ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud asserted that a part of the child's narcissism is transferred upon his superego, and thus narcissistic tensions occur in the ego as it strives to live up to the ego ideal. The antithesis to narcissism is not the object relation but object love. An individual's profusion of object relations, in the sense of the observer of the social field, may conceal his narcissistic experience of the object world; and a person's seeming isolation and loneliness may be the setting for a wealth of current object investments. The concept of primary narcissism is a good case in point. Although it is extrapolated from empirical observations, it does not refer to the social field but to the psychological state of the infant. The balance of primary narcissism is disturbed by maturational pressures and painful psychic tensions which occur because the mother's ministrations are of necessity imperfect and traumatic delays cannot be prevented.
