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Narcissists are like young children in that they over rely on other adults for validation and support.

Heinz Kohut's treatment for NPD focuses on helping narcissists mature and need less external validation.

The object relations treatment for NPD focuses more on attaining whole object relations than on self-objects.

All humans are born helpless. We depend on our caregivers for everything from soothing us, to feeding us, to making sure we are safe. If we are not taken care of by other humans, we die.

As we develop during childhood and our teens, we gradually start to take over the functions that our caregivers do for us. Eventually, if we are healthy, we learn how to dress ourselves, tell time, read, learn right from wrong, make friends, and so on. We learn to soothe ourselves through internalizing our experiences of being soothed.

What About Our Self-Image?

Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929), a noted sociologist, introduced the concept of “The Looking Glass Self.” He theorized that one of the ways we form a sense of who we are is by internalizing the reactions that we believe other people have towards us. Other people act like a mirror in which we can see ourselves (1902).

Heinz Kohut (1913–1981), the brilliant Austrian American psychiatrist who revolutionized the treatment of narcissistic personality disorder, introduced the term “self-object” to describe how humans use other people as extensions of themselves to manage internal and external problems. If we look at children, we can see that they use their caregivers as self-objects (1971, 1977).

Kohut’s work gave birth to modern Self Psychology, one of the two main treatments for NPD. (The other is Object Relations).

Even when children are able to physically take care........

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