Concept
Malignant narcissism
A severe form of narcissistic personality in which the pathological grandiose self is pervaded by aggression. Otto Kernberg described it as a syndrome joining narcissistic personality with antisocial behaviour, sadism that is felt as justified, and a paranoid stance towards others, and placed it between the narcissistic and the antisocial personality. Erich Fromm had used the phrase earlier for the extreme self-worship he saw at the root of destructiveness.
Read more- Broader concept
- Narcissism
- Introduced by
- Erich Fromm
- Key works
- 2
- Related
- Grandiose self
introduced by
- Erich Fromm 1964 Fromm distinguished benign from malignant narcissism in The Heart of Man (1964), calling malignant the narcissism whose object is what a person has or is rather than what they produce, and placing it with necrophilia and incestuous symbiosis in the syndrome of decay; Otto Kernberg later took up the phrase for a clinical syndrome.
developed by
- Otto F. Kernberg 1984 Kernberg took up the phrase malignant narcissism, used earlier by Erich Fromm, and made it a clinical syndrome of severe narcissistic pathology marked by aggression, antisocial traits and paranoia, set out in Severe Personality Disorders (1984).
derives from
- Grandiose self Kernberg described malignant narcissism as the pathological grandiose self of the narcissistic personality infiltrated by aggression, so that cruelty and the wish to dominate become part of the inflated self-image.