This volume is the first in a series entitled The Self-in-Process. In the ample foreword to the ten papers that comprise this book, Benjamin Nelson cites two reasons for the selection of narcissism as the first topic in the series. Narcissism is “now evidently the focal point of concentration of the major disputes, contradictions, and paradoxes engaging the various schools of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.” Secondly, “Narcissism presents problems as well as opportunities both for the self as agent and for the scientific study of … men as biological organisms;