Table Of ContentFREUD’S “ON NARCISSISM:
AN INTRODUCTION”
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CONTEMPORARY FREUD
Turning Points and Critical Issues
Series Editor: Leticia Glocer Fiorini
IPA Publications Committee
Leticia Glocer Fiorini (Buenos Aires), Chair; Samuel Arbiser (Buenos Aires); Paulo Cesar
Sandler (São Paulo); Christian Seulin (Lyon); Gennaro Saragnano (Rome); Mary Kay O’Neil
(Montreal); Gail S. Reed (New York)
On Freud’s “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”
edited by Joseph Sandler
Freud’s “On Narcissism: An Introduction”
edited by Joseph Sandler, Ethel Spector Person, Peter Fonagy
On Freud’s “Observations on Transference-Love”
edited by Ethel Spector Person, Aiban Hagelin, Peter Fonagy
On Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”
edited by Ethel Spector Person, Peter Fonagy, Sérvulo Augusto Figueira
On Freud’s “A Child Is Being Beaten”
edited by Ethel Spector Person
On Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”
edited by Ethel Spector Person
On Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia”
edited by Leticia Glocer Fiorini, Thierry Bokanowski, Sergio Lewkowicz
On Freud’s “The Future of an Illusion”
edited by Mary Kay O’Neil & Salman Akhtar
On Freud’s “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence”
edited by Thierry Bokanowski & Sergio Lewkowicz
On Freud’s “Femininity”
edited by Leticia Glocer Fiorini & Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose
On Freud’s “Constructions in Analysis”
edited by Sergio Lewkowicz & Thierry Bokanowski, with Georges Pragier
On Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”
edited by Salman Akhtar & Mary Kay O’Neil
On Freud’s “Negation”
edited by Mary Kay O’Neil and Salman Akhtar
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FREUD’S “ON NARCISSISM:
AN INTRODUCTION”
Edited By
Joseph Sandler
Ethel Spector Person
and Peter Fonagy
CONTEMPORARY FREUD
Turning Points and Critical Issues
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Grateful acknowledgement is made to Sigmund Freud Copyrights; The Institute
of Psychoanalysis, London; The Hogarth Press; and Basic Books for permission
to reprint “On Narcissism: An Introduction” as published in Sigmund Freud,
The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, trans. and ed.
by James Strachey, Hogarth Press, London; and in Sigmund Freud, The Collected
Papers of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 4, ed. James Strachey, Basic Books, New York.
First published in 1991 by Yale University Press for the International
Psychoanalytical Association, London.
This edition published in 2012 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 1991, 2012 the International Psychoanalytical Association
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78049-108-0
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
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Contents
Preface
ETHEL SPECTOR PERSON / vii
Introduction
JOSEPH SANDLER, ETHEL SPECTOR PERSON,
AND PETER FONAGY 1 ix
PART ONE ON NARCISSISM:
AN INTRODUCTION ( 19I 4)
SIGMUND FREUD/ I
PART TWO DISCUSSION OF
“ON NARCISSISM: AN INTRODUCTION” / 33
Freud’s “On Narcissism”: A Teaching Text
CLIFFORD YORKE I35
Contents I vi
“On Narcissism: An Introduction”: Text and Context
R. HORACIO ETCHEGOYEN / 54
Introduction to “On Narcissism”
NIKOLAAS TREