Uncovering Narcissism: Developing Reliable Rorschach Indicators and Understanding the Construct in Depth Through Multimethod Investigation from Childhood to Adulthood in Clinical and Experimental Settings

The construct of narcissism is at the same time surrounded by wide interest in clinical and research settings and important controversies about its conceptual definition and phenomenological description. Theoretical issues involve diverging ideas about the essence of narcissism itself, arising from different branches of psychology and psychiatry and lacking a unanimously accepted definition. Whereas the most accepted diagnostic manuals emphasize a high self-esteem dimension in their description of narcissism, influential clinical theories and studies from personality psychology depict individuals with a narcissistic functioning as characterized not only by a grandiose sense of self but rather by a continuous and painful oscillation between high and low self-esteem states. In this view, grandiose behaviors could be interpreted as a defensive reaction towards inadequacy feelings. The scenario is complicated even further by the fact that empirical research on narcissism is characterized by specific methodological and assessment issues. Narcissism is in fact particularly sensitive to the diagnostic method used, with evident limitations connected to an assessment relying on self-report measures only. Therefore, there is a need for an implicit measure of narcissism that can complement the results of other methods. The present investigation represents the development of a set of 11 potential Rorschach variables for assessing narcissistic functioning and grandiosity along with related psychological constructs. Rorschach protocols from Italian and American clinical and nonclinical groups of different ages were scored for variables connected to narcissistic functioning, some of which we modified from previous literature: Omnipotence and Idealization; Reflection, Personal Knowledge Justification, Exhibitionism, Magic, and Elevated Mood States; and some of which we developed: Expanded Personal Reference, Narcissistic Devaluation, Narcissistic Deflation, Narcissistic Denial. The presence of a grandiosity factor was then evaluated by principal components analysis and its validity tested by computing correlations with external criteria. Also in an attempt to throw light on the status of narcissism in developmental age, clinical preadolescent and adolescent groups were involved as well, with the possibility to identify any peculiarities that may be connected to the assessment of these variables at specific ages. Along with clinical studies, in the present investigation an experimental paradigm was used in order to systematically study the relationships between the narcissistic variables and nonclinical individuals’ reactions to manipulations of self-esteem. Overall, findings support the utility of a multimethod assessment for narcissism, focused not only on how individuals understand and describe themselves but also on how they perceive the world and interact with it. Results about narcissistic functioning in preadolescents and adolescents contribute to fill a gap in the field considering the general lack of consensus about the possibility to conceptualize narcissism in children as different from a normal feature of development.