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A way of reading this work that enables us to visualise dialectically the argument developed by Mauro Mancia in this collection of writings is suggested by the title itself, whose ambiguity is a fair reflection of the ambiguity with which the narcissistic dimension of human existence confronts whoever tries to approach it without wishing to over-simplify things. Thus, with regard to the “look of Narcissus”, the question is not only what we can perceive therein, but how it is possible to perceive anything; that is to say, what attitude must one adopt in order to enter an area, which by definition seems to shut itself off from the interest and desire of the other; it does so to such an extent, that one is tempted to agree with Ovid, who says that the only thing to be seen in the look of Narcissus is Narcissus vainly in search of himself. This is perhaps why Freud placed the so-called narcissistic neuroses in a category of their own, since they were inaccessible to the other, even though subsequently Freud himself, at least in theory, did not hesitate to use the psychoanalytic method to investigate this territory, which is so closely guarded by the subject. Thus Freud opened up a field that was subsequently to be extensively investigated by psychoanalytic research. In the second chapter Mauro Mancia provides an up-to-date and thorough account of this research, towards which he adopts a clearly defined line or attitude that leads him to identify in the look of Narcissus a world of potentially hostile and defensive images, affects, relationships and processes.
This world is clearly outlined for us through the dream about the “stolen glasses” in which O. (a patient, a discussion of whose case takes up the whole of the third chapter) is threatened by a gang of young thugs who try to carry out a robbery in order to get their hands on a large amount of glasses; “they looked like sunglasses” O. specifies and associates them with his own pair, which