ABSTRACT
“The condition in which the ego retains the libido is called by “narcissism”, in reference to the Greek legend of the youth Narcissus who was in love with his own reflection. A certain quantity of libido is always retained in the ego; even when object-love is highly developed, a certain amount of narcissism persists. The ego is a great reservoir from which the libido that is destined for objects flows out and into which it flows back from those objects. Within the English-speaking world, narcissism was incorporated as one of M. Klein’s theoretical parameters for the partial object-relations specific to the paranoid-schizoid position. Negative narcissism which acts as an obstacle to process within treatment. Clinical accounts in which the narcissism of death predominates relate primarily to borderline or non-neurotic states. The analyst, when tackling oedipal defences within transference, is led to intervene indirectly or contiguously upon certain aspects of the patient’s narcissism.
