OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 5 Narcissism against Narcissus? A Classical Myth and its Influence on the Elaboration of Early Psychoanalysis from Binet to Jung David Engels INTRODUCTION From André Gide’s Traité du Narcisse (1891) through Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig (1912) to Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930–42), the myth of Narcissus has been of the utmost importance to the history of Western thought during the last one hundred years or more.1 Thus, it is not surprising that, like Oedipus, Chronus, and Prometheus, the high associative potential of the mythical figure of Narcissus led to the introduction of this classical narrative into the psychological sciences as an archetype of human behaviour. Nevertheless, the frequent use of the terminus technicus ‘narcissism’ (Narzißmus or Narzissismus), and the apparently clear reference to an excessively self-centred structure of personality, barely hide the numerous contradictions and disagreements between the different psychological and psychoanalytical schools in defining the exact place of narcissism in the context of human personality; which explains the growing distance between narcissism as a technical term and the contents of the classical myth itself. In the following, I propose to stress one of the most important but 1 Cf. in general Renger (2002). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 76 David Engels frequently overlooked moments in the history of narcissism2 and will try to analyse, after a short introduction to the genesis of the concept, the controversy between Freud and Jung over the use of the term ‘narcissism’ and the rather curious development of this concept in Jungian Tiefenpsychologie. ORIGINS OF A CONCEPT It seems that it was Alfred Binet (1857–1911)3 who first imported the Greek myth into technical language in his 1887 article ‘Le Fétichisme dans l’Amour’. Binet, one of the founding fathers of psychometrics and the inventor of a series of scales known as the Binet-Simon échelle métrique de l’intelligence, that eventually led to the development of IQ tests,4 enumerated a long list of fetishist behaviours in everyday life and tried to establish a clinical definition of ‘fétichisme’. In his paper’s final remarks, he describes the case of a patient excited by female skirts and, it seems for the first time in the context of modern psychology, refers to Narcissus: With this patient, the association of emotions is generated by a personal, egoistic pleasure. Without doubt, there are subjects where the object of fetishism is their own person. The fable of the beautiful Narcissus is a poetic image of these sad perversions. Everywhere else in this context, we find poetry covering and disguising the pathological fact.5 Narcissus is thus introduced as the paradigm par excellence of a form of fetishism oriented towards the subject itself, even though, unfortunately, Binet confined his paper to a mere enumeration of diverse forms of fetishist behaviour in order to prove their correlation to specific forms of religious fetishism, thus refraining from suggesting more elaborate explanations. The details of the myth itself—somewhat 2 See as introductions to the topic: Eissler (1992). Cf. in general Martin (1924), Bertrand (1930), Avanzini (1999), and Foschi and Cicciola (2006). 4 Nevertheless, it has to be stressed that Binet himself was opposed to an irrevocable quantification of human intelligence; cf. e.g. Binet (1911) 141. 5 Binet (1887) 264 with n. 1. All English translations, except for Freud’s collected works, cited in the Strachey Standard Edition, are by the author of the present contribution. 3 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 77 incorrectly belittled as ‘une fable’—and its numerous versions are not expressly verbalized, as Binet only refers to the concept in general without any deeper analysis. The declaration, however, that poetry should be considered as a transcendent expression of psychopathology, testifies to the interest of Binet and his contemporaries in the psychological dimension of classical narratives6 and shows how Narcissus, from the beginning, was not only seen as one mere illustrative example among others, but as an absolute prototype of pathologically self-centred behaviour. Whereas Binet equated Narcissus-like behaviour with a form of fetishism, Havelock Ellis7 (1859–1939), author of the notorious Studies in the Psychology of Sex (banned from publication until 1935),8 approximated narcissism with an extreme variation of what he termed, in his 1898 homonymous article, ‘auto-erotism’, meaning ‘spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding, directly or indirectly, from another person’.9 Thus, Ellis provided evidence for the actual existence of behaviour resembling the mythical Narcissus and dissociated it from specific sexual perversions as described by Binet; an approach summarized in his 1927 article ‘The Conception of Narcissism’ (an expanded version of his first paper on auto-erotism) as follows: The extreme form of auto-erotism is the tendency for the sexual emotion to be absorbed and often entirely lost in self-admiration. This Narcissus-like tendency, of which the normal germ in women is symbolized by the mirror, is found in a minor degree in some men, and is sometimes well marked in women, usually in association with an attraction for other persons, to which attraction is, of course, normally subservient. In the extreme form in which alone the name of Narcissus may properly be invoked, there is comparative indifference to sexual intercourse or even the admiration of the opposite sex. Such a condition seems to be rare, except, perhaps, in insanity. Since I called attention to this form of auto-erotism . . . several writers have discussed the condition, especially Näcke . . . 10 6 Cf. Fischer (1980) and Burkert (1999). Cf. in general Peterson (1928), Calder-Marshall (1959), Collins (1959), Brome (1979), Grosskurth (1980), and Nottingham (1999). 8 Ellis (1897–1928). 9 Ellis (1898) 260. 10 Ellis (1927). 