ABSTRACT
The concept of narcissism turns out to be one of the most problematic and obscure in all psychoanalytic theory. This chapter begins with a purely semantic approach, examining individually the many meanings of the term in Sigmund Freud's work and considers the problems they raise. Freud clearly delineates a development that breaks down into four phases, namely: autoerotism, narcissism, homosexual object choice, and heterosexual object choice. Freud's description of the state of being in love is of very great theoretical importance. This state implies a considerable involvement of narcissistic libido, which has been deposited in the object as a condition of its gratification. The narcissism of the first kind, the narcissism of the ego, is no longer a primary narcissism but always a secondary narcissism. The concept of narcissism has an exceedingly complicated history in Freud's work; the line of development it follows is not straight but broken and full of fluctuations and even changes of meaning.
