ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the defensive echoist whose characteristics can best be understood in relation to the defensive or libidinal narcissist, and to J. P. Sartre’s category of being-for-others. It discusses the echoist both in relation to psychoanalytic ideas of projection and to existential ideas relating to modes of Being. In Sartre’s and M. Heidegger’s philosophies the very notion of being-in-the-world refers to the individual as being in relation to others. The vignette describes the experience for the therapist of encountering a defensive echoist, whose primary mode of Being is for others and not for herself. The defensive echoist frequently presents as playing no active part in her relationship to the narcissist, considering herself to be a victim, and it manifests as a further defence against possessing and using her own voice.
