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Our aim in this chapter is to develop a dialogue with some of Symington's ideas about narcissism as presented in his works over the years.
Neville Symington is the president of the Australian Psychoanalytic Society. He was trained in the British Independent School, of which he is a senior member. Deeply influenced by Alfred Bion, he developed his own original theory of narcissism. His studies in theology and philosophy and his extensive psychoanalytic experience with narcissistic patients were the background for the development of what might be termed an existential psychoanalytic conceptualization (Grotstein, 1993).
Out of his many rich ideas, we chose two that stood out as the most important concepts in his theory of narcissism: (1) the idea of the