Case Conceptualization of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

From Abnormal Psychology 2020

Introduction

Shameless is a series that debuted in 2011 that depicts a poor, low working class, dysfunctional family of Frank Gallagher, a father of six, living in the slums of Chicago. Their mother Monica struggles with bipolar personality disorder and is off elsewhere. Through all Frank’s shenanigans and misadventures, his children have learned to fend and take care of themselves. Although he struggles with problems of alcohol and drug abuse and addiction, ultimately the selfishness and lack of empathy from his narcissistic personality disorder has caused his family to face some difficult challenges without an actual involved parent with a stable income. It is immediately obvious that Frank and his children face many psychological issues due to their living situation but overall due to Frank’s maladaptive personality. He possesses a very inflated sense of self-esteem, believes the world and his children owe him something for being outstanding, and he frequently shrugs off other people’s feelings to focus on his own wants and desires at the expense of other people. Frank shows symptoms of this disorder evident in a number of chronic interpersonal difficulties like an impairment in functioning, cognition, impulse control, relationships with everyone but most importantly his children, and his exaggerative behavior and attempts at receiving what he wants at another person’s cost. It is my interpretation after analyzing Frank that he is living with a cluster B personality disorder of narcissism due to his behavior, cognitions, and affections that have a negative impact on everyone around him.

Symptoms and Diagnosis

The portrayal of Frank Gallagher as a narcissist is one of the best on film. He really displays most if not all of the symptoms and he even suffers from comorbidity with a substance abuse disorder but for the purpose of this paper, I am only focusing on narcissistic personality disorder. His narcissistic personality is present across all contexts in any situation he is in. He displays grandiosity with a pompous attitude and a feeling of being superior to others. He regularly references the belief that he should be thanked and appreciated for being such a great father or for contributing so much to society. He constantly lacks empathy or remorse towards those he manipulates, including his own children when they’re physically or mentally in a tough situation. For the first criterion, Frank has a high sense of self-importance and habitually speaks of himself and his “incredible” achievements worthy of praise and admiration.

In Season one episode two, he exclaims, “nevermind being a single parent. Nevermind you wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for me,” which goes to show how he believes his miniscule accomplishments are great. For the second criterion, Frank doesn’t seem to display signs of fantasizing for fortune, success, power, beauty or any of the like although he is concerned with obtaining free money through a number of his scams and fraudulent behavior but that will be further discussed later. Frank has this idea in his head where he is quite special and deserving of commending and compliments for the third symptom. In the tenth season it follows Frank with a new homeless, alcoholic, narcissistic man whose personality and motivates reminds him like much of himself, so he became attached. When his children exhibit the same clever, criminal behavior as him occasionally, he praises them for “following in his steps” or for being similar to him. In the pilot episode within the first twenty seconds, he remarked when referring to his children as “…my kids who I’m proud of because every single one of them reminds me a little bit of me,” wherein its evident that he prefers agreeing with and being near those who he feels are similar to him, further signifying his concern for himself. Again, for the fourth criterion, he commonly speaks to others about how he should be admired or praised at home, at the bar with his drinking buddies, or in new relationships he creates with unsuspecting victims.

For the fifth symptom, Frank displays self-entitlement among others in favor of his own beliefs and expectations. He is quite unreasonable and feels like he is deserving favorable treatment by those around him, including all those who he exploits. This leads us into the sixth criterion where he is almost always using or taking advantage of someone who is easily manipulated such as a mentally or physically handicapped individual or an emotionally vulnerable person. Even worse, there are dozens of instances where he manipulates and exploits his children, especially the younger and more naïve they are to his toxic behavior. He abuses the welfare system and believes the state, his family, and those he gets involved with owes him and is obligated to take care of him. To obtain what he wants, he does use others to reach end goals by for example, taking the social security checks of their Aunt Ginger, the old woman that owned the Gallagher home. Another example is when his son Carl had a broken arm, he convinced him to ride his bike in front of a car to get hit and to eventually receive an injury compensation check. Throughout the entire show, Frank only has room for concern for himself and actions that affect his life showing no responsibility or care for his children’s lives or wellbeing. His children suffered from numerous psychological illnesses like addiction, physical injuries, heartbreak and various other problems have arisen likely due to trauma and failure of at least one decent parent to provide and take care of them. He was more worried about finding his next drug or drink to please himself. There was one instance where he and a woman were sharing a cocaine I believe and she overdosed almost immediately. Frank took anything valuable she had and then fled the scene, not an ounce of remorse to be seen. For the eighth criterion, he doesn’t ever appear to be envious of others or have a feeling that others may be envious of him. Again, he doesn’t seem too concerned with success. As for the final criterion, number nine, he regularly displays arrogance and haughtiness to those he interacts with, even law enforcement, and has a superior attitude toward others if there’s any confrontation or doubt of his loud superiority. If Frank displays seven out of nine symptoms in the criteria when he needs at least five, he has surpassed the qualifications for having narcissistic personality disorder.

