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This paper presents the dynamics and symptom constellations of two related types of pathological narcissism. The less mature group is marked by sporadic hypochondiacal rumination. The more mature group has a character organization structured around the trait of invidiousness, i.e., the inclination to elicit hostile envy in the onlooker. There are intermediate individuals who overlap both groups. And interestingly enough, patients in the less mature group pass through the second group)—the invidious type—as a transitional stage as they develop in therapy. A key drive in individuals of both groups is to victimize others, thrusting onto others their own sense of defeat and loss, hoping thereby to build up their own friable self-regard.
In outline the thesis is as follows. The extremely narcissistically vulnerable individual essentially lacks internal structures which define the self in realistic, synthesizing, and caring fashion, and which stably anchor the self-representation against passing interpersonal currents. Without these internal entities, the individual is open to external assaults on his self-esteem. He is powerless against any debilitating intrusion that pierces his ego boundaries. He is also unsure of who he is, what he feels about his life situation, and how the world sees him. In order to help define himself and his circumstances, he becomes preoccupied by comparisons of himself with others. Should he fare badly in this comparison, his worthlessness is reconfirmed. Should he do well, he exults. Another's deterioration and downfall may make him feel better about himself, and consequently, he often wishes others ill.
In the less developed type, narcissistic mortification and the dread of mortification have resulted in a degree of paralysis of secondary thought processes and an altered cathexis of his body representation. In this regressed archaic thinking state, and because of the fearfully experienced nature of his differently cathected body ego, with possi