Rating: 
Summary: This is a Wonderful Book
Review: A co-worker of mine recommended this book to me a few years back but I was not ready to evaluate my life. Now I wish I would have listened to her. From the very first paragraph of this book it described my relationship with mother. I found the reading of it to be easy and insightful with simple exercises that were also enlightening.
For years I have struggled with mother, trying to cope with and change her. It's a bit cliché but, I learned I can't change her. I can only change myself. With children of my own now, I don't want to continue the cycle and raise my children with the doubts of self worth that I was raised with. This reading is so very important to adult children who have suffered for years-living in the shadow of a Narcissistic parent. There are so many of us out there. One of the best things about Children..... is that it uses exercises that encourage the reader to look inside themselves. Not to blame, but to grow. This is so very key when one is reevaluating their life.
Since I have read this book, I have put a lot of the exercises into practice. For instance in self training, Children...... recommends when first encountering the troubling parent to put yourself in a protective box to keep the parents hurtful comments out, instead, mother gets put in a box to keep all the bad stuff in and me safe from it. It's a mental exercise but it's helped reduce the battles mother and I have with every conversation.
In a nutshell, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend Children of the Self Absorbed to anyone with a parent or family member thats Narcissistic. Do yourself a favor, buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Worthwhile Resource
Review: As a therapist, this is a book I would recommend to appropriate clients. Of particular help, Dr. Brown confirms that the narcissist is not likely to change because they are incapable of seeing anything is wrong with their behavior. Therefore, it is not the child's responsibility to help the parent change; the child has to focus on what they can control, i.e. themselves. Among the helpful strategies, I also appreciated her candid descriptions of anticipated responses by parents and how to handle them. While there are a few typos and it is not the best edited text, these concerns reflect the editor, and not Dr. Brown's content. There are relatively few resources on this subject and this is one of the better ones.
Rating:
Summary: Gaining an Understanding of Unacceptable Parenting
Review: Being the child of two narcissistic parents this book enabled me to see that what I thought was normal parental behavior, not having any other point of reference, was in fact unacceptable and cruel. I was in awe that an entire book could be written that so definitively described my parents and me. The second half of the book was helpful in providing me with coping and protecting devices. I look forward to rereading the book several times to be able to incorporate the ideas into my every day living.
Rating:
Summary: You can't fix them, but you can help yourself!
Review: Children of the Self-Absorbed is a well constructed manual for dealing with one of the touchiest people in the world: the Perfectly Perfect Parent. It's organized in a very usuable fashion: first, you find out if your Problem Parent fits the category; next, you find out how to dodge the bullets; and finally, you find out how to fix the old wounds. Useful for therapists as well as progeny, it practically maps out the treatment, step by step. A gem!
Rating:
Summary: Uncanny insights, helpful suggestions, not great literature
Review: I found the author's descriptions of narcissistic parents and their affects on adult children to be concise, insightful and helpful. The author begins by describing the narcissist parent and the adult child's responses to him / her. The behaviors included were wide ranging and the moments of recognition frequent. As the child of an artful narcissist, I felt like Brown understood my position and tied together behaviors that I had not previously seen as stemming from my own parent's narcissism. Brown goes on to offer sympathy for the plight of adult children of narcissists, but establishes a strong position that the parent will not change. The message to children of narcissists is to move on, but not without tools for dealing with the narcissist and the ability to care for oneself. Brown offers practical advice on how to lessen the impact of the narcissist's volleys, which are helpful without being trite. (I've even experimented with some of the suggestions that Brown makes, e.g. flatter the narcissist, agree with his / her criticisms, and these are enormously empowering because they allow the person targetted by the narcissist to gain a sense of logic and clarity in the interaction.) The one weakness of the book is the writer's style, which is sometimes sloppy. All in all, that was a small price to pay for a book that contains wonderful insights and genuinely helpful suggestions.
Rating: 
Summary: Who's the narcissist?
Review: I found this book poorly written and poorly edited (many typographical errors). Some of the suggestions/recommendations were childish in the extreme. There were a few (very few) nuggets of information but generally I felt like I was wasting my time. Too much of the book was spent on unhelpful generalizations about problem parents and techniques to control and/or manage parental behavior. The title led me to believe that the content would focus more on managing onself and establishing other satisfying relationships. I think Dr. Brown may still be too absorbed in the self-absorbed parents she writes about!