7 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 78 David Engels Whereas Binet used the myth in order to propose a paradigm for mainly fetishist behaviour, Ellis equated Narcissus’ attitude with an extreme example of a more general form of auto-erotism, decoupling exaggerated self-esteem from sexual perversion and approximating it to a form of appropriation of one’s own body; the most widespread form of auto-erotic self-realization being of course masturbation. By this definition, Narcissus-like behaviour, defined as exceptional self-admiration and self-excitement, becomes an extreme form of auto-erotism and is to be looked for not only in cases of more or less severe mental illnesses, but also, for example, in hysterical female patients presenting an otherwise normal social adaptation. Paul Näcke (1851–1913), a nowadays mostly forgotten psychiatrist and criminologist as well as director of asyla such as those in Colditz and at the Hubertusburg near Leipzig,11 adopted Ellis’ approach to narcissistic phenomena as forms of auto-eroticism and was the first actually to introduce the term ‘Narcismus’ into psychological language (a fact for which Ellis never forgave him):12 Much less frequent than daydreaming is, at any rate, narcissism [Narcismus], the fact of being in love with oneself. It is important to distinguish this condition from simple vanity, as one can only speak of narcissism, when the contemplation of oneself or of parts of it is accompanied by clear signs of orgasm. This would be the most classical case of ‘autoerotism’ [in English in the original] in the sense of H. Ellis. Following him, narcissism can mostly be found in women, perhaps because the normal germ to this condition ‘is symbolized by the mirror’ [in English in the original]. Here too, there is much research still to be done, most of all the collection of irreproachable material.13 Näcke thus attempted to investigate concrete forms of this condition and referred mostly to examples from his professional experience with mentally diseased patients, reducing the phenomenon again to rather extreme cases of actual self-love and interpreting the mythical Narcissus not as an extreme example of a more general behaviour, but as an actual case of a precise mental illness. Näcke thus explained in his 1899 paper ‘Die sexuellen Perversitäten in der Irrenanstalt’ (‘Sexual Perversions within the Mental Asylum’) that among 1,500 11 Cf. Friedländer and Naecke (1924). Cf. Ellis (1928) 356. 13 Näcke (1899a) 375. See also Freud’s résumé of Näcke’s definition (1914b) SE 14: 73. 12 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 79 insane persons he found only four men and one woman with outright narcissistic symptoms.14 Nevertheless, somewhat differently, he analysed in his 1906 paper ‘Der Kuß bei Geisteskranken’ (‘The Signification of the Kiss among the Mentally Ill’) the case of a woman kissing her own hand and arms and the example of a young man with dementia praecox kissing his own mirror-image, and identified them as clear cases of narcissism (contradicting his own former definition of narcissism as an essentially non-tactile behaviour): Concerning narcissism [Narzißmus], I witnessed a second case. A young man (dem. Praex. Paranoides), admitted to the Hubertusburg on June 20th, 1905, mirrored himself in a window glass and kissed his own reflection.15 If we exclude some cursory mentions of narcissism in the work of the historian of sexuality Iwan Bloch16 and the psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Karl Abraham,17 we have to mention as a further important step in the pre-Freudian evolution of narcissism the contribution of Isidor Sadger (1867–1942),18 an Austrian physician and psychoanalyst and close, if not always orthodox, follower of Freud. Sadger brought together Näcke’s newly invented term ‘narcissism’ and his own research on the origins of homosexuality in early childhood experience, thus paving the way for a new understanding of narcissism, which was now presented as a normal phase in human psychological evolution and not just as a specific form of perversion or fetishism.19 Thus, in his 1910 article ‘Ein Fall von multipler Perversion mit hysterischen Absencen’, already previously presented in 1909 at one of the many meetings of Vienna’s psychoanalytical community, Sadger described his analysis of a Danish aristocrat, whose symptoms were as follows: During the analysis which now began, it became obvious that the patient showed not only the symptoms already announced by the psychiatrist— degeneration, intolerance to alcohol, epileptical fits and homosexuality— 14 See Näcke (1899b); cf. also Näcke (1906a). Näcke (1906b) 127. 16 Bloch (1902) 201. 17 Abraham (1908), defining narcissism as a mechanism where libido is detracted from the object and invested in the individual’s own person; a theory later on adopted by Freud in order to explain psychoses. 18 Cf. in general Bölle (1994). 19 Sadger (1908). 15 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 80 David Engels but also a rich program of sexual disorders out of which we could enumerate a series of manifestations of auto-erotism like onanism, narcissism [Narzismus], a form of auto-coitus, meaning attempts at and phantasies of penetrating his own anus with his membrum, a mighty pulsion to expose himself, exhibitionism and a monstrous anal erotism; further agalmaphilia, masochistic and sadistic traits, self-flagellation, pyromaniac drives and a Dysuria psychica. Quite obviously, an impressive visiting card.20 In his attempts to explain these various symptoms through detailed cross-references to the patient’s childhood, Sadger developed, following a suggestion by Freud himself, the distinction between primary and secondary auto-erotism; prefiguring in some respects Freud’s future distinction between primary and secondary narcissism. Sadger thus defines as secondary auto-erotism a stage where the infant’s auto-erotic pleasure through his mouth and anus is superimposed by the awakening of genital sexuality and produces an intermediate stage designated as secondary auto-erotism, where the regions of pleasure correspond to the infantile stage, whereas the instrument of pleasure belongs to the genital stage, thus apparently realizing the fantasy of narcissistic intercourse: The drive is still auto-erotic and lacks an external object. Furthermore, it continues to be tied to erogenous zones, exactly as in the case of a child, and thus prefers the same mucuous membranes: lips and anus. To this extent, secondary auto-erotism runs parallel to primary autoerotism. However, the former one is already wholly characterized by the predominance of the sexual organs. Hence there only remains the task of bringing the membrum closer to the principal erogenous mucuous membranes, meaning to plug it into the mouth or the anus, a feat worthy of a contortionist and of course impracticable for the boy.21 At the same time, narcissism, defined by Sadger as a cross-over of primary and secondary auto-erotism, is defined as a classical episode in the development of homosexuality: The way to homosexuality always leads through narcissism [Narzismus], viz. the love of one’s own self. I was able to prove this in all my cases, and Freud, too, confirmed this when I asked him about his homosexuals. Thus, narcissism is not an isolated phenomenon, but a necessary stage of development in the passage from auto-erotism to 20 Sadger (1910) 63. 