History of narcissism
Encyclopedia
The concept of excessive selfishness
has been recognized throughout history. The term "narcissism
" is derived from the Greek mythology
of Narcissus
, but was only coined at the close of the nineteenth century.
Since then, 'narcissism has become a household word; in analytic literature, given the great preoccupation with the subject, the term is used more than almost any other'.
Echo
. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus 'lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour', and finally pined away, changing into a flower that bears his name, the narcissus.
The story was retold in Latin by Ovid
in his Metamorphoses, in which form it would have great influence on medieval and Renaissance culture. 'Ovid's tale of Echo and Narcissus...weaves in and out of most of the English examples of the Ovidian narrative poem'; and 'allusions to the story of Narcissus...play a large part in the poetics of the Sonnets
' of Shakespeare. Here the term used was 'self-love
...Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel'. Francis Bacon
used the same term: 'its is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs...those that (as Cicero
says of Pompey
) are sui amantes sine rivali...lovers of themselves without rivals'.
Byron at the start of the nineteenth century used the same term, describing how, "Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens...to stumble on it." while Baudelaire wrote of 'as vigorous a growth in the heart of natural man as self-love', as well as of those who 'like Narcissuses of fat-headedness...are contemplating the crowd, as though it were a river, offering them their own image'.
By mid-century, however, egotism
was perhaps an equally common expression for self-absorption - 'egotists...made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture in which it dwells' - though still with 'curious suggestions of the Narcissus legend' in the background. At the century's close, the term as we now know it finally emerged, with Havelock Ellis
, the English sexologist
, writing a short paper in 1927 on its coining, in which he 'argued that the priority should in fact be divided between himself and Näche, explaining that the term "narcissus-like" had been used by him in 1898 as a description of a psychological attitude, and that Näche in 1899 had introduced the term Narcismus to describe a sexual perversion'.
The twentieth century has largely defined the concept in psychological terms, with Otto Rank
publishing in 1911 the first psychoanalytical paper specifically concerned with narcissism, linking it to vanity
and self-admiration.
Ernest Jones
tells us that 'at a meeting of the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society on 10 November 1909 Freud
had declared that narcissism was a necessary intermediate stage between auto-erotism and object-love'. The following year in his "Leonardo" he described publicly for the first time how 'the growing youngster...finds his love objects on the path of narcissism, since Greek myths call a youth Narcissus, whom nothing pleased so much as his own mirror image'. Although Freud only published a single paper exclusively devoted to narcissism called On Narcissism: An Introduction
., in 1914, 'Narcissism was soon to take a central place in his thinking'.
. He argued that narcissism "is the libidinal
complement to the egoism
of the instinct
of self-preservation," or, more simply, the desire and energy that drives one’s instinct
to survive. He referred to this as primary narcissism.
According to Freud, people are born without a sense of themselves as individuals, or ego. The ego develops during infancy and the early part of childhood, only when the outside world, usually in the form of parental controls and expectations, intrudes upon primary narcissism, teaching the individual about the nature and standards of her social environment
from which she can form the ideal ego
, an image of the perfect self
towards which the ego should aspire. 'As it evolved, the ego distanced itself from primary narcissism, formed an ego-ideal, and proceeded to cathect objects'.
Freud regarded all libidinous
drives
as fundamentally sexual and suggested that ego libido (libido
directed inwards to the self
) cannot always be clearly distinguished from object-libido (libido directed to persons or objects outside oneself).
An aspect frequently associated with primary narcissism appears in an earlier essay, 'Totem and Taboo
,' in which Freud describes his observations of children and primitive people. What he observed was called magical thinking
, such as the belief that a person can impact reality by wishing or willpower. It demonstrates a belief in the self as powerful and able to change external realities, which Freud believed was part of normal human development.
. 'This megalomania has no doubt come into being at the expense of object-libido....This leads us to look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing on of object-cathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary narcissism'. For Freud, while both primary and secondary narcissism emerge in normal human development, problems in the transition from one to the other can lead to pathological narcissistic disorders in adulthood.
