At first, the child idealises his parents. As he grows, he begins to notice their shortcomings and vices. He withdraws part of the idealising libido from the images of the parents, which is conducive to the natural development of the Superego. The narcissistic part of the child's psyche remains vulnerable throughout its development. This is largely true until the "child" re-internalises the ideal parent image.

Also, the very construction of the mental apparatus can be tampered with by traumatic deficiencies and by object losses right through the Oedipal period (and even in latency and in adolescence).

The same effect can be attributed to traumatic disappointment by objects.

Disturbances leading to the formation of NPD can be thus grouped into:

1. Very early disturbances in the relationship with an ideal object. These lead to a structural weakness of the personality, which develops a deficient and/or dysfunctional stimuli-filtering mechanism. The ability of the individual to maintain a basic narcissistic homeostasis of the personality is damaged. Such a person suffers from diffusive narcissistic vulnerability.
2. A disturbance occurring later in life - but still pre-Oedipally - affects the pre-Oedipal formation of the basic mechanisms for controlling, channelling, and neutralising drives and urges. The nature of the disturbance has to be a traumatic encounter with the ideal object (such as a major disappointment). The symptomatic manifestation of this structural defect is the propensity to re-sexualise drive derivatives and internal and external conflicts, either in the form of fantasies or in the form of deviant acts.
3. A disturbance formed in the Oedipal or even in the early latent phases - inhibits the completion of the Superego idealisation. This is especially true of a disappointment related to an ideal object of the late pre-Oedipal and the Oedipal stages, where the partly idealised external parallel of the newly internalised object is traumatically destroyed.

Such a person possesses a set of values and standards, but he is always on the lookout for ideal external figures from whom he aspires to derive the affirmation and the leadership that he cannot get from his insufficiently idealised Superego.

next: Chapter 1, The Soul of a Narcissist, The State of the Art