Etiology of the masochistic and narcissistic personality.

It is the premise of this article, that at least in some instances, narcissistic and masochistic characters may develop from different role assignments in the same family (i.e., families with narcissistic dynamics). It is hypothesized that the child who later becomes narcissistic becomes assigned the role of the good child, remains merged with the mother, and becomes her ego-ideal. In contrast, the mother projects the egodystonic aspects of herself onto the child who becomes scapegoated, more willful, and defiant and eventually masochistic. The author has observed among her patients that some variables that seem to have contributed to the particular role assignment of a given child in the family are birth order, temperament, gender, resemblance to grandparents or significant objects in parents' life, and/or innate talents, gifts, and differences. It is suggested that the presence of narcissistic dynamics in the families of both masochistic and narcissistic characters may account for the similarities between the two character structures previously noted in the literature. It is obviously a limitation of this article that conclusions about family members (i.e., mothers and siblings) are based on reports of patients during long-term psychoanalytic treatment rather than direct observation. It is thus recommended that future research efforts attempt to verify these hypotheses through longitudinal family studies.

Validation of the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale.

The Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS; Clance, 1985) was compared to the newly developed Perceived Fraudulence Scale (Kolligian & Sternberg, 1991). The two scales were found to have high internal consistency and to correlate in a similar manner with other measures. Further, discriminant validity evidence for the Impostor Phenomenon (IP) was provided by comparing the CIPS to measures of depression, self-esteem, social anxiety, and self-monitoring. The IP was related to, but substantially discriminable from, these constructs. Finally, construct validity evidence for the CIPS was provided through principal components analysis that yielded three stable factors: Fake, Discount, and Luck.

Understanding and differentiating clients' positive feelings in psychotherapy.

The positive feelings patients experience towards their therapists have important diagnostic and treatment considerations. This article reviews and integrates the literature on the therapeutic alliance, the positive transference, and the idealizing transference. Examples are provided to help clinicians understand and differentiate their patients' positive feelings.

Current conceptualizations on masochism: genesis and object relations.

Masochism has become one of the most confusing and controversial clinical and diagnostic terms within the psychotherapy literature. When defined, however, as a self-defeating way of loving and individuating, masochism remains a particularly useful clinical construct. This article is designed to: (1) review the literature related to the definition, scope and relevance of masochism; (2) present a descriptive clinical overview of the masochistic personality; (3) describe and discuss the etiology of the disorder and (4) discuss masochistic object choice. Masochists' object relations are characterized by loving objects who give non-love in return in order: (1) to attain fusion with the primary object with whom they feel an impossible separation and (2) to heal a narcissistic injury by making critical and rejecting objects love and approve of them. Masochists tend to choose idealized but unloving partners with whom they behave as caretakers or self-objects. This frequently leads them into relationships with individuals who have borderline and narcissitic character structures. While borderline and narcissistic individuals initially fulfill the masochist's underlying wish for idealized symbiosis, they later recapitulate the erratic environment of the masochist's childhood.