'The narcissist ultimately starves for love because he or she can never get enough in the present to compensate for the past. -- Pathological narcissism is related to narcissistic rage: a furious, reflexive, unrelenting need to repay any perceived slight or insult. Neurotic narcissism starts out as normal narcissism, a healthy, natural childhood need for attention and appreciation which, when continually frustrated, becomes fixated and pathological. Neurotic narcissism stems from inadequate, insufficient or traumatic parenting and resulting narcissistic injury, especially prior to five years of age, during what Freud called the pre-Oedipal period. Children at this tender age find any serious lack of attunement and attention – or certainly, any outright abuse, neglect or emotional, if not physical, abandonment – an insult, a psychological injury, a traumatic psychic wound which distorts perceptions of both themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. When children experience parents or caretakers as unloving, rejecting or hostile, they respond to this narcissistic wounding by creating a shell-like false self – which replaces, protects and conceals the unaccepted, unloved and damaged true self – presenting instead a persona (Jung) based on what they perceive the parents and world want them to be. A great deal of what pathological narcissism in adults disguises is unresolved infantile anger, resentment and rage about not being recognized, accepted, and loved for who we are. This anger – along with feelings of being unlovable and unworthy of love – is buried beneath the false self. It is repressed, but not forgotten, nor forgiven. Narcissistic rage from the past tends to be re-stimulated by intimate relationships in the present. In romantic relationships, feelings are inevitably re-injured, and the childhood anger suddenly resurfaces – with a vengeance.'