'This state of secondary narcissism constituted object relations of the narcissistic type, according to Freud', something he went on to explore further in "Mourning and Melancholia" - 'Freud's profoundest contribution to object relations theory
...constitut[ing[ the dialectics of object relations and narcissism '.
According to Freud, as a child grows, and his ego develops, he is constantly giving of his self-love to people and objects, the first of which is usually his mother. This diminished self-love should be replenished by the affection and caring returned to him.
Karen Horney saw narcissism quite differently from Freud, Kohut and other mainstream psychoanalytic
theorists in that she did not posit a primary narcissism but saw the narcissistic personality as the product of a certain kind of early environment acting on a certain kind of temperament. For her, narcissistic needs and tendencies are not inherent in human nature.
Narcissism is different from Horney's other major defensive strategies
or solutions in that it is not compensatory. Self-idealization is compensatory in her theory, but it differs from narcissism. All the defensive strategies involve self-idealization, but in the narcissistic solution it tends to be the product of indulgence rather than of deprivation. The narcissist's self-esteem
is not strong, however, because it is not based on genuine accomplishments.
and ideal parents. He claimed that deep down, all people retain a belief in their own perfection and the perfection of anything they are part of. As a person matures, grandiosity
gives way to self-esteem
, and the idealization of the parent becomes the framework for core values. It is when psychological trauma
disrupts this process that the most primitive and narcissistic version of the self remains unchanged. Kohut called such conditions narcissistic personality disorder
, 'in which the merging with and detaching from an archaic self-object play the central role...narcissistic union with the idealized self-object'.
Kohut suggested narcissism as part of a stage in normal development, in which caregivers provide a strong and protective presence with which the child can identify that reinforces the child's growing sense of self by mirroring his good qualities. If the caregivers fail to provide adequately for their child, the child grows up with a brittle and flawed sense of self. 'Kohut's innovative pronouncement...became a veritable manifesto in the United States....The age of "normal narcissism" had arrived'
Kohut also saw beyond the negative and pathological aspects of narcissism, believing it is a component in the development of resilience, ideals and ambition once it has been transformed by life experiences or analysis - though critics objected that his theory of how 'we become attached to ideals and values, instead of to our own archaic selves...fits the individual who escapes from bad inner negativity into idealized objects outside'.
in the regulation of self-esteem
.
He believed normal, infantile narcissism depends on the affirmation of others and the acquisition of desirable and appealing objects, which should later develop into healthy, mature self-esteem. This healthy narcissism depends upon an integrated sense of self
that incorporates images of the internalized affirmation of those close to the person and is regulated by the super ego and ego ideal
, internal mental structures that assure the person of his worth and that he deserves his own respect.
The failure of infantile narcissism to develop in this healthy adult form becomes a pathology
.
's...descriptions of infantile omnipotence
and megalomania
provided important insights for the clinical understanding of narcissistic states. In 1963, writing on the psychopathology of narcissism, Herbert Rosenfeld
was especially concerned to arrive at a better definition of object-relationships and their attendant defense mechanisms in narcissism'.
D. W. Winnicott's 'brilliant observations of the mother-child couple [also] throw considerable light on primary narcissism, which in the young child can be viewed as the extension of the mother's narcissism.
- building on Freud's dictum that 'all narcissistic impulses operate from the ego and have their permanent seat in the ego' - used his own concept of the mirror stage
to explore the narcissistic ego in terms of 'the essential structure it derives from its reference to the specular image...narcissism', in his battle against ego psychology
.
'Béla Grunberger
drew attention to a double orientation of narcissism — as both a need for self-affirmation and a tendency to restore permanent dependency. The active presence of narcissism throughout life led Grunberger to suggest treating it as an autonomous factor (1971)'.
'Under the evocative title Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism (1983), André Green
clarified the conflict surrounding the object of narcissism (whether a fantasy object or a real object) in its relationship to the ego. For Green, it was because narcissism affords the ego a certain degree of independence...that a lethal kind of narcissism must be considered, for the object is destroyed at the beginning of this process'; while in a further analysis, 'Green evokes physical narcissism, intellectual narcissism, and moral narcissism' - a set of divisions sometimes simplified into that between 'somatic narcissists who are obsessed with the body...[&] cerebral narcissists - people who build up their sense of magnificence out of an innate feeling of intellectual superiority'.
is a condition defined in DSM-IV
, but a proposal has been made to remove it from the next edition, DSM-5
, instead submerging it as a facet of the antagonism personality type domain.
