Narcissistic Trespass
Term used to describe the violation of personal boundaries and invasion of privacy by individuals with narcissistic tendencies or personality disorder, often causing emotional harm and psychological distress to their victims.
Origin
The exact origin of the phrase is disputed. Sigmund Freud's 1914 essay "On Narcissism" first described how development requires distinguishing self from other, and later object-relations theorists — above all Heinz Kohut in the 1970s — documented how narcissistic personalities fail to recognise others as separate centres of experience. The specific phrase "narcissistic trespass" is often attributed to popular psychology writing of the early 2000s, where it named this boundary-crossing projection as a distinct relational pattern.