Over the past 15 years, disorders of the self have occupied the attention of the psychoanalytic community. In particular, Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut have written extensively about narcissism, but from distinctly different theoretical vantage points. Each theorist has attracted adherents, but the debate between the conflict and deficit models of narcissism has been largely polemical, serving to further polarize the psychoanalytic community.

Using the techniques of causal modeling, the article introduces this powerful data analytic strategy to psychoanalytic researchers and tests a model of narcissism which permits a direct, empirical comparison of some of the ideas of Kernberg and Kohut. In a number of strategic comparisons involving the theoretical underpinnings of narcissism—the structural stability of the self, damaged self-esteem, and grandiosity—these data appear to be more consistent with the deficit model, although various aspects of the conflict model also find support.