Pathological narcissist meaning12/13/2023 ![]() Narcissism was thus seen as the libidinal complement to the egoism of the self-preservative instinct. 427-428).įreud postulated an original cathexis of the ego, a primary narcissism, in the infant later some part of this libidinal cathexis would be redirected onto objects, creating an opposition between ego-libido and object-libido. Freud described the relationship between narcissistic identification and hysterical identification in the twenty-sixth of his Introductory Lectures (1916-1917a, pp. But it becomes easier to see how narcissism can be viewed as a phase between autoeroticism and object love, and autoeroticism as a mode of satisfaction, if we bear in mind that the significance of autoeroticism changes during development, as the identificatory processes described by Karl Abraham (incorporation) and by S ándor Ferenczi (introjection) come into play. On its face, this account would seem to conflict with the one set forth in "On Narcissism" (1914c). We call this condition 'narcissism' and this way of obtaining satisfaction 'auto-erotic"' (p. In "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915c), Freud described "a primal psychical situation": "Originally, at the very beginning of mental life, the ego is cathected with instincts and is to some extent capable of satisfying them on itself. 89).Īt this time he formed the hypothesis of a narcissistic stage of development occurring between the auto-erotic stage and the stage of object-love. In the third chapter of Totem and Taboo, "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts," Freud defined narcissism in much the same way (1912-13a, p. He used it again in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1910c), then offered a more complete account in his discussion of the case of Schreber: "There comes a time in the development of the individual at which he unifies his sexual instincts (which have hitherto been engaged in autoerotic activities) in order to obtain a love-object and he begins by taking himself, his own body as his love-object" (1911c, p. In 1910 the word appeared in Freud's writing for the first time in a long note added to the third edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905c, p. The term was borrowed from Paul N äcke, who in 1899 described a form of behavior, resembling a perversion, whereby an individual treated his own body as one might treat the body of a sexual partner. These last two concepts would be elaborated on later by Freud. ![]() He also described an ego-ideal as the heir of infantile narcissism and as a psychic agency of self-observation. This paper was a response to four related issues: the difficulties encountered in psychoanalysis in working with neurotics the controversy with Jung, who defended the idea of the unity of psychic energy the debate with Adler over the role of "masculine protest" in symptom-formation and above all Freud's growing interest in the psychoses, which opened his way to the study of the ego (1923a).īy proposing the notion of narcissism, Freud (1914c) meant to show how four different phenomena were related: narcissism as sexual perversion narcissism as a stage in development narcissism as libidinal cathexis of the ego and narcissism as object-choice. The concept was introduced in Freud's work shortly before the publication of "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914c). ![]() The term narcissism, in keeping with the Greek myth of Narcissus, refers to self-love.
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