Chapter 9. Clinical Facts about Narcissism

Let us follow Freud who, in his paper ‘On Narcissism’, advised us that speculative or theoretical ‘ideas are not the foundation of science, upon which everything rests: that foundation is observation alone. They are not the bottom but the top of the whole structure, and they can be replaced and discarded without damaging it’ (‘On Narcissism’, Standard Edition, XIV, p. 77). Following this advice let us examine the clinical observations that Freud used to prove the existence of narcissism in his paper of 1914. The defenders of the theory will first say, as did Freud, that clinical observations can neither prove nor disprove primary narcissism since it is only a theory; then they, as did Freud, give clinical observations to make the theory acceptable. My intention in this chapter is to show that the observations on which Freud, and after him the theoreticians, based the hypothesis of primary narcissism prove only the existence of secondary narcissism. A theory of primary narcissism can be attached to them, but does not follow from them.

Freud enumerated in his paper ‘On Narcissism’ five clinical facts on which he based his theory of narcissism — though in fact he used eight in his argument. He mentions first the study of schizophrenia and of homosexuality and then continues: ‘Other means of approach … by which we may obtain a better knowledge of narcissism’ are ‘the study of organic diseases, of hypochondria and of the erotic life of the sexes’ (op. cit., p. 82). The three further facts not mentioned here but used in the argument are: (1) the various — psychotic and normal — overvaluations of self and object, (2) sleep, and (3) observations of young children and infants. There can be no question that in the case of an organic disease or of hypochondria we have to deal with secondary narcissism, that is, with libido withdrawn from objects; but what about the other clinical observations?

I wish to start my discussion with observations concerning homosexuality and the eroti