21 Ibid. 105. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 81 later object-love. . . . The homosexual cannot get away from himself; this is his fate.22 The way to homosexuality leads through narcissism, viz. the love of oneself, as one has actually been, or, in an idealized way, as one would like to have been.23 This interpretation of narcissism already shows a certain degree of abstraction in comparison with previous understandings of the psychological interpretation of the myth.24 RANK’S RE-APPROPRIATION OF THE MYTH OF NARCISSUS Until now, apart from Binet’s somewhat vague allusions to the proximity of poetry and psychopathology, the specific narrative details of the myth of Narcissus had scarcely received any more detailed attention. This was to change with the emergence of classical psychoanalysis and, most of all, with the work of Otto Rank (1884–1939), whose treatment of the subject represents one of the most interesting steps in the psychoanalytical appropriation of the myth of Narcissus, at least from the point of view of classical studies.25 Initially a close follower of Freud, Rank acted as secretary to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Nevertheless, the importance he gradually attributed to the ‘here and now’ as opposed to the patient’s childhood, substituting ‘Verdrängung’ (repression) for ‘Verleugnung’ (denial), led to an eventual estrangement from Freud in 1926,26 when Rank became an independent psychoanalyst in Paris before later founding the Casework-School in New York. In his 1911 paper ‘Ein Beitrag zum Narzissismus’ (‘A Contribution to Narcissism’), Rank dealt extensively with the myth of Narcissus itself and, for the first time in the history of the term, explicitly referred to its classical sources; a critical approach most certainly related to Rank’s general interest in the history and psychoanalytical significance of mythological subjects; Rank had gained his PhD through a thesis on the Lohengrin myth27 22 Ibid. 111ff. Ibid. 114. 24 See Freud’s résumé of Sadger’s contribution (1914b) SE 14: 46. 25 Compare Taft (1958); Berger Karpf (1970); Lieberman (1993); Roazen (1997); Janus (1998); Leitner (1998). 26 Cf. Leitner (1998). 27 Rank (1911a). 23 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 82 David Engels and had also published other investigations on related topics.28 In his paper, Rank first discounts all previous work on the subject and states: Since Havelock Ellis drew attention to the pathological state of infatuation with one’s own person as a specific form of auto-erotism, this phenomenon, called ‘narcissism’ [Narzissismus] by Näcke following a suggestion by Ellis, has only occasionally been dealt with by researchers. However, nothing precise has yet emerged concerning the origins and the deeper sense of this strange phenomenon, except some rather interesting casuistic and literary allusions, mostly by Ellis. Here too, it has been the privilege of psycho-analytical research to throw first light upon the genesis and the probable psycho-sexual correlations of this strange attitude of the libido . . . 29 Referring in his notes to some of Freud’s earlier writings and to Sadger’s contribution to narcissism, Rank not only disconnects narcissism30 from extreme cases of auto-fetishism or auto-erotic excitement, but also from homosexuality,31 and defines the word as a generic term for a general transitional stage in psychosexual evolution: Recent psycho-analytical experiences, mostly with patients characterized by homosexual tendencies, have suggested consideration of narcissism [Narzissismus], the infatuation with one’s own person, as a normal stage of development, introduced by puberty and destined to procure the necessary transition from pure auto-erotism to object-love.32 Wishing to investigate mainly feminine narcissism, Rank narrates a dream of a female patient admiring a photograph of herself and explicitly adduces as a parallel—quite understandably—the myth of Narcissus. But, unlike his predecessors, Rank did not stop at a simple erudite comparison, as he first explicitly refers to Ovid, whose Metamorphoses became probably the most popular and well-known rendering of the Narcissus myth, not only during the Roman empire 28 Rank (1909) and (1912). Rank (1911b) 401. 30 Rank is the first to use the correct form ‘Narzissismus’ in German, but the original term as coined by Näcke was ‘Narzißmus’ (or ‘Narcismus’). Freud would later use both versions and finally opt for Narzißmus, as shall be cited. 31 See Freud’s résumé of Rank’s contribution to the development of the term Narcissism (1914b) SE 14: 46–7. 32 Rank (1911a) 401. 