What does it mean to say that narcissists lack empathy?

In this Weekly Insight, Dr. Ettensohn challenges the common assumption that low empathy is a fixed trait in narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Drawing from psychoanalytic theory and clinical observation, he explores how empathy in NPD often collapses in response to internal threat, and how this collapse is due to defenses rather than intrinsic empathy deficits. The episode identifies three core processes that disrupt empathic functioning in NPD: paranoid anxiety, dissociated self-states, and shame-driven defenses against dependency.

These processes help explain the inconsistency, withdrawal, and emotional detachment often seen in narcissistic dynamics.

Whether you identify with narcissistic traits or have been affected by them in others, this video invites a more psychologically informed and humanistic understanding of how empathy functions under distress.

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Works Cited:

Miller, A. (2008). The drama of the gifted child: The search for the true self (Rev. ed., R. Mannheim, Trans.). Basic Books. (Original work published 1979)

In this Weekly Insight, Dr. Ettensohn examines the rise of moral panic within contemporary discourse about narcissism, particularly how popular online narratives have transformed psychological terms into tools of moral judgment.

In this Weekly Insight, Dr. Ettensohn examines the rise of moral panic within contemporary discourse about narcissism, particularly how popular online narratives have transformed psychological terms into tools of moral judgment. Using a recent online interaction as a jumping-off point, the video traces how disagreement is increasingly reframed as harm, and how nuanced discussions of narcissistic personality structure are met with accusations of abuse, gaslighting, or complicity. Drawing on Stanley Cohen’s original criteria for moral panic, and placing current trends alongside historical examples such as witch hunts, McCarthyism, and the Satanic Panic, Dr. Ettensohn contextualizes the intense emotional reactions that now dominate conversations about NPD.

The video explores how stigma, stereotypes, and moral binaries are amplified online, creating a culture in which appeals to complexity and humanity have become taboo. It also considers the communal function of scapegoating within current narratives about narcissism.

This video offers a clinically grounded, sociologically informed framework for understanding what happens when trauma discourse is overtaken by lurid sensationalism and moral panic, and why the path toward healing lies in reclaiming psychological depth, complexity, and humanization.

Link to episode 1 in this series, on psychotic-level NPD: https://youtu.be/IoxUCbNUJUE

Link to episode 2 in this series, on borderline-level NPD: https://youtu.be/Oz-C503q_9Y

Link to part 1 of episode 3 in this series: https://youtu.be/vUsnambadIE

This is the third episode of a four-episode series describing the narcissistic personality style across different levels of severity. Due to the length of the material, this episode has been divided into three parts. This is part two.

In this part, Dr. Ettensohn explores the emotional consequences of the developmental shift from borderline to neurotic-level personality organization. While borderline-level defenses aim to ward off annihilation through splitting, projection, and omnipotence, neurotic-level functioning introduces new emotional burdens: grief, guilt, and the realization that some losses cannot be undone.

Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, this episode examines how individuals begin to internalize the reality of separate minds, enduring subjects, and the permanence of emotional injury. These capacities open the door to deeper love, mutuality, and ethical concern—but also to sorrow, remorse, and longing.

Dr. Ettensohn also outlines the core developmental conditions that support this shift, including “good enough” relational experiences that enable ambivalence to be tolerated and meaning to be preserved across time.

Finally, the episode offers concrete strategies for strengthening neurotic-level integration and functioning, both in therapy and in everyday life.

References:

Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. Columbia University Press.

Gabbard, G. O., & Wilkinson, S. M. (1994). Management of countertransference with borderline patients. American Psychiatric Publishing.

Johnson, S. M. (1987). Characterological change: The hard work miracle. W. W. Norton.

Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 27, 99–110.

Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Winnicott, D. W. (1949). Hate in the counter-transference. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 30, 69–74.

Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development. International Universities Press.