it gained wider recognition owing to Sigmund Freud’s work. In his work Freud described narcissism as a sexual perversion, and defined it as
“the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the way in which the body of the sexual object is ordinarily treated – who looks at it, strokes it, fondles it till he obtains complete satisfaction from these activities.” (Freud, 1914, p.73)
Narcissism is defined by the American Psychiatric Association (2013) as a personality disorder, which includes “a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy” (p. 645). There is an important distinction to be made between the personality disorder, and its subclinical version. Nine diagnostic criteria have been identified to define narcissism. …show more content…
To date, the one that has received the most empirical and academic support is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) developed by Raskin and Hall (1979). The NPI was originally created to measure and quantify differences among individual’s narcissistic tendencies. Raskin and Hall (1979) created a questionnaire in forced-choice format, containing 54 dyadic statements, one of which reflected narcissistic behaviour. A higher score indicated stronger narcissistic tendencies. The statements were based on the “Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders” (DSM-III) by the American Psychiatric Association (1980). It is important to note that there is no cut-off score, that would indicate a personality disorder, and to a certain extent a large part of the general population exhibit symptoms of narcissism as a personality trait (Emmons, …show more content…
Some researchers argue that it reflects the persistent rise of narcissism in today’s society, called the narcissism epidemic (Twenge & Campbell, 2009). Twenge and Campbell (2009) studied 37 000 college students in the United States and found that starting from the 1980’s the number of people exhibiting narcissistic personality traits grew faster than obesity rates. The increase is present in both narcissism’s subclinical and clinically diagnosed version. It can be argued, that the increasing rates are due to declining self-report bias. However, researchers found that unlikely owing to NPI’s forced-choice format, where neither option is more socially desirable, and the fact that the increasing rates have also been tested by structured clinical interviews (Twenge & Foster,
“the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the way in which the body of the sexual object is ordinarily treated – who looks at it, strokes it, fondles it till he obtains complete satisfaction from these activities.” (Freud, 1914, p.73)
Narcissism is defined by the American Psychiatric Association (2013) as a personality disorder, which includes “a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy” (p. 645). There is an important distinction to be made between the personality disorder, and its subclinical version. Nine diagnostic criteria have been identified to define narcissism. …show more content…
To date, the one that has received the most empirical and academic support is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) developed by Raskin and Hall (1979). The NPI was originally created to measure and quantify differences among individual’s narcissistic tendencies. Raskin and Hall (1979) created a questionnaire in forced-choice format, containing 54 dyadic statements, one of which reflected narcissistic behaviour. A higher score indicated stronger narcissistic tendencies. The statements were based on the “Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders” (DSM-III) by the American Psychiatric Association (1980). It is important to note that there is no cut-off score, that would indicate a personality disorder, and to a certain extent a large part of the general population exhibit symptoms of narcissism as a personality trait (Emmons, …show more content…
Some researchers argue that it reflects the persistent rise of narcissism in today’s society, called the narcissism epidemic (Twenge & Campbell, 2009). Twenge and Campbell (2009) studied 37 000 college students in the United States and found that starting from the 1980’s the number of people exhibiting narcissistic personality traits grew faster than obesity rates. The increase is present in both narcissism’s subclinical and clinically diagnosed version. It can be argued, that the increasing rates are due to declining self-report bias. However, researchers found that unlikely owing to NPI’s forced-choice format, where neither option is more socially desirable, and the fact that the increasing rates have also been tested by structured clinical interviews (Twenge & Foster,