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In this collection of articles written between 1956 and 1967, the author describes the central contribution of narcissism to various aspects of analytic practice and of mental functioning. The analytic process, countertransference, oral and anal object relations, the
meaning of the phallic image, depression, and suicide are studied from the point of view of narcissism.
Grunberger suggests that narcissism should be considered independently from the drives and from the vicissitudes of id, ego, and superego. In fact, narcissism should be granted the status of instance, a word that cannot be translated but is equivalent to the word 'structure' as it is used to designate id, ego, and superego. He suggests the term soi (self) to designate this instance but, strangely enough, he does not take advantage of the differentiation he thus establishes between ego and self, and keeps referring to the ego when one would expect him to use the word soi.
One of the crucial points Grunberger attempts to make is that a continuous dialectic interrelation exists between narcissism and drives; that narcissistic pleasure is different in quality from drive pleasure and that the search for the former often outweighs drive-pleasure seeking activities. Drive pleasure is often used to compensate for the lost initial narcissistic pleasure. A crucial task of development is the synthesis of narcissistic and drive pleasure; this is also the task of the analytic process.
Narcissism is defined in terms of the model of fetal life: narcissistic pleasure is preverbal; it is characterized by autonomy, a sense of infinite grandeur with spontaneous functioning, and a deep sense of elation. There is a sense of cosmic communion: Federn's Ich-Gefühl is often referred to. Birth first, then the birth of the ego, of drive needs and of dependence on the objects constitute a series of severe narcissistic injuries from which man never quite recovers. Man's civilization, the vicissitudes of his drives, and t