Freud held that his paper ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ displayed all the signs of a difficult labour, an appropriate metaphor no doubt when we consider narcissism’s troubled adoption within the broader psychoanalytic community.3 In Chapter 1 I begin with a reading of Freud’s paper of 1914, identify some of its major difficulties, and explore some of its prominent (mis)readings, with a particular focus on its treatment by the object relations theorist Michael Balint. I then turn to the figure of the mirror in the work of Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan to consider how the challenge of conceptualising the subject’s initial relation with his primary environment anticipates the ongoing challenges of the subject’s acculturation to society. With their different accounts of the infant-narcissist at the mirror, Winnicott and Lacan invite us to engage directly with the Narcissus myth, and to ask how we should understand the eponymous hero’s recognition — or misrecogni — tion — of the image with which he is besotted. Here, the mythic prophecy that ‘Narcissus will live to a ripe old age, provided that he never knows himself’ becomes an important element of our story, putting into question the relation between self-love, self-knowledge and self-possession (Graves, 286). I consider Herbert Marcuse’s political reappraisal of the figure of Narcissus and, focussing on the question of the quality of Narcissus’ engagement with his image, subject it to a comparative analysis with the Lacanian account of the mirror stage, and the idea of a primary and authentic relationality seen differently in the work of Balint and Winnicott. Ultimately, I offer my own interpretation of Narcissus’ moment of self-love that is in keeping with my reading of primary narcissism as a state which enacts all the imaginary seductions of the mirror but also provides an aperture onto society. I make a case for preserving the value of primary narcissism as a ‘construction’ of a formative illusion underwritten by the fact of the infant’s existence in a precarious environment. Taking seriously Judith Butler’s call to ‘think through [… ] primary impressionability and vulnerability with a theory of power and recognition’, I return to the force and originality of narcissistic illusion as that which defends the self, and at the same time posits the self in the social world (2004, 45). Once we have considered the paradoxes of an original illusion, we shall be in a position to consider its social efficacy.
Chapter 2, ‘Socialising Narcissus via the Case of "Little Hans"’, examines the two examples of narcissistic object-choice identified in Freud’s 1914 paper that will have a strong bearing on our ongoing discussion of narcissism as a productive social force; namely, that ‘a person may love what he himself would like to be’, and that ‘a person may love someone who was once a part of himself’ (1914a, 90). These examples — the ego-ideal, and the narcissism of parenting — allow us to see narcissism’s durability in the social field beyond the state of infancy. The subject of parenting, and more specifically the interlocking narcissisms of the parent and child, remain central to the discussion as I offer an extended reading of Freud’s case history of ‘Little Hans’ (1909). I develop the idea that the child’s narcissism is inextricably linked to his ‘research instinct’ or Wissbegierde (the desire to know) such that demarcating the boundaries between the narcissist’s self-love and the scientist’s ‘passionless impartiality’ becomes a moot point (1915a, 275). My interpretation of the successes and failures of Hans’ treatment recapitulates the double structure that I have identified in Freud’s concept of primary narcissism where the essential disequilibrium in the child’s given environment of care motivates his narcissistic fantasies of self-sufficiency. Thus, while Freud attributes the success of Hans’ case to the ‘affectionate care and scientific interest’ with which it was administered, we will identify an additional element to Hans’ treatment, namely the child’s particular resistances to his educative environment (1909, 5). Significantly, Hans’ narcissistic obstinacy is not only scientifically rewarding but also establishes the terms for his social endearment.
That narcissism attests to the problem of the origin — and of analogy — is as evident in sociological discourse as it is in psychoanalysis. In Chapter 3, ‘On the Narcissism of Nostalgia’, I suggest that certain modes of sociological analysis are marked by a nostalgic impulse to return to the primary bonds of community. Accordingly, I designate Ferdinand Tonnies’ account of the move from Gemeinschaft (community) to Gesellschaft (civil society) as a scriptural moment in the history of sociology, the influence of which is still discernible in contemporary critiques of mass society. Of particular relevance to the topic of narcissism is Tonnies’ emphasis on the social bond and the vision of an original state of intimacy and harmonious relationality that accompanies it. By nominating Tonnies’ text as ‘scriptural’ I mean to suggest that it represents an enduring reference point in sociology’s disciplinedefining script, where social change is narrated through the poetic lines of the weakening centre: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’ (W. B. Yeats). Tonnies’ is an account that offers an early formulation of this cultural decline. As we shall see in Chapter 4, when the infamous centre can no longer hold, a culture of self-centering, branded as ‘narcissistic’, vies for attention as the authoritative cultural script. However, in keeping with my prior reading of the value of primary narcissism as a necessary but fictive structure, it will be important to interrogate the inclination of nostalgic sociology towards invoking a developmental moment when something ‘real’ was lost. By examining the structural affinities between narcissism and nostalgia, I shall demonstrate the power of return and repetition as psychical mechanisms operating within social discourse.
Accepting that ‘"[N]arcissistic libido" is not just love for the self, but love that covers up a loss’, we can anticipate an ironic affinity between nostalgia as a mode of sociological analysis, and narcissism as an object of sociological critique (Frosh, 1991: 70). Which is to suggest that when the nostalgic sociologist critiques his culture’s narcissism (and the gender assignation is not irrelevant here), by betraying his preoccupation with a lost object, he unwittingly holds up a mirror to his own disposition. The thesis taken forward in Chapter 4 is that the ground between a culture of narcissism (or a so-called therapy culture) and its fierce sociological opponents may be more shared than contested. I place the work of Christopher Lasch, the most influential critic of narcissism, alongside that of Richard Sennett and Alasdair MacIntyre to convey a mode of sociological narration that I term ‘critical declinism’. In the broadest terms, Sennett, Lasch and MacIntyre share the conviction that modern society is marked by the decline of cultural resources necessary for a robust public life, and the confusion between the value categories of psychological intimacy and cultural impersonality. Their critical declin — ism, as I suggest it, refers to a melancholic impulse to mourn the social bonds of community and to critique the relational prospects that emerge in their wake. This double aspect is important because it reflects a particular normative orientation in which an active critique of contemporary social reality is sustained via investments in a narrative of decline. My suggestion is that this element of critique is only sanctioned by critical declinism’s concern with a loss, irrespective of whether the lost object was ‘real’.
