": 479 Narcissism can thus be seen as a symptom of fundamentally low self-esteem, that is, lack of love towards oneself, but often accompanied by "an immense increase in self-esteem" based on "the defense mechanism of denial by overcompensation." "Idealized love of self...rejected the part of him" that he denigrates – "this destructive little child" within. Instead, the narcissist emphasizes their virtues in the presence of others, just to try to convince themself that they are a valuable person and to try to stop feeling ashamed for their faults;  such "people with unrealistically inflated self-views, which may be especially unstable and highly vulnerable to negative information,...tend to have poor social skills. ": 126

See also
References
Further reading
Baumeister, Roy F. (2001). "Violent Pride: Do people turn violent because of self-hate or self-love?," in Scientific American, 284, No. 4, pp. 96–101; April 2001. Branden, N. (1969). The Psychology of Self-Esteem. New York: Bantam. Branden, N. (2001). The psychology of self-esteem: a revolutionary approach to self-understanding that launched a new era in modern psychology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001. ISBN 0787945269
Burke, C. (2008) "Self-esteem: Why? ; Why not?," New York: 2008
Crocker J.; Park L. E. (2004). "The costly pursuit of self-esteem". Psychological Bulletin. 130 (3): 392–414. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.130.3.392. PMID 15122925. Franklin, Richard L. (1994). "Overcoming The Myth of Self-Worth: Reason and Fallacy in What You Say to Yourself." ISBN 0963938703
Hill, S.E. & Buss, D.M. (2006). "The Evolution of Self-Esteem." In Michael Kernis, (Ed. ), Self Esteem: Issues and Answers: A Sourcebook of Current Perspectives.. Psychology Press:New York. 328–33. Full text
Lerner, Barbara (1985).
For example, if a woman was given the self-relevant stimuli of female and mother, psychologists would measure how quickly she identified the negative word, evil, or the positive word, kind. Development across lifespan
Experiences in a persons life are a major source of how self-esteem develops. In the early years of a childs life, parents have a significant influence on self-esteem and can be considered the main source of positive and negative experiences a child will have. Unconditional love from parents helps a child develop a stable sense of being cared for and respected. These feelings translate into later effects on self-esteem as the child grows older. Students in elementary school who have high self-esteem tend to have authoritative parents who are caring, supportive adults who set clear standards for their child and allow them to voice their opinion in decision making. Although studies thus far have reported only a correlation of warm, supportive parenting styles (mainly authoritative and permissive) with children having high self-esteem, these parenting styles could easily be thought of as having some causal effect in self-esteem development. Childhood experiences that contribute to healthy self-esteem include being listened to, being spoken to respectfully, receiving appropriate attention and affection and having accomplishments recognized and mistakes or failures acknowledged and accepted. Experiences that contribute to low self-esteem include being harshly criticized, being physically, sexually or emotionally abused, being ignored, ridiculed or teased or being expected to be "perfect" all the time.During school-aged years, academic achievement is a significant contributor to self-esteem development.