Healthy narcissism

Healthy narcissism is a positive sense of self that is in alignment with the greater good. The concept of healthy narcissism was first coined by Paul Federn and gained prominence in the 1970s through the research of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. It developed slowly out of the psychoanalytic tradition, and became popular in the late twentieth century.

The concept of healthy narcissism is used in clinical psychology and popular psychology as an aid to self-assertion and success. It has indeed been suggested that it is useful to think of a continuum of narcissism, ranging from deficient to healthy to pathological, with stable narcissism and destructive narcissism as stopping-points in between. Recent scientific work suggests that healthy narcissism reflects an abundance of agentic/self-enhancing features and a relative absence of antagonistic/other-derogating elements.