oh Squash. i am not talking about concentration camps.
Narcissistic personality disorder, which is the PD that i am intimately acquainted with, cannot be treated because the sufferer has no insight into their condition. the lack of insight is a key symptom of the PD. no insight = no route into the mind of the sufferer. it's really that simple.
if you have learned differently, please share that with me.
i cannot speak much to borderline personality disorder, but i do know two people with a BPD diagnosis who have made SOME strides towards normalcy. however they are not near health, they are simply not quite as sick as before. other PDs -- not a lot of experience so i can't speak to them at all.
so allow me to clarify my position: I am talking about NPD here, and perhaps also PDs with strong N elements.
I disagree that spouses can help an NPD person. This is because NPD cannot be helped. the sufferer can't actually even fathom that their spouse is a human being with feelings of their own. what the spouse says is irrelevant in a very profound way, in a way a "normal" person could probably never fully understand.
whether the spouse remains enmeshed with the NPD sufferer or not is immaterial to the sufferer. if the spouse were to leave, the sufferer would simply replace them with the next vulnerable person they happened upon.
evil manipulative freaks is not what i label NPD sufferers as at all. i simply label them as incurable, and their condition as extremely destructive to those around them. i don't believe that's a value judgement; it think it's a statement of fact borne out by the literature. again, if you know of a therapy that has an effect on a sufferer with no insight, let me know, i shall direct my father to it and see what he says.
concentration camps for people with PDs? no, not at all. i don't think there's anything to be done about NPD on a societal level. all that can be done is that in individual cases, where NPD is suspected, families of the sufferer should be counselled to end their enmeshment with the sufferer, lower their expectations of recovery, and begin building a safe space for children of the sufferer to begin rebuilding what the sufferer has laid waste to.
it's hard that there are people with NPD out there. not nice at all. no-one wants to give up on another human being, it's awful and wrenching.
but encouraging spouses to "support" the NPD sufferer does no good at all... sad but true.