Going Beyond ‘Hurt People Hurt People’: Rethinking Narcissism and Personality Disorders

About this episode

The episode explores narcissism and personality disorders, challenging the notion that harmful behavior is solely a result of unresolved trauma.

In this episode, I speak with Peter about his work on narcissism and its place within the broader spectrum of personality disorders. He shares that when he was in graduate school for literature, he was required to participate in a course of psychotherapy—an experience that sparked his interest in the field and eventually led him to pursue clinical training. Peter explains that he became increasingly interested in personality disorders, especially after having his own personal encounter with someone exhibiting narcissistic traits. This experience helped shape his focus in this area of study. He notes that the field of psychotherapy often views narcissism through the lens of “hurt people hurt people”—the idea that harmful behavior stems from unresolved trauma. While that framework can sometimes be useful, Peter believes it may also lead people to remain in harmful dynamics for too long because they extend too much empathy and assume the behavior is unintentional. He discusses meta-analytic research on twins showing that roughly 50% of psychological traits are heritable; in some studies, narcissistic traits have been found to be up to 79% heritable. Peter emphasizes the importance…

People in this episode

Host: W Keith Sutton PsyD

Guest: Peter

Topics covered

• narcissism
• personality disorders
• psychotherapy
• heritable traits
• empathy
• harmful behavior

Keywords

• narcissism
• personality disorders
• psychotherapy
• heritable traits
• empathy
• harmful behavior
• clinical training
• meta-analytic research

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