Am J Psychiatry 1990; 147:918-922
Copyright © 1990 by American Psychiatric Association
Identifying criteria for narcissistic personality disorder
E Ronningstam and J Gunderson
Psychosocial Research Program, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA 02178.
The authors report an exploratory effort to identify useful criteria for
narcissistic personality disorder. They used the semistructured Diagnostic
Interview for Narcissism to assess 24 narcissistic patients and 58 others
on 33 characteristics imputed to pathological narcissism. The following
characteristics were significantly more common among the patients with
narcissistic personality disorder: a sense of superiority, a sense of
uniqueness, exaggeration of talents, boastful and pretentious behavior,
grandiose fantasies, self-centered and self- referential behavior, need for
attention and admiration, arrogant and haughty behavior, and high
achievement. The results provide an empirical basis for developing an
improved set of criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.