29 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 83 but also in the nineteenth century.33 Rank then discusses, for the first time in the term’s history, other versions of the myth: The Roman poet pictured this excruciating self-love, it seems in independent invention, as a punishment for Echo’s disdained love, whereas Wieseler (Narkissos, Göttingen 1856) refers the myth to cold self-love. However, the myth also exhibits homosexual features: Amainas [sic] kills himself at Narcissus’ door, because the latter had sent him a sword in reply to his suit.34 Thus, Rank transcends the usual simplistic reading of the myth proposed by previous scholars and tries to demonstrate, through a thorough examination of different sources, the ambiguity already experienced by classical mythographers when dealing with the story of Narcissus. Accordingly, he contrasts Ovid’s heterosexual, depathologized reading of the myth, so typical of the appropriation of classical myth by early imperial society, with the tradition concerning Narcissus’ rejected male lover Ameinias (Rank’s ‘Amainas’ is obviously a typographical error by Rank or the typesetter), which can only be found in a rather obscure fragment deriving from the mythographer Conon (whom Rank does not mention)35 and thus underlines the myth’s potential homosexual component.36 But Rank not only explicitly cites Ovid’s or Conon’s rendering of the Narcissus myth; he also refers, some sentences later, to Plutarch, mentioning a paragraph from the Moralia, where the Greek polyhistor narrates the myth of Eutelidas, who fell ill because of his exaggerated love for his own image seen on the surface of water.37 Quite typically of pre-War erudition, Rank goes on casually to refer also to more contemporaneous versions of the Narcissus myth, such as Calderón de la Barca’s El laurel de Apolo (1636), Emil Brachvogel’s Narziss (1856), a scene in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–6), and above all Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). After mentioning Wilde’s 33 More precisely, Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.402–510. Rank (1911) 407. Besides Wieseler, Rank also cites the classical dictionary by Roscher (Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie); a work which, very probably, constituted his main source of information. 35 Conon, Narratives 24 (for the original text and a translation of the passage, cf. Brown 2004). 36 In a footnote, Rank (1911b) 49, n. 1 also alludes to a similar passage in Dio Chrysostomus, where Pan is rejected by the nymph Echo and is taught masturbation by his father Hermes. 37 Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales 5.7. 34 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 84 David Engels detail that Gray strangely resembled his mother,38 Rank tries to show the parallels between this feature of the novel and yet another derivative version of the myth of Narcissus narrated by Pausanias:39 Here it appears that the narcissist [Narzissist] not only exerts his objectlove insofar as he falls in love homosexually with his own younger image, but also insofar as he loves a priori, through his own body, the body of another person once beloved (in this case his mother). Similarly, following Pausanias (9.31.6), Narcissus, from the Greek fable, admires and loves, through his mirror image, not himself, but rather his beloved twin sister who resembled him perfectly in looks and clothing, but whom he had lost by death.40 Again, Rank shows his acquaintance with less well-known versions of the myth and uses his knowledge of classical sources in order to increase the associative diversity of his psychoanalytical understanding of narcissistic symptoms. Moreover, it is surprising to see how Rank, by linking an episode in Wilde’s Dorian Gray to a less wellknown version of the myth of Narcissus in Pausanias, equates a nineteenth-century novel and a classical source as coequal paradigms of pathological behaviour and coordinate analytical tools in the understanding of his female patient’s dream. Thus, for example, a fragment of her dream in which she rejoiced at seeing an unattractive photograph of a woman she considers as an erotic rival is analysed by Rank as he refers without distinction to both Narcissus and Dorian Gray: However, this opposition between her and her rival, in terms of a narcissistic disposition and the significative relation with the mother, is depicted in a way in which the Dorian-Gray-like wish to stay always young, beautiful and amiable and to push old age and ugliness to the rivals (the images) appears in the foreground.41 This new and innovative understanding of the symbolism of Narcissus, whose associative powers are notably increased by a broad 38 Wilde (1891) 271: ‘It was a large, well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance.’ 39 Pausanias 9.31.7ff. Cf. also the Pauly-Wissowa entry by Eitrem (1935), col. 1725ff, judging this version to be rationalizing and euhemeristic. 40 Rank (1911) 412. In contemporary editions of Pausanias, the passage can be found in 9.31.7ff instead of 9.31.6. 41 Rank (1911) 420. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 85 integration of the most diverse ancient sources and modern literary variants, as a normal stage of psychological evolution nevertheless representing the risk of fetishist or alienist degradation, as related by Binet and Näcke, should pave the way to the ‘official’ claim of narcissism by Freud himself. Unfortunately, Rank’s paper ‘Ein Beitrag zum Narzissismus’ also represents the end of a more complex and source-critical reading of the myth itself, as shall be shown in the following section. FREUD AND NARCISSISM Until his reading of Rank’s 1911 paper, Freud had only randomly used the term ‘narcissism’,42 for example in his 1905 ‘Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie’ (‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’), where he simply associated narcissism with auto-erotism and located it in the pre-sexual stage; nevertheless he was already interpreting narcissism as a reservoir of future object-libido:43 In contrast to object-libido, we also describe ego-libido as ‘narcissistic’ libido. From the vantage-point of psycho-analysis we can look across a frontier, which we may not pass, at the activities of narcissistic [narzißtisch] libido, and may form some idea of the relation between it and object-libido. Narcissistic or ego-libido seems to be the great reservoir from which the object-cathexes are sent out and into which they are withdrawn once more; the narcissistic libidinal cathexis of the ego is the original state of things, realized in earliest childhood, and is merely covered by the later extrusions of libido, but in essentials persists behind them.44 In 1909 Freud expressed his interest in Sadger’s approach to narcissism and anticipated many ideas later formulated in ‘Zur Einführung des Narzißmus’ (‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’) by explaining: Sadger’s observation concerning narcissism [Narzissismus] seems new and valuable. It is no isolated phenomenon, but a necessary evolutionary 42 Cf. as an introduction Sandler (1991) and Schneider (2005). Concerning Freud’s early definition of auto-erotism, compare also Freud (1907b) SE 9: 133–134, (1908b) SE 9: 188–9, and (1909d) SE 9: 232–3. 