Narcissism: shame, rage and addiction.
This paper employs perspectives from Self psychology to illuminate our understanding of narcissism. Striving for complete independence and autonomy, a goal of classical psychoanalysis, encourages the disavowal of narcissism. Instead, narcissism is viewed as necessary for the survival of a sense of self and not on the same continuum with object love. The concepts of self-object and self-object functions are defined. Shame and rage are explained as byproducts of self-object failure. It is postulated that shame emerges out of self-depletion and that narcissistic rage emerges out of self-fragmentation. Countertransference and treatment implications are discussed. Following Lichtenberg, addictions are viewed as deriving from the quest for self-object experience, regardless of the long-term detriment.
Grosch
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Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic, Albany Medical Center, New York 12208.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D017004:Codependency, Psychological; D005260:Female; D005619:Freudian Theory; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009289:Narcissism; D009769:Object Attachment; D010553:Personality Development; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011889:Rage; D012649:Self Concept; D012752:Shame