This personality type seeks to make up for past losses or injuries, filling their emptiness with false notions of grandiosity and superiority. These persons are very apt to brag and boast of their accomplishments, even the least little one.
Features of the Compensatory Narcissistic Personality1
Seeks to counteract or cancel out deep feelings of inferiority and lack of self-esteem Offsets deficits by creating illusions of being superior, exceptional, admirable, noteworthy Self-worth results from self-enhancement Millon observes that, for the compensatory narcissist, “Life is a search for pseudostatus, an empty series of aspirations that serves no purpose other than self-enhancement. . . . Instead of living their own lives, they pursue the leading role and achievements in a false and imaginary theater not related much to reality. Should these pursuits totally lose their grounding in reality, becoming increasingly an imaginary world peopled with self and others as in a dream, compensatory narcissistic persons begin to deceive themselves in a manner not unlike that shown by paranoid persons. However, whereas compensatory narcissistic persons strive for prestige in a world composed of real people, paranoid persons act out their aspirations in solitude. . . . Because of the insecure foundations on which their narcissistic displays are grounded, compensatory narcissistic persons are ‘hypervigilant.’”2
These persons have a deep sense of inadequacy at their core which they seek to hide by a display of (actually feigned) arrogance.
Return to Associated Features
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 & Davis, 2000, p. 278
2Millon, 1998, p. 95