44 Freud (1905b) SE 9: 218. 43 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 86 David Engels stage leading from auto-erotism to object-love. The infatuation with one’s own person (= one’s own genitals) is a necessary phase of evolution. From this phase, one proceeds to similar objects. Man has two initial sexual objects, and his further life depends on which one he pursues. These two sexual objects are, for everyone, the woman (the mother, the nurse, etc.) and one’s own person.45 In 1910, however, Freud seemed mainly interested in the relationship between narcissism and homosexuality. Thus, in his well-known 1910 treatise ‘Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci’ (‘Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood’) Freud used the term ‘narcissistic’ in order to define the genesis of homosexuality, equating homosexual attraction with the dislocation of infantile auto-erotism to individuals of the same gender, apparently enabling the individual to realize narcissistic phantasmata: The boy represses his love for his mother: he puts himself in her place, identifies himself with her, and takes his own person as a model in whose likeness he chooses the new objects of his love. In this way he has become a homosexual. What he has in fact done is to slip back to autoerotism: for the boys whom he now loves as he grows up are after all only substitutive figures and revivals of himself in childhood—boys whom he loves in the way in which his mother loved him when he was a child. He finds the objects of his love along the path of narcissism, as we say; for Narcissus, according to the Greek legend, was a youth who preferred his own reflection to everything else and who was changed into the lovely flower of that name.46 Similarly, at a 1910 evening gathering of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Freud equated narcissism with the sexual orientation of homosexuals, whose confinement to their own gender expresses the search for a mirror image, enabling them to realize their auto-erotic libido in a form similar to Narcissus.47 Between 1911 and 1913, however, perhaps influenced by Rank’s seminal paper on narcissism, Freud mainly examined the term ‘narcissism’ as a normal intermediate state between auto-erotism and object-love, representing thus a necessary phase in infantile psychosexual development, as can also be seen when reading Lou Andreas45 Nunberg and Federn (1976), 10 November 1909. Freud (1910) SE 11: 100. 47 Nunberg and Federn (1976), 12 October 1910. Compare also Freud (1908c) SE9: 216–17. 46 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 87 Salomé’s rather positive evaluation of the term in these years.48 This is most noticeable in Freud’s 1911 ‘Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)’, concerning the well-known case of Senatspräsident Daniel Schreber,49 a text eventually leading to the rift with Jung and provoking a reassessment of narcissism in Freudian thought: Recent investigations have directed our attention to a stage in the development of the libido which it passes through on the way from auto-erotism to object-love. This stage has been given the name of narcissism [Narzissismus], though I prefer the perhaps less correct, but shorter and less unharmonious name narcism [Narzißmus]. What happens is this. There comes a time in the development of the individual at which he unifies his sexual instincts (which have hitherto been engaged in auto-erotic activities) in order to obtain a love-object; and he begins by taking himself, his own body, as his love-object, and only subsequently proceeds from this to the choice of some person other than himself as his object. This half-way phase between auto-erotism and object-love may perhaps be indispensable normally; but it appears that many people linger unusually long in this condition, and that many of its features are carried over by them into the later stages of their development. . . . The line of development then leads on to the choice of an external object with similar genitals—that is, to homosexual objectchoice—and thence to heterosexuality.50 In this context, the narcissistic stage seemed to be one of the weakest points in psychological development, as it presented the risk of an autistic retreat of the mind into auto-erotic self-confinement. Freud therefore supposed that external factors in adult development were liable to unseal infantile narcissistic complexes and initiate grave mental diseases such as dementia praecox and paranoia,51 enabling him thus to reduce the fascinating Schreber case to a typical example of failed libido-management, stating: 48 Andreas-Salomé (1912/13) 44. Cf. in general Canetti (1960) 500–33, Niederland (1978), and Lothane (1992). 50 Freud (1911b) SE 12: 60. The clause ‘though I prefer the perhaps less correct, but shorter and less unharmonious name narcism’ has been added by the author of the present contribution in order to translate Freud’s expression ‘ich ziehe den vielleicht minder korrekten, aber kürzeren und weniger übelklingenden Namen Narzißmus vor’. 51 Ibid. 62. 49 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 88 David Engels The prognosis is on the whole more unfavourable than in paranoia. The victory lies with repression and not, as in the former, with reconstruction. The regression extends not merely to narcissism (manifesting itself in the shape of megalomania) but to a complete abandonment of object-love and a return to infantile auto-erotism.52 This reduction of paranoia and dementia to ‘simple’ narcissism or auto-erotism, motivated by a mere pathological reorientation of sexual libido, provoked a major discord with C. G. Jung, Freud’s designated ‘crown prince’ up to this time. Jung, who in a certain way had ‘discovered’ Schreber’s autobiography as psychoanalytical quarry and had already proposed a personal analysis of this case in his 1907 ‘Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox’,53 criticized Freud’s libido theory54 for failing to account for the atavistic material emerging from cases of grave mental