The twenty-first century and the World Wide Web
brought what has been called 'a personal mission by self-confessed narcissist Sam Vaknin
to raise the profile of the condition, through...his amazingly intense presence on the internet—in discussion forums, information pages, agony columns and the like—something that, "...has had a major effect on making narcissism an issue to be taken seriously by the general public."
Selfishness
Selfishness denotes an excessive or exclusive concern with oneself, and as such it exceeds mere self interest or self concern. Insofar as a decision maker knowingly burdens or harms others for personal gain, the decision is selfish. In contrast, self-interest is more general...
has been recognized throughout history. The term "narcissism
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
" is derived from the Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
of Narcissus
Narcissus (mythology)
Narcissus or Narkissos , possibly derived from ναρκη meaning "sleep, numbness," in Greek mythology was a hunter from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was exceptionally proud, in that he disdained those who loved him...
, but was only coined at the close of the nineteenth century.
Since then, 'narcissism has become a household word; in analytic literature, given the great preoccupation with the subject, the term is used more than almost any other'.
Before Freud
Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymphNymph
A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...
Echo
Echo (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Ekho , "echo", itself from ἦχος , "sound") was an Oread who loved her own voice. Zeus loved consorting with beautiful nymphs and visited them on Earth often. Eventually, Zeus's wife, Hera, became suspicious, and came from Mt...
. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus 'lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour', and finally pined away, changing into a flower that bears his name, the narcissus.
The story was retold in Latin by Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
in his Metamorphoses, in which form it would have great influence on medieval and Renaissance culture. 'Ovid's tale of Echo and Narcissus...weaves in and out of most of the English examples of the Ovidian narrative poem'; and 'allusions to the story of Narcissus...play a large part in the poetics of the Sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...
' of Shakespeare. Here the term used was 'self-love
Self-love
Self-love is the strong sense of respect for and confidence in oneself. It is different from narcissism in that as one practices acceptance and detachment, the awareness of the individual shifts and the individual starts to see him or herself as an extension of all there is...
...Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel'. Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
used the same term: 'its is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs...those that (as Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
says of Pompey
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...
) are sui amantes sine rivali...lovers of themselves without rivals'.
Byron at the start of the nineteenth century used the same term, describing how, "Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens...to stumble on it." while Baudelaire wrote of 'as vigorous a growth in the heart of natural man as self-love', as well as of those who 'like Narcissuses of fat-headedness...are contemplating the crowd, as though it were a river, offering them their own image'.
By mid-century, however, egotism
Egotism
Egotism is "characterized by an exaggerated estimate of one's intellect, ability, importance, appearance, wit, or other valued personal characteristics" – the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself....
was perhaps an equally common expression for self-absorption - 'egotists...made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture in which it dwells' - though still with 'curious suggestions of the Narcissus legend' in the background. At the century's close, the term as we now know it finally emerged, with Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...
, the English sexologist
Sexology
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behavior, and function. The term does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sex, such as political analysis or social criticism....
, writing a short paper in 1927 on its coining, in which he 'argued that the priority should in fact be divided between himself and Näche, explaining that the term "narcissus-like" had been used by him in 1898 as a description of a psychological attitude, and that Näche in 1899 had introduced the term Narcismus to describe a sexual perversion'.
The twentieth century has largely defined the concept in psychological terms, with Otto Rank
Otto Rank
Otto Rank was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, teacher and therapist. Born in Vienna as Otto Rosenfeld, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, an editor of the two most important analytic journals, managing director of Freud's...
publishing in 1911 the first psychoanalytical paper specifically concerned with narcissism, linking it to vanity
Vanity
In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but...
and self-admiration.
