Some psychological and criminological reflections on the theme of narcissism

The authors intend to provide some reflections on the subject of narcissism.The aim is to highlight those aspects of a psy- chopathological and criminological nature that may have probable implications even in psychiatric-forensic psychiatry.The following are then taken into account: first, the historical evolution of the concept of narcissism; then, the physiological or pathological projection of the narcissistic component of individual personality, especially in the different phases of life; finally, the relationship between this phenomenon and that of aggression, taking into account the different conceptions of the latter. In this perspective, those figures (from the syndrome of malignant narcissism to the mother’s death complex, to the so-called white psychosis) and those markers (from rage to hatred, from the absence of empathy to the inability to “wreck” existentially) of narcissistic aggression.These contributions, therefore, are intended to be propedeutic to the psychiatric-forensic evaluation of criminogenesis and criminodynamics of many crimes at c.d. narcissistic matrix, especially the most violent ones: from stalking to sexual violence, from attempted murder to murder.