خودشیفتگی و خاطراتی از تجربیات زندگی

Recent studies have found associations between narcissistic personality features and retrospective accounts of early experiences. The current study sought to extend these previous findings by examining whether adaptive and maladaptive features of narcissism were associated with recollections of early life experiences in a non-clinical sample of undergraduate students (N = 334). Results revealed that the Entitlement/Exploitativeness feature of narcissism was associated with low security, high parental discipline, and high threats of separation. Narcissistic Grandiosity was positively associated with peer affectional support and parental discipline, whereas Narcissistic Vulnerability was not uniquely associated with memories of early life experiences. The results provide partial support for models of narcissism in which parents are recalled as failing to provide a secure base while inducing threats of separation and discipline.

There has been a recent resurgence in research focused on understanding the developmental origins of narcissism. It has often been suggested that the roots of narcissism lie in dysfunctional interactions between children and their primary caregivers during the earliest years of life. For example, Freud (1914/1957) posited that the foundation of narcissism was an inward focus of love that was either the result of parental overvaluation or the perception of parents as distant, cold, and rejecting. According to Freud, narcissistic personality features were the product of parents failing to moderate the praise and admiration devoted to their children by either lavishing the child with too much positive attention or failing to provide enough. Following the work of Freud (1914/1957), theorists have often argued that narcissism is the result of one of these two extreme forms of dysfunctional parenting. Both Kernberg, 1975 and Kohut, 1977 suggest that narcissism is the result of cold, indifferent parenting that is inadequate for meeting the needs of the developing child. Although there are a number of important differences in their models of narcissistic development, Kernberg and Kohut share a belief that narcissism results from parental deficiencies that lead narcissistic individuals to strive to meet their unfulfilled early needs during adulthood. The inadequate and insensitive parenting that narcissists received during childhood is believed to result in feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem which is disguised by the development of a grandiose façade. The speculation that the overtly positive self-views of narcissists serve to hide their deep-seated negative feelings about themselves is often referred to as the psychodynamic mask model of narcissism (see Bosson et al., 2008, for a review). This view of the origin of narcissism has been widely shared in clinical descriptions of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (e.g., Akhtar & Thompson, 1982) and has been incorporated into many models of narcissism (e.g., Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). In contrast to the work of Kernberg, 1975, Kohut, 1977 and Millon, 1981 focused on the other extreme of dysfunctional parenting by suggesting that narcissism may be the result of parents being overly indulgent and admiring of their children. In so doing, parents may unintentionally foster the development of an overinflated sense of self-worth in their children that is nearly impossible for the child to sustain over time. As a result of their inflated sense of self-worth, narcissistic individuals are forced to engage in strategies that are intended to maintain and enhance their grandiose feelings of self-worth because these inflated self-views are not likely to be supported by the sort of feedback that is generally provided by the social environment. These speculations concerning the origin of narcissism are similar in that each suggests that adult narcissism may have its roots in early dysfunctional interactions with caregivers but there are important differences between these accounts. As suggested by Otway and Vignoles (2006), one of the most important issues to be resolved in this area of inquiry is whether narcissistic personality features are the result of parenting that was cold and indifferent (Kernberg, 1975 and Kohut, 1977), overly indulgent (Millon, 1981), or some combination of the two (Freud, 1914/1957). Empirical studies that have examined the early experiences of narcissists have provided mixed results. Some of these studies have found narcissism to be associated with indulgent aspects of parenting such as warmth (Horton, Bleau, & Drwecki, 2006) and excessive parental admiration (Otway & Vignoles, 2006). However, narcissism has also been shown to be associated with cold and rejecting aspects of parenting such as a lack of warmth (Otway and Vignoles, 2006 and Watson et al., 1995), a lack of supervision (Miller & Campbell, 2008), psychological control (Horton et al., 2006), and inadequate parenting (i.e., more permissive, more authoritarian, and less authoritative; Watson et al., 1992 and Wink, 1992). These early experiences with caregivers are thought to be important for narcissists because they shape the cognitive schemas that these individuals use to navigate their social environments later in life (Zeigler-Hill, Green, Arnau, Sisemore, & Myers, 2011). That is, these problematic early life experiences may contribute to the development of narcissistic tendencies by interfering with the appropriate development of feelings of self-worth, and realistic expectations concerning their own abilities and achievements.

The results of the present study found that certain maladaptive features of narcissism (i.e., NPI Entitlement/Exploitativeness and PNI Narcissistic Grandiosity) were associated with negative early life experiences. These results provide partial support for models of narcissism that suggest negative early experiences that occur either in isolation or in alternation with overindulgent parenting may contribute to the development of narcissistic personality features. This study also provided additional support for the distinction between various features of narcissism by showing the differences that emerge in their associations with recollections of early life experiences.