You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Narcissistic States and the Therapeutic Process, by Sheldon Bach. New York and London: Aronson, 1985, xix + 253 pp., $25.00.
Humanizing the Narcissistic Style, by Stephen M. Johnson. New York and London: Norton, 1987, xiii + 284 pp., $27.95.
The Many Faces of Shame, edited by Donald L. Nathanson. New York and London: Guilford, 1987, xvi + 370 pp., $30.00.
Of the many concepts that Freud bequeathed us, few have proved as elusive as narcissism. In his first systematic exposition of this concept, Freud (1914) stated that the term narcissism was coined to refer to a paraphilia in which one takes one's own body, rather than another person, as a sexual object. He proceeded, however, to redefine narcissism not as a disorder of sexual object choice but as a normal process, “the libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation, a measure of which may justifiably be attributed to every living creature” (pp. 73-74). This formulation usually has been rendered as the libidinal cathexis of the ego or, as modified by Hartmann (1950), the libidinal cathexis of the self. Narcissism, according to this essentially economic definition, means self-love and self-esteem. In this framework, narcissism is depleted by libidinal investment in another and is reacquired when one receives love from another or approval from one's ego ideal, itself in turn rooted in narcissism (Freud, 1914).