Case Study: Narcissism and Snapping | When the Narcissist Loses Control

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can analyze a case that looks at a narcissist who snapped so this is when somebody loses control loses their composure and acts out sometimes when we talk about this in the context of narcissism it's referred to as an episode of narcissistic rage so what does it mean to snap well there's no official scientific definition that I'm aware of anyway for this but for the purposes of this video here's what it means to snap when somebody suddenly manifests aggression that is different from their normal behavior this kind of snapping I'm talking about with narcissism is not a behavior in response to aggression for example if somebody attempts to rob another person and that victim defends themselves some people would say that the victim snapped and yes their behavior was out of the ordinary but it was justified by the attempted robbery and the force that they used was comparable to the force being used by the aggressor what I'm talking about here is when a narcissist acts or responds in an inappropriate manner the actions are not justified because of some threat or provocation now people can snap for a variety of reasons why they snap comes down to a combination of stress and their personality narcissists are susceptible due to their personality structure and they're also susceptible because they create stress through their behavior right they antagonize people they cause difficulty for people so really their interpersonal relationship style makes the stress that then combines with a personality that leads them to snap so before I get to the case report itself I want to take a quick look at narcissism with narcissism we see characteristics like being self-centered a sense of entitlement and requiring admiration and we also see two types of narcissism on the grandiose side we see those three characteristics those are common to all narcissists but we also see somebody socially dominant extroverted arrogant and resistant to criticism and this resistance has limits and that'll be reflected here in this case study on the vulnerable side of course the common elements are there but also shame distrust being introverted being hypersensitive to criticism and being resentful narcissistic rage can occur with either type of narcissism but in this case study that I'll be reviewing here the narcissist is more on the grandiose side so now moving to this case study this one is a little unusual compared to most of the case studies I've talked about this one was presented to educate on legal liability issues so the individuals presenting were attorneys specifically they looked at how personality abnormalities can contribute to legal problems we don't see a lot of case studies from counselors on topics like aggression because counselors tend to create case reports about clients who improved right hand if people are snapping and assaulting other people that's not consistent with improvement so he really wouldn't expect a case study like this too often from the mental health counseling community the presentation didn't really address the construct of narcissism in terms of treatment like the mental health counseling or something similar but rather adjusts the dynamics that narcissism introduces into work settings so the case study had a lot of detail about the narcissistic behaviors and what happened because of those behaviors but obviously nothing related to treatment outcomes there's no indication that the narcissist in this case ever received treatment this was really more about prevention the moral of this case study was that employees and employers should be on the lookout for behavior that may lead to aggression and not to treat these behaviors as isolated but rather to view them as tendencies so in this sense again it really was looking at personality as always with this case study some of the information was changed to protect identities this report starts with an individual who I will call Jim Jim is in his early 60s and he works for a manufacturer and specifically at a site for this company that processes chemicals so I'm picturing something like a particular site that works with these chemicals and then sends them to another were there used in the manufacturing process so Jim is in a management position so his job here is to oversee about 20 to 25 skilled laborers and supervisors so he's actually pretty high up the ladder for the site where he is now before any drastic incident occurred we see that he has a history at this company like he's well known to the people who work at this company for his behaviors that get him in trouble Jim's manager indicated that Jim was condescending pretentious deceptive took credit for other people's work played favorites and was vindictive his manager also reported that Jim had attributes that were helpful like he was extremely confident he was driven to succeed and he had a lot of energy and enthusiasm when customers would visit the plant Jim could appear to be very competent especially if his interaction with them was limited to just a few minutes so we can never know for sure because Jim was not assessed by a clinician but it seems fairly likely that he was narcissistic now a few of his subordinates had complained about Jim from time to time but management always allowed Jim to negotiate his own resolution with those employees so we already see a number of problems the management this company is taking a risk for really a marginal benefit they're not taking employee complaints seriously and it appears they don't understand the nature of narcissism so this brings me to Jim's interaction with a female employee I will refer to her as Marie so Jim had made it clear that he believes some of these shifts available to plant and some of the positions were better suited for men so we see that Jim was discriminating here not long after he made this clear we see that Murray's work hours were changed so she now had to work Saturday so she was put on a shift that Jim thought was more appropriate for a female worker now two other skill laborers who were both men who were less qualified than Murray were promoted to supervisory positions as well so we see a few different levels of discrimination here based on gender not long after this Murray complained about Jim's behavior to management and she insisted they investigate as opposed to her working something out with Jim which again was what the company had allowed to happen before management determined that they could understand Marie's point of view and it did look like Jim had been discriminatory they restored her work schedule to what it was before and they offered her a promotion to supervisor in another department this was something she agreed to and from her point of view this seemed reasonable for one thing it got her away from Jim and I think that was probably something that was important to her at this point so Jim claimed to other employees after this happen after management move Murray that he was happy to get rid of her she was never a good worker anyway and he went to her new supervisor I'll call him Fred and Jim told Fred that he should be careful how much responsibility he gives to Marie she was dangerously unqualified and that she was known to walk off the site with company property so Jim accused Marie of stealing to her new supervisor now this behavior Jim going to Fred and complaining this is known as retaliation and it's very common for narcissist in work settings interestingly in this case Fred not only reported this behavior to Marie but he reported to management it seems like he believed this was unacceptable and he also felt like a victim in this process because Jim was trying to drag him into this violation of employment law so management once again investigated and found that Jim's behavior was not appropriate they apologized to Marie and Fred and assured Marie that her standing as a supervisor would not be effective in a negative way and evidently this again was acceptable to Marie and evidently this was acceptable to fret as well so here's what we have so far Jim has violated all these employment laws and it appears as though management to some extent but perhaps reluctantly has protected the victims however they really haven't done anything adverse to Jim they haven't done anything to fix the cause of the problem this is the exact argument that