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Ge, Sabrina Yue Jia

University of British Columbia

Background: Several decades of theory suggest that pathological narcissism may limit psychotherapy success, but empirical evidence for such theories is limited and mixed. In addition, despite theoretical and empirical associations between pathological narcissism and perfectionism, no studies thus far have investigated the impact of pathological narcissism on psychotherapy outcome for patients with perfectionism. Thus, this study aimed to extend past research by investigating whether pre-treatment pathological narcissism led to smaller pre- to post-treatment reductions in 1) symptom severity, 2) life satisfaction and, 3) work and social functioning in a sample of patients with perfectionism undergoing group psychodynamic psychotherapy. Method: This sample was drawn from the UBC Perfectionism Treatment Study (Hewitt et al., 2023) and consisted of 80 treatment-seeking adults with elevated perfectionism. Patients underwent 12 sessions of psychodynamic group psychotherapy for perfectionism and completed self-report measures of pathological narcissism at pre-treatment and of symptom severity, life satisfaction, and work and social impairment at pre- and post-treatment. Results: Contrary to expectations, multilevel and multiple regression analyses indicated that pre-treatment pathological narcissism did not significantly predict post-treatment changes in symptom severity, life satisfaction or work and social impairment. Additional analyses showed that these findings held even when vulnerable and grandiose dimensions of pathological narcissism were analyzed separately. Conclusions: Despite longstanding theoretical and clinical accounts on the perniciousness of pathological narcissism in the clinical context, these results, taken together with past findings, suggest that pathological narcissism may not be associated with poorer psychotherapy outcomes in certain contexts, such as in the case of psychodynamic group psychotherapy for perfectionism. Future research should investigate whether certain variables may moderate the relationship between pathological narcissism and treatment outcome.

Text

2023-08-14

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/85456

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/