Rating:
Summary: Unique Ways of Dealing with the Its-All-About-Me Parent
Review: I have found this book to be useful in my ministry for adult children of abusive or controlling parents. It begins by describing Destructive Narcissistic Parents (DNPs),teaches how being raised by them affected you, and gives very unique techniques for diffusing their ability to hurt you. It subscribes to the theory that confrontation will not work because a narcissist will never change and does not believe he is doing anything wrong, but rather thinks that everyone else exists for his use and benefit; therefore other techniques for dealing with him are suggested, including avoidance, humor, or body language designed to subconsciously confuse the narcissist.
Does your parent have attention needs, admiration needs, the need to be considered unique and special, lack of empathy, feel others are extensions of herself, grandiosity, shallow emotions, a sense of entitlement, emotionally abusive traits, or does she exploit others? These characteristics identify a DNP, and specific examples of each trait are given.
As an adult, you can have two possible responses to being raised by a DNP. You may have a Siege Response- some traits of which include becoming defiant when given orders or demands, rebelling against restrictions or rules, being wary or fearful of intimacy, feeling anxious or panicky when others want to be nurtured, guilty feelings, personalizing others' behavior, being easily offended, etc. You may also exhibit the Compliant Response, including needing to be liked or approved of, feeling responsible for others' well-being, feeling that others are taking advantage of you, sacrificing personal needs for others, being overemotional, being overly critical of yourself and others, etc.
We are taught coping strategies which include developing emotional insulation, avoiding trying to empathize, giving up unrealistic fantasies, and meeting our emotional needs instead of putting them second to everyone else's.
The empowering strategies which are suggested are very interesting. For instance, becoming contrary when a DNP is trying to manipulate us- without explaining or announcing what we are doing, simply doing the opposite of or something entirely different from whatever is wanted or ordered. Other examples include becoming indifferent, avoiding interactions, setting guidelines your parent must follow in order to obtain your cooperation, practicing a blank facial expression and no response when being criticized, acting bored and "drifting" to another subject, asking a series of questions that will point out the absurdity of what they are saying, and declaring independence. It is important not to let them get a rise out of you or appear hurt, angry or defensive.
This book is especially valuable for those with self-centered parents who exploit them, and have probably done so since childhood. Many of us will recognize the narcissist in our own parents.
Rating:
Summary: RISE ABOVE YOUR RAISING - CHILDREN OF THE SELF ABSORBED
Review: I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking to find help with mood disorders, any type of addiction, identity issues, self-esteem issues, reoccurring unresolved anger and troubling relationship issues. Excellent compliments to this book are: The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders by Joseph Santoro and Ronald Cohen; The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert Pressman; Emotional Blackmail: When People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier; Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable and Volatile Relationship by Christine Ann Lawson; Living with the Passive-Aggressive Man by Scott Wetzler; Treating Attachment Disorders: From Theory to Therapy by Karl Heinz Brisch and Kenneth Kronenberg; Toxic Coworkers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job by Alan Cavaiola and Neil Lavender. And if you want to pursue the subject even further, you may be interested in reading The Narcissistic / Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective On Marital Treatment; Addicted to Unhappiness: Free yourself from the moods and behaviors that undermine relationships, work and the life you want by Martha Heineman Pieper and William Pieper; Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility by Jim Fay and Foster Cline.
Rating:
Summary: There's NO excuse for such a poorly written book
Review: If psychologist Nina Brown is not exactly on speaking terms with Standard English, then New Harbinger Books should get its editorial staff off its collective backside to make authors look like they've completed high school ... at the very least. Brown offers some valuable insight into the narcissistic personality but unfortunately, readers must sift through pages of poor writing (awkward phrasing, ghastly grammar, and and an utter lack of attention to a logical sequence of problems, examples, and explanations) to find it. This book MAY seem like it's well written to those who are familiar only with the most colloquial levels of speech and writing, but experts -- especially Ph.Ds -- owe their general readership much more.
Rating:
Summary: Narcissistic Parents, Narcissistic Off-spring
Review: Is there a linear connection between narcissistic parents and narcissistic off-spring? Is there a lineage of narcissism? Is narcissism contagious? Judging by the number of books about 'affected children of narcissists', the answer would seem to be: yes. Growing up with narcissistic parents is tantamount to being a POW, a hostage, the object of the whole spectrum of abuse. It is trauma writ large. And it can - and sometimes does - distort the child's healthy development. Narcissists are, as Nina Brown says, 'self-absorbed'. The child is an extension, a plaything, a toy, a nuisance, a threat - but never, simply, another human being with needs (especially emotional ones) and boundaries to be respected. This book is a straightforward presentation of this state of siege and how to overcome the pernicious after-effects of being exposed to narcissism, replete with case studies. A fascinating read. Sam Vaknin, author of 'Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited'.
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