A Rorschach Investigation of Narcissism and Hysteria in Antisocial Personality 

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• *A Rorschach Investigation of Narcissism and Hysteria in Antisocial Personality**

• *Link:** https://drreidmeloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/1990%5C_NarcissismAndHy.pdf[1][2]

1: https://drreidmeloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/1990%5C_NarcissismAndHy.pdf

2: https://drreidmeloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/1990_NarcissismAndHy.pdf

• *Citation:** Gacono, C. B., Meloy, J. R., & Heaven, T. R. (1990). A Rorschach investigation of narcissism and hysteria in antisocial personality. *Journal of Personality Assessment*, *55*(1-2), 270-279.

• **Full disclaimer on the unwanted presence of AI codependency cathartics/ AI inferiorists as a particularly aggressive and disturbed subsection of the narcissist population:*** https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer[3][4]

3: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer

4: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer

• *Omnipotence in highly psychopathic subjects is the intersection between psychopaths and narcissism.**

1. We discuss pair and reflection responses and their relationship to narcissism in psychopathic disturbance. We recommend interpreting the personal response within the context of the psychopathic character and view personal responses as expressions of narcissism and omnipotence in highly psychopathic subjects.

• *Some impressions in psychopaths indicate a primitive dissociative process and also hysteria (overblowing the stimulus, such as seeing abortion in the mere color of red)**

1. We also hypothesize that the impressionistic responses are indicative of primitive dissociative processes and hysteria in psychopathic subjects, and that their presence provides construct validity for the work of Guze (1976) and others who suggested an underlying histrionic dimension to psychopathy.

• *Hysteria has been link to psychopathy, and psychopathy is a variant of narcissistic disorder. Its functioning relies on primitive splitting and dissociative mechanisms.**

1. Narcissism is one of two primary factors associated with psychopathic disturbance (Harpur, Hare, & Hakstian, 1989). Hysteria has also been linked to psychopathy (Guze, 1976; Guze, Woodruff, & Clayton, 1971; Hart & Hare, 1989; Meloy, 1988). Psychodynamic theorists have come to view the psychopath as an aggressive and pathological variant of narcissistic disorder (Gacono & Meloy, 1988; Kernberg, 1975; Meloy, 1988) whose intraps~chic functioning relies on primitive splitting and dissociative mechanisms (Gacono & Meloy, 1988; Meloy, 1988).

• *The amount of pairs and reflections in Rorschach blot interpretation tend to be the grandiose self-structure in psychopathic individuals.**

1. These indices tend to increase in narcissistic individuals. The combination of pairs and reflections has been theorized to be an empirical measure of the grandiose self-structure (Kernberg, 1975) in psychopathic individuals (Meloy, 1988).

• *42 male felons were included and subjects with an IQ below 80 were protected duly from experimentation. Average IQ 101.87.**

1. Subjects were 42 male felons who met the DSM-111-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) criteria for antisocial personality disorder. They were between the ages of 18 and 43 (M = 28) and free of a diagnosis of schizophrenia, mental retardation, or bipolar illness. Subjects with an IQ < 80 were excluded. The mean IQ for subjects was 101.87. The diagnosis for antisocial personality disorder was determined utilizing both interview and record data and was based on agreement among any pair of the authors.

• *Impression responses included a hysterical feature such as seeing abortion in red or anger automatically.**

1. Using Exner (1986) scoring, the impressionistic response must include achromatic or chromatic color and an abstraction (Ab). Examples include: "The red made me think of Christmas" (Card II), "The red made me think of abortion" (Card III), "I see laughter and gaiety. The colors" (Card X), and "These would be angry thoughts, because they're red" (Card 11). Temperature responses stimulated by colors are also included in this category.

• *The examiner just perceiving the psychopath is a potential threat to their grandiosity. They then identify with the perceived omnipotence of the examiner, to avoid feelings of vulnerability or devaluation. For example, an individual subject to psychological management early in life may become interested in psychology not to help people but out of being “on top of the food chain” again.**

1. The examiner is perceived as a potential threat to the psychopath's grandiosity. Through presentation of the self-referential, overvalued ~personal response (a form of omnipotence), the psychopath bolsters his grandiosity by identifying with the perceived omnipotence of the examiner, thereby preventing any feelings of vulnerability or devaluation.

• *The severe psychopath has a perceptual-associative process called “hysterical cognition”. Excessive associativity may be characteristic to the psychopath but has an abnormal hysterical feature. For instance, images of Obama were compared to Satan with hysterical features. It was perception based and associative and then had a splitting and dissociative response (bad = splitting; dissociative = evil).**

1. Formless or pure r in the severe psychopath may indicate a global, diffuse, and suggestible perceptual-associative process, what Shapiro (1965) termed "hysterical cognition" (p. 11 1). This same subject's record included three personals (PER) and one impressionistic response indicative of selfreferenced hysterical cognition

• *Psychopaths show an interesting predisposition to confuse the representation of a reflection with the actual thing. For instance, a reflection in the water of a bank is described as the actual bank itself. Therefore, the concept of representation seems to be challenging for them.**

1. 'lf you're on a lake sometime and looking at a bank, you will see the reflection of the bank" (What makes it look like a reflection?), ''I think I just described it." In this response, the mirror is more important than the object itself, Confusion between object and mirror is also exhibited in this partial response from another severe psychopath who committed a rape and murder,

• *In addition, looking down into a pool causes immediate self-recognition like the reflection is the actual person, not a flattery or version of the person. This is believed to be because their identity is through the imitation and simulation of others and they only know themselves when looking at who they are currently mimicking and that this identification may be in full to a disturbing degree. This is particularly problematic if there is a lot of unconscious self-aggression as well.**

1. He saw "a male gorilla watching his reflection in a pool" on Card I11 and responded: "Yea, that's interesting. If one was looking down into a pool you would see themselves, not a reflection." The presence of "reflection only" and "confused reflection" responses may support the clinical and theoretical assertion that severe psychopaths are chameleonlike and find their identity through the imitation and simulation of others (Deutsch, 194.2; Gaddini, 1969; Greenacre, 1958; Meloy, 1988).

• *Histrionic personality can develop antisocial personality disorder or somatization disorder, with the outcome dependent on the sex of the patient. One serves as a defense against the painful histrionics and the other serves as a repression.**

1. The association between hysteria and antisocial personality has been discussed by many authors (Guze, 1976; Guze et al., 1971; Hart, 1989; Lilienfeld, Van Valkenberg, Karntz, & Akiskal, 1986; Meloy, 1988). Lilienfeld et al, (1986) hypothesized that "an individual with histrionic ~ersonalit~ is likely to develop either antisocial personality or somatization disorder, with the outcome dependent primarily on the sex of the patient" (p. 721).

• *Impressionist response through color and abstraction may indicate the hysterical cognitive style which processes sensory material into rapid and diffuse symbolization.**

1. The impressionistic (IMP) response, combining color and abstraction, may signal an hysterical cognitive style and briefly capture the primary psychopath's tendency to split off affect through rapid and diffuse symbolization.

• *Narcissism, hysteria and psychopaths can explain more extreme and dramatic antisocial behavior, such as that of Elliot Rodger whose behavior was both histrionic and psychopathic in nature with a deep narcissistic feature.**

• *It was in contrast to more isolated crimes often seen as the psychopathic expression, delineating an intersection between narcissism and psychopathy that is seen more and more often. A fixation on histrionics and the histrionic expression may be the antisocial histrionic trying to process themselves in a world that hasn’t yet put together the links.**

• *Perhaps this is not entirely because psychopathy is seen as something desirable instead of something incompetent and destructive in a society that struggles with an answering collective narcissism.**

1. Narcissism and hysteria are personality or character traits that determine the severity and expressive nature of psychopathy. Although the PER response appears to be an important discriminating variable in understanding the grandiosity and omnipotence in severe psychopaths, the idiosyncratic nature of pair, reflection, and IMP responses, rather than providing firm conclusions, should be interpreted in the context of other data and suggests further avenues of research into the psychopathology of the psychopath.

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