NARCISSISM NOTES

Narcissism and its Vicissitudes

Brief history

Freud postulated a conflict between libido and ego instincts..which can be understood on darwanian lines as
survival of self vs survival of species.

Sabina speilrein gave Jung the concept of death instinct, which was completely rejected by Jung..so then she
approached Freud. Freud seemed to reject it, until in 1920 he came up with a slightly different version of his
own in Beyond the Pleasure principle.

Freuds german word for ego is Ich..which means I..not ego..ego is a very technical word. Super Ich
translates to Over I. Freuds word for Id is actually It.So Freud actually wrote very informally, but the
translation converted his work into a lot of jargons.

Melanie Klein who also talked about narcissism a lot..The narcissistic position is the primary narcissistic
position with omnipotence with implied paranoid and schizoid positions..so in todays language, narcissistic
position should be used as per Klein. From Kohut, we get depressive and narcissistic position.

{Freuds narcissistic theory gave way to structural model, ego psychology, object relations ( in terms of
cathexis on part object like breast), Kohut, Lacan. So it has been a revolutionary paper.

The baby when it is born, it has a libido..so the instinct has source aim object..the source is the mouth, aim is to
suck and incorporate everything, the object is the breast and at that point the breast is also part of the auto-
erotism coz babies cant differentiate between oneself and mother.

Allo erotism is when the libido is cathected outside oneself..

In between auto erotism and allo erotism, freud says something must have happened which leads auto erotism to
become allo erotism and it is primary narcissism that happens.

Though the concepts of auto erotism and primary narcissim seem similar but are different. In auto erotism there
is not a developed sense of oneself..the childs understanding of oneself is very fragmented..not just around
ones body..but even temporallyso when they go to sleep..they dont wake up to the same room..its like new
room..newness everytime..and one is note even aware of oneself( as sir says in the next sykpe lecturethe
child experiences ones own movements in a discontinuum..there is a discontinuum for the child between him
moving a limb and the same happening in the mirror reflection)

(The distinction made in this concept corresponds to the common, popular distinction between hunger
and love. Or need and desire. The child is at first only in need of the mother, in terms of hunger satiation,
getting food. But later he learns to see her as an object of desire whom he completely wants to possess. Thus the
child has moved from a state of auto-erotism to primary narcissism for he has developed a sense of agency
now.)

Primary narcissism is when there is enough of an agency to know that one is different from others..so this
is def no 2..that primary narcissism comes about as a developmental process..

So this allo erotism can be thought of as what we call today, object love..
An instinct not only has source, aim, object but also a quantum..quantity..this comes about in the economic way
of thinking..how much libido is cathected here or there.

Freud used the eg of amoeba..the body is a reservoir of libido..the pseudo poda ( pseudo leg) is an extension of
the libido..this pseudo poda tries to incorporate the food, which is the object love..the neuron of the amoeba is
the ego. When done with that object the leg goes back, and the libido comes back..

So conversely if you love a person a lot, then most of your energy is directed toward the object and there is little
narcissism.

But this returning pseudo poda, or libido will somehow be transformed into something slightly different from
primary narcissism and it takes the form of secondary narcissism.

Primary narcissists have very high self esteem and feelings of omnipotence that they can do anythinglike in
children with autism, if not supervised..they can quickly kill themselves not coz they are suicidal but coz they
think they can do anything and might step out of the window..

A primary narcissist wouldnt even realize that you are insulting him..a secondary narcissist would be reactional
and react to this insult..

When we underplay something about which we are proud, it isnt out of humility..its rather a manifestation of
primary narcissism.

You never get that perfect validation..the minute you value a secondary narcissist, they devalue youcoz they
so truly believe that they are worthless, that if you praise them, they instead pull you down..

(but what change happens for there to result a difference in primary & secondary narcissism? Its the same
libido being recathected inwardsso what brought the change? Perhaps there is some loss of libido when it
went out, so in that sense there is a trauma now..some libido will always be attached with that other object love..

Some residual primary narcissism always stays with us despite a lot of it going out toward the object..so
here comes the 3rd def of primary narcissism..residual amount of libido left in the ego

Freud says we cathect most of our libido out..but a certain amount of it remains in the ego which the primary
narcissism..which is there in all of us..

This is necessary and is a part of healthy narcissism in the absence of which, there will be no motivation to eat,
drink, and defecate etc.

The 4th def of primary narcissism comes from object choices. There are 2 types of object choices-anaclitic..and
narcissistic.

