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Healthy narcissism
Healthy narcissism is a structural truthfulness of the self, achievement of self and object constancy, synchronization between the self and the
superego and a balance between
libidinal and aggressive drives (the ability to receive gratification from others and the drive for impulse expression). Healthy narcissism forms a constant, realistic self-interest and mature goals and principles and an ability to form deep
object relations.
[7] A feature related to healthy narcissism is the feeling of
greatness. This is the antithesis of insecurity or inadequacy.
Campbell and Foster (2007)
[14] review the literature on narcissism. They argue that narcissists possess the following "basic ingredients":
- Positive: Narcissists think they are better than others.[15]
- Inflated: Narcissists' views tend to be contrary to reality. In measures that compare self-report to objective measures, narcissists' self-views tend to be greatly exaggerated.[16]
- Agentic: Narcissists' views tend to be most exaggerated in the agentic domain, relative to the communion domain.[clarification needed][15][16]
- Special: Narcissists perceive themselves to be unique and special people.[17]
- Selfish: Research upon narcissists' behaviour in resource dilemmas supports the case for narcissists as being selfish.[18]
- Oriented toward success: Narcissists are oriented towards success by being, for example, approach oriented.[clarification needed][19]
Heritability of narcissism utilizing twin studies
Livesley et al. concluded, in agreement with other studies, that narcissism as measured by a standardized test
[21] was a common inherited trait.
[22] Additionally, in similar agreement with those other studies, it was found that there exists a continuum between normal and disordered personality.
The study subjects were 175 volunteer twin pairs (ninety identical, eighty-five fraternal) drawn from the general population. Each twin completed a questionnaire that assessed eighteen dimensions of personality disorder. The authors estimated the
heritability of each dimension of personality by standard methods, thus providing estimates of the relative contributions of
genetic and
environmental causation.
Of the eighteen personality dimensions, narcissism was found to have the highest heritability (0.64), indicating that the concordance of this trait in the identical twins was significantly influenced by genetics. Of the other dimensions of personality, only four were found to have heritability coefficients of greater than 0.5: callousness, identity problems, oppositionality and social avoidance.