Abstract
Narcissism is a complex dimension related to the self and characterized
by grandiosity and/or vulnerability. Grandiosity is related to explicit
dominance, self-importance and entitlement while vulnerability is
characterized by the feelings of incompetence, inadequacy and negative
affect. According to psychodynamic scholars shame can be considered as
the core narcissistic affect, however different dynamics might
characterize the experience of shame in grandiose and vulnerable
narcissism. Although narcissism and shame have received a certain
attention in the literature, a comprehensive review of empirical
research examining the relationship between these constructs is still
missing. Therefore, our systematic review comprised 25 studies on
narcissism in its different manifestations and its relation with shame,
as different from guilt. We subdivided our articles in three main
clusters: 1) correlational studies of narcissistic personality features,
2) studies on narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and 3)
experimental task studies. Overall our findings show that: i) shame is
mainly related to vulnerable narcissism while narcissistic grandiosity
seems to be a defensive structure towards threatening affect for the
self; ii) guilt doesn’t seem to be consistently related to narcissism
across studies; iii) NPD studies confirmed the findings of grandiosity
as a defensive structure to preserve the self of the individual, while,
on the other hand, when NPD is more vulnerable (e.g., depressive,
suicidal, etc.), it seems to be more prone to experience shame; iv)
experimental studies investigating narcissism in different scenarios,
like performance judgements, dishonesty and spirituality, again
confirmed the different dynamics between grandiosity and vulnerability
related to shame.