The origins of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder a

THE ORIGINS OF NARCISSISM 51
and self-representation (the ego’s representation of oneself),4 this passage
indicates that the psychical action that brings about narcissism is
the infant’s forming a self-representation (see Balint, 1968/1979; Laplanche
& Pontalis, 1967/1973). If autoerotism is an objectless state
involving gratification from one’s own body, narcissism occurs when
one can form an image of oneself or, rather, of one’s body (cf. Freud,
1923/1961) and therefore can take one’s own body, for the first time
regarded as a unified gestalt, as a love object. According to this reading
of Freud’s theories on early development, the (body-)self is in fact the
first love object (Smith, 1985). In consequence, self-overvaluation is
fundamental to human psychological functioning (Freud, 1914/1957).
Although autoerotism is usually considered to be objectless, several
commentators (Balint, 1968/1979; Baranger, 1991; Henseler, 1991;
Kanzer, 1964; Laplanche & Pontalis, 1967/1973; Smith, 1985) have
noted that Freud had many reservations about placing an objectless
state at the beginning of development. In Three Essays on the Theory
of Sexuality, Freud (1905/1953) argues that sexual drive satisfaction,
following the self-preservative drive, is originally attached to the mother’s
breast, becomes autoerotic only when the infant becomes capable
of forming a total image of the mother, and does not again seek an
object until after latency. Several other passages suggest that Freud
found troubling the notion that autoerotism and narcissism are objectless
states and instead saw autoerotism as following an initial (selfpreservative)
investment in an object (Freud, 1915/1957, 1917/1963,
1923/ 1955). Freud’s reservations in this regard are crucial because they
Because Freud used the German Ich to denote both ego and self-both the
human subject and the subject’s conception of itself-H. Hartmann’s (1950)
distinctions among ego, self, and self-representation are not without controversy
(see, for example, Balint, 1968/1979; Kernberg, 1982; Laplanche & Pontalis,
1967/1973). Specifically, Freud’s usage suggests a dialectical relationship
between the ego’s agency and the ego’s capacity to represent itself, or invest
in itself, as an object-a dialectic that some writers (e.g., Bach, 1985; Balint,
1968/1979; Lacan, 1953; Laplanche, 1970/1976) hold is essential to understand
narcissism. Hartmann’s terminology is adopted here because it has become
standard (see, for example, Moore & Fine, 1990) and because it does
clarify numerous passages (for example, the above selection from ”On Narcissism”)
in which Freud apparently means ego as self or self-representation
rather than ego as subject or agent. As this chapter argues, however, narcissism
results from a dialectical relationship between ego and self.