The origins of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder a

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70 JOHN S. AUERBACH analogy between these two notions is erroneous. Unfortunately, this analogy constitutes a central, if not the central, conceptual barrier to the final rejection of ideas like primary fusion, primary merger, primary narcissism, and normal symbiosis. Although it is relatively easy, in the wake of Stern’s (1985) arguments, to reject the concept of normal autism, it is far more difficult, as examples like Kernberg (1991) and Pine (1986) show, to renounce the theory of normal symbiosis. There is something seductively plausible about regarding a neonate’s rudimentary differentiations between self and mother as an indication of fusion between self and mother. As the subliminal activation studies of L. H. Silverman, Lachmann, and Milich (1982) confirm, the fantasy of oneness exerts a powerful influence on human behavior. To be brief about this point, however, fusion is an experience or a fantasy-a complex but essentially narcissistic state that, like the narcissistic illusion of omnipotence, presupposes language, the capacity for self-recognition, and the capacity to regard oneself as separate (Lachmann & Beebe, 1989; Stern, 1985). It is only in the context of a capacity to experience separateness that the fantasy of oneness can become psychologically compelling. Differentiation, on the other hand, is a relative or comparative term that can refer, among its multiple meanings, to the degree of organization in a person’s phenomenal experience or to the complexity of one psychological state or set of processes relative to another. An infant, therefore, is clearly less differentiated psychologically than is an adult and cannot make the same discriminations between self and other that an adult can. Nevertheless, the infant is biologically programmed to acquire knowledge of these discriminations, much as nonhuman organisms do without ever coming to regard themselves as separate entities, distinct from their conspecifics. Furthermore, the relative lack of awareness of these distinctions does not make one psychologically fused with others, any more than an infant rhesus monkey is psychologically merged with its mother. I might also add that the fusion fantasies of toddlers, as embodied in transitional objects, are less differentiated than are the fantasies of adults about emotional and sexual intimacy; even fantasies of merger exist on a continuum of differentiation. Although affect attunements are the likely preverbal precursors to the experience of fusion, these affective states cannot be regarded as moments of merger in the absence of the experience of separateness
THE ORIGINS OF NARCISSISM 71 (Lachmann & Beebe, 1989; Stern, 1985). Such preverbal states are easily explained, without recourse to psychoanalysis, as consequences of mutual caregiver-infant regulation. What requires psychoanalytic explanation are not babies’ moments of affective contentment but instead adults’ essentially narcissistic fantasies about these infantile experiences. A Reformulation of Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder By now, it should be clear that the term narcissism, at least when used to characterize normal infant development as objectless, is problematic. If normal development contains no truly objectless phases, then perhaps, contrary to Freud’s positing of narcissistic neuroses, there are no truly objectless forms of psychopathology. In short, if infants, from the very beginning of life, have object relations, then Freud’s (1914/1957) idea that certain severe forms of pathology involve a regression from object relations to a narcissistic, and hence objectless, point of fixation becomes untenable. But if narcissistic personality disorder does not involve a characterologically based absence of object ties, the question arises as to the grounds on which such a disorder may legitimately be called narcissistic. The following pages contain an admittedly speculative attempt, on the basis of clinical lore and empirical research in social cognition and developmental psychology, to answer precisely this question. Because empirical research indicates that the self-representation emerges at age 18 months (Amsterdam & Levitt, 1980; Kagan, 1981; M. Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979), this account will stress the centrality of the second, rather than the first, year of life in the origin of narcissistic phenomena. Of course, a simpler argument, given Freud’s (1914/1957) linking not just objectlessness but grandiosity to the concept of narcissism, is that persons with a narcissistic disorder are especially conceited or arrogant. This account misses, however, the dialectical character of narcissism (Andreas-Salome, 1921/1962; Bach, 1985; Grunberger, 1971/1979; Lacan, 1953; Laplanche, 1970/1976)-in this case, the involvement of narcissism in some forms of low self-esteem. As Grunberger (1971/1979, p. 3n) wrote, “The narcissistic person is one who
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