ABSTRACT
Having indicated a few basic motifs in the subject of narcissism by way of the Narcissus myth, we shall now examine that small but central document in the work of Sigmund Freud that had a decisive influence on the further development of psychoanalysis. It is the essay On Narcissism: An Introduction , which was first published in 1914 and begins as follows:
The term narcissism is derived from clinical description and was chosen by Paul Näcke in 1899 1 to denote the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the same way in which the body of a sexual object is ordinarily treated – who looks at it, that is to say, strokes it and fondles it till he obtains complete satisfaction through these activities.