Fred took forward to management so even though he initially agreed with what they had determined and what they were gonna do he decided not long after that he really wanted something done about Jim's behavior he wanted management to take action that would discourage this type of behavior in the future from Jim and from anybody else who would think about doing it so this brings us close to the event that led to the rage we see that one of the higher level managers so a person at another site was particularly frustrated by this whole situation how this kept causing new problems for the company so at a meeting again at a different location we see about 10 to 15 employees were there and at this meeting this higher level manager told Jim Murray and Fred to stop behaving a nonsensical way so I pitched him saying something like just stop all this nonsense and get back to work so essentially he spread the blame across the victims and the perpetrator and he did so in front of other people this was a disastrously foolish move on the part of this higher level manager however this is remarkably common from the point of view of this manager he was just seeing a lot of disagreement and relational problems he wasn't seeing one person as the cause of the difficulty and other people as victims narcissism exposure in work settings is not as clear as other offenses to other people who do not understand narcissism so if Jim had stolen Fred's car or if he had refused to pay Murray for work that she did that's very clear right people would understand that one person's the perpetrator and another is the victim but interpersonal dealings that involve false accusations defamation and making unkind comments come across as subtle from the perspective of management they just look at it like here a bunch of people that can't seem to get along right that's how they view things like this they don't again understand how personality actually functions so either way this event being insulted by this higher level manager in front of these other workers this was something that was extremely embarrassing to Jim and it was something he could not tolerate which I actually find fairly interesting because he could have viewed this as a victory remember he was the one that was guilty he was the one that broke the law and yet his victims were getting grouped together in the same category as he was evidently the logic of this argument escaped him or never occurred to him and we see his resistance to criticism was not strong enough I talked about that as one of the characteristics of a grandiose narcissist resistance to criticism but again it has limits this is the moment when Jim snapped this is when we see the sudden aggression not long after this meeting the workday was over Jim followed Fred out of the plant they're both driving their own vehicles and again this was a different sight so Jim signals to Fred to pull over and Fred pulls into a gas station this isn't smart but because they're a different sight I'm thinking maybe Fred believed that Jim was lost and was just signaling him to say hey I need to know where to go it's hard to imagine that happening in this day and age with GPS being widely available but it does seem like this case study was from maybe about 10 to 15 years ago so not every phone had GPS back then that's possible but either way he pulls into this gas station Jim comes up to him and demands that Fred write a letter to upper management taking responsibility for the whole mess with Fred and Murray again not even acknowledging that he was at fault that Jim was at fault Fred refuses and Jim assaults Fred evidently Jim didn't have a weapon but he punched Fred several times and Fred sustained minor injuries as Jim was walking away from this crime back to his car he loudly accused Fred of striking him first so I picture a situation where maybe there were some onlookers and they were like amazed that what happened here and Jim's walking away and saying oh you know this guy punched me right so either way Jim gets in his car and he drives off now the police arrive shortly thereafter and of course he was gone by then but eventually they catch up to Jim at his house when the police confronted Jim he told them that he was glad that they were there he tried to call them but couldn't get through he wanted to report that a man named Fred had attacked him when both stories were checked out by the police of course Fred's story was the only one that lined up with the evidence Jim was charged for the assault and for a few other crimes related to that and he was allowed to plead eventually to misdemeanor assault right so never went to trial he was also fired from the employer so some interesting points here Jim had a long history of breaking the law and violating boundaries he had those in a position to do something about his behavior didn't feel like it was important to take action Jim had essentially gotten away with his bad acts but it was the insult that was too much room to handle like in this particular case so he was being blamed but so were the victims and he was insulted he could have just again walked away but that was too much even right after his moment of Rage we see he made a false accusation against the victim this is very common for narcissist when the police came out he stuck with that same story also common at no point do we see someone here who's willing to take responsibility for anything that he did and I think this is a very important take away from this case study people who are not narcissistic do things that are wrong just like people who are narcissistic do things that are wrong but often people who are not narcissistic are willing to take at least some responsibility for their actions narcissists don't concede anything there is never a retreat gradual or otherwise rather there's a collapse and this is when we see the aggression this is when they snap the narcissist snaps when the narcissism is not strong enough narcissism typically doesn't fail in stages it fails catastrophically if Jim's narcissism was strong enough he could have walked away from that meeting where he was insulted and said to himself management really wasn't talking about me they're really talking about Fred and Murray so essentially he could have lied to himself one can make the argument that when narcissism does fail in stages and not catastrophic Lee that means the narcissist has a chance of improving they can improve how they relate to people but again that's not what happened here now the last takeaway here in this case study one of the challenges with this idea that people can snap is that it's difficult to predict when it could happen we see in this scenario of course Fred should have never stopped his car he should never got out of his car but he didn't understand narcissism would seem the people involved with this company the people that work to this company we see that no one really understands narcissism in the situation and this is what I see a lot people in these situations where there's clear narcissistic behavior and a clear warning that something aggressive could occur that a crime could occur and nobody really understands what to call it they can name all these different descriptions that match with narcissism but they don't know that it's a construct that's been studied a lot and that there's a lot of information available about it and that in fact if they were aware of what narcissism look like they could prevent a lot of things that happen as a result of it not just the aggression but all the other bad behaviors that happen as well so this is another case study that emphasizes the importance of workplace education on narcissism I know whenever I talk about topics like narcissism and aggression there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate early interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this case study on narcissism to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 443,980

Keywords: narcissistic rage, case study, clinical vignette, snapping, narcissism, narcissist, narcissistic, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable, narcissistic personality disorder, personality disorder, toxic relationship, manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, jealousy, special, unique, fantasy, entitlement, grandiosity, requires admiration, lack of empathy

Id: HRQWLY1ybQc

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020