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The chief virtue of this presentation derives from the fact that most of it represents clinical experience that has proved of definite therapeutic value. It advances no new theory nor technique; it is based upon what is common knowledge and practice among psychoanalysts. In my approach there might be the individual difference that I have established the habit of challenging and isolating familiar phenomena. In the text that follows, these phenomena may appear more primitive and exclusive than they really are.
I have found it difficult to confine myself to the traditional definition of the narcissistic neuroses. Narcissistic phenomena are by no means limited to borderline cases or psychoses; practically speaking, any type of neurosis represents a narcissistic problem. For didactic as well as clinical considerations I have neglected that sharp distinction between transference neuroses and narcissistic neuroses. From the clinical point of view transference may safely be regarded as a specific narcissistic phenomenon, and transference in narcissistic neuroses as a primitive and rudimentary type.
Frequently it seems useful to see clinical phenomena in the light of narcissism. This paper follows the plan of investigating a number of phenomena in which the Oedipus complex appears to be eclipsed by some other process. This enables us to include certain manifestations frequently appearing at various stages of analyses which belong to a kind of transitory narcissistic neurosis. In these instances the analyst's knowledge