The Dorian Grey Syndrome (DGS) shares much with a narcissistic personality disorder. The syndrome denotes a cultural and societal phenomenon characterized by extreme pride in one's own appearance accompanied by difficulties coping with the aging process and with the requirements of maturation.
Symptoms include narcissistic character traits, signs of body dysmorphic disorder (marked by a fixation on an imaginary flaw in the physical appearance) and arrests in psychic maturation. Dorian Gray patients frequently are excessive users of procedures and products that offer extended youthfulness, such as face-lifts, cosmetics or vitamins.
The Dorian Grey Syndrome has taken the name of the protagonist from Oscar Wilde’s novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ (1890) in which the Dorian Grey, a handsome young man, looks at a just-painted portrait of himself by artist Basil Hallward and wishes that it, rather than he, could grow old. He is then unable to mature, and ‘gives his soul away’ in order to resist time and nature.
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