illnesses like Schreber’s and expressed himself in this sense in a letter addressed to Freud.55 Freud first tried to integrate Jung’s viewpoint into his theory by publishing a ‘Nachtrag’ to his ‘Psychoanalytic Notes’, in which he emphasized the close links between the origins of myth and the psychoanalysis of childhood, thus acknowledging Jung’s work.56 But contrarily to Freud’s intention, this apparent broad-mindedness contributed to even further alienate Jung from Freud’s cause, as he considered Freud’s dismissal of mythologial material as easily explainable neurotic ravings to be too reductionist57 and thus considered the theory of libido as failed,58 openly rejecting the cornerstone of the Freudian psychoanalytical dynamic. The eventual rift between Freud and Jung in 1913 then led Freud to re-evaluate narcissism in his 1914 ‘On Narcissism: an Introduction’ in order to bolster his position. Narcissism thus became a pivotal element in the discussion about the monistic role of libido as the foundation of human psychology, as Freud himself pointed out when explaining the origins of his preoccupation with narcissism: 52 Ibid. 77. Jung (1907). 54 Cf. Dyhr (1999). 55 Jung (letters), 11 December 1911. Cf. in general Reitan (1992). 56 Freud (1911b) SE 12 80–2. 57 See for instance Freud’s version of the reasons for this estrangement (1914a) SE 14: 58–66. 58 Jung (1912). 53 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 89 A pressing motive for occupying ourselves with the conception of a primary and normal narcissism arose when the attempt was made to subsume what we know of dementia praecox (Kraepelin) or schizophrenia (Bleuler) under the hypothesis of the libido theory.59 Freud resolutely supports the assumption of narcissism as a normal stage in psychological development, following auto-erotism, and, for the first time in the history of psychoanalysis, differentiates between primary and secondary narcissism, perhaps inspired by Sadger’s introduction of primary and secondary auto-erotism or similar allusions by Abraham. According to Freud, ‘primary narcissism’ corresponds to a primitive developmental phase in which the individual perceives himself as the microcosmical centre of the world and therefore invests only his proper person with his libido, defining external objects only through their relative importance. Only after an individual has learned to value other people for their own sake and thus to realize mutually equivalent relationships, can he outgrow the phase of the ‘unescapability of the self ’, by putting his self-image into perspective. This outside-based self-awareness leads to the construction of an ‘ego-ideal’ which becomes the object of a new, ‘secondary’ narcissism: This leads us to look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing in of object-cathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary narcissism that is obscured by a number of different influences.60 The myth of Narcissus itself, however, is never again directly alluded to by Freud in all his explanations of narcissism, quite unlike the broad attention accorded to the various facets of other mythological or legendary narrations like the traditions associated with Oedipus, Empedocles, or Moses. ‘Narcissism’, from now on charged with a terminological importance decisive for the intellectual crystallization of classical psychoanalysis, seems to have definitely superseded the interest in the myth of Narcissus—at least in Freud’s thought.61 59 Freud (1914b) SE 14: 74. Ibid. 75. 61 Unfortunately, it would transgress the limits of this paper to investigate other developments or denials of the Freudian approach to Narcissism outside Jung; nevertheless, the influence of texts like Reich (1922) should by no means be underevaluated. 60 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 90 David Engels JUNG AND NARCISSI SM We now have to examine the analysis of Narcissus in, and the influence of the theory of narcissism on, the work of Jung.62 Surprisingly, although Jung is known as one of the most sensitive specialists in the analysis of myths and rituals, he seems to have nearly completely avoided any reference to the myth of Narcissus and the use of narcissism as a technical term. Indeed, the term only appears twice (or, adding a statement by his pupil Aniéla Jaffé, thrice) in his entire works, which is all the more amazing as Jung is scarcely known for terminological consistency and coined a rich and often contradictory psychoanalytical language. Excluding a statement in ‘Das Liebesproblem des Studenten’ (1924), where narcissism is rather clearly used as a synonym for onanism,63 we first have to consider Jung’s definition of narcissism in the chapter ‘Definitionen’ of his Psychologische Typen (1921/1972), his first major work since the rift with Freud and his phase of ‘creative illness’ between 1913 and 1918. The entry Seelenbild may be seen as a direct, even if veiled reply to Freud’s 1914 ‘Zur Einführung des Narzißmus’ and presents the most explicit, if not very successful (and apparently later on abandoned) attempt to integrate narcissism in Jung’s ‘Tiefenpsychologie’. Jung endeavours to dissociate his personal definition of narcissism from Freud’s contemporary use of the words by linking it to his personal idea of an antagonism between the Persona and the Seele. The Jungian Persona corresponds to the outward facade each individual develops in order to insert himself into society and thus is necessarily attached to the person’s gender, while the inner self, identified as the Seele, is imagined as belonging to the other sex (men thus having a female and women a male Seele). As the individual identifies itself mostly with the Persona and often ignores and relegates its Seele into the unconscious, the Seele tends to manifest itself through dreams and projections. For Jung, ‘normal’ individuals therefore tend to project their Seele onto other persons corresponding to its main characteristics in order to attain mental completeness, thus creating strong emotions such as love, where men and women mutually project their Seele onto each other. Narcissism, however, is precisely defined as the evolutionary stage where this projectional mechanism fails: 62 Cf. e.g. Hillman (1989). 63 Jung (1924) 117. