The Workings of Pathological Narcissism - Development of the Narcissistic Personality

Written by Sam Vaknin

Defenses such as narcissism are developed to compensate for the intolerable and gradual realisation that adults are merely human: capricious, unfair, unpredictable, non-dependable. Defences provide both satisfaction and a sense of security.

Otto Kernberg

Otto Kernberg (1975, 1984, 1987) is a senior member of the Object Relations school in Psychology (comprising also Kohut, Klein, and Winnicott). Kernberg regards as artificial the division between Object Libido (energy directed at people) and Narcissistic Libido (energy directed at the self). Whether the child develops a normal or a pathological form of narcissism depends on the relations between the representations of the self (the image of the self that the child forms in his or her mind) and the representations of objects (the images of other people that the child forms in his or her mind). It is also dependent on the relationship between the representations of the self and real objects. The development of pathological narcissism is also determined by instinctual conflicts related both to the libido and to aggression.

Kernberg's concept of Self is closely related to Freud's concept of Ego. The Self is dependent upon the unconscious, which exerts a constant influence on all mental functions. Pathological narcissism, therefore, reflects a libidinal investment in a pathologically structured Self and not in a normal, integrative structure of the Self. The narcissist suffers from a Self, which is devalued or fixated on aggression.

All object relations of such a pathological Self are detached from the real objects (because they often cause hurt and narcissistic injury) and involve dissociation, repression, or projection onto other objects. Narcissism is not merely a fixation on an early developmental stage. It is not confined to the failure to develop intra-psychic structures. It is an active, libidinal investment in a deformed structure of the Self.

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