Development and Etiology

In season two, Frank’s mother, Peggy, is released from prison and sent home to the Gallagher household. It’s made clear as soon as she arrives that she has her own psychological problems based on her unkindly treatment of others. She puts others down and uses depreciating jokes as her way to cope and she did the same to her son. It’s obvious that she wasn’t a loving mother to Frank. Quite the opposite really, constantly nagging or criticizing, depreciating him, and showing disinterest in his life or his problems. At one point she even stabs Frank in the leg for ruining a deal she had with an older drug dealer. However, she praises Frank when she finds out he lies to the government to receive benefits and she also has a habit of using him to get what she wants, which Frank has seemed to learn from. From what we can collect, Peggy’s treatment of Frank when he was young was not pleasant. He never had a loving, supportive parent around to encourage healthy behaviors or

flexible, adaptive characteristics and coping mechanisms. The development of this disorder most likely arose from the mistreatment at the hands of his mother along with the verbal abuse. Since she was overly critical although abusive in almost all areas, controlling, and cold, her behavior seemed to cause Frank to develop a mix of two types of narcissism. The grandiose stems from her attempts at dominating him and dismissing his feelings or desires while the vulnerable stems from the abuse, intrusiveness, and her avoidant attitude. He uses aggression, grandiosity, and extraversion when he gets into disagreements with others, like Fiona’s first boyfriend from season one when he tried to confront him about his parenting style, and Frank just dismissed his words, belittled him, and called him names while throwing a tantrum. Or physically “getting back” at his son Ian for fooling around with a girl whose Dad headbutted his nose at a bar so he went and did the same to his son. He uses a condescending attitude and arrogance as a façade to make up for his deep hatred of himself and his unstable self-esteem to protect himself from rejection and criticism. His upbringing under her negative styled parenting and her lack of empathy is likely the cause of his manipulative, selfish, and neglectful tendencies, just as he witnessed and lived with his mother growing up.

In Frank’s life he dealt a mother suffering from her own kind of psychopathology, maladaptive practices and cognitions, hurtful, ineffective parenting styles, and many kinds of abuse. Biologically, we don’t know much about his family history as we don’t learn about or meet many other family members in the show but it is possible that he was predisposed for developing narcissism and may have inherited certain genes linked to the disorder. However, I believe that the majority of the source of the disorder stems from childhood and his mother’s behavior and parenting.

Impact

The disorder has taken a toll on Frank’s life and those around him. Along with narcissism he has an addiction alcohol and any and all drugs. He is impulsive and refuses to receive help because he only cares about his own pleasure and relief. He even goes out of his way to hurt himself to receive pain medications. The disorder has kept him from obtaining or keeping a job because he feels the world “owes him,” it has kept him from showing the love, support, empathy, and compassion to his children that they need in healthy development, and it has kept him from creating and maintaining any kind of relationship because he manipulates and lies to get what he wants just to name a few ways the disorder has controlled his functioning. A large portion of the problems he causes falls on his children to correct, especially the eldest daughter, Fiona. Frank doesn’t seem to care about his own life, just denying how he could ever do anything wrong. One example is at the end of season nine when Fiona goes to leave the Southside of Chicago, the last person she sees as she’s about to head out of the door with her suitcase is Frank of all people. His last words to her, and you can see the pain, discomfort, and the struggle in his face before he has to give her a compliment to “be nice” before she leave, was “You did a good job. Monica [(the mother)] wasn’t up to it. You stepped in and helped.” That is a huge understatement as Fiona was the only way her and her siblings survived for years, scrambling to pay the bills and take care of each other. She scuffed and said, “Helped? I did it all, Frank,” to which then he said, “Well, if it helps you sleep better,” and then she left the city in search of a better life. Another example of his disorder in terms of self-esteem and gratitude is how with every child, he tries to do something that will win over their approval and admiration. When he got Liam, the youngest of all the children into private school for free due to another scam and an outrageous scene that he caused when complaining about their lack of racial representation and underprivileged communities and the working class. Liam eventually says “you’re a great dad,” which genuinely makes Frank happy to hear through his ears because he grinned ear to ear for a second and you could see the joy in his eyes.

As for mental health, Frank is luckier than most as the whole purpose of narcissistic personality disorder is to protect the ego and cope with internal and external stimuli for unwanted feelings, thoughts, or words. He gradually built a list of inflexible, distorted personality characteristics to hide the shame of his true feelings of himself that his mother imposed on him, which can now be classified as NPD. If he had another kind of disorder, odds are he would struggle more mentally. What’s interesting is some of the most successful individuals are narcissists and are perfectly functional, so this disorder is one of the less serious ones to have on the individual that is diagnosed with it as opposed to those around them. They hurt those around them while boosting themselves up.

Critique

I have never seen or heard of a better portrayal of a narcissist on TV as I did in Shameless with Frank. The symptoms that he does have are conspicuous and a bit over the top at times although all true, they exaggerate how the typical narcissist would appear and behave using Frank to make him a more interesting character. He truly never admits his faults and makes everyone else seem like they’re wrongdoing him which is an accurate portrayal of a real narcissist. When his children are suffering through something, he shows absolutely no empathy and lets them figure it out on their own, which I don’t believe a narcissistic parent would behave that way. They would likely display a bit more concern for their child’s wellbeing but it’s almost like Frank is incapable of even caring for himself. When he’s searching for compliments or appreciation, he likes to draw tons of attention to himself in crowds while a real-life narcissist isn’t as loud and proud and normally display this behavior in personal conversations with family or something similar.

Conclusion

Based on the criteria of narcissistic personality disorder, his interaction with loved ones, and various unemphatic, selfish, manipulative actions and negatively impacting beliefs, Frank can be identified and diagnosed as having this disorder. He really does have this false belief about his perception of the world and how others should be treating him. “The way I see it, I’ve done a lot for the folks around here over the past couple of years” while at a bar called The Alibi in season two. And another one of Frank’s great quotes, “I don’t believe in God, I believe in a being that thinks it’s greater than me” in Season 3. Frank will never seek help because most narcissists don’t since they don’t realize they have a problem. They literally can’t see it or understand it. His children have tried to make him see how terrible of a father his illness has made him but there is no use, no amount of persuading will work for him. He will live with narcissistic personality disorder until his he dies.

Citation:

1. Wells, John. (Executive Producer). (2011-present). Shameless. [TV Series]. John Wells Productions; Warner Bros. Television; Showtime Networks.