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 91 If the soul image is projected, an immediate affective attachment to the object occurs. If it is not projected, then a rather unadapted disposition arises, partially described by Freud as narcissism [Narzißmus]. . . . If the soul image is not projected, an almost pathological differentiation of the relation with the unconscious will by and by arise. The subject will be gradually submerged by unconscious material, but is unable either to put it to use because of the deficient relation to the object, or to assimilate it in any other way.64 Jung thus rejects the Freudian generalization of narcissism as denoting a necessary stage in psychological development between autoerotism and object-love and reduces it once again to its concrete pathological, not merely illustrative, original sense, obviously approving of Binet’s and Näcke’s very restricted use of the myth. Jung’s implicit opposition to Freud also becomes very clear when comparing the features of partner-choice within both texts, the Freudian explanation closely prefiguring the formulation of the later Jungian version: (Freud:) A person may love: (1) According to the narcissistic type: (a) what he himself is (i.e. himself), (b) what he himself was, (c) what he himself would like to be, (d) someone who was once part of himself. (2) According to the anaclitic (attachment) type: (a) the woman who feeds him, (b) the man who protects him, and the succession of substitutes who take their place.65 (Jung:) The projection of the soul image [Seelenbild] dispenses with the occupation with inner processes, as long as the behaviour of the object corresponds to the soul image. Thus, the subject is enabled to live his persona and to develop her. However, the object will not be able, in the long run, to correspond always to the claims of the soul image, though there are women able to impersonate their husbands’ soul image for a very long time, disregarding their own lives. . . . The same may be done unconsciously by the man for his wife.66 It is interesting to see that all of Jung’s different versions of couplerelationship are thus founded on the assumption that love is essentially a result of auto-erotic projection of the soul. In the Freudian terminology, the Jungian lover thus would necessarily correspond to a ‘narzißtischer Typus’, as the ‘Anlehnungstyp’ seems to be non-existent in the Jungian projectional typology. In reducing narcissism to a form 64 65 Jung (1921/1972) 511ff. Freud (1914b) SE 14: 90. 66 Jung (1921/1972) 511ff. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 92 David Engels of pathology, Jung hence clearly negates the previous Freudian definition of narcissism as a necessary transitional stage in human development, not in order to obliterate this concept, but, on the contrary, to transform it into the basis of his very understanding of relationships as a result of a narcissistic projectional mechanism. Narcissism thus is no more a transitional stage, but a permanent quality, as it concerns, as the context of the above-cited passage shows, ‘extroverted’ as well as ‘introverted’ individuals. This rather curious handling of the idea of narcissism obviously constitutes a major break with the traditional use of the term, even if Jung concedes to Freud at least a ‘partial’ understanding of the problem. But Jung’s new definition also provokes a major problem where homosexuality is concerned, as the love for someone from the same gender seems to contradict the axiomatic identification of the Seele with the opposite sex.67 Jung therefore explains homosexual projection68 as projection not of the Seele but of the Persona, in order to assure his theory’s consistency: However, the opposite case sometimes occurs, when the soul image is not projected, but stays rather with the subject, provoking an identification with its soul insofar as the subject in question is actually convinced that the ways in which it deals with its inner processes also represents its only and true character. In this case, the persona is projected unconsciously, namely on a person of the same gender, laying thus the basis for many cases of open or latent homosexuality. . . . Such cases always concern people with a deficient capacity of outer adaptation and comparatively poor relationships, as the identification with the soul creates a disposition mainly oriented on the perception of inner processes.69 Homosexuality thus seems to be identified implicitly, but not explicitly, with narcissism, but it is obvious that the equation of homosexuals with people mainly interested in their inner ‘female’ feelings and thus falling in love with exponents of their own repressed masculinity is more than problematic and reproduces stereotypes which (at least nowadays) are no longer debatable. Furthermore, if the gender of 67 Only where individuality lacks totally—Jung probably refers to primitive cultures—the Soul is identified with the same sex (1921/1972) 510. 68 Cf. Bair (2007) 106 for Jung as alleged victim of a homosexual aggression during childhood. 69 Jung (1921/1972) 511. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 93 the soul has to be opposed to the gender of the Persona, which corresponds to the social image of a person and is thus normally dictated by biological conditions, how can it be explained that the soul of a homosexual male still remains mainly feminine? And whereas the projectional mechanism nicely explains heterosexual partnership through complementary projections, how can it explain the mutual attraction of homosexual partners, who should ideally be attracted by humans exposing the Persona they lack themselves? The last, scarcely more precise Jungian reference to narcissism leads us to ‘Analytische Psychologie und dichterisches Kunstwerk’ (1922), where Jung approaches narcissism from the angle of art.70 Again, an explicit reference to the myth itself is missing, although here a comparison of sources might have shed an interesting light on the personality of Narcissus as well as on the authors dealing with the myth. Jung explicitly dissociates himself in this context from what he qualifies as Freud’s reductionism and professes—in clear opposition to Freud’s attempts to explain art or religion through Psychoanalysis as in ‘Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood’ (1910) or in Totem and Taboo (1913)—that: Only that part of art that is identical to the process of artistic creation can be an object of psychology, but not that one that represents the proper essence of art. . . . We have to apply a similar distinction also to the field of religion . . . 