Sadomasochism and complementarity in the interaction of the narcissistic and borderline personality type

The narcissist and borderline personality types complement one another's defensive style providing needed defensive externalization of disavowed and split-off feelings. One is exploitative, grandiose, and dominant, forever seeking admiration and exhibiting an aggrandized self; the other experiences humiliation, neediness, helplessness, and terror of aloneness. They form a powerful complementary dyad wherein each identifies with disavowed emotional experiences displayed in the other. They can coexist for lengths of time, defensively discharging unwanted feelings. In the first case presented above, the transference was split initially, with the masoborderline patient being victimized and humiliated by her sadonarcissistic lover. In the second case, a male sadonarcissist enacted disavowed feelings through relationships with masoborderline women. In both cases, defensive enactment was fed by a complementary, intense, and symbiotic relationship. Complementary dynamics can be subtle and difficult to analyze. They involve defensive identification that draws on projection, enactment, and externalization--all difficult defenses to analyze. Enactment rather than remembering is inimical to the development of insight into transference and genetic connections and must be worked through for the analysis to progress. More than the usual analytic patience and resolve is needed to work through the difficult entrapments caused by these dynamics.