Introduction: Narcissism is a complex personality construct with two distinct subtypes: vulnerable narcissism and grandiose narcissism. This study aimed to investigate the differences between these subtypes in a clinical population.
Purposes: To provide a better understanding of how grandiose and vulnerable narcissism compare regarding personality functioning, maladaptive personality traits, and psychopathological symptoms in a psychiatric sample.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted that included (1) a group of vulnerable narcissism (VN) (n=103), predominantly female, and (2) a group of grandiose narcissism (GN), predominantly male. Self-reported assessments: Personality Inventory for DSM-5, Level of Personality Functioning Scale, NEO Five-Factor Inventory, Brief Symptom Inventory. logistic regression analyses were performed.
Results: The VN group showed greater impairments in all domains of personality functioning, and scored higher on negative traits of affectivity, detachment, disinhibition, and psychoticism, and displayed more severe psychopathological symptoms in all measures. The GN group scored higher exclusively on antagonism. The key predictors of VN are detachment traits and depression symptoms, while age predicted the GN group. The VN group was predominantly female with higher education, whereas the GN group was predominantly male with lower education.
Conclusions: The findings suggest that VN is associated with greater shortcomings in personality functioning, more maladaptive traits, and a more severe psychopathology compared to GN. This supports the view of VN as a more maladaptive manifestation of pathological narcissism, with implications for understanding narcissism subtypes and their gender-related biases in diagnosis. These results have significant implications for understanding the subtypes of narcissism and their clinical presentations.