Narcissism

Narcissism In 1914, Freud ‘depicts adult narcissistic love as disturbance in libidinal development leading to seeking oneself as a love-object’ (Cooper and Maxwell, 1995: 77). Anna Freud put forward the difference between transference neurosis symptomatology and narcissistic disorders, and alerted analysts that to treat narcissism like neurosis (Oedipal conflicts) would lead to an impasse (Cooper and Maxwell, 1995: 20-21). Today, Kristeva recalls this Annafreudian understanding of the difference between Oedipal and narcissistic disorders. If imaginary scenarios evoked by the subject in the context of analysis appear to refer to the narcissistic stage of development, then one should be careful to avoid automatic assumptions of realism, believing that ‘the risk would consist precisely in under-estimating the metaphoric sense of phantasy; to hear only the reality of named objects, without the metaphorised part; in short, in denying imaginary metaphorisation and settling for a form of psychological realism’ (Kristeva, 2000: 239). Imaginary contents are not a symbolic representation of the real but a ‘symbolisation degree zero’. The symbol is the metaphoric incarnation of the imaginary. Hence to confuse the imaginary for the real (to take imaginary contents for symbolic contents) would equate first with not addressing the ‘true’ real and second with constructing the imaginary as the subject’s psychological reality. This would effectively displace the analysand’s narrative from pre-history and pre-verbal experience to accomplished subjectivity in the symbol. In short the analyst would be transforming narcissistic economy (maternal function) into an Oedipal one (paternal function) and fail to recognise and interpret the locus of the subject’s arrested development: the move from maternal to paternal within the maternal function rather than within the paternal function. Anna Freud and Kristeva’s concerns are today found in other clinical accounts judging the prospect of cure of narcissistic states uncertain. Cooper and Maxwell (1995) sum up the reasons why the psychoanalytic field remains doubtful vis-à-vis the possibility of cure of narcissistic states. Freud blamed the patients’ unconquerable resistance, Bion points to the untouchable nature of the narcissist’s primary object. Finally, ‘the prognosis of these patients is poor. [...] The analyst may invest a lot of energy over a long period of time, but he or she has to be prepared for the fact that it may well turn out to be an analysis that goes nowhere as a result of the patient’s early childhood experience of non-containment’ (Cooper and Maxwell, 1995: 124). Resistance to transference to the paternal site, the refusal to renounce the idealised maternal object and the failure of the imaginary father

form the three pillars around which the contemporary psychoanalytic field understands and investigates narcissism. Cooper and Maxwell’s pessimistic views are increasingly tempered by other less dramatic accounts and testify to the present investment of psychoanalytic circles in understanding and treating an increasing amount of narcissistic patients. Psychoanalysts1 agree with Anna Freud that ‘[t]he narcissistic transference is different from the ordinary transference because it involves the revival of archaic objects rather than the instinctual investment of Oedipal concerns’ (Cooper and Maxwell, 1995: 124-5). They add that ‘[t]hese patients are trying to re-experience the missing connectedness of their primary attachment. [...] In the repetition of earlier ‘smashings’, the patient is trying to find the original unbroken contact.’ (Cooper & Maxwell, 1995: 124-5). This echoes Kristeva’s belief that the crisis in contemporary society has translated into a collective desire to return to a time anterior to the symbolic contract. Her work points to the importance of theorising the maternal as operating the passage from pre-symbolic to symbolic. There is a need to further search for the original place prior to social crisis and for rebuilding the social stratum from that point. In Histoires d’amour (Kristeva, 1983), Kristeva put forward narcissism as the ‘new dementia’ (Kristeva, 1983: 131-53) of contemporary subjectivity. Ovid’s account2 of the Narcissus myth has frequently been analysed in terms of ‘the morbid, narcotic, subterranean signification of this legend’ (Kristeva, 1983: 134). But a more incisive reading can better apprehend the predicament of the contemporary subject:

But it may be more interesting today to insist on the originality of the narcissistic figure, and the quite singular place it holds, first in the history of Western subjectivity and second, considering its morbidity, in examining the critical symptom of this subjectivity. (Kristeva, 1983: 134)

Thus narcissism is today construed as the new psychical mode of social and individual organisation for contemporary men and women. Before considering the increasing interest given to narcissism, in both Kristeva’s recent work and other

1 Some theorists, in using psychoanalytic discourse understand narcissism as

secondary narcissism. Christopher Lasch for instance does not locate the difficulties of narcissistic personalities within primary narcissism: ‘Pathological narcissism, ‘which cannot be considered simply a fixation at the level of normal primitive narcissism,’ arises only when the ego has developed to the point of distinguishing itself from surrounding objects.’ (Lasch, 1979: 79). But Lasch’s understanding does take into account the contribution made by Melanie Klein. Since Klein, secondary narcissism or the accomplished differentiation self-other has been shown to be secondary to the earlier experience of part differentiation and that Lacan described as the Mirror Stage. What Lasch (and other theorists sharing his understanding) terms ‘narcissistic pathology’, and which appears at the level of symbolic economy, effectively arches back to an earlier difficulty in the subjectivation process.