The following discussion is based on the chapter, “Models of Personality and Its Disorders,” Millon, Blaney & Davis (1999).¹

The personality may be said to have what are known as functional characteristics which, “represent dynamic processes that transpire within the intrapsychic world and between the individual's self and psychosocial environment . . . . [They] represent ‘expressive modes of regulatory action’—that is, behaviors, social conduct, cognitive processes, and unconscious mechanisms that manage, adjust, transform coordinate, balance, discharge, and control the give and take of inner and outer life.”²  There are four functional domains relating to personality.

To learn more about them as they relate to NPD, click on the following links.

Expressive Behavior:  The ways in which a person acts that, “enable us to infer either what the person unknowingly reveals about him or herself or, conversely, what he or she wishes others to think or to know about him or her.”³

Interpersonal Conduct:  A person’s style of relating to others, including the impact of their actions on others, whether intended or not; the attitudes that underlie, prompt, and shape actions; methods used to get one’s needs met; styles of coping with social tensions and conflict.

Cognitive Style:  “How the individual perceives events, focuses attention, processes information, organizes thoughts, and communicates reactions and ideas to others.”⁴  These behaviors are very useful to a clinician in understanding a person’s particular way of functioning.

Regulatory Mechanism:  Internal processes relating to self-protection, need gratification, and conflict resolution that “are not open to reflective appraisal . . . . they often contribute to a sequence of events that intensifies the very problems they were intended to avoid.”⁵
 

Functional Attributes of the Narcissistic Personality  
 

Expressive Behavior	Interpersonal   Conduct	Cognitive Style	Regulatory Mechanisms
Haughty	Exploitive	Expansive	Rationalizations

 

Millon, Blaney and Davis define the structural attributes of personality as the, “deeply embedded and relatively enduring templates of imprinted memories, attitudes, needs, fears, conflicts, and so on that guide experience and transform the nature of ongoing life events, channeling actions and experiences into conformity with preformed inclinations and expectancies.”⁶  They identify four “structural domains”:

Self-Image:  a person’s enduring sense of self as a “distinct, ever-present, and identifiable ‘I’ or ‘me.’”⁷

Object Representations:  The substrait composed memories, attitudes and effects from early experience that predispose an individual to perceive and react to persons and events in a particular way.

Morphic Organization:  “The structural strength, interior congruity, and functional efficacy of the personality system.”⁸

Mood-Temperament:  “The predominant character of an individual’s effect and the intensity and frequency with [which] it is expressed.”  These qualities are conveyed not only by a person’s self-report of their feelings but are, “revealed as well, albeit indirectly, in the patient’s level of activity, speech quality, and physical appearance.”⁹

NOTE:  To learn more about any of these features as they relate to NPD, click on the link buttons above.   Structural Attributes of the Narcissistic Personality

 

Self-Image	Object Representations	Morphologic Organization	Mood- Temperament
Admirable	Contrived (artificial)	Spurious (without having the genuine qualities of what is represented)	Insouciant (lighthearted unconcern)

 

For more information on NPD personality “styles,” click here 

---

Click on the note number to return to where you were above; click on the author's name to go to the bibliographic entry.
 
¹Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, pp. 485-522
²Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 515
³Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 516
⁴Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 516
⁵Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 516
⁶Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 518
⁷Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 518
⁸Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 518
⁹Millon, Blaney, & Davis, 1990, p. 518