Adaptive and Maladaptive Narcissism in Adolescent Development

Department of Psychology 118C Haggar Hall University of Notre Dame Notre Dame IN 46556 Email: [email protected] [email protected] Narcissism is a complex construct with a long history. Its theoretical source is attributed to Freud’s (1914) influential essay “On Narcissism,” and it has figured prominently ever since in the literatures of psychoanalysis, object relations, self-psychology, psychopathology and clinical psychotherapy (e.g., Morrison, 1986; Mitchell, 1988). These literatures tell a developmental story about the clinical origins of narcissistic personality (e.g., Masterson, 1993; Wink, 1996; P. F. Kernberg, 1998), although empirical research on the development of narcissism is largely absent. This is somewhat surprising given that the concept of narcissism long has been thought, at least in the popular imagination, to capture something fundamental about the developmental experience of adolescents. As Bleiberg (1994, p. 31) put it, “Perhaps like no other phase of life, the passage through adolescence bears the hallmarks of narcissistic vulnerability: a proneness to embarrassment and shame, acute selfconsciousness and shyness, and painful questions about self-esteem and self-worth.” However, one looks in vain for the term narcissism in the subject index of developmental textbooks or in the proceedings of professional conferences devoted to the study of adolescence.