ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the theoretical structure that underpins the view of psychoanalytic therapy with couples that have been describing as a struggle to emerge from narcissism towards marriage. It considers the Narcissus myth itself to some reflections on a kind of identification which is more like mimicry or imitation. The chapter focuses on the notion of intrusive projection as a kind of identification, an idea that has been the pivot for much of psychoanalytic thinking about disturbed couple relations. It looks at the living in a kind of hell which has the quality of what Donald Meltzer terms a "claustrum" as well as at what can be described as sado-masochistic folie-a-deux relationships. Sigmund Freud said he borrowed the term "narcissism" from Havelock Ellis's discussion of the myth of Narcissus and Echo, although he credits Paul Nacke with coining this term.
