Interpersonal and Individual Factors in the Grandiose Fantasies and Threats to Self-esteem of A Non-clinical Sample

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate whether interpersonal factors play a prominent role in the construction of narcissistic fantasies, by comparing memories of threat to self-esteem, grandiose fantasies and imaginary relaxing scenes.

A non-clinical group of university students produced written descriptions of each of these three types of scene. The qualitative features of the texts were analyzed and the contents were classified along three different dimensions: biological, psychological and interpersonal.

Memories of threat to self-esteem and grandiose fantasies were found to be mainly interpersonal in content, while the relaxing scenarios were characterized by both relational and biological elements.