Where does narcissism collide?

In psychoanalysis and clinical psychology, narcissism is a disturbance in the regulation of self-esteem and in the structure of the self, running from Freud's account of libido invested in the ego to Kernberg's model of pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality organisation. Freud's 1914 On Narcissism: An Introduction introduced the concept, and Kernberg's Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism developed the clinical picture of grandiosity defending against underlying emptiness and envy. The referent is a clinical construct about disordered self-structure, assessed by clinical interview, distinct from the normal-range personality trait that shares the name.[1][2]

Unit

The degree of pathology in self-esteem regulation and the structure of the self

Recovery means

Narcissistic pathology can shift with long-term psychotherapy; the construct describes a disorder of self-structure rather than a fixed state

Measured by

Assessed by clinical interview and structured measures of personality organisation

In personality and social psychology, narcissism is a continuously distributed trait in the normal range (grandiosity, entitlement, self-enhancement, and a need for admiration) rather than a clinical disorder, studied in non-clinical samples and as one member of the "dark triad." Raskin and Hall's 1979 A narcissistic personality inventory operationalised this trait and made it widely measurable. The referent is a quantitative personality dimension assessed by self-report, a different construct from the psychoanalytic disorder of the self even though both travel under the word narcissism.[3]

Unit

A person's standing on a continuous narcissism-trait dimension

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Measured by self-report scales such as the Narcissistic Personality Inventory