The Nature and Nurture of Narcissism

Understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder from the Perspective of Gene - Environment Interaction

By: Peter Salerno PsyD

Narrated by: Peter Salerno PsyD

What Causes Narcissism?
The world has been indoctrinated with the false notion that narcissism is the result of a bad childhood.

It’s as if narcissists have been granted immunity from responsibility. Mental health professionals - and the general public alike - seem more than willing to offer narcissists a perfectly convenient scapegoat: trauma.

The goal of this book, using the most recent empirical evidence on the etiology and treatment of narcissistic personality disorder - is to dispel the widely held and already discredited myth that narcissism is the result of childhood trauma. Despite evidence to the contrary, this widely held myth continues to prevail in popular media and culture.

This book aims to correct the mistakes related to the cause of narcissism so that mental health practitioners and the general public will have a scientifically informed understanding of etiology and intervention. Because the reality is that almost everything we have been taught about the cause of narcissism…is wrong.

©2024 Peter Salerno (P)2024 Peter Salerno

Essential reading for

This book has been invaluable in assisting to understand not only Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but more importantly the confusing, disorienting and isolating emotions experienced when exposed to a Narcissist. From the perspective of a layperson, reading Dr. Salerno’s book has been vital in understanding this complex topic.

SO informative and healing

Knowledge is so healing and validating. These people will drive you to your grave and THEN claim they were trying to rescue or help you, AND that you victimized THEM. It's deadly, one way or another. It's absolutely genetic, that's why, by the end of their lives, only their cluster B family members, or people who need them for money, will still be around. Everyone else is either slowly killed by their constant abuse or they eventually flee with often nothing that they helped build. It's a slow motion nightmare.

Valuable new information on Narcisstic Personality Disorder.

I liked that this specialist has brought attention to the fact that NPD is not caused by childhood trauma but is an inherited trait condition. This should bring relief to all those poor parents wrongly held responsible for their child's behaviour.

What a Huge relief, so much history and science!

Part of me wishes this was four times as long, people need content like this to lay out how we got to the present stage of acceptance of (non) responsibility as well as what to do with the people who will always be with us -- just a part of human nature.

Outstanding

Clear succinct definitions and descriptions of the making of a personality and the challenges of narcissism. I’m particularly fascinated and proud of Dr Salerno’s authentic approach on comparing old schools of thought on reasons for narcissism to a more scientific and empirical approach. He clearly is able to navigate the listener or reader in understanding how clinicians have had bias confirmation from training regarding the causes of narcissism. It seems to be an accepted line of thinking among the general population of psychologists and psychiatrists and he has definitely put his leg in shark waters but honestly he is able to explain why old schools of understanding don’t work. And are more like pseudoscience than actual science.

Thoughtful and well researched

I’ve been studying this for years to understand the impact they have, and only now do I understand it. This should be the definitive work on this topic.

A must read to all who are victims of narcissistic abuse!🙏🏻😇❤️

Unbelievable insight! This book is a must read for all therapists no matter what their specialty. I hope with great expectations all therapist share this wonderful knowledge with each other to Guide each patient in the right direction so that each and every person has a fair chance. Especially the surviving victims. God bless this young man for enlightening us, if I didn’t read this book I would have been stuck thinking that trauma causes narcissistic personality disorder and many other disorders. Genetics makes so much more sense. This information should be taught to all children as early as middle school.