Healthy Narcissism and Individuation - Clinical, Cultural and Political Manifestations

This paper explores the healthy narcissism related to self-expression and looks at how this is frequently pathologized and split-off, with problematic consequences for the individual and for culture. This is explored through Yeats' poem, ‘The Second Coming’, as are other personal, cultural and clinical manifestations, with a split evident between those who advocate self-denial and those who are ‘full of passionate intensity’ and seen as narcissistic. The paper argues that the process of individuation requires us to embrace a multiplicity of self-states, and thus a broadening of ego-identifications, including states of vulnerability, self-denial, self-centredness, murderousness and power, in contrast to the unworkable unitary identifications of previous eras, where such states were projected onto scapegoat groups in, for example, racism. The neurobiological underpinnings of the core self are outlined which, the paper argues, help us better understand and accept the broad range of narcissistic phenomena. Embracing guilt, out of care and concern as described by Loewald (1979), and thus addressing states of both passive and active blindness to the other, allows us to put a ‘human head on the lion's body’, described in Yeats' poem. Some clinical manifestations and dynamics are also outlined.