Reactive/Reflective

Because the children in a narcissistic family are to attend to the needs of the parents (rather than the other way around), they grow up being reactive to the needs of other people and devote much of their time and attention to reflecting on what other people want (not just their parents). While this attention to the needs of other people is often appreciated in our society, the costs for the child reared in a narcissistic family are great. Ultimately, this obsessive other-directedness is destructive to organizations (and according to David Reisman is a widely-found source of distress and alienation in contemporary societies—see his classic book called The Lonely Crowd as well as Whyte’s study of The Organization Man).

Problems with Intimacy

At an even more basic level, the child reared in a narcissistic family finds it difficult to establish intimate relationships. Many years ago, Erich Fromm (in The Art of Love) proposed that we can’t truly love another person until we can love ourselves. This proposal would seem relevant to Donaldson-Pressman and Pressman’s analysis of the intimacy problems facing the products of a narcissistic family. These men and women can’t identify their own needs and wants, hence can never easily let other people into their lives other than through superficial relationships. While their attention to each of their lover’s needs may initially seem like a pleasurable gift, there is a terrible cost associated with this one-way relationship. Neurobiologists have recently indicated that human beings (more than any other animal) are oriented to bonding (as mediated through the neurochemical oxytocin)—probably in large part because of the above-mentioned vulnerability of the new-born human child. This bonding will only be sustained if there is a sharing of responsibility and attention. The adult who comes from a narcissistic family may be unable (and unwilling) to build a mutual bonding relationship in large part because they never received bonding-attention as a child.