You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Years ago, when working for the United States federal government, I worked in a department headed by a colleague who had been promoted out of the lab, despite a paucity of executive experience. She was highly intelligent, passionate about science, and fervently devoted to the organization and its staff. She began to surround herself with a growing cadre of adherents, enlarging and redecorating the executive suite to accommodate them. Shortly into her term, she bought a new Mercedes with the acronym of our organization on vanity plates, front and back.
During her tenure, staff and budgetary reductions resulted in a severe decline in productivity. Our director did not understand why the staff were stressed and why they thought things were so bad. In an effort to show leadership and “save” the organization, she convened a blue-ribbon panel charged with producing a report that would attest to our achievements and their scientific importance. She was sure that the praise would persuade upper management to restore funding. She flushed as she convened the proceedings in a fancy conference centre with invited press coverage. She triumphantly touted our prominence among the “finest labs in the United States public self-service.” As a member of the United States Public Health Service, I duly noticed the parapraxis.
The decline of the research program preceded my psychoanalytic training and current career as an organizational consultant. Yet I am still mystified by our inability to sway the director and her inability to change the course of the organization's decline. What would Joan Lachkar have said to our narcissistic executive? Perhaps, with her insight, the story might have come out differently.
However, though there are kernels of theoretical veracity as well as an occasional clinical nugget in How to Talk to a Narcissist, sifting through the entire book is, in my view, ultimately disappointing. This conclusion is based on three problems: taxonomy, technique, and tendentiou