Removing the Mask of Kindness: Diagnosis and Treatment of the Caretaker Personality Disorder

211 Pages·2006·7.34 MB·English

by  Les Barbanell

REMOVING THE
MASK OF KINDNESS
REMOVING THE
MASK OF
KINDNESS
Diagnosis and Treatment of the
Caretaker Personality Disorder
Les Barbanell
JASON ARONSON
Lanham· Boulder· New York • Toronto· Plymouth, UK
Published in the United States of America
by Jason Aronson
An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright © 2006 by Jason Aronson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barbanell, Les, 1941-
Removing the mask of kindness: diagnosiS and treatment of the caretaker
personality disorder / Les Barbanell.
p. ;cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7657-0409-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-lO: 0-7657-0409-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN -13: 978-0-7657-0410-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN -10: 0-7657-0410-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Personality disorders. 2. Caregivers-Psychology. 3. Caregivers-Mental
health. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Caregivers-psychology. 2. Personality Disorders. WM 190 B228r
2006]
RC554.B37 2006
616.85'81-dc22 2006011998
Printed in the United States of America
@ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSIINISO Z39.48-1992.
To my beloved Mother, who lived for her children-until one day, in her
later years, she discovered ceramics.
CONTENTS
Preface IX
Acknowledgments
PART I THE INBORN ABILITY TO PROTECT
THE SELF
Psychological and Emotional Survival 3
2 The Benign and Pathological Use of Masks 19
3 Factors in the Choice of Protective Strategies 31
4 From Identity to Catastrophe: When Masks Fail to Protect 43
PART 2 KINDNESS AS DECEPTION 61
5 Diagnosis of the Caretaker Personality Disorder 63
6 Caretaker Personality Disorder and Other Clinical States 81
7 The Psychotherapist with Caretaker Personality Disorder 101
PART 3 TREATMENT 117
8 Obstacles toward Discarding the False Self 119
vi i
vii i CONTENTS
9 Treatment and the Shift toward Self-Focus 135
10 Observing and Measuring Indications of Change 157
Appendix A: Glossary 175
Appendix B: The Selfless Personality Scale 179
Bibliography 181
Index 187
About the Author 195
PREFACE
Within the recesses of our conscious mind is the belief that "it is better to
give than to receive." The Great Commandment from the New Testament
is to love God and thy neighbor as thyself. Giving to others is not only spiri-
tually rewarding but also sOcially and interpersonally redeeming, psycholog-
ically palatable, and perhaps even phYSiologically beneficial. There are indi-
viduals who seemingly take the concept of giving to extremes as if
self-gratification is selfish and, even worse, a sin. Psychotherapists have ob-
served many of the consequences of pervasive selflessness that include feel-
ings of deprivation, emptiness, and the experience of living in an existential
vacuum. As a consequence of this observation, particularly over the past two
decades, therapists more readily encourage their patients to seek balance in
their relationships and develop a healthy self-interest while also being re-
sponsive to the needs of others, in other words, to love thy neighbor as thy-
self but not to the exclusion of the self. Perhaps as a precursor to this con-
temporary emphasis on a give-receive balance, Fromm stated his view of the
Significance of self-affirmation: "If an individual is able to love productively
he loves himself too; if he can love only others he can not love at all."l Spir-
itual leaders are beginning to espouse that even for the giver, charity is as
much about getting as it is about giving and that spiritual self-interest is an
appropriate action.
In spite of the increasing awareness that it is not always better to give
than to receive, for many individuals receiving is extremely uncomfortable
i x