Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Abstract

Cold therapy is based on two premises: (1) That narcissistic disorders are actually forms of complex post-traumatic conditions and (2) That narcissists are the outcomes of arrested development and attachment dysfunctions. Consequently, cold therapy borrows techniques from child psychology and from treatment modalities used to deal with PTSD. Cold therapy consists of the re-traumatization of the narcissistic client in a hostile, non-holding environment which resembles the ambience of the original trauma. The adult patient successfully tackles this second round of hurt and thus resolves early childhood conflicts and achieves closure rendering his now maladaptive narcissistic defenses redundant, unnecessary, and obsolete. Cold therapy makes use of proprietary techniques such as erasure (suppressing the client's speech and free expression and gaining clinical information and insights from his reactions to being so stifled). Other techniques include: Grandiosity reframing, guided imagery, negative iteration, other-scoring, happiness map, mirroring, escalation, role play, assimilative confabulation, hyper-vigilant referencing and re-parenting.

Biography

Sam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" and other books about personality disorders. He spent 6 years developing a treatment modality for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

E-mail: samvaknin@gmail.com