(Part 2) Best books about compulsive behavior according to redditors
We found 308 Reddit comments discussing the best books about compulsive behavior. We ranked the 101 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Was it this?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0787947946/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_QN7TAbRATSRW9
That's it.
I'm rage-quitting reddit for the rest of the evening and finishing my book...
>My experience : they can tell you and will lie to you about how recently it was.
...or am I?
>My wife reads a ton (40 to 50 books a year) and most of her friends read a lot too. these are late 40s to early 50s women.
Post wall hag. I must be reading about lying.
give her this
or better yet, this
A selection of his work: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c11b/3f9bd12e62bfd495db3cd60ae1065ae5cd33.pdf
http://www.safranlab.net/uploads/7/6/4/6/7646935/cognitive_interpersonal_theory_1990.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Therapeutic-Alliance-Relational-Treatment/dp/1572308699/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1525824550&sr=8-2&keywords=jeremy+safran&dpID=51ynH-BnDcL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
Hey :) Have you thought about talking to a therapist about this? Sounds like OCD to me.
Edit: have looked at your other posts. Therapy is the best place to start. If you can't afford that, I'd recommend buying yourself an exposure and response prevention workbook, like this one on amazon
Welcome to the sub.
If you haven't already, please take a look at this post:
"I Have A Hoarder In My Life--Help Me!" Your Hoarding Quick-Start Kit
It summarizes the research we've done on this sub to some basic steps. Hoarding is a complex disorder that is quite difficult to treat, so it's vital to educate yourself on it.
Now:
>I feel I cannot reason and use logic with him.
So the first thing you have to understand is that hoarding is a mental disorder. That means that--among other things--your boyfriend is not capable of being rational about his possessions. Which further means that you can't use logic and reason to talk him into cleaning up, because his hoarding doesn't arrive from logical and reasonable sources.
>I feel a lot of anxiety when I am in his apartment...I feel completely out of control. I feel that if I decide to have a family with him my life will be filled with anxiety. And we both suffer because of that: he because he wants to have many stuff and me because I want to have less...I feel he loves more his things than me. He knows that he has to reduce the amount of items if we expect to live together one day, but his progress is too slow.
>
>On the other hand, when he comes to visit me or we stay at a neutral place, everything goes well between us. I love him very much. I would like this relationship to work but I have no idea how to navigate this.
Please look at the words you've written, esp. the ones that I bolded. Then look at what I'm about to write next:
Because right now? You're correct when you say that he loves his things more than he loves you. He loves hoarding things the way an alcoholic loves alcohol, the way a coke head loves cocaine, the way any addict loves the thing he's addicted to.
Your boyfriend loves you. He knows at some level that he needs to get sober in order for the two of you to have a healthy relationship. But until he commits to recovery, he will always choose getting his fix over you.
The following books are mentioned in the links above, but I urge you to read:
Three references for you:
Smith, Mary Lee; Glass, Gene V; & Miller, Thomas I. (1980). The Benefits of Psychotherapy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
The Great Psychotherapy Debate
Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change
Not Kohut himself, but a good place to start and a beautiful book.\
https://www.amazon.com/Between-Therapist-Client-New-Relationship/dp/0805071008
For anyone further interested in this subject there's a great book in which "master therapists share their worst failures". Great read.
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Therapy-Master-Therapists-Failures/dp/0415933234
I'd skip theory books at the start, you'll have plenty of time to read them in depth. Go for books with personal accounts of something that inspires you or add up to you knowledge about a specific topic.
As for the book I recomend you The man who could not Stop: The Thruth About OCD by David Adam. You can get it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Couldnt-Stop-Truth/dp/1447277686
Although Adam's a journalist I find his book quite rich in good information about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Also, his personal account for the disorder is quite humanizing imho. I think it's a good book to understand better the disorder, but also how it is to cope with it. Give it a try!
