Pathologizing & Treating the Victim Instead of the Narcissist

by Kathy Krajco

When confronted with the facts about the mental healthcare industry, many people are justifiably skeptical, asking, "Now why would they do that?"

That's a fair question, because the answer isn't obvious. This post will explain what is going on.

Let's say that you are a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other clinical therapist. While you're hanging out your shingle, you're thinking, "I wonder how many psychopaths and other malignant narcissists there are in this community."

Let's say that your best guess is about 10.

The trouble with them is that treating them is a PITA. They make you angry with their constant put-downs and game-playing. You get nowhere with them. And you must work hard to work with them at all. There is no drug you can just prescribe and say, "Come back and see me next month." So, the drug companies lose interest in you if you treat these patients. Your clinic isn't happy, either.

The only time narcissists are candidates for drugs is when in a very rare life crisis, which depresses them and often makes them lose control of a drug or alcohol habit. But that doesn't last long. They find a new host to parasitize and are gone... cured... no problems anymore.

Hmmm. Not much reward in treating them, is there? In fact, it IS a fact, that most mental healthcare professionals will not treat psychopaths and other narcissists. They just say that nothing can be done for them.

But wait - look. Every narcissist has a trail of victims in his or her wake. Psychologically injured victims. The pupils of your eyeballs turn into dollar signs $$.

If the narcissist has risen to a position of administrative power, these victims might number in the dozens (sometimes many dozens) of people who have have been calumniated, fired, blackballed, and made permanently unemployable - having lost their families and all their friends as a result. Even the narcissist who is but a laborer has about 10 or so family members, close friends, co-workers, and neighbors trampled and writhing in agony in his wake.

For your 10 narcissists then, the victim list is 100-200 people! More lucrative math, eh?

And these are people who are already down. They have been browbeat mercilessly with the brainwashing that they are defective. In other words, they are at least half-convinced that they are mentally ill already, and all you must do is reinforce that notion. That's easy, if you make-believe it yourself.

Just act like their savaged FEELINGS are a mental illness. Act like they are crazy if they don't lay down for it and act like it never happened. You guys can make anything - ANYTHING - sound like a mental illness.

The narcissist refuses to believe that he's sick and refuses to cooperate, but these people trust you and can easily be persuaded that something is wrong with them (so long as you say it with a sympathetic look on your face) and will conscientiously cooperate to improve themselves by going along with whatever you say. Indeed, if nothing else, they'll experience a placebo effect.

They need someone to listen, someone to think they aren't so bad, and they think you're IT. They will cling to you, so long as you put on what they most need - a sympathetic face.

These people are, of course, oppressed and therefore depressed, so you can prescribe drugs to your heart's content. Narcissists put up with treatment only for a short time - until they find a new host to parasitize, but the victims of narcissists can be kept in your appointment book for life if you play your hand right.

Enter "codependency disorder." A way for mental healthcare professionals to capitalize on the harm a narcissist does. Exploiting the victims.

Because it is much easier and more profitable to blame and pathologize the victim in the name of "treatment" than it is to do anything about the victimizer.

Follow the Money
Health insurance companies pay for physical healthcare. They began doing so in the 20th century, after medicine began to strictly adhere to science and to scientific standards for establishing the existence of a disease and the safety and effectiveness of standardized treatments for it. You can imagine what would happen if the insurance companies had to pay for the wares of snake-oil salesmen and treatments of quacks.

But that is exactly what they would be doing if forced to pay for mental healthcare. The DSM has more than tripled the "official" list of mental illnesses, from 107 in DSM-I to 365 in DSM-IV. That makes 365 billable diagnoses by any clinician who can find something in the DSM to label you with. My favorite is the personality disorder next to the check box named "other," a very popular diagnosis.

One must have been born yesterday not to see right through this racket.

For example, homosexuality used to be on the list of mental illnesses but was removed when that idea became politically incorrect. The reverse happened with cigarette smoking, which now is officially a 'mental' illness that you can charge for treatment of.

In other words, unlike other branches of medicine, mental health is still plagued by snake oil salesmen and quacks.

The bottom line is the bottom line: See the book, "Making Us All Crazy", by Herb Kutchins. The DSM applies the language of mental illness to everyday behavior, transforming ordinary reactions to life's vicissitudes into BILLABLE pathology.

In Congress, the same faction that constantly speaks of the "evil" drug companies is being lobbied by them (in league with clinical academia and the APA) to force health insurance companies to pay for mental healthcare. The hypocrites. In bed with the same entity they call evil in any other context.

Can you imagine what that would do to health insurance premiums? In fact, one large reason for the sky-high premiums now is the fact that more and more mental healthcare is being covered under some private plans. Like the colleges, the more money the clinicians and drug companies suck, the higher they mercilessly jack their prices to suck whatever price the market will bear.

The mental health clinicians, clinical mental health professors, and the big deals in the APA laugh at the real scientists and researchers among them, just like MDs laughed at Louis Pasteur when he proved that germs exist and cause disease, trying to get them to wash their hands before surgery. They scoffed, because they just knew better, you see: they were (say the word in a breathy tone) doctors.

And so, today, this branch of medicine needs a housecleaning from top to bottom (one that establishes it firmly on the foundation of real science) rather like the rest of medicine underwent in the last century.

This chicanery undermines the entire industry, even those clinicians who are not just mediocre parrots and really are delivering helpful counseling.

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