Narcissistic Resistance

Charles Kligerman opened the meeting by pointing out that the current panel was an outgrowth of a panel on narcissism which had been chaired by Maxwell Gitelson in 1961. Although the main emphasis of the present panel would be on clinical aspects, he hoped it could be set in an effective theoretical framework. The very subject matter, "Narcissistic Resistance," was seen to be the confluence of two complex and often obscure concepts. Further, it was only fairly recently that there had been any specific articulation of the idea of narcissistic defenses as such, although various aspects have in the past been dealt with as part of pregenital regressions or the character defenses of Wilhelm Reich. Karl Abraham perhaps made the first unequivocal mention of it in 1919. It was interesting that Freud omitted it not only from his classical list of resistances (1926), but also from any explicit place in "Analysis Terminable and Interminable." Freud may have neglected the defensive uses of narcissism because his concept had arisen from his clinical interest in the problems of homosexuality and psychoses, so that it was reserved mainly for the graver conditions. What did characterize Freud's views on narcissism were all-or-none dichotomies and polarities as witness the narcissistic neuroses vs. the transference neuroses; narcissistic libido vs. object libido; primary vs. secondary narcissism, etc. Normal narcissism was an early developmental stage to be surmounted or else seen as regressive. It was originally described in energic terms as a quantitative economic concept in spite of its obvious structural, genetic, and dynamic considerations. Federn (1929) was given credit for some of the earliest stress on "the healthy aspects of narcissism."