I am not an expert on this question. But Bergin and Garfield's Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change, 6th Ed. suggests humanistic-experiential and psychodynamic psychotherapies, as well as some behavior therapies, have much more research in this realm. I suspect it's partly because they can never win the fight on the realm of number of studies establishing their efficacy (every study that therapy X does to establish that it is at least as effective as CBT contributes to the CBT literature, so therapy X will always be behind). Also it's hard to get funding for that anymore (since we already have a "well-established" therapy). Furthermore, client-centered approaches lead to client-centered research, so a bulk of their research is about how clients change. Similarly, psychodynamic therapies have wonderful deeply examined case studies that facilitate understanding at a sequential causal level how that particular person changed. Yes that's not generalizable to the population at large, but when your n=1 studies are in the hundreds (probably thousands), you have learned a lot about how people change.
Ahhh. Though going back to the frame of motivation (intrinsic v extrinsic, specifically), I can see changing relative to an other as a potentially losing battle for someone with SPD.
I found this book ihelpful in understanding the human dynamics of change:
https://www.amazon.com/Motivational-Interviewing-Third-Helping-Applications-ebook/dp/B00A5YPDMG
Hey there, don't feel like a failure. My mother's been supporting me through a very severe episode of OCD all summer, and she doesn't think she's 'failed' just because her (grown-up) kid got sick - if anything, I think in the end she's proud that we teamed up and beat OCD together :) OCD isn't caused by bad parenting; the scientific research shows it's probably caused by genetics, biological issues with brain inflammation, chemical imbalances and sometimes life stresses. It's not something children get because their parents necessarily did anything wrong.
Your son's issues do sound a lot like OCD. There seem to be two main ages that OCD symptoms start - a lot of us, either we've had obsession and anxiety problems since we were young children, or we get sudden OCD symptoms around 18 - 25. So it's not unusual that your son might have OCD difficulties at 10/11. The extreme perfectionism and worries over perceived moral or social mistakes are very typical of OCD.
It's good that you're seriously listening to him and addressing his talk around dying. Trying to get along in life with major untreated OCD is understandably a really, REALLY horrible way to spend your days, so it's pretty common for a lot of us with OCD to start thinking thoughts like these. Obsessions are so full-on, they're 24/7 and they're absolutely tormenting, so you never get a break unless you're asleep/unconscious! The idea of going to sleep, and not having to wake up and deal with yet another day of endless screaming obsessions, is an idea that can come to seem like a relief. I realize this is a really dark and disturbing thing to discuss, but I just want you to know that there's an explanation for the way your son's talking and it's got an understandable reasoning behind it when you look at the full picture. It does NOT mean everyone with OCD is constantly suicidal - OCD is very treatable and many of us make a great recovery! But it's good to be sympathetic and understand the intensity of full-blown OCD, and take the issue seriously. I'm glad you're not dismissing it as just daft things kids say.
You're doing the right thing looking for a child psychologist. Second choice would be any psychologist who specializes in treating anxiety and OCD. Whatever you do, please make sure that the psychologist you choose uses the RIGHT, scientifically-proven methods to help. If it OCD (and it does sound like it), it should be treated using a mix of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and exposure-and-response-prevention therapy (ERP) (write that down somewhere and make sure!), or some similar variant. The reason we warn each other about this is because using the wrong methods on OCD can actually make it worse. The techniques you want are ones that encourage your son to face his fears in a controlled way and learn to just let meaningless dark thoughts pass by. Any technique that encourages him to over-analyse or repeatedly talk about his fears without facing them, is a no-no. We know from psychological studies that obsessions just get worse the more you over-analyse them. Unfortunately there are still a lot of unlicensed or underqualified (and some qualified!) ones who use the wrong methods on OCD.
There are some excellent books aimed at children and families on how to recover from OCD. Your son might like this one, which focusses on 'standing up to' the scary thoughts as if they were a bully? : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Talking-Back-OCD-Program-Parents/dp/1593853556/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1487352207&sr=8-10&keywords=ocd+children
There's also 'Breaking Free from OCD: A CBT Guide for Young People and Their Families' ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Breaking-Free-OCD-People-Families-ebook/dp/B00ENSRTWW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1487354438&sr=8-4&keywords=ocd+children ) and What to Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck: A Kid's Guide for Overcoming OCD ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-When-Brain-Stuck-What/dp/1591478057/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487354438&sr=8-1&keywords=ocd+children ).
One list of resources you might find really helpful for your son is actually at OCDkidsmovie (a charity project to help kids with OCD feel less alone, by seeing other children who've recovered). There's links to the main OCD charities you can contact if you're having trouble accessing paediatric therapy, OCD support groups for parents and some specially-written pieces for children with OCD, to help them understand their scary thoughts better: http://www.ocdkidsmovie.com/ocdresources
All the best to you in overcoming OCD - it's not easy and it's not quick, but it's totally do-able. Your son can learn to feel much, much better, with the right therapy :)
What kind of background do you have with exposure therapy? Are you looking to learn about it in general? Are you curious about how to approach it with a specific person in mind? I ask, since that might help point you in some good direction.
"Traditional" exposure therapy relies heavily addressing negative reinforcement (operant conditioning), with an emphasis on habituation. Having a solid understanding of how negative reinforcement fuels anxiety disorders is a fundamental starting place in this line of work. Since exposure therapy works by attempting to extinguish a fear response through habituation, understanding this process becomes important not only for your own knowledge, but for psycheducation to help your clients/patients understand why you want them to do the things you'll ask them to do (e.g., face their fears).
It's worth noting that the habituation model isn't the only way to approach exposure therapy. Michelle Craske's article on inhibitory learning provides some additional context on enhancing exposure work and offers some useful insights that move beyond the habituation model. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) provides another school of thought involving exposure work, but as that's outside of my area of expertise I'm hesitant to recommend books there. However, anything by Steven Hayes is bound to be a good way to learn more about ACT
Within the habituation realm, Exposure Therapy for Anxiety Disorders would be a good place to start, as it gives a broad overview of the concepts and begins delving into specifics.
Beyond that, however, my suggestion would be to focus on learning about exposure and response prevention (ERP), particularly for OCD. The concepts here apply to every other anxiety disorder (although certain adjustments need to be made in certain situations, such as patients with BDD or PTSD). OCD is simultaneously simple and complex to treat with ERP. The principles are straightforward (i.e., response prevention aimed towards compulsions, exposure aimed to obsessions and avoidance), but building and designing the appropriate treatment plans takes a solid understanding of both the process of ERP and a patient's individual symptoms. Two great places to start are The "Treatments That Work" book on OCD, which is part of the reading list for the International OCD foundation's Behavior Therapy Training Institute (BTTI), as well as Johnathan Grayson's book, Freedom from OCD, which I recommend to all of my patients with OCD.
/edit - spelling
> What happens when someone you thought was a friend just says that they let you lean on them because you're needy and you were having a rough time?
I don't quite understand what you're saying: that's sort of what friends are supposed to do (let you lean on them when times are rough). Are you worried that they're only listening to you out of pity? That may be true, but you could also be selling them a bit short. If perhaps they feel you are leaning on them too much, it might be wise to cut back with that one particular friend and rely on someone else as well to talk to, but it is important to talk to someone.
If you're getting stuck in these vicious cycles and circular thinking, you should really see a therapist, because that's what they shine at untangling. The only way to break a vicious cycle is to throw a wrench in the whole thing and go from there. If you find that you're dealing with your depression by talking to the same person, and you say the same thing, in the same way, at the same time after having eaten the same sandwhich for lunch, and that he rolls his eyes at you the same way he did the 14 other times he heard you say exactly the same thing, maybe it's time to try something different. To go back to my being in a hole analogy, maybe that means that you stop trying to dig yourself out of the hole by doing exactly the same thing you've been doing for so long. After all, it hasn't gotten you out. And that's all beating yourself up as done: keep you in exactly the same place.
I had a lot of success with ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). It has a strong focus on mindfulness activities, and has a strong body of empirical research (which isn't as common as you might think) to back up its use. I also ripped my analogy straight from an ACT text, so if you didn't think it was the most retarded thing you've ever heard you might want to check out the following books.
A quick ACT primer:
http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/090208p36.shtml
The ACT "Bible". This one is more of a clinical manual but it is fairly accessible.
ACT Made Simple The content of the above made for non clinicians.
Things might go terribly, horribly wrong. This one is meant for clients, and isn't really a self help book. There's a big focus on dealing with anxiety, which may not apply so much too you but the strategies for cognitive defusion are kind of the same as what I think an ACT therapist would recommend for you to do.
Find an ACT therapist:
http://contextualpsychology.org/civicrm/profile?gid=17&reset=1&force=1
or
www.psychologytoday.com "Find a therapist"
It's understandable to not want to be a burden, and I'm sure there are certain limits on your friend's time and energy given his schedule. It's important to not de-legitimize the pain you're experiencing by saying that you're not deserving of at least some small portion of his time and support. If the friendship you have for your roommate is as strong as you're letting on, you should trust him to want to be there for you in your time of need. On a basic level, that's kind of what friends are for, and while I can completely relate to the impulse to want to withdraw and bottle things up in order to not be a burden, look at it from his perspective: avoiding him might make him feel like the energy he already spends on you is being wasted, or that you somehow don't value it as much as you obviously do. These little blurbs probably does a better job of explaining it than I can:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/maybe-its-just-me/201107/why-its-so-difficult-love-people-who-dont-love-themselves
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/maybe-its-just-me/201008/self-loathing-and-the-paradox-selfless-love
As for your financial situation, that sucks. Life always seems to find a way to pile on the misery in a series of brutal incessant blows, doesn't it? If you don't mind my asking, what kind of therapy were you going through? Personally, I've had some decent success with mine who practices ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy), which doesn't as the name might suggest mean resigning yourself to your current situation. It's an empirically supported therapy method (not all rise to this level), and after reading some of your other posts this may be something that you would at least enjoy reading a little bit about. Some of the pieces on cognitive fusion might be of particular interest to you given your background: it seems you do get that the way things were modeled for you really did not prepare you for life in a healthy way, but that you've still internalized a lot of those rules. Cognitive fusion basically describes our attachment to these kinds of verbal rules we hold, and a very big portion of ACT is learning to loosen our reliance on them. The following books explain this concept better than I can:
http://www.amazon.com/Things-Might-Terribly-Horribly-Wrong/dp/1572247118
http://www.amazon.com/Acceptance-Commitment-Therapy-Experiential-Approach/dp/1572309555/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310155398&sr=1-6
The first is meant to be a little more accessible to the general public, and the second is meant more for therapists, but it's still pretty easy to follow. They do not read as lame self help books, if that's something you're worried about. ACT also tends to have a quicker turn around rate than some other therapy methods.
If you've managed to lose 45 pounds while struggling with some pretty systemic depression, you have a lot to be proud of. That shit isn't easy in the first place, let alone with all the bullshit that comes from being depressed, and you're still committed to working at it. Don't diminish the real importance of what you've already accomplished, and keep up the good work!
No problem and thank you for the compliment. Overall, I love experiential and psychodynamic theories but I try to approach any theory as a means to an end. Any clinician that becomes too dogmatic risks missing the point (that is, helping the client and not serving your own ends). I like playing between affect and behavior with clients and attachment theory is behind it all for me.
In any case, why don't you ask an easier question? Haha. There is so much material out there for each modality that I could recommend plenty.
Strengths-focused
Experiential
Attachment
Psychodynamic
Hope that helps! Feel free to PM me too. I wonder if /u/evilqueenoftherealm would have any suggestions too.
Not until you stop being a liar... Imagine having to lie to make points. Are you donald trump?
https://www.amazon.com/How-Stop-Lying-Pathological-Psychopathy-ebook/dp/B00GKTSDZY
2nd half:
Peter Giovacchini (1993) – Schizophrenia and Primitive Mental States
http://www.amazon.com/Schizophrenia-Primitive-Ment-Peter-Giovacchini/dp/0765700271/
David Garfield (1994) – Unbearable Affect: A Guide to the Psychotherapy of Psychosis
http://www.amazon.com/Unbearable-Affect-Guide-Psychotherapy-Psychosis/dp/1855755475/
John Steiner (1994) – Psychic Retreats: Pathological Organizations in Psychotic, Neurotic, and Borderline Patients
http://www.amazon.com/Psychic-Retreats-Pathological-Organizations-Psychoanalysis/dp/0415099242/
Murray Jackson and Paul Williams (1994) – Unimagineable Storms: A Search for Meaning in Psychosis
http://www.amazon.com/Unimaginable-Storms-Search-Meaning-Psychosis/dp/1855750759/
Lawrence Hedges (1994) – Working the Organizing Experience: Transforming Psychotic, Schizoid, and Autistic States
http://www.amazon.com/Working-Organizing-Experience-Transforming-Psychotic/dp/1568212550
Vamik Volkan (1995) – The Infantile Psychotic Self: Understanding and Treating Schizophrenics and Other Difficult Patients –
http://www.amazon.com/Infantile-Psychotic-Self-Fates-Schizophrenics/dp/1568213794/
Hyman Spotnitz – Psychotherapy of Preoedipal Conditions: Schizophrenia and Severe Character Disorders (1995) –
http://www.amazon.com/Psychotherapy-Preoedipal-Conditions-Schizophrenia-Character/dp/1568216335/
Clancy McKenzie (1996) – Delayed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders from Infancy: The Two Trauma Mechanism
http://www.amazon.com/Delayed-Posttraumatic-Stress-Disorders-Infancy/dp/9057025019
Peter Giovacchini (1997) - Schizophrenia and Primitive Mental States
http://www.amazon.com/Schizophrenia-Primitive-Ment-Peter-Giovacchini/dp/0765700271
Brian Martinedale, Ed. (2000) – Psychosis: Psychological Approaches and their Effectiveness.
http://www.amazon.com/Psychosis-Psychological-Approaches-Their-Effectiveness/dp/1901242498
Murray Jackson (2001) – Weathering the Storms: Psychotherapy for Psychosis
http://www.amazon.com/Weathering-Storms-Psychotherapy-Murray-Jackson-ebook/dp/B005WH0PZQ/
Paul Williams (2001) – A Language for Psychosis: Psychoanalysis of Psychotic States
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Psychosis-Psychoanalysis-Psychotic-States/dp/1861561660/
Colin Ross (2004) – Schizophrenia: Innovations in Diagnosis and Treatment
http://www.amazon.com/Schizophrenia-Innovations-Diagnosis-Colin-Ross-ebook/dp/B00IOPWAF6/
Hyman Spotnitz – Modern Psychoanalysis of the Schizophrenic Patient: Theory of the Technique (2004) –
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Psychoanalysis-Schizophrenic-Patient-Technique/dp/0970392362/
Johannessen, Jan Olav (2006) – Evolving Psychosis: Different Stages, Different Treatments
http://www.amazon.com/Evolving-Psychosis-Treatments-International-Psychological/dp/1583917233
Franco De Masi (2009) – Vulnerability to Psychosis: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Nature and Theapy of Psychotic States
http://www.amazon.com/Vulnerability-Psychosis-Psychoanalytic-Therapy-Psychotic/dp/1855755041/
Ira Steinman (2009) – Treating the Untreatable: Healing in the Realms of Madness
http://www.amazon.com/Treating-Untreatable-Healing-Realms-Madness-ebook/dp/B00582MGQQ/
Yrjo Alanen (2009) – Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Schizophrenic Psychoses: Past, Present and Future
http://www.amazon.com/Psychotherapeutic-Approaches-Schizophrenic-Psychoses-International/dp/0415440130/
Paul Williams (2010) – Invasive Objects: Minds Under Siege
http://www.amazon.com/Invasive-Objects-Minds-Relational-Perspectives/dp/0415995477/
Daniel Dorman (2011) – Dante's Cure: A Journey Out of Madness
http://www.amazon.com/DANTES-CURE-Journey-Out-Madness-ebook/dp/B005UFUW30/
John Steiner (2011) – Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat
http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Being-Seen-Emerging-Psychoanalysis/dp/0415575060/
Evelyn Liegner (2011) – The Hates That Cures: The Psychological Reversibility of Schizophrenia
http://www.amazon.com/Hate-That-Cures-Psychological-Reversibility/dp/1936411067/
Paris Williams (2012) – Rethinking Madness: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Our Understanding and Treatment of Psychosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Madness-Understanding-Treatment-Psychosis/dp/0984986707/
Pamela Fuller – Surviving, Existing, or Living: Phase Specific Psychotherapy of Severe Psychosis (2013) –
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Existing-Living-Phase-specific-International/dp/0415516625/
John Read, Ed. (2013) – Models of Madness: Psychological, Social, and Biological Approaches to Schizophrenia
http://www.amazon.com/Models-Madness-Psychological-Schizophrenia-International/dp/1583919066
Ty Colbert (2015) – Healing Runaway Minds: How to Understand and Recover from Major Mental Disorders with Special Emphasis on “Schizophrenia”
http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Runaway-Minds-Understand-Schizophrenia/dp/0989160734/
David Garfield and Ira Steinman (2015) – Self Psychology and Psychosis: The Development of the Self During Intensive Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses
http://www.amazon.com/Self-Psychology-Psychosis-Psychotherapy-Schizophrenia/dp/1782202285/
Christopher Bollas (2015) – When the Sun Bursts: The Enigma of Schizophrenia
http://www.amazon.com/When-Sun-Bursts-Enigma-Schizophrenia/dp/0300214731/
Andrew Lotterman (2015) – Psychotherapy for People Diagnosed with Schizophrenia: Specific Techniques
http://www.amazon.com/Psychotherapy-People-Diagnosed-Schizophrenia-International-ebook/dp/B015CLFL0U/
I like anything that Catherine Maurice is involved in. I started out with her memoir, which describes her journey into creating a home-based ABA program for her children during the 1980s when such programs were not available hardly anywhere, and it also talks about her struggle weeding out ineffective interventions, like holding therapy. The memoir wasn't a perfect read for me, as she is very religious, and I am not. However, it really gave me a lot of hope and courage to fight for my children.
The other book I have from her is this one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0890798710/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8
It's not light reading, but it's made me think a lot about how I do things at home and helped me to make subtle changes in my behavior that have improved my children's behavior in return. If you wanted to implement a more structured approach with the book, it definitely shows you how to do it.
I know a lot of people on this forum advocate for the early start Denver model and DRI/floortime. It may be helpful to learn about a combination of different approaches, and see what works best for your kiddo.
This book has a whole chapter on incidental teaching. Downside: it is a bit pricey, and might feel kind of textbook-y, but I think it's worth a skim at the very least. It's written by highly-regarded folks in the field of applied behavior analysis who spend their lives working with kids with autism and covers choosing among treatment options, different teaching strategies, and is aimed towards parents and those new to intervention.
Full disclosure: I'm a professional in the field of behavior analysis who works with kids with autism. Other interventions may be worth checking out but right here, right now, ABA is the best bang for your buck. Science, national and local government agencies, health insurance companies, and a whole bunch of kids with autism and their families agree.
I think this site could help you filter your assessments of treatment decisions parents may talk to you about. Or could be something to offer them as a resource.
One thing I often hear, and that I've seen borne out in my work, is that every kid with autism is different. Just like any other kid without autism, a kid with autism will have his or her own unique package of stuff they are great at and stuff they're not so good at. Kids with autism tend to have a different basic pattern of which stuff is which, but otherwise there seems to be a lot of variability. So in your googling, it might help to keep in mind that people's accounts of their lives with autism or their child's or student's life with autism represent points on the spectrum so often described.
Best wishes for you, the kiddo, and his family! Hang in there!
Let me preface this with the disclaimer that I'm a fourth year psychiatry resident with a passion for psychoanalythic theory, so I've studied (and continue to) the topic extensively. This most likely is the reason why you'll find that I have very strong opinion on many of these matters. I don't know if you're from the field or not, but since you seem to at least have a very healthy curiosity and interest in these matters, be warned that I'm going to go balls deep with this comment and the defense of my claims.
Ok, I read the article. What stands out to me in the introduction is this paragraph:
>> Thus, it is important to clarify that this research does not address pathological narcissism [...]
after spending a while explaining or (or justifying, rather), why on earth it is that they refer to people who don't (as per their disclosure) qualify in any fashion in any classification of mental illness, as "narcissists". Now, I'm trying to reserve my personal opinion on this article in particular, but to be blunt, extensive "research" into what are essentially variations of normality have not much interest to clinical psychology (let alone psychiatry), but I'll grant that it's interesting research nonetheless, and certainly necessary to form comprehensive models or theories about the functioning of the human psyche. In this sense, since you provided a direct PDF link I can't where this paper was published, but I'd be surprised if it were published in a high-impact, well-respected, and peer-reviewed clinical or research journal of the field. I'll leave this at that, because later when I talk about narcissism again I'll go more in depth about the merits (or lack thereof) of using phenomenological measures (the NPI used in this article as the primary measure, for instance) and equating them with actual psychological or psychiatric pathology.
Now, let's get back to love. I think the matters we're discussing here, as I mentioned earlier, will boil down to definitions. Love is a concept that has existed for as long as humanity has existed, so I won't try to force down on you the idea that the psychoanalytic notion of "love" is the "correct" notion of love. So it's very much up for discussion. That's part of the reason I mentioned that the Christian idea of "love" is very similar to what I was defending, in that it stemms from pure altruism and selflessness, rather than being subject to the vicissitudes of hormones, general life events, convenience, or the homeostatic clash of 2 complementary neuroses. Now, if we were to agree that this is the definition of "love" that we want to work with, then I can support my claims with psychoanalytic texts, starting with Freud's classic "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality", and perhaps more specifically, "A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men" (do take the time to read it if you're at all interested, it's pretty short). But Freud is dense and pedantic and nigh impossible to read if you're not familiar with psychodynamic terminology, so I'll instead (or in addition to) recommend a text by who's today probably the most influential psychoanalyst, and whose style of writing is much easier to grasp. the cited chapter of this book, talks very succintly and with examples about this matter, but if you're at all interested in the matter, that whole book is crazy interesting. I realise that psychoanalytic texts are probably not the best source to prove a point, but to anyone in the field what I say is very readily clear just by observing patients and the way they form relationships. If, by contrast, we were to take "love" to mean what is colloqually meant by the word (ie: the hollywood definition of love), then you'd be right, anyone has the capacity to fall in love.
edit: I just found this entry, worth a read as well.
And back to narcissism. Now, contrary to the term "love", "narcissism", or certainly the fact that is began to be used by people on the streets, derives directly from the psychoanalytic literature that started to become mainstream at the beginning of the XXth Century, so in this case I think it's fair to ask that we should use said theoretical works to define the term. I have to make this remark because even though the term originated in psychoanalysis, it's since been appropriated by general (medical) psychiatry and mainstream psychology, and that's how, more or less, it is understood colloqually. At some points both PoVs intersect, but for the most part they're referring to radically different things. I'll try to explain as best as I can (to provide a background in case you're not already familiar with this).
I'm sure that's you've heard of the controversies surrounding diagnostic manuals like the DSM, with rabid detractors fighting very publicly against very passinate defenders of such models. The crux of the issue is this: In order for psychiatry (and psychology in general) to become more in-line with the rest of medical specialties, and to be able to start to incorporate elements of Evidence Based Medicine into its practise, it needed a standarised way to classify mental illnesses, and that way simply could not be achieved with the (up until then, prevalent) psychoanalytic framework, because the matter of reliability and subjectivity was a huge one (2 well-respected psychoanalysts could very well disagree wildly on the diagnosis of a particular patient), because psychoanalysis seeks to understand mental illnesses according to their underlying mechanisms, rather than by symptoms. This is in theory great, but in practice, you can't expect a psychiatrist to a) undergo a full psychoanalytic formation (which takes longer than a goddamed psychiatry residency, and is crazy expensive), or b) have patients lie on the couch for months on end before reaching a diagnosis. It's just not practical. And that's not even taking into account the usual criticisms against psychoanalysis, which I think can boil down to it's "unscientificness" due to the fact that a great deal of its tenets are experimentally unfalsifiable (how can you prove the existence and universality of the oedipus complex?). So, a few decades ago the American Psychiatric Association sought to put and end to this mess by coming up with a classification system that required not much more than being able to accurately recognise and prioritise external symptoms; ie: a phenomenological classification of mental illness. This has the benefits of being universal, readily practical for its use in research, and all that, but the detractors (rightly), point out that for the vast majority of "illnesses", the syndromes in question might not accurately represent discreet clinical entities.
Taking all of that into account, now we can see the differences between the psychoanalytic concepts of "narcissism" and the DSM concept of the same "pathology". For the DSM, narcissism is indeed an outward (phenomenological, remember?) manifestation of self love, while for psychoanalysis, it's a crucial development stage, on whose appropriate and satisfactory traversal depends the person's adult ability and way to interact in his relationships (Kernberg also has a book on the matter as well, which I haven't read, but surely is as good as the rest). The only place in which the two worlds coincide in regards to narcissism, is in the grave phases, which the DSM calls "narcissistic personality disorder". But that's where the similarities end. What your article proposed, which by DSM standards would be "a lesser grade grade of narcissism", in psychoanalytic terms would be radically different, in that it would mean a person with a perfectly adequate traversal through the narcissistic phase, but who as a percularity of personality traits has high self-esteem and such, except for the whole "exploitative" measure they did, which is something I wouldn't consider healthy, but w/e.
Hopefully I've been able to express myself in a clear enough manner.
Excellent book about Kohut, Gill and Rogers.
https://www.amazon.com/Between-Therapist-Client-New-Relationship/dp/0805071008/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492665846&sr=1-1&keywords=between+therapist+and+client
Thank you for calling it DID and not multiple personality disorder. <3
Have you read Creating Hysteria? It's a really interesting read about the creation of DID in the 80s.
And When Rabbit Howls is a incredibly disturbing memoir by a person with DID. I couldn't get all the way through it. But if you're interested in this sort of thing.
You can buy Family Therapy Techniques for a penny on Amazon. It's classic/canon, and still holds up today. The rest of the advice in this thread sounds good. I would also add that when working with teens and their parents, it can be challenging and helpful to model respect for the teen while challenging the parents to accept what is probably pretty understandable teenage behavior. And that can be hard, since you're holding a lot of anxiety.
Additionally:
Family Therapy Techniques https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674294106/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kF7DDb45T12SS
When I was studying for the licensure exam I used "Selecting Effective Treatments" by Seligman.
http://www.amazon.com/Selecting-Effective-Treatments-Comprehensive-Systematic/dp/0470889004
Linda Seligman wrote a book on effective treatments not positive psych to which I'm referring. [Selecting Effective Treatments: A Comprehensive, Systematic Guide to Treating Mental Disorders] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470889004/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_wn5Ztb0P10V9P)
Congratulations... it sounds like you brought up to light something significant in your own recovery.
If you'd like to dig further a book like Character Styles by Stephen Johnson describes how the early experiences in life shape your behaviour, ways of thinking, and also coping mechanisms, it has a summary near the end of what each character types needs to address and focus on.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Character-Styles-Stephen-M-Johnson/dp/0393701719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1550495457&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=character+styles
Bad Therapy: Master Therapists Share Their Worst Failures
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Therapy-Master-Therapists-Failures/dp/0415933234
Bad Therapy offers a rare glimpse into the hearts and mind's of the profession's most famous authors, thinkers, and leaders when things aren't going so well. Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson, who include their own therapy mishaps, interview twenty of the world's most famous practitioners who discuss their mistakes, misjudgements, and miscalculations on working with clients. Told through narratives, the failures are related with candor to expose the human side of leading therapists. Each therapist shares with regrets, what they learned from the experience, what others can learn from their mistakes, and the benefits of speaking openly about bad therapy.