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The author thinks that the term 'narcissim' should be used only when designating a particular type of libidinal investment of the ego. This can happen only when there has occurred a certain degree of id-ego differentiation, and object-subject differentiation. If narcissism cannot be conceived without the existence of an ego which is invested by libido in a specific way, it follows that the existence of an ego calls forth the existence of an object. This leads to the assumption that the ego and the object are contemporaries which are constituted by reciprocal action. He assumes at this stage of ego and object formation a partition of the libido that invests at the same time the ego and the object.
The fact that there is a flow of libido from the object to the ego does not mean that it denies the object in a narcissistic way. The negation of the object highlights only more strongly the fundamental role of and need for the object. The narcissistic regression speaks less of the love which the subject has for himself than of the frustrated love which he had for the object. The subject feels incomplete and lacking without the object, searches for it with great intensity and continuously, his world becomes an illusory reflection of the original object that is forever eluding him. The subject seeks an essential fusion with the object which is the goal of the narcissistic completeness. The relation of these hypotheses to the analytic situation is discussed.