, 1977) used to refer to the child’s earliest emotional injury or narcissistic vulnerability, be it the birth of a sibling, an unattuned parent, or a parent giving excessive attention to one child over another. To punctuate the importance of continually reminding couples of the role their archaic injury plays in their relationship, I devised a new concept called the “V-spot,” an area of extreme vulnerability that gets aroused when one’s partner hits an emotional raw spot. In psychoanalytic terms it is the seat of the archaic injury, the epicenter of emotional sensitivity It is a product of early trauma that affects all relationships and often creates inappropriate and disproportionate reactions.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“The psychological tragedy is that when one turns to others for constant recognition, validation, and approval, one cannot hold onto one’s own experiences as measurements of success emanating from external reality”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly how important it is for the therapist to understand the difference between what approval means for the narcissist and what approval means for the borderline. Narcissists need approval to validate the nascent self, to prove they are really talented and brilliant. They require constant validation and mirroring responses from self objects in order to prove their sense of specialness. The borderline, on the other hand, is trying to prove he exists as an entity in itself. Because borderlines have difficulty relying on their perceptual apparatus or their experiences, they need the other to “bear testimony.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“No one has the right to make you feel like a nothing, but if there is an internal part of you that feels like a nothing, then you are more inclined to identify with the negativity your partner projects onto you.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“There are those individuals who cannot feel a semblance of aliveness unless they are fused/bonded to another in a maladaptive attachment. In addition, the pain is familiar. It is what the child got used to. Another reason is that the disparaging partner who is cruel and sadistic can also be loving and kind. This fuels the already existing confusion and the fantasy that “If I behave, I will be loved.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy

“The bitter paradox is that the borderline is never needy enough and the narcissist is never narcissistic enough for each to get their “real” needs met.”
― Joan Lachkar, The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy