How can the same object become split when viewed by different groups of observers? What is the relationship between conflict and consensus, and the ritual and the rational? I interrogate these questions through the case of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) in Germanophone Europe and North America. I interviewed forty-five practitioners from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the US and Canada. These conversations were semi-structured and ethnographically inflected. I attempted to take the informant’s perspective earnestly and to read any available works by that author in advance of the interview. To gain a sense of how science differed when not immediately concerned with the treatment of patients, I included an assessment specialist and a social-personality psychologist. Non-expert practitioners, who had not published any books or articles on pathological narcissism, were included to test whether theory is solely alluring to the academician or if it holds sway over the psychotherapist on the street. These respondent pools were matched as closely as possible across the two contexts to facilitate comparison. Approximately six psychotherapeutic schools emerged as important amongst my respondents. After a brief introduction to the different psychotherapies, I begin with the native understandings of NPD or pathological narcissism. These definitions and the wide range of narcissistic patients seen pose the puzzle: How can these definitions be so disparate, and all ostensibly be concerned with NPD as a clinical or scientific object? My concern is less oratorical and more earthy: What precisely do practitioners do? Opening with assessment (Ch. 5), we find some common signs. Diagnostic procedures may employ different technological mixes, but ultimately all follow a single pattern. Chapter 6 addresses empathy and the therapeutic alliance. The notion of a minimal medical model underlying all treatment types I encountered was unearthed despite many methods’ active denial of the ‘medical model.’ The patient-practitioner boundary is, however, far from the final frontier. Conceptualisation helps to guide the ways in which clinicians interact with one another, and ultimately the broader science of psychopathology. Chapter 8 addresses the ways in which different classificatory schemes relate to one another, and how this helps to shape the science of narcissism. What ultimately emerges is a story of (1) the minor differences of narcissism and (2) the narcissism of minor differences. The narcissism (2) can be said to obscure the (1) minor differences. Competition is inherent in the process at multiple levels: between models for both students and patients (attention-space), and through scientific exchange and the effort to gain evidence for one’s theory. I suggest that science serves less to find the best description or explanation for pathological narcissism, and more to legitimate one’s conceptualisation. Evidence of this sort gives a theoretical school means to command more financial and attentional resources. Psychotherapeutic technology is, however, path dependent, limiting the distance between any two methods.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-16T15:23:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1329050 bytes, checksum: 3d1d6e7fc6769d052a7e3538858c2e6f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-07-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The need for information organization imposed by the increasing informational bulk rouses treatment measures by professionals among the most diverse information systems, such as archives, libraries, documentation centers, museums, and others. In society, nowadays, the exarcebated volume of the connective input of social, cultural, economic and technological wealth, which refers to information, requires that countries promote measures that go far beyond the physical space found in such systems so as to get into the virtual world. Intellectual technologies, then, come into action as a solution concerning the increasing informational flow, among them, the digital hypertext as a technology for the organization, management as well as communication of informational blocks; and groupware blog, chat and discussion lists as those ones capable of stimulating users to both individual and collective intelligence in the context of virtual learning nets. The overall aim is directed to the analysis of the digital hypertext as a technology targeted on information management and organization in the perspective of information communication. The specific ones cover the creation of a study group involving professors, researchers and Master students on areas like Management, Computer Science and Information Science, with the purpose of discussing interdisciplinary relations; the elaboration of guidelines for the production of the Virtual Learning Net's prototype PPGCI.NET, of the Postgraduate Program on Information Science/UFPB, by means of the relation digital hypertext -groupware blog, chat and discussion list; and the investigation into digital hypertext in the perspective of organization and management for information communication as regards to the guidelines for the development of the Virtual Learning Net PPGCI.NET. The methodological features as to method types, research, objective, gathering procedures and data nature correspond, respectively, to the following ones: research-action method, practical research or research-action, participant research, exploratory research and qualitative one. The substantiated plurality of theoretical voices - throughout the research - also includes the methodological analysis of the Hypertextus Study Group's discussions, of the students' - the ones who are representative of the Postgraduate Program on Information Science/UFPB, and of the volunteered participation of an Information Science professional. The aspects, described above, represent only some links of such an untiring web of investigation called hypertext. / A necessidade de organizar a informação imposta pela crescente massa informacional impulsiona medidas de tratamento pelos profissionais nos mais variados sistemas de informação, como arquivos, bibliotecas, centros de documentação, museus, etc. Na sociedade atual, o volume exacerbado do insumo conector de riqueza cultural, econômica, social e tecnológica que é a informação, exige que países promovam medidas que vão além do espaço físico encontrado nesses sistemas para adentrarem no mundo virtual. As tecnologias intelectuais entram em cena como uma solução diante do crescente fluxo informacional, entre elas o hipertexto digital como uma tecnologia para a organização, gestão e comunicação de blocos informacionais, e os groupware blog, chat e lista de discussão como aqueles capazes de estimular nos usuários as inteligências individual e coletiva no contexto das redes virtuais de aprendizagem. O objetivo geral refere-se à análise do hipertexto digital como uma tecnologia intelectual voltada para a gestão e organização da informação na perspectiva da comunicação da informação. Já os específicos abrangem a criação de um grupo de estudo envolvendo professores, pesquisadores e mestrandos das áreas de Administração, Ciência da Computação e Ciência da Informação, com a finalidade de discutirmos as relações interdisciplinares; a elaboração de diretrizes para a criação do protótipo da Rede Virtual de Aprendizagem PPGCI.NET, do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação/UFPB, a partir da relação hipertexto digital groupware blog, chat e lista de discussão; e a investigação do hipertexto digital na perspectiva da organização e gestão para a comunicação da informação no que diz respeito às diretrizes para a criação da Rede Virtual de Aprendizagem PPGCI.NET. As caracterizações metodológicas quanto aos tipos de método, pesquisa, objetivo, procedimentos de coleta e natureza dos dados correspondem, respectivamente, aos seguintes: método pesquisa-ação, pesquisa prática ou pesquisa-ação, exploratória, pesquisa participativa, e qualitativa. A pluralidade de vozes teóricas fundamentada no decorrer da pesquisa também engloba a análise metodológica das discussões do Grupo de Estudo Hipertextus, dos discentes representantes do Programa de Pós- Graduação em Ciência da Informação/UFPB e da participação voluntária de um profissional da área Ciência da Computação. Os pontos delineados acima representam apenas alguns links desta insaciável teia de investigação chamada hipertexto.