Narcissism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"One of the key concepts for understanding man's urge to heroism is the idea of "narcissism." As Erich Fromm has so well reminded us, this idea is one of Freud's great and lasting contributions. Freud discovered that each of us repeats the tragedy of the mythical Greek Narcissus: we are hopelessly absorbed with ourselves. If we care about anyone it is usually ourselves first of all. As Aristotle somewhere put it: luck is when the guy next to you gets hit with the arrow [ Rhetoric (Aristotle) ]. Twenty-five hundred years of history have not changed man's basic narcissism; most of the time, for most of us, this is still a workable definition of luck. It is one of the meaner aspects of narcissism that we feel that practically everyone is expendable except ourselves. We should feel prepared, as Emerson once put it, to recreate the whole world out of ourselves even if no one else existed." --The Denial of Death (1973) by Ernest Becker |
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Narcissism describes the character trait of self love.
The word is derived from a Greek myth. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name, the narcissus.
Freud believed that some narcissism is an essential part of all of us from birth and was the first to use the term in the reference to psychology. (see "On Narcissism")
Andrew Morrison claims that, in adults, a reasonable amount of healthy narcissism allows the individual's perception of his needs to be balanced in relation to others.
In psychology and psychiatry, excessive narcissism is recognized as a severe personality dysfunction or personality disorder, most characteristically Narcissistic Personality Disorder, also referred to as NPD.
The terms "narcissism", "narcissistic" and "narcissist" are often used as pejoratives, denoting vanity, conceit, egotism or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.
See also
- Counterdependency
- Dorian Gray syndrome
- Ego ideal
- Egotism
- Illusory superiority
- Jointness (psychodynamics)
- Megalomania
- Model minority
- Narcissism of small differences
- Narcissistic abuse
- Narcissistic defences
- Narcissistic elation
- Narcissistic mortification
- Narcissistic parents
- Narcissistic Personality Inventory
- Narcissistic rage and narcissistic injury
- Narcissistic supply
- Narcissistic withdrawal
- Selfishness
- Spoiled child
- Superiority complex
- True self and false self
- Sam Vaknin
- Vanity
