Notes on the developmental pathogenesis of narcissistic personality disorder.

Narcissistic personality disorder is considered here as a higher-order borderline personality disorder: Both share related pathogeneses in terms of impaired parent-child relationships. The author develops his view of these disorders as arising from impaired separation-individuation, drawing on both "classic" and object-relations concepts as expressed in the contributions of Mahler, Kernberg, Kohut, Gerald Adler, Masterson, and himself. Emphasis is placed on pre-Oedipal developmental arrest as fundamental to the separation-individuation failure that characterizes these cases.