23/11/2021
Relationship between narcissism and charisma
“Raymond Battegay, a Swiss psychiatrist who studied charismatic sects, reviewed the field from an object relations perspective. Charismatic relationships, he maintained, are an archaic form of relationship in which projective identification results in 'unreflected closeness', a relationship which he termed 'Narcissistic-fusional' as opposed to a more mature state of mind in which the individual is able to make free decisions on how to regulate a relationship (Battegay, 1996).
There is, however, no clear-cut equation between narcissism and charisma. Some charismatic individuals advance along a spectrum of omnipotence from supreme self-confidence through to a sense of grandiosity and then develop persecutory ideas when they meet with opposition. Others maintain a state of healthy self-esteem bounded by the conviction that they have a purpose in life, with no breakdown into paranoia when challenged. The transformation from a pre-charismatic mind-set to the belief that it is that person's destiny to become a leader may take place over a period of many years or it unexpectedly as a revelatory experience”.
Behr H. (2021), Charismatic leadership: a group-analytic perspective, in Group Analysis, volume 54, number 2, June 2021, pag. 211