For Sennett, narcissism dictates a retreat from ‘surface sociability’ into a fallaciously conceived ‘deeper’ life (1993 [1974], 315). We test his claim that modern culture is tyrannically governed by the logic of psychological intimacy, and explore in some detail the opposition he draws between the impersonal principles of play, and the ascetic principles of the narcissistic personality. We then turn to the most (in)famous and influential critic of a culture of narcissism, Christopher Lasch, in whose hands narcissism is transformed into a metaphor for the war-like conditions of the modern social world. I shall focus on Lasch’s survey of American cultural life and challenge the conception of the ‘new Narcissus’ that he puts forward. It will be important to highlight some of the contradictions that reside in Lasch’s nostalgia for a cultural authority in what he recognises to be an increasingly pluralistic culture marked by factional politics. Indeed, we shall see that Sennett’s and Lasch’s interpretation of the rise of ‘authenticity politics’ — or ‘identity politics’ — as a further symptom of cultural narcissism, rests on a particular analysis of the shifting contours of the public and the private spheres. In light of this, there is a clear demand to historically situate the theses under consideration in this chapter. Tied to a distinct moment in the history of (Anglo-American) sociology of the late 1970s and early 1980s, we might ask what this sociological style brings to an analysis of contemporary psychosocial relations beyond the possible pleasures of its critical lamentations? The conflation of identity politics with a politics of narcissism leaves critical declinism open to the charge of patrician retrenchment. That said, and demonstrating that there are indeed modes of relation — ality and intimate sociability that narratives of decline are ill-equipped to appraise, I am disinclined to reject outright this mode of sociological engagement. What is of value in critical declinism, which we will see to be in contrast with the reflexive sociology of Anthony Giddens, say, is its commitment to critiquing the narratives of selfhood that are demarcated by ‘therapeutic’ modes of modern authority.
One of the enigmas of narcissism concerns how the turn to the self — the illusion of self-sufficiency — can be simultaneously associated with a feeling of unboundedness, or not knowing where the self is in relation to the other. This leads us to consider that the respective narcissistic positions of ‘splendid isolation’ (the illusion of self-sufficiency) and the ‘oceanic feeling’ of being one with the world (the illusion of merging) are in dialectic relation.4 Although they speak to the same boundary confusion between self and other, these positions have often been distinguished along gender lines where unboundedness is related to the metaphysical consolations of femininity, and self-sufficiency to the autonomous masculine subject. When Freud describes the narcissist as the ‘purest and truest’ female type, we might well raise an eyebrow; indeed, many critics have taken issue with psychoanalysis’ unbalanced association of narcissism with the feminine (1914a, 88). It is true that, late in his career, Freud comes to warn the analyst that he may rightly be frightened by the ‘rigidity’ that a woman will display in the consulting room under the sign of her narcissism: ‘Her libido has taken up final positions and seems incapable of exchanging them for others. There are no paths open to further development; it is as though the whole process had already run its course and remains thenceforward insusceptible to influence’ (1933, 135 my emphasis). However, among those qualities that Freud attributes to the narcissist in his ‘On Narcissism’ paper (where the female narcissist makes her debut), are the ‘limits to [the narcissist’s] susceptibility to influence’, her ‘inaccessibility’, her ‘self-contentment’ and ‘charm’ (1914a, 73; 89). In Chapter 5 we shall consider what scope there is for re-reading feminine insusceptibility to influence as an active principle of seduction, in which case Freud’s general orchestration of narcissism and the feminine may merit further consideration. Specifically, I want to ask whether Freud’s ‘feminine narcissism’ can re-establish the values of impersonality and detachment that the so-called culture of narcissism was said to corrode. I shall do this through the introduction of a character-type I call the Narquette, a compound-figure drawn from Freud’s female narcissist, and Georg Simmel’s sociable coquette as outlined in his essays on ‘Flirtation’ (1909) and ‘The Sociology of Sociability’ (1910).
Taking licence from the enduring complexities of Freud’s treatment of narcissism, this book argues for a re-imagining of a narcissistic sociability distinct from sociological critiques of narcissistic modernity. In terms of its discursive appropriation, it is my suggestion that narcissism has too often assumed a fixed shape that does not obviously lend itself to theorising the reflexivity and fluidity purported to prevail in twenty-first century social relations. Accordingly, narcissism may be said to have fallen out of fashion. In Chapter 6, ‘From Narcissism to Melancholia, and Back Again…’, we shall consider how contemporary critical investments in melancholia, paying particular attention to the work of Judith Butler, should be read in light of the reflexive understanding of narcissism advanced in the preceding chapters. What is striking about the turn to melancholia is that it is also a (re)turn to metapsychology. Whereas the configurations of (cultural) narcissism are more or less distanced from the theoretically speculative dimensions of the psychoanalytic project, with the move to melancholia contemporary critical theory makes a renewed investment in Freudian metapsychology. This means that the turn to melancholia is also, inevitably, a return to narcissism, but crucially one that enables psychosocial thought by focussing on the metapsychology of narcissism rather than focussing on negative narcissism as a cultural metaphor.
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