ABSTRACT
Narcissism owes its name to the Greek myth of Narcissus. Narcissus fell in love with his own re¯ection in a pool of still water. Consumed by his own desire, he was transformed into a ¯ower. Narcissism, then, has to do with excessive self-love; or as psychodynamic thinkers would have it, a withdrawal of object love and reinvestment in (pathological) self-love. Narcissism has many, somewhat diverse connotations in psychology: it can refer to normal range mechanisms of maintenance and regulation of self-esteem, to a normal range personality trait, to an extreme amount of self-esteem, or be a descriptor term for a DSM-IV syndrome.
