Saturday, January 18, 2020

The Art of Listening or Not Listening, How to Talk to a Narcissist

Welcome to the Art of Listening!
Today we live in a narcissistic society. Everything is me, me, me! Everyone wants their voices to be heard. We all want to talk, but very few want to listen. As analysts, we listen beyond the norm, or what Theodore Reik refers to as “listening with the ‘third ear.’” So how do we listen? Or not listen. Since writing my first edition of How to Talk to a Narcissist, I have expanded the narcissistic personality into eight different types of narcissists. Like many other disorders they are not clear and concise entities and do seep over into other personality disorders. Then I started to ask now that we have all these variations how do we “talk” to them.? Do we just keep them in a chapter and let them fight among themselves?  After writing the 2nd edition I realized that talking is not enough. Someone has to “listen.”  But what do we listen to or listen for? As almost every couple therapist can attest to most of time they are about complaints! The narcissist will complain about everything nothing is good enough or perfect enough, whereas the borderline will complain about being attacked. In this 2nd edition I have expanded beyond how to “talk: to describe eight different way to listen e.g., “objective listening,” “subjective listening,” listening with the third ear” (beyond the words), when “not to listen” (when person is evacuating). The beauty of analytic work is the process of sorting out and weighing the real from the not real, the objective from the subjective, and the reality-based from the intersubjective.'
How to Talk to a Narcissist, 2nd Edition
The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple
Common Complaints that Bring Couples into Treatment
The Disappearing Male
View More Lachkar Books, Amazon.com

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