71 Consequently, Jung refuses to apply categorizations like narcissism to art, declaring on the contrary: This kind of analysis only leads to the sphere of human psychology before [underlined in the original] the [production of] work of art, out of which [human psychology] not only the work of art, but also many other things may come forth. An explanation of the work of art originating from such a viewpoint is superficial, similar to the sentence: ‘Each artist is a narcissist’ [Narziß]. Everyone who wants to follow his 70 A similar use of these ideas, if not of the term ‘narcissism’, can incidentally be observed in Jung’s 1934 letters to the great novelist Hermann Hesse, who underwent an analysis by Jung and his pupil J. B. Lang from 1916 to 1922 and was deeply influenced by Jung’s archetypes: Jung to Hesse, 1 December 1934 (224–226), 1 December 1934 (224–226), 18 September 1934 (221–222), Hesse’s critical review ‘Über einige Bücher’ (Die Neue Rundschau, vol. 45, 2, 1934), and his letter to Jung from September 1934: Hesse (letters), 136ff. 71 Jung (1922) 75. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi 94 David Engels own line as consequently as possible is a ‘narcissist’, if it is allowed to use such a specific term from the pathology of neurosis in such a broad way; and thus, such a phrase does not mean anything . . . 72 Quite clearly, the restriction of narcissism to the strictly confined field of the pathology of neuroses implicitly rejects Rank’s and Freud’s apparent dilution of the term and proposes to bring it back to its original meaning, at least insofar as the technical term is implied. But it also becomes obvious how Freud’s notion of narcissism as a deeprooted orientation of sexual libido and thus an ultimate motivation for creativity that apparently profoundly disturbed Jung. As Freud seemed to use narcissism as a tool for ‘explaining’ transcendental aspects through mere clinical records and thus reduced it to a mere superficial phenomenon, easily explained away and potentially disturbed cured, the term was unacceptable to Jung as a general notion and thus discarded, apart from some early attempts like the ‘Definitionen’, from his personal psychoanalytical vocabulary. Later it was replaced by the mechanism by which an individual’s personality may become ‘inflated’ with the archetypal content of its own subconscious; rooted as much in the subject’s psychological evolution as in the collective unconscious of human culture. CONCLUSION It is, of course, very difficult to provide a satisfactory ‘conclusion’ concerning the meandering genesis of the term ‘narcissism’, its appropriation by Freud, and finally its reinterpretation by Jung. What becomes clear is that, from the beginning until Jung, with the notable exception of Rank, the myth itself played only a subordinate role in the elaboration of early psychoanalytical theory, which is all the more surprising and disappointing as other myths like that of Oedipus have found such a broad treatment and annotation. What also becomes clear is the tight link of the interpretation of Narcissus with the scholarly convictions of each author and, through these opinions, with the author’s personality and thus psyche itself. It is thus no wonder that Rank, personally interested in myth and aetiologies, is 72 Jung (1922) 79. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/3/2013, SPi Narcissism against Narcissus? 95 the only one who compared different versions of the myth and cited Ovid, Conon, Plutarch, and Pausanias, amplifying the theme of Narcissus by its amalgamation with other related texts, not even refraining from equating it with motifs from Wilde’s Dorian Gray. Rank thus showed that Narcissus and his behaviour could not only be interpreted as a paradigm of purely auto-erotic behaviour, but also as the result of heterosexual, homosexual, and even incestual propulsions—an ambiguity probably raising more questions than resolving and explaining why future scholars preferred to restrict their understanding to the ‘classical’, straightforward essence of the myth as a mere example of extreme self-love. Thus, Freud’s handling of the myth is characterized by his uncertainty of how to integrate narcissism, not Narcissus, into his growing complex of theories, so that he, quite understandably, prefers to ignore the precise details of the myth itself and retains only the abstract idea of ‘narcissism’ as a somewhat shadowy form of self-love. This enables him, therefore, to reinterpret constantly the precise relationships between narcissism and libido until the elaboration of ‘On Narcissism’ and the generalization of sexual libido as the ultimate dynamic essence of the human psyche. Finally, Jung’s ostensible disregard for the term ‘narcissism’, as well as for the myth of Narcissus, is most notable and surprising; a feature virtually bordering on a form of ‘Verdrängung’ (repression), as his fascination with mythology and antiquity is usually considered one of the most prominent features of his work. As the history of psychoanalysis is always closely aligned to the psychoanalytic practice of its creators, it may not be too hypothetical to refer this interesting fact to the personality of Jung himself, placing a form of narcissism at the basis of his whole anthropology, in that he knowingly ignored the Freudian terminology of narcissism and, by perhaps extending his personal experiences to the character of humanity itself, made Narcissus instead a paradigm of each human in search of self-completion. Narcissus thus represents not the arbitrary mythological content of the early history of psychoanalysis from Binet to Jung, but, quite the contrary, an archetype of psychology and psychoanalysts themselves who, like Narcissus bent over his mirrored image, only to uncover, through their fascination with the trials and tribulations of the human soul, their own depths. They thereby confirm—not surprisingly—Thomas Mann’s bon mot for myth as a ‘zeitlose Immer-Gegenwart’ (‘eternally timeless presence’).