Narcissus: From the Myth to Analysis

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the complexities we encounter when analysing people with narcissistic problems, and to put forward some considerations about the impasses that are not infrequent in these cases. Reading the myth along Freudian lines, taking it as a narrative which finds itself echoed in individual structural pathologies, I will take my starting point from the story of Narcissus in order to investigate the subject which is the focus of this study.

To do this, I will also present some material from the treatment of a patient tormented by the thought of growing old and dying, and endlessly seeking flattery and appreciation in the conviction of being able to control the objects' response and arresting the passage of time.

In the light of the elements which emerged during treatment, the second part of the paper will set out some clinical and theoretical reflections on the «Ilness of Ideality» (Chasseguet Smirgel, 1976).

In the Metamorphoses, Ovid describes Narcissus as a young man of such beauty that every human creature who encounters him becomes entranced by him.

As is well known, one day he comes across a pond of clear water and, as soon as he sees his own reflected face, he falls hopelessly in love with it, believing it to be another person.

He experiences himself as ageless and for as long as he admires himself in that unmoving mirror, he perceives himself in all his youth and immune to the passing of the years. In despair at being unable to join with his own image, he weeps, but his tears make ripples on the surface of the water, so that Narcissus seems himself changing and the perfection of his own face disappearing. Unable to bear the fact that time can wither his face, he throws himself into the pool and dies, later being transformed into a flower.

Some versions of the myth leave us to presuppose other reasons for this aversion to growing old: for example, the fact that in Narcissus's family there were no boundaries (between