Your kindness and its inherent optimism is compelling. Thank you for that. I am writing to also add an additional perspective regarding your treatise. To be succinct, you have a number of blind spots in your thesis. In one case, you could drive an 18 wheeler through the hole in your logic.

“Loved one” to a narc never exists. Without empathy there simply can not be love. What exists is transactions. People to a narc are like used vehicles cleaned and polished to a car dealer. Narcs are inherently motivated to avoid strategic change. This reality is the core of the matter and the heart of the argument. Its like a alcoholic driving drunk and consequently causing an accident that includes breaking his arm. The arm can heal [the narc tactics] but the core problem [ his or her alcoholism] is not resolved [ the narc reason for being…affirmation via others at all costs [to include changing tactics].

To state the narc does have impulse control and willingness to delay satisfaction is simply false. A narc’s emotional vector is ever pointed to immediacy. A narc without impulse is not able to advantage themselves to the primal need. They live by impulse. To characterize a narc as evil results in no different outcome then when you praise the narc. To the positive the momentarily smile feel normal then within moments arc back to simply being lost. A negative characterization works the exact same way while serving as a cornerstone to seeking additional attention when couching the characterization as being attacked hence, a victim thus, worthy of being attended to [ see flying monkeys]. The trap you have been caught up in is the use of wrong filters. You see the narc via a nuro typical set of eyes. As in the title of your article, you are not seeing the narc via the narc non-nuro typical set of eyes. This reality leads to flawed premises consequently inaccurate if not unfounded conclusions.

My experienced in the 30 plus years with a narc [ accompanied with many years of reflection] does agree with the rare moment of shame that drives incremental thought processes. I witnessed her rare moment of pause and reflection [post being called out for her historical portfolio of daunting deeds]when the deed was demeaning [ more primitive arcing to embarrassment ] to her current tactics [which had evolved into more sophisticated and stealth while nevertheless ever lethal in their outcomes]. Shame to a narc is as close as she could get to the genuine dark, unloved self. This reality was dynamic and fast moving always arcing back to the original status of acts focused on self interest exclusively. Narcs like the predator on the Serengeti, is pure instinct that in large part has been wired [see inherited] for such while reason as product of the dialectic [standing back and becoming an objective observer…seeing both sides…multiple views], simply is beyond their reach for even in a state of shame they remain first and foremost a survivor. Arguably, this fact removes them from the practical nature of altering their emotional maturity to match their cognitive dissonance state.What I viewed from her attempts at “normalcy” was simply a dynamic camouflage being unleashed.

Understandably, your theory is focused on the rare moment in nature when its algorithm is altered or found simply nuanced. To that end, I indeed wish your pursuits well for in every class 5 hurricane there exists infinite opportunity to include the finite possibility it and and will alter its dynamic by changing…mitigating its inherent nature. To that end, one could offer hope while treading lightly for as in all mythological tales, hope and delusion can become strange bedfellows.

Thank you and please allow your voice to remain eminently engaged for your wonderment and its energy offers much hope and for that we as listeners, remain ever grateful.