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After having surveyed the clinical facts used by Freud to support the introduction of narcissism, we are left with the conclusion that, apart from two, all of them were clear-cut cases of secondary narcissism. We found only two phenomena that could not be explained purely on the basis of secondary narcissism: the regressive states in schizophrenia and deep dreamless sleep; yet even in these two instances it appeared that the fixation point towards which the regression tended was not necessarily primary narcissism, but a very primitive form of relationship in which a probably undifferentiated environment was very intensely cathected.
We must not forget, however, that this difficulty was correctly forecast by Freud, the clinician, who had stated already in 1914: ‘the primary narcissism of children which we have assumed and which forms one of the postulates of our theories of the libido, is less easy to grasp by direct observation than to confirm by inferences from elsewhere’ (Standard Edition, XIV, p. 90. Italics are mine). A convincing picture of Freud's state of mind: the theoretician is optimistic and goes on with his constructions, while the clinician, to say the least, is cautious, if not sceptical.
Furthermore, in this passage Freud talks about the primary narcissism of children, while the prevailing psychoanalytic theory forces us to consider the primary narcissism in the ante-natal state. This tendency to ante-date is fairly general in analytic theory: if an assumption proves to be incompatible with clinical observation, instead of rejecting it as untenable or, at any rate, re-examining it, it is ante-dated to refer to still earlier phases of development, so early as to be beyond the reach of any clinical observation.
In order to simplify matters, I shall discuss chiefly Phyllis Greenacre's ideas relating to this topic. This is justifiable as she is a recognized authority in this field and dealt with our topic extensively in her book Trauma. Growth and Personalit