Dr Phil Mollon

Pathological narcissism can be interpreted as a defence against the terror of fragmentation, a fear Kohut referred to as, ‘the deepest anxiety a man can experience.’ Drawing on ideas from Lacan, Bollas, Kohut and Buddhist philosophy, Dr Phil Mollon suggests that we all bound to make identities from the culture we are all born into, the images others have of us in their minds.

However, pathological narcissism develops because there is no negotiation at all between the infant’s own nascent grandiosity and his mother’s idea of her perfect baby. This causes the infant to split off his own grandiosity and a personality develops that swings between self-regard and self-denigration in an ongoing effort to avoid the psychotic outbreak of a still fragmented underlying psychic structure.

Audio lecture – 45 mins

About the Speaker

Phil Mollon PhD is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, with a background profession of clinical psychology. He has worked in the NHS for 35 years. The author of ten books, Dr Mollon has written and lectured widely on trauma, shame, narcissism, and Kohut’s self psychology. Always searching for better ways of helping traumatised people, his enquiries led him to EMDR, and then to ‘energy psychology’.