It is only when the mother fails to be a 'good enough mother', that the narcissistic condition will occur (Asper 93). .
When the mother-child relationship is damaged the child's ego does not develop in an optimal way. Rather than form a secure 'ego-Self axis' bond, the child's ego experiences estrangement from the Self. This Self-estrangement negatively affects the child's ego, and thus the narcissist is said to have a 'negativized ego'. The negativized ego than proceeds to compensate for the Self-estrangement by suppressing the personal needs which are inherent in the Self; thus "the negativized ego of the narcissistically disturbed person is characterized by strong defense mechanisms and ego rigidity. A person with this disturbance has distanced himself from the painful emotions of negative experiences and has become egoistic, egocentric, and narcissistic" (Asper 82).
According to Kernberg and the object relations school, the crisis of the rapprochement sub-phase is critical to the development of the narcissistic personality. The individual who is unable to successfully master the challenges of this stage will sustain a narcissistic injury. In essence the narcissistic injury will occur whenever the environment (in particular significant others) needs the individual to be something which he or she is not. The narcissistically injured individual is thus told "Don't be who you are, be who I need you to be. Who you are disappoints me, threatens me, angers me, over-stimulates me. Be what I want and I will love you" (Johnson 39).
The narcissistic injury devastates the individual's emerging self. Unable to be what he or she truly is, the narcissistically injured person adapts by splitting his personality into what Kohut terms the nuclear (real) self and the false self. The real self becomes fragmented and repressed, whereas the false self takes over the individual. The narcissist thus learns to reject him or herself by hiding what others have rejected.
