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The narcissistic personality disorder is complex and often misunderstood. The main characteristic of the narcissistic personality is the ostentatious feeling of self-importance, but ironically beneath the shell of this grandiosity the narcissist suffers from a chronically fragile low self esteem. The flamboyance of the narcissist, however, is often so thorough that we are prone to alienate from him or her. The narcissist conjures in us images of the mythological character Narcissus who could only love …

…experience great suffering, for which they try to make up by the projection of the grandiose front. These people are not character-disordered. They are people tormented by narcissistic injury and handicapped by developmental arrests which rob them of the fullness of life they could have had otherwise. Furthermore, narcissism is a quality found in most people to some degree, whereas narcissists are those of us for whom narcissism has reached the scale of a disorder.