The Partial Object, the Ideal Ego, the Ego-Ideal, and the Empty Subject: Four Degrees of Differentiation within Narcissism

Overall, Freud's theory has a built-in tension and ambiguity between a developmental and a structural concept of narcissism. On the developmental side, Freud (1911) first conceived of narcissism as a phase of sexual development wherein the individual begins taking his or her own body as a love object. In line with this perspective, Freud defined primary narcissism as corresponding to the ego-representation involved in this sexual phase of development, where the ego loves the image of his or her own body. Secondary narcissism was then defined as a regressive and pathological return to the primary narcissism of early childhood. Narcissism in this account is a primitive and temporary phase of development that, if unchecked, becomes ultimately pathological. The narcissistic or ego-centered phase of development, in which an object relationship does not exist, needs to be abandoned in favor of a more advanced object-oriented phase of development. However, the limitation of establishing an absolute developmental difference between a narcissistic and an object phase of development is that subject and object co-arise or mutually determine each other. Narcissistic and object love are interrelated.

On the other hand, in his paper on narcissism, Freud (1914) considers the ego as a reservoir of libidinal cathexis from whence the latter are issued toward objects. Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) have pointed out that such an energetic definition presupposes a structural rather than a stadial or temporal conception of narcissism. These authors also note that Freud differentiated autoerotism from narcissism by emphasizing a lack of