A Case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder with Brief Psychotic Episode

Cho, Yun Gyoo

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
The Objective of this case report is to present basic materials of clinical symptomatologic study in narcissistic personality disorder by reviewing a case diagnosed as narcissistic personality disorder with brief psychotic episode.
METHODS
The subject was a psychiatric inpatient diagnosed concomitantly as narcissistic personality disorder and brief psychotic disorder by DSM- IV. Practical clinical diagnostic process for narcissistic personality disorder was applied and reviewed. Clinical characteristics of brief psychotic episode in narcissistic personality disorder such as precipitating psychological factors, main psychotic symptoms, and course were investigated as well.
RESULTS
AND CONCLUSION: For diagnosing narcissistic personality disorder, it is essential besides superficially manifested symptoms, to search for underlying psychological meanings of those symptoms, careful observations of behavior and attitude, and to take reliable informations from family or relatives. In case of encountering blow-out of pathologically inflated grandiose self mainly in middle age, brief psychotic episode could be broken out. Main features of the episode were affective symptoms, failure in impulse and behavior control, and perceptual disturbances rather than thought disorder.