The purpose of this study was to assess the psychosocial antecedents of narcissistic personality syndrome as defined in DSM-III. 60 undergraduate students completed the Constantinople Inventory of Psychosocial Development as a measure of Erikson's stages of ego-development, a measure of narcissism derived from the explicit diagnostic criteria presented in DSM-III, and the Machiavellian V scale. In support of both Kohut's and Erikson's theories, the results indicated that there were stage-specific predictors of the different dimensions of narcissistic personality syndrome.
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