31 January/1 February 1960: Narcissism and Social-ism. Cogitations

These two terms might be employed to describe tendencies, one egocentric, the other socio-centric, which may at any moment be seen to inform groups of impulsive drives in the personality. They are equal in amount and opposite in sign. Thus, if the love impulses are narcissistic at any time, then the hate impulses are social-istic, i.e. directed towards the group. And vice versa; if the hate is directed against an individual as a part of narcissistic tendency, then the group will be loved socialistically. That is to say, if A hates B, as an expression of narcissism, then he will love the society. “I hate B because he is so harmful to the society that I love”, might be an assertion symptomatic of what I would call a state of narcissistic hate of A for B. I maintain that in a narcissistic statement there is always implied a social-istic statement. The two must go together: if one is operating, so is the other.

It follows that if narcissistic hate is felt for A, then social-istic love is felt for B. If A is one person, then B will become a group of people all possessing the admirable characteristics that distinguish B from A who lacks them. Put in still other terms: if one group of impulses is dominated by narcissistic trends, then the remaining impulses will be dominated by social-istic trends. Let X be a person: if his hate impulses are social-istic, his love impulses will be narcissistic. But suppose his impulses towards himself, say love impulses, become narcissistic, then all his other impulses will become social-ized, and he will split himself up into a ‘group’. Love of self need not be narcissistic; love of the group need not be social-istic. At one pole is one object: at the other pole an infinitude of objects. At one pole there will be one object to which one group of emotions will be directed: at the other pole a number of emotions will be directed to the infinitude of objects that owe their numbers to a splitting of one object.