Anaclitic-the child has a choice of either investing the ego in the same place where the instincts are invested or
in a new place in the ego..so eg if as a boy u love a girl who is like ur mother, its anaclitic..

Anaclitic is what you are notso you love what you are notLacan uses the word, Hetente-when you fall in
love with something that you are not..according to Lacan, there is no such thing as homosexuality..even 2 men
can have heterosexual relations..it doesnt have anything to do with your gender..

Only the analyst can tell you what kind of love are you feeling..coz your psyche also has masculine and
feminine parts..so is it a feminine part of u loving the feminine part of someone and the like..
Homosexuality is liking for the same part in others as the part where you came from..doesnt depend on your
gender..

Anaclitic can be 2 types:

You want someone who can nurture you like your mother
Or protect you like your father

Narcissistic type is like:

who you are

who you were
Who you want to be
Who was originally a part of you ( referring to the mother child symbiosis)

So this is the 4th definition..That primary narcissism is to be seen in narcissistic object choice.

Section III-Ego Ideal

Primary narcissism has to be given up by the child..coz its conducive to survival..but freud said that you dont
give up anything without a struggle..so what the ego does, create an ideal ego..its an ideal version of yourself.
So now we have 2 versions of ourselves; we have an observing ego, a part of ourselves split off which observe
ourselves..through this we assess our ego. And then there is the ideal ego. (what prompted the subject to form
an ego ideal, on whose behalf his conscience acts as watchman, arose from the critical influence of his parents
(conveyed to him by the medium of the voice), to whom were added, as time went on, those who trained and
taught him and the innumerable and indefinable host of all the other people in his environment - his fellow-men
- and public opinion. ( what is the difference between this observing ego and conscience? Ego ideal is formed as
a result of ones experiences with parents and other significant figures. Then further the superego acts as a
watchman on behalf of the ego ideal to see how the ego is doing, in terms of realizing the ego ideal and dos and
donts)

Ego ideal is the idealized version of what you want to be and what you should be.Eg I want to be a very good
lacanian or winnicottian..that is ego ideal. My ideal ego is that I have an idealized version of myself..eg I want
to be more even tempered.eg 2; your ideal ego is what you are on your first date..

Ego ideal is what you want to be..in terms of future.

As always where the libido is concerned, man hashere again shown himself incapable of giving up a satisfaction
he had once enjoyed. He is not willing to forgo the narcissistic perfection of his childhood; and when, as he
grows up, he is disturbed by the admonitions of others and by the awakening of his own critical judgement, so
that he can no longer retain that perfection, he seeks to recover it in the new form of an ego ideal. What he
projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was
his own ideal. ( so for instance as a child maybe I was fond of being the center of attraction, being dominating,
wanting what I want, but I was forced to let that go and what instead I acquired as an adult were the opposite
elements. Now my ego ideal takes the form of this lost self-I aspire to be more dynamic, life of a party..all the
things which were originally me but repressed by the forces of civilization and are now redesired in the form of
an ideal)

ARTICLE
Narcissistic manifestations are to be seen in schizophrenia, dreams, children, primitive people.

In our observations of children and primitive people, we find characteristics which, if they occurred singly,
might be put down to megalomania: an over-estimation of the power of their wishes and mental acts, the
omnipotence of thoughts, a belief in the force of words, and a technique for dealing with the external world
magicwhich appears to be a logical application of these grandiose premises.

We see also, broadly speaking, an antithesis between ego-libido and object-libido. The more of the one is
employed, the more the other becomes depleted. (ie the more we are cathected into oneselves the less energy is
available for external objects in which one can cathect)

The highest phase of development of which object-libido is capable is seen in the state of being in love, when
the subject seems to give up his own personality in favour of an object-cathexis; while we have the opposite
condition in the paranoic's phantasy (or self-perception) of the end of the world

Not until there is object-cathexis is it possible to discriminate a sexual energythe libidofrom an energy of
the ego-instincts.( is there a difference between sexual energy, object libido. And is there a difference between
object libido and ego libido?) (Then Freud went to great lengths to delude himself and us that there is a
difference between ego libido and ego instinct)

There is a difference between ego ideal and sublimation. Here we see that the formation of an ego ideal or
working in the same direction isnt the same as sublimation. Formation of the ego ideal is something that
heightens the demands of the ego and is the most important factor for causing repression. Sublimation whereas
is a true catharsis of libido into something more positive and doesnt require repression for an expression of the
libido does take place in that positive activity. (But doesnt this ego ideal reside in the superego? Is it a part of
the superego then? What is the difference between an ego ideals formation/structure and a strong superego?)