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Nicolas Duruz has the unusual good fortune to have had his psychoanalytic training both in French-speaking countries and in the U.S. He is thus better placed than most to review the subject of narcissism,
particularly the contemporary literature. His presentation of the four most important systems of thought in psychoanalytic literature—those of J. Lacan and B. Grunberger in France, H. Kohut and O. F. Kernberg in the U.S.—is lucid and authoritative. Furthermore, he does not neglect to examine earlier writers: from I. Sadger, the "inventor" of the concept (from whom Freud "retrieved" it), to O. Rank, S. Ferenczi, V. Tausk, P. Federn, M. Balint, H. Hartmann, and E. Jacobson.
Duruz' analysis is far from superficial, raising a number of fundamental and complex problems: What is the ego? What constant features form its identity? How can changes and modifications be possible? By tracing out the evolution of the concept of narcissism, Duruz helps us reevaluate its relation to the concepts of ego and id, and gives us a grasp of its many ramifications—economic, for example. By taking account of such an extensive field of writing, stretching from C. G. Jung, W. R. D. Fairbairn, E. H. Erikson and H. S. Mahler, right up to cognitive approaches such as J. Piaget's, Duruz succeeds in placing problems into an unusually broad perspective.
It would be virtually impossible to give a resumé of the wealth of ideas contained in this book. It clearly needs to be read with care, and mulled over. The best recommendation one can give is that Duruz renders easy to understand even those authors most noted for their obscurity. One comes to see why the ego, for Lacan, is finally just an illusion and for Grunberger, a driving force of evolution (independent, though bound up with other instinctual forces), how Grunberger uses the "bioanalytic" concepts of S. Ferenczi—an intricate web of thoughts to explore. On the road to these discoveries, Duruz provides an excellent introductory gu