Sigmund Freud
Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones was a British neurologist and psychoanalyst, and Sigmund Freud’s official biographer. Jones was the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and became its leading exponent in the English-speaking world where, as President of both the British Psycho-Analytical...
tells us that 'at a meeting of the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society on 10 November 1909 Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
had declared that narcissism was a necessary intermediate stage between auto-erotism and object-love'. The following year in his "Leonardo" he described publicly for the first time how 'the growing youngster...finds his love objects on the path of narcissism, since Greek myths call a youth Narcissus, whom nothing pleased so much as his own mirror image'. Although Freud only published a single paper exclusively devoted to narcissism called On Narcissism: An Introduction
On Narcissism
On Narcissism was a 1914 essay by Sigmund Freud, widely considered an introduction to Freud's theories of narcissism.In this paper, Freud sums up his earlier discussions on the subject of narcissism and considers its place in sexual development...
., in 1914, 'Narcissism was soon to take a central place in his thinking'.
Primary narcissism
Freud suggested that exclusive self-love might not be as abnormal as previously thought and might even be a common component in the human psychePsyche (psychology)
The word psyche has a long history of use in psychology and philosophy, dating back to ancient times, and has been one of the fundamental concepts for understanding human nature from a scientific point of view. The English word soul is sometimes used synonymously, especially in older...
. He argued that narcissism "is the libidinal
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
complement to the egoism
Psychological egoism
Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It claims that, when people choose to help others, they do so ultimately because of the personal benefits that they themselves expect to obtain, directly or indirectly,...
of the instinct
Instinct
Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...
of self-preservation," or, more simply, the desire and energy that drives one’s instinct
Instinct
Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...
to survive. He referred to this as primary narcissism.
According to Freud, people are born without a sense of themselves as individuals, or ego. The ego develops during infancy and the early part of childhood, only when the outside world, usually in the form of parental controls and expectations, intrudes upon primary narcissism, teaching the individual about the nature and standards of her social environment
Social environment
The social environment of an individual, also called social context or milieu, is the culture that s/he was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts....
from which she can form the ideal ego
Ego ideal
The ego ideal is the inner image of oneself as one wants to become. Alternatively, 'The Freudian notion of a perfect or ideal self housed in the superego', consisting of 'the individual's conscious and unconscious images of what he would like to be, patterned after certain people whom...he regards...
, an image of the perfect self
Self (psychology)
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the...
towards which the ego should aspire. 'As it evolved, the ego distanced itself from primary narcissism, formed an ego-ideal, and proceeded to cathect objects'.
Freud regarded all libidinous
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
drives
Drive theory
The terms drive theory and drive reduction theory refer to a diverse set of motivational theories in psychology. Drive theory is based on the principle that organisms are born with certain physiological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied...
as fundamentally sexual and suggested that ego libido (libido
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
directed inwards to the self
Self (psychology)
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the...
) cannot always be clearly distinguished from object-libido (libido directed to persons or objects outside oneself).
An aspect frequently associated with primary narcissism appears in an earlier essay, 'Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics is a book by Sigmund Freud published in German in 1913 under the title Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker...
,' in which Freud describes his observations of children and primitive people. What he observed was called magical thinking
Magical thinking
Magical thinking is causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events. In religion, folk religion, and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or...
, such as the belief that a person can impact reality by wishing or willpower. It demonstrates a belief in the self as powerful and able to change external realities, which Freud believed was part of normal human development.
Secondary narcissism
According to Freud, secondary narcissism occurs when the libido withdraws from objects outside the self, above all the mother, producing a relationship to social reality that includes the potential for megalomaniaMegalomania
Megalomania is a psycho-pathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, or omnipotence. 'Megalomania is characterized by an inflated sense of self-esteem and overestimation by persons of their powers and beliefs'...
. 'This megalomania has no doubt come into being at the expense of object-libido....This leads us to look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing on of object-cathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary narcissism'. For Freud, while both primary and secondary narcissism emerge in normal human development, problems in the transition from one to the other can lead to pathological narcissistic disorders in adulthood.
'This state of secondary narcissism constituted object relations of the narcissistic type, according to Freud', something he went on to explore further in "Mourning and Melancholia" - 'Freud's profoundest contribution to object relations theory
Object relations theory
Object relations theory is a psychodynamic theory within psychoanalytic psychology. The theory describes the process of developing a mind as one grows in relation to others in the environment....
...constitut[ing[ the dialectics of object relations and narcissism '.
Narcissism, relationships and self-worth
According to Freud, to care for someone is to convert ego-libido into object-libido by giving some self-love to another person, which leaves less ego-libido available for primary narcissism and protecting and nurturing the self. When that affection is returned so is the libido, thus restoring primary narcissism and self worth. Any failure to achieve, or disruption of, this balance causes psychological disturbances. In such a case, primary narcissism can be restored only by withdrawing object-libido (also called object-love) to replenish ego-libido.According to Freud, as a child grows, and his ego develops, he is constantly giving of his self-love to people and objects, the first of which is usually his mother. This diminished self-love should be replenished by the affection and caring returned to him.
Karen Horney
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
theorists in that she did not posit a primary narcissism but saw the narcissistic personality as the product of a certain kind of early environment acting on a certain kind of temperament. For her, narcissistic needs and tendencies are not inherent in human nature.
Narcissism is different from Horney's other major defensive strategies
Defence mechanism
In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, defence mechanisms are unconscious psychological strategies brought into play by various entities to cope with reality and to maintain self-image. Healthy persons normally use different defences throughout life...
or solutions in that it is not compensatory. Self-idealization is compensatory in her theory, but it differs from narcissism. All the defensive strategies involve self-idealization, but in the narcissistic solution it tends to be the product of indulgence rather than of deprivation. The narcissist's self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
is not strong, however, because it is not based on genuine accomplishments.
Heinz Kohut
Heinz Kohut explored further the implications of Freud's perception of narcissism. He maintained that a child will tend to fantasize about having a grandiose selfSelf (psychology)
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the...
and ideal parents. He claimed that deep down, all people retain a belief in their own perfection and the perfection of anything they are part of. As a person matures, grandiosity
Grandiosity
Grandiosity is chiefly associated with narcissistic personality disorder, but also commonly features in manic or hypomanic episodes of bipolar disorder....
gives way to self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
, and the idealization of the parent becomes the framework for core values. It is when psychological trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
disrupts this process that the most primitive and narcissistic version of the self remains unchanged. Kohut called such conditions narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which the individual is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity...
, 'in which the merging with and detaching from an archaic self-object play the central role...narcissistic union with the idealized self-object'.
Kohut suggested narcissism as part of a stage in normal development, in which caregivers provide a strong and protective presence with which the child can identify that reinforces the child's growing sense of self by mirroring his good qualities. If the caregivers fail to provide adequately for their child, the child grows up with a brittle and flawed sense of self. 'Kohut's innovative pronouncement...became a veritable manifesto in the United States....The age of "normal narcissism" had arrived'
Kohut also saw beyond the negative and pathological aspects of narcissism, believing it is a component in the development of resilience, ideals and ambition once it has been transformed by life experiences or analysis - though critics objected that his theory of how 'we become attached to ideals and values, instead of to our own archaic selves...fits the individual who escapes from bad inner negativity into idealized objects outside'.
Otto Kernberg
Otto Kernberg uses the term narcissism to refer to the role of selfSelf (psychology)
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the...
in the regulation of self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
.
He believed normal, infantile narcissism depends on the affirmation of others and the acquisition of desirable and appealing objects, which should later develop into healthy, mature self-esteem. This healthy narcissism depends upon an integrated sense of self
Self (psychology)
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the...
that incorporates images of the internalized affirmation of those close to the person and is regulated by the super ego and ego ideal
Ego ideal
The ego ideal is the inner image of oneself as one wants to become. Alternatively, 'The Freudian notion of a perfect or ideal self housed in the superego', consisting of 'the individual's conscious and unconscious images of what he would like to be, patterned after certain people whom...he regards...
, internal mental structures that assure the person of his worth and that he deserves his own respect.
The failure of infantile narcissism to develop in this healthy adult form becomes a pathology
Pathology
Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
.
Object relations theory
'Melanie KleinMelanie Klein
Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...
's...descriptions of infantile omnipotence
Omnipotence
Omnipotence is unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence to only the deity of whichever faith is being addressed...
and megalomania
Megalomania
Megalomania is a psycho-pathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, or omnipotence. 'Megalomania is characterized by an inflated sense of self-esteem and overestimation by persons of their powers and beliefs'...
provided important insights for the clinical understanding of narcissistic states. In 1963, writing on the psychopathology of narcissism, Herbert Rosenfeld
Herbert Rosenfeld
Herbert Alexander Rosenfeld was a British psychoanalyst, who was born in Germany in 1910 and died in London in 1986.'British analysts have been deeply influenced by the work and teachings of Rosenfeld who increasingly focused upon the analyst's contribution to what was happening in the analysis -...
was especially concerned to arrive at a better definition of object-relationships and their attendant defense mechanisms in narcissism'.
D. W. Winnicott's 'brilliant observations of the mother-child couple [also] throw considerable light on primary narcissism, which in the young child can be viewed as the extension of the mother's narcissism.
French connections
LacanLacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née Lacan...
- building on Freud's dictum that 'all narcissistic impulses operate from the ego and have their permanent seat in the ego' - used his own concept of the mirror stage
Mirror stage
The mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Philosopher Raymond Tallis describes the mirror stage as "the cornerstone of Lacan’s oeuvre."...
to explore the narcissistic ego in terms of 'the essential structure it derives from its reference to the specular image...narcissism', in his battle against ego psychology
Ego psychology
Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind.An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical construct called the ego to explain how that is done...
.
'Béla Grunberger
Bela Grunberger
Béla Grunberger was a Jewish Hungarian-French psychoanalyst known for his 1969 work L’univers Contestationnaire, written with fellow IPa member Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, under the joint pseudonym 'André Stéphane'...
drew attention to a double orientation of narcissism — as both a need for self-affirmation and a tendency to restore permanent dependency. The active presence of narcissism throughout life led Grunberger to suggest treating it as an autonomous factor (1971)'.
'Under the evocative title Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism (1983), André Green
André Green
André Green is a French psychoanalyst of global renown.'Among contemporary practitioners, Andre Green...epitomizes an international spirit of independence'.-Life and career:...
clarified the conflict surrounding the object of narcissism (whether a fantasy object or a real object) in its relationship to the ego. For Green, it was because narcissism affords the ego a certain degree of independence...that a lethal kind of narcissism must be considered, for the object is destroyed at the beginning of this process'; while in a further analysis, 'Green evokes physical narcissism, intellectual narcissism, and moral narcissism' - a set of divisions sometimes simplified into that between 'somatic narcissists who are obsessed with the body...[&] cerebral narcissists - people who build up their sense of magnificence out of an innate feeling of intellectual superiority'.
Modern diagnosis
Narcissistic personality disorderNarcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which the individual is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity...
is a condition defined in DSM-IV
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...
, but a proposal has been made to remove it from the next edition, DSM-5
DSM-5
The next edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , commonly called DSM-5 , is currently in consultation, planning and preparation...
, instead submerging it as a facet of the antagonism personality type domain.
Online
The success of the term "narcissism" has led to something of an 'inflation of meanings....Some in fact exploited it as a handy term of abuse for modern culture or as a loose synonym for bloated self-esteem'.The twenty-first century and the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
brought what has been called 'a personal mission by self-confessed narcissist Sam Vaknin
Sam Vaknin
Shmuel Ben David "Sam" Vaknin is an Israeli writer. He is the author and publisher of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited , editor-in-chief of the website Global Politician, and runs a website about narcissistic personality disorder .Race, Tim. , The New York Times, July 29, 2002, p...
to raise the profile of the condition, through...his amazingly intense presence on the internet—in discussion forums, information pages, agony columns and the like—something that, "...has had a major effect on making narcissism an issue to be taken seriously by the general public."
See also
Further reading
- Bela Grunberger, Narcissism: Psychoanalytic Essays (New York 1971)
- J. Sandler et al, Freud's "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (Yale UP, 1991)