---
title: "History of narcissism"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_narcissism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:04.509844+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Later psychoanalysts ==

=== Karen Horney ===

Karen Horney saw narcissism quite differently from Freud, Kohut and other mainstream psychoanalytic theorists in that she did not posit a primary narcissism but saw the narcissistic personality as the product of a certain kind of early environment acting on a certain kind of temperament. For her, narcissistic needs and tendencies are not inherent in human nature.
Narcissism is different from Horney's other major defensive strategies or solutions in that it is not compensatory. Self-idealization is compensatory in her theory, but it differs from narcissism. All the defensive strategies involve self-idealization, but in the narcissistic solution it tends to be the product of indulgence rather than of deprivation. The narcissist's self-esteem is not strong, however, because it is not based on genuine accomplishments.

=== Heinz Kohut ===

Heinz Kohut explored further the implications of Freud's perception of narcissism. He maintained that a child will tend to fantasize about having a grandiose self and ideal parents. He claimed that deep down, all people retain a belief in their own perfection and the perfection of anything they are part of. As a person matures, grandiosity gives way to self-esteem, and the idealization of the parent becomes the framework for core values. It is when psychological trauma disrupts this process that the most primitive and narcissistic version of the self remains unchanged. Kohut called such conditions narcissistic personality disorder, 'in which the merging with and detaching from an archaic self-object play the central role...narcissistic union with the idealized self-object'.
Kohut suggested narcissism as part of a stage in normal development, in which caregivers provide a strong and protective presence with which the child can identify that reinforces the child's growing sense of self by mirroring his good qualities. If the caregivers fail to provide adequately for their child, the child grows up with a brittle and flawed sense of self. 'Kohut's innovative pronouncement...became a veritable manifesto in the United States....The age of "normal narcissism" had arrived'
Kohut also saw beyond the negative and pathological aspects of narcissism, believing it is a component in the development of resilience, ideals and ambition once it has been transformed by life experiences or analysis—though critics objected that his theory of how 'we become attached to ideals and values, instead of to our own archaic selves...fits the individual who escapes from bad inner negativity into idealized objects outside'.

=== Otto Kernberg ===

Otto Kernberg uses the term narcissism to refer to the role of self in the regulation of self-esteem.
He believed normal, infantile narcissism depends on the affirmation of others and the acquisition of desirable and appealing objects, which should later develop into healthy, mature self-esteem. This healthy narcissism depends upon an integrated sense of self that incorporates images of the internalized affirmation of those close to the person and is regulated by the super ego and ego ideal, internal mental structures that assure the person of his worth and that he deserves his own respect.
The failure of infantile narcissism to develop in this healthy adult form becomes a pathology.

=== Object relations theory ===

'Melanie Klein's...descriptions of infantile omnipotence and megalomania provided important insights for the clinical understanding of narcissistic states. In 1963, writing on the psychopathology of narcissism, Herbert Rosenfeld was especially concerned to arrive at a better definition of object-relationships and their attendant defense mechanisms in narcissism'.
D. W. Winnicott's 'brilliant observations of the mother-child couple [also] throw considerable light on primary narcissism, which in the young child can be viewed as the extension of the mother's narcissism.

=== Jacques Lacan ===
Lacan—building on Freud's dictum that "all narcissistic impulses operate from the ego and have their permanent seat in the ego"—used his own concept of the mirror stage to explore the narcissistic ego in terms of "the essential structure it derives from its reference to the specular image...narcissism".
'Béla Grunberger drew attention to a double orientation of narcissism—as both a need for self-affirmation and a tendency to restore permanent dependency. The active presence of narcissism throughout life led Grunberger to suggest treating it as an autonomous factor (1971)'.
'Under the evocative title Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism (1983), André Green clarified the conflict surrounding the object of narcissism (whether a fantasy object or a real object) in its relationship to the ego. For Green, it was because narcissism affords the ego a certain degree of independence...that a lethal kind of narcissism must be considered, for the object is destroyed at the beginning of this process'; while in a further analysis, 'Green evokes physical narcissism, intellectual narcissism, and moral narcissism'—a set of divisions sometimes simplified into that between 'somatic narcissists who are obsessed with the body...[&] cerebral narcissists—people who build up their sense of magnificence out of an innate feeling of intellectual superiority'.

== Psychiatry ==

=== Diagnosis ===
Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition defined in DSM-5, made by the American Psychiatric Association.
The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Edition (ICD-10), of the World Health Organization (WHO), lists narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) under the category of "Other specific personality disorders". The ICD-11, due to be adopted on 1 January 2022, will merge all personality disorders into one, which can be coded as "Mild", "Moderate" or "Severe".

== Online usage ==
The success of the term narcissism has led to something of an "inflation of meanings....Some in fact exploited it as a handy term of abuse for modern culture or as a loose synonym for bloated self-esteem."

== See also ==
Malignant narcissism
Narcissism of small differences
Narcissistic parents
Narcissistic rage and narcissistic injury
Narcissistic supply

== References ==

== Further reading ==
Bela Grunberger, Narcissism: Psychoanalytic Essays (New York 1971)
J. Sandler et al., Freud's "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (Yale UP, 1991)

== External links ==