ABSTRACT
Narcissistic Society In proposing the existence of an increasingly narcissistic society, the term ‘narcissism’ is frequently ill defined and used to refer to different and often incompatible meanings. Even within the bound of the psychoanalytic frame, the term is far from pointing towards a meaningful totality. Freud alone did not succeed in proposing a stable definition of the term. In a first attempt at defining the term, narcissism corresponds to the submitting of instinct to reality. The move from a closed unit (narcissism) to an open structure (social membership) is motivated by the instinct for survival that drives the individual to protect the species (the social) over individual interest. Later on, Freud abandoned the idea of narcissism as a physically driven stage and proposed narcissism as a purely psychical process. Upon observation of adults, Freud concludes the narcissist withdraws the libido from outside interests and turns back the sexual drive onto the ego. Narcissism as pathology is now an intermediate stage between the objectless (auto-erotic) and object oriented individual. Freud then begins to categorise human attachment, opposing the narcissistic and the anaclitic type of attachment. The narcissist attaches to the same, the anaclitic type attaches to the different. To sum up, narcissism corresponds to that stage of development between objectless and symbolic. Freud further differentiated between primary and secondary narcissisms, with the former referring to the baby’s anobjectal world, and the latter to the identificatory stage of development. Secondary narcissism will show in the type of object the individual chooses to attach to: narcissistic type, that is attachment to ‘the same’, where the object is recognised as separate but not different from the individual. Since Klein, Freud’s understanding of primary narcissism as anobjectal has been questioned, in particular the difficulty in defining Narcissus as the place between anobjectal and pre-objectal. The crux of the debate is summarised by Laplanche and Pontalis (1988). They find in psychoanalytic circles a separation between two understandings of narcissism, in particular primary narcissism. Primary narcissism always refers to ‘a strictly ‘objectless’ - or at any rate ‘undifferentiated’ - state, implying no split between subject and external world.’ (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1988: 338). They object to this definition on the following two points: first an anobjectal state erases the very possibility of a narcissistic image; second, some research (Melanie Klein, Balint) suggests the capacity for object relation in the newborn baby. To conceive of a narcissistic stage of development, between no-objects and pre-objects, is then illogical. Laplanche
and Pontalis consequently suggest ‘primary narcissism’ as an ‘early phase or formative moments, marked by the emergence of a first adumbration of the ego and its immediate libidinal cathexis’ (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1988: 338). Like Laplanche and Pontalis, Kristeva also retains the idea of primary narcissism as an early structuring of the subject.
