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FEW concepts are as pivotal in psycho-analytic theory as the concept of narcissism. It serves simultaneously as the conceptual support for a new departure in the libido theory, and for the study of the development of object relations, with far-reaching consequences for the clinical approach to the psychoneuroses and the psychoses. In addition, it is the anchor for the new ego psychology, and, last but not least, on it rests, as a basis, the structural reformulation of metapsychology. It is not surprising therefore that a concept which must support such a multitude of theoretical edifices is at once indispensable and yet exposed to an extraordinary degree of 'conceptual stress'. In this sense narcissism can still be spoken of, as Jones (1955) did, as a 'disturbing' concept. As a consequence, there have been numerous attempts to redefine it, make it handier by eliminating some of its original, Freudian connotations, replace some of its uses with new, more specific terms, etc. (Balint, 1960); (Bing et al., 1959); (Jacobson, 1954); (Kaywin, 1957).
This paper endeavours to contribute to these efforts at obtaining a clearer view of what is implied in the concept of narcissism. It hopes to accomplish this result, however, by a somewhat different approach to the problem. This approach consists of the somewhat paradoxically sounding attempt to differentiate between a variety of psychological phenomena that are all condensed in the one concept of narcissism, and simultaneously to pay close attention to the underlying truth which justifies Freud's insistence on uniting all the phenomena under one single concept. To make such an approach possible, I shall take the liberty of dealing with narcissism not so much as an abstract concept, but as a kind of ideogram, i.e. a pictorial symbol or a 'word in its visual, not in its auditory, form, the mere tracing of which evokes the whole group of ideas or notions that it connotes' (Etiemble, 1954). It is, I believe, no coincidenc