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Androgyny as synthetic narcissism: Sex role measures and Kohut's psychology of the self

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Abstract

In Kohut's analysis of narcissism, the self emerges as a bipolar structure characterized by grandiosity at one pole and dependency at the other. Through appropriate developmental processes, grandiosity grows into a mature ambitiousness, and early dependencies are converted into a stable system of ideals. The present investigation predicted that sex role constructs essentially measure these two aspects of the self. Expected relationships between masculinity and grandiosity, and between femininity and dependency, were in fact obtained. Based in large part on Westin's (Self and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) analysis of Kohut's theory, synthetic, internal, external, and archaic narcissistic self styles were hypothesized to exist and to parallel the androgynous, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated sex roles, respectively. Rough comparabilities were in fact evident between these two typologies. Factor analyses also demonstrated that narcissism and sex role measures load on factors in ways revealing the intimate ties between “pathological” narcissism and the failure to achieve desirable sex role characteristics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, University of Tennessee at Chatanooga, 350 Holt Hall, 615 McCallie, 37403, Chattanooga, Tennessee

    P. J. Watson, Michael D. Biderman & Carolyn Boyd

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  1. P. J. Watson
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  2. Michael D. Biderman
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  3. Carolyn Boyd
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Watson, P.J., Biderman, M.D. & Boyd, C. Androgyny as synthetic narcissism: Sex role measures and Kohut's psychology of the self. Sex Roles 21, 175–207 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289902

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