In common with many of the other human sciences, psychoanalysis is constantly trying to redefine its terms to gain greater specificity and clarity of meaning. This paper looks at one of our most important concepts, narcissism, and the various applications of the term in our literature.

The term narcissism was originally used to name a number of phenomena which appeared to be explainable by assuming that the individual had taken himself as a sexual object—that he loved himself or some part of himself. Gradually, the application of the term was extended to almost any concentration of psychological interest upon the self. Many different phenomena fell into that category, and narcissism was applied to all of them. Very early in the psychoanalytic literature the term was being used in several different ways: