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(1991). Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 46:307-324

Grandiosity in Children with Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders—A Comparative Analysis

Yecheskel Cohen, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

I draw a distinction between two clinical pictures in children, borderline and narcissistic disorders. Both belong to the realm of personality disorder—or, perhaps, disorders in the development of the personality—but only the former has been widely reviewed and thoroughly investigated in the professional literature. I raise the question how and when these disorders emerge, stressing that both derive from the early, preoedipal period, and precede completion of the separation-individuation processes. Both disorders reveal manifestations of grandiosity which I view as a defense against the two underlying emotional experiences of the disorders: the experience of feeling alone in the borderline case, and the experience of "worthlessness" in the narcissistic personality.

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