ABSTRACT
People with narcissistic disorders often suffer from not being 'the fairest of them all' and look on themselves as nothing but ugly and inferior. But behind the frequently paralysing inferiority complexes of narcissistically disturbed individuals is an unconscious insistence on 'perfect beauty' in the broadest sense, for example, total intelligence, absolute power, brilliant genius. Since such massive demands cannot be fulfilled, the self-love is indeed disturbed and tile individual suffers from narcissistic disorders. It would seem, then, that it is not narcissism in itself that constitutes a personality disorder, but rather the failure of narcissism because of tile unrealistic demands of the 'grandiose self (see Kohut, 1971).
