ABSTRACT
Narcissistic parents can pervert developmentally facilitating mirroring into an impinging mode of mirroring, “impinging” being a D. W. Winnicottian term. Winnicott’s ideas on mirroring as a developmental function find their perverse form in the narcissistic parent’s grandiose mirroring, which creates an addiction to the narcissistic image of the parent within the child’s psyche. Melanie Klein’s focus on envy is unnecessary as long as the child remains merged with the narcissistic parent through an addiction to the parent’s contrived mirroring view of her- or himself, reflecting back to the child only what is flattering to the parent’s grandiose self-image. Within the heated-up pathological bond and the bind of narcissistic mirroring, Winnicott’s interest in recognition version impingement plays a macabre dance. Nobody displays this dance better than Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath’s developmental arrest might have begun with her mother’s failings in separation–individuation, perhaps due to the sealed-off affect and self-state of her mother.
