Covert, grandiose, and dysfunctional subtype of narcissistic personality disorder

Abstract

Narcissistic personality disorder(NPD) is described in the DSM-IV-TR as “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy.” The other features are: grandiose sense of self-importance and grandiose fantasies, belief in being special and unique, need for admiring attention, sense of entitlement, exploitation, arrogance, lack of empathy, and envy of others or belief that others envy them. Other features are: vulnerable self-esteem; feelings of shame, sensitivity and intense reactions of humiliation, emptiness or disdain to criticism or defeat; and vocational irregularities resulting from difficulties tolerating criticism or competition. Hence, NPD should be understood from the context of grandiosity and self esteem dysregulation. The subtypes of NPD i.e. the shy, covert, besides the arrogant, overt, grandiose and unempathetic helps emphasise the phenomenologic range of narcissism. We report a case of narcissistic personality disorder, who presented with the unusual subtype with shyness, covertness, poor functioning, but grandiose.

Keywords

• case report
• grandiosity
• narcissistic personality disorder
• self-esteem