Is there a Line of Development of Narcissism?

The observation that psychical development begins with a series of interlocking stages in childhood constitutes one of Freud's most significant contributions. The phases of development, the oral, anal, phallic and oedipal, became the model for conceptualizing a psychoanalytic genetic metapsychological point of view. The goal of much of the early research in psychoanalysis was to refine the observation of these phases, further subdividing them and evolving theories of energic transformations of instincts as unifying explanations of the observations.

From the beginning, however, another trend was present in Freud's writings. This is most evident in his references to 'the mental apparatus as a compound instrument' (Freud, 1900, p. 536). Here, along with the clinical theory of energy and phases, Freud reflected on how the specific aspects of perceptions, memory and motor activity function. It is from this trend (the precursors of Freud's structural theory; see Lichtenberg, 1977) that Ferenczi (1911) first used the concept of a 'line of development', applying it to a specific area of psychic functioning: the line of development between primitive mental images and 'abstract' imagination and thought. In 1913 Ferenczi described an extensive reconstruction of stages in the development of the sense of reality. He used the phrase a 'line of development' in a sequence of thoughts that foreshadowed both its current meaning and the issue I address in this paper. He spoke of 'the line of development of "erotic reality" (the compulsion to find an object)' and noted that 'narcissism never comes to an end at all, but always remains by the side of object-erotism' (p. 234). Ferenczi was thus describing two lines of development that persist side by side. Ferenczi stated the line of development of narcissism differed from the ups and downs of object love in that 'in so far as we confine ourselves to self-love … we can retain the illusion of omnip