The origins of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder a

THE ORIGINS OF NARCISSISM 91
infants are born into an objectless state-that is, without interest in
objects or knowledge of them-and only come to discover other persons
through frustration and hatred. This theory is consistent with the economic
assumptions of his thought-specifically, a limited quantity of
libido and a drive to eliminate tension-but Freud had many reservations
about this account of early development.
According to his earlier theory, which Freud never fully abandoned,
narcissism is a developmental stage between autoerotism and object
love. It begins when an infant first becomes capable of forming an ego
or, in modern terms, a self-representation. Infants then shift from autoerotic
gratification to a libidinal investment in the early self-image.
Self-inflation is therefore fundamental to the ego. Freud also held that
the autoerotic stage is preceded by a period in which infants seek
objects (i.e., the breast) out of the self-preservative drive. But although,
in this early theory, the neonate has complex interactions with the
object world, Freud’s economic assumptions drove him increasingly to
describe babies as monads.
Freud’s confusions about early development have since given way
to a surprising unanimity of psychoanalytic opinion. Both classical and
object-relations theorists, despite bitter theoretical battles over the
question of primary indifference to objects versus primary attachment,
describe the infant as fused with or undifferentiated from mother. Narcissism
is thus conceptualized as a tensionless state, a continuation of
prenatal existence.
Current empirical research increasingly disputes this characterization
of the first year of life. Recent findings suggest that differentiation
between self and object begins at birth, if not before. Because this
research also portrays newborns as active, stimulation-seeking organisms
who establish with their caregivers a system of mutual affective
regulation, traditional accounts of a tensionless, narcissistic stage are
of dubious validity.
Although the concept of primary narcissism is problematic, Freud’s
first theory of narcissism-that narcissism begins with the formation
of the self-representation-is far more in accord with the findings of
social and developmental psychology, as are several psychoanalytic
concepts used to describe the second year of life (e.g., rapprochement,
the mirror stage, and transitional object usage). Because research in
social cognition confirms Freud’s insight that normal self-esteem is
narcissistic (i.e., self-enhancing), this chapter proposes a theory of nor-