Books and Films

„The Narcissist in Your Life” by Julie L. Hall who grew up in a narcissistic family. The author is now helping clients recover from toxic relationships with daffodils. A very quick-to-read description of life in narcissistic families. Based on real stories. What if your parents or one of them is a narcissist? How to heal, how to forgive? Psychotherapists recommend this book to people who grew up with a narcissistic mother or narcissistic father. „Reading this book, I felt as if someone had described how I felt as a child. It was interesting to realize that those experiences were something that no child should have to experience. As a child, I adapted to the narcissistic environment, left my desires aside and did everything to satisfy the narcissists’ wishes – to survive as a child. It’s an eye-opener. Most importantly, the book offers solutions to the problem: the book describes how grown-up children deal with narcissistic parents. They either cut off communication with their parents or set clear boundaries. „This book changed my life. Thanks to my psychotherapist for recommending this book.” – says the founder of this charity Vidmante Jurgaityte.

„Drama of a Gifted Child” by Alice Miller. After reading the book, I realized that a big early-life trauma could be an explanation of why a person is very intelligent or talented. The book describes the talented personalities of painter Chaïm Soutine and philosopher Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s secret of famous philosophy is traumatising abuse by his mother, grandmother, and aunts. As a result, in his philosophy, a woman always has a negative image, such as a witch. The hardest thing for Nietzsche was to see the hypocrisy. The women in his family were very pious. They went to church on weekends and emphasized that everyone should love a stranger as their neighbour, while not loving their child, grandson, or nephew – Nietzsche. Surprisingly, Nietzsche did not criticize his female relatives. Instead, he criticized morality in general, and this is the core of his philosophy. Later, the Nazis used Nietzsche’s philosophy to do evil on a global scale… Analogously, children who experience parental abuse often do not blame their parents. Because children fear that afterwards, society will perceive them as „badly educated.” As a result, innocent abused children get used to feeling guilty, and that feeling follows them through life when they attract toxic friendships. The author of the book emphasizes the importance of this book: „My work with Nietzsche’s material made me realize that society’s ignorance about children’s traumas poses a great danger to humanity.”

„The Narcissist Test. How to spot outsized egos … and the surprising things we can learn from them” by Dr Craig Malkin. This book compares and contrasts healthy and unhealthy narcissism. It explains that every single person falls somewhere in the narcissism spectrum, which scales from 1 to 10. The healthiest way is to be in the middle of the spectrum, (score 4-6), to be a bit selfless, i.e. to care about others while remembering your needs. The least healthy is to be absolutely selfless (score 1-2) or totally arrogant (very right on the spectrum, score 9-10). The book discusses the roots of unhealthy narcissism which is improper parenting techniques. Healthy narcissism-promoting parenting styles are described so parents and teachers would greatly benefit from this book if they want to raise healthy self-importance having the new generation.