On Narcissism

An Introduction

Sigmund Freud

• Publisher: Read & Co. Great Essays
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781473319899
• eBook ISBN: 9781473396333
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Abnormal Psychology
• Index: Psychology

From the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, comes this fascinating introduction to his theories of narcissism.

First published in 1914, On Narcissism introduces Sigmund Freud's work surrounding the psychological symptoms and treatment of narcissism. In this work, Freud explores his theories and argues narcissism's relevance to sexual development.

What is now known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a mental condition that often affects one's ability to empathise and maintain healthy, balanced relationships. This compact volume is one of Freud's earliest works and contains a wealth of influential information. Examining Carl Jung's theory of non-sexual 'libido' and Alfred Adler's 'masculine protest' concept, Freud offers narcissism as an alternative explanation.

Republished by Read & Co. Great Essays, On Narcissism: An Introduction is not to be missed by those interested in books on psychoanalysis or collectors of Sigmund Freud's work.

On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914)

I

The term narcissism is derived from clinical description and was chosen by Paul Näcke in 1899 to denote the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the same way in which the body of a sexual object is ordinarily treated - who looks at it, that is to say, strokes it and fondles it till he obtains complete satisfaction through these activities. Developed to this degree, narcissism has the significance of a perversion that has absorbed the whole of the subject’s sexual life, and it will consequently exhibit the characteristics which we expect to meet with in the study of all perversions.

Psycho-analytic observers were subsequently struck by the fact that individual features of the narcissistic attitude are found in many people who suffer from other disorders - for instance, as Sadger has pointed out, in homosexuals - and finally it seemed probable that an allocation of the libido such as deserved to be described as narcissism might be present far more extensively, and that it might claim a place in the regular course of human sexual development.¹ Difficulties in psycho-analytic work upon neurotics led to the same supposition, for it seemed as though this kind of narcissistic attitude in them constituted one of the limits to their susceptibility to influence. Narcissism in this sense would not be a perversion, but the libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation, a measure of which may justifiably be attributed to every living creature.

¹ Otto Rank (1911c).

A pressing motive for occupying ourselves with the conception of a primary and normal narcissism arose when the attempt was made to subsume what we know of dementia praecox (Kraepelin) or schizophrenia (Bleuler) under the hypothesis of the libido theory. Patients of this kind, whom I have proposed to term paraphrenics, display two fundamental characteristics: megalomania and diversion of their interest from the external world - from people and things. In consequence of the latter change, they become inaccessible to the influence of psycho-analysis and cannot be cured by our efforts. But the paraphrenic’s turning away from the external world needs to be more precisely characterized. A patient suffering from hysteria or obsessional neurosis has also, as far as his illness extends, given up his relation to reality. But analysis shows that he has by no means broken off his erotic relations to people and things. He still retains them in phantasy; i.e. he has, on the one hand, substituted for real objects imaginary ones from his memory, or has mixed the latter with the former; and on the other hand, he has renounced the initiation of motor activities for the attainment of his aims in connection with those objects. Only to this condition of the libido may we legitimately apply the term ‘introversion’ of the libido which is used by Jung indiscriminately. It is otherwise with the paraphrenic. He seems really to have withdrawn his libido from people and things in the external world, without replacing them by others in phantasy. When he does so replace them, the process seems to be a secondary one and to be part of an attempt at recovery, designed to lead the libido back to objects.¹

The question arises: What happens to the libido which has been withdrawn from external objects in schizophrenia? The megalomania characteristic of these states points the way. This megalomania has no doubt come into being at the expense of object-libido. The libido that has been withdrawn from the external world has been directed to the ego and thus gives rise to an attitude which may be called narcissism. But the megalomania itself is no new creation; on the contrary, it is, as we know, a magnification and plainer manifestation of a condition which had already existed previously. This leads us to look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing in of object-cathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary narcissism that is obscured by a number of different influences.

¹ In connection with this see my discussion of the ‘end of the world’ in the analysis of Senatspräsident Schreber; also Abraham, 1908.

Let me insist that I am not proposing here to explain or penetrate further into the problem of schizophrenia, but that I am merely putting together what has already been said elsewhere, in order to justify the introduction of the concept of narcissism.

This extension of the libido theory - in my opinion, a legitimate one - receives reinforcement from a third quarter, namely, from our observations and views on the mental life of children and primitive peoples. In the latter we find characteristics which, if they occurred singly, might be put down to megalomania: an over-estimation of the power of their wishes and mental acts, the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, a belief in the thaumaturgic force of words, and a technique for dealing with the external world - ‘magic’ - which appears to be a logical application of these grandiose premisses.¹ In the children of to-day, whose development is much more obscure to us, we expect to find an exactly analogous attitude towards the external world.² Thus we form the idea of there being an original libidinal cathexis of the ego, from which some is later given off to objects, but which fundamentally persists and is related to the object-cathexes much as the body of an amoeba is related to the pseudopodia which it puts out. In our researches, taking, as they did, neurotic symptoms for their starting-point, this part of the allocation of libido necessarily remained hidden from us at the outset. All that we noticed were the emanations of this libido - the object-cathexes, which can be sent out and drawn back again. We see also, broadly speaking, an antithesis between ego-libido and object-libido. The more of the one is employed, the more the other becomes depleted. The highest phase of development of which object-libido is capable is seen in the state of being in love, when the subject seems to give up his own personality in favour of an object-cathexis; while we have the opposite condition in the paranoic’s phantasy (or self-perception) of the ‘end of the world’.³ Finally, as regards the differentiation of psychical energies, we are led to the conclusion that to begin with, ...

Table of contents

• On Narcissism: An Introduction
• Sigmund Freud
• On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914)