Testing Heinz Kohut’s thoughts on narcissism and narcissistic rage: narcissistic injury paves the way for radicalization and subclinical paranoid states – an experimental study

Abstract

According to psychoanalytic self-psychological theory, narcissistic injuries may induce radical intentions, and subclinical paranoid states via self-psychological mechanisms. The testing took place in a narcissistic-injuring situation in Germany, where a reform of psychotherapy-training was implemented with only brief period of transition for those aiming to become psychotherapists after graduating. Within a randomized controlled-experimental design, 100 psychology-students were to read information about short transition-periods for them (affectedness-by-the-reform-condition) vs. for education-students (no-affectedness-by-the-reform-condition). After reading a radicalization-prompt, discussing in a 30-minute-group-discussion, participants in both conditions completed dependent measures of separatist identification, negative affects, overconfidence, radical intentions and subclinical paranoid states. Compared to the control condition (n = 49), psychologists in the experimental-condition (n = 51) stronger experienced narcissistic injury (d between 0.79 and 1.01; manipulation-check). They experienced a stronger alloyance with an archaic-omnipotent object (d = 0.52), exhibited more negative affects (d = 0.46), claimed overconfidence (d = 0.50), more radical intentions (d = 0.52), and subclinical paranoid states (d = 0.43). Our study supports Kohut’s idea that antisocial as well as paranoid states are responses to narcissistic injuries mediated by the alloyance with an archaic-omnipotent object, negative affects and overconfidence.

Keywords:

• Radicalization
• state paranoia
• narcissism
• narcissistic injury
• narcissistic rage

Acknowledgements

We thank Paulina Demnitz, Meike Habicht, Eva Hildebrandt, Mara Johannsen, Kai Mathis Niebuhr, Steven Staerk, Christina Wetzel, and Stina Zieplies for assisting in conducting the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02668734.2023.2274450

Notes

1. More specifically, the original study observes in a randomized 2 (politicization vs. radicalization prompt) x 2 (no social interaction vs. social interaction) between-subjects-design that after the shared-grievance-induction for all, research-participants in the social interaction (archaic omnipotent object) conditions showed more political action intentions in both the social-interaction-politicization- and the social-interaction-radicalization-condition. Research participants in the social-interaction-radicalization however showed more radical action intentions.

2. While the psychology students present here as participants in the experiment could in principle become both child and adolescent psychotherapists as well as adult psychotherapists according to the old system, those graduating from educational science programs in Germany could only become child and adolescent psychotherapists according to the old system. Under the new system, the latter can no longer become child and adolescent psychotherapists at all, but even psychology graduates can only become psychotherapists under the old system.

3. Instead of Thomas et al. (2014)’s induction of a commonly shared grievance by highlighting suffering chickens in battery cages, our experimental participants were told that there might be too short transition-periods to obtain a license to practice as a psychotherapist for themselves (vs. for education-students who want to become child and adolescent psychotherapists). Verbatim instructions can be found in the appendix.

4. The questionnaire contained additional measures relevant to other research questions of the larger project. However, all data analyses reported in the article are novel and the findings have not been published elsewhere.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Verbund norddeutscher Universitäten.