The Effectiveness of Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy on Couple Interactive Damages of Narcissistic Men: A single- subject research

Narcissism has many negative interpersonal consequences, and marital relationship is an appropriate context for many of these consequences. The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of metacognitive interpersonal therapy on couple interactive damages in narcissistic man. In this research, a single subject method with A-B-A design was used. For this purpose, two couples (4 people) were selected through purposive sampling. For men, after determining the baseline level, 21 intervention sessions were performed and their wives completed questionnaires at the same time.
Semi-structured interviews (SCID), narcissistic personality inventory (NPI-40) and researcher-made Interactive damages Inventory was used. In order to analyze the collected data, visual analysis, trend index and stability index, percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) and percentage of overlapping data (POD) were used. According to the visual analyses of the data diagrams, the intervention was effective on the 4 subjects. The mean scores of 4 subjects in the baseline have decreased from 212.66, 224.33, 193.0 and 245.66 to 101.0, 113.0, 84.66 and 115.0, respectively. The percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) in the two baseline and intervention situations for the 4 subjects was 100%. The maximum percentage of improvement (MPI) was higher than 50% for all 4 participants that indicated a clinically meaningful effect. This effectiveness was observ able in the follow-up stage. The results of this study showed that MIT due to focus on self-awareness, interpersonal circles and schemas can reduce the couple interactive damages of narcissistic man.