Defensive misperception of the emotional contents of self/other communication

Abstract

In this paper, I will be discussing a group of narcissistic patients who are not autistic, or psychotic but exhibit some autistic like symptoms in that they tend to misinterpret emotional communications and fail to detect aggression and attack in their own provocative language and behavior. As a result, they have very few friends, and often feel disrespected, discarded, and alienated by others. They easily feel insulted and get involved in interpersonal altercation. They fail to appreciate humor and show an inability to properly decode metaphoric language. They fit Piaget's description of developmental pathology in a paradoxical way, in that they exhibit an absence of both self-perception and objectivity, whereas acquiring possession of the object as such is on a par with the acquisition of self-perception. Very similar to cases of autism, these patients show a relative incapacity to participate in an intersubjective field.