The grandiose self occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychological literature, functioning simultaneously as a developmental landmark, a pathological fixation, and a contested therapeutic object. The term was given its most consequential technical elaboration by Heinz Kohut, who identified it as a normal infantile configuration — the pole of archaic exhibitionism and omnipotence — that, under conditions of adequate empathic mirroring, undergoes transmuting internalization into mature self-esteem. Kohut’s account stands in productive tension with Otto Kernberg’s, for whom the grandiose self represents primarily a defensive consolidation against archaic envy, requiring interpretive dismantling rather than empathic resonance. Mario Jacoby, working from a Jungian-analytic vantage, maps this disagreement directly onto clinical technique, noting that neither response is universally adequate. Allan Schore situates the grandiose self within a neurobiological frame, linking its pathological persistence to dysregulated affect states in the late-practicing subphase. Moore and Bly, writing from archetypal and mythopoetic perspectives, complicate the clinical consensus by insisting that therapists frequently depreciate the grandiose self prematurely, confusing healthy vitality — what Moore calls the ‘shining’ of the Divine Child — with narcissistic pathology. Flores synthesizes these streams in the addictions literature, identifying the grandiose self as the defensive false-self erected over shame. Across these voices, the term marks the intersection of developmental arrest, narcissistic structure, and the perennial question of how psychic greatness is to be distinguished from inflation.