Narcissism and Childhood Recollections (PDF)

[CZBZ]

Narcissism and Childhood Recollections: A Quantitative Test of Psychoanalytic Predictions

Lorna J. Otway

Vivian L. Vignoles

University of Sussex, United Kingdom

Different psychotherapeutic theories provide contradictory accounts of adult narcissism as the product of either parental coldness or excessive parental admiration during childhood. Yet, none of these theories has been tested systematically in a nonclinical sample. The authors compared four structural equation models predicting overt and covert narcissism among 120 United Kingdom adults. Both forms of narcissism were predicted by both recollections of parental coldness and recollections of excessive parental admiration. Moreover, a suppression relationship
was detected between these predictors: The effects of each were stronger when modeled together than separately. These effects were found after controlling for working models of attachment; covert narcissism was predicted also by attachment anxiety. This combination of childhood experiences may help to explain the paradoxical combination of grandiosity and fragility in adult narcissism.

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[betterdays]

STBXNH  grew up believing he was a musical genius and in his own words, a "prodigy".  I have never heard him play or sing, and believe he is no more than average intelligence.  His NMomster alternated this false talk with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.  N told me 10 years into the marriage that his own mother had done things to him sexually when he was a little boy, under the age of 10.  N's mother is a cruel, sneering type of N, and it makes sense that the article affirms this type of abuse, alternating with excessive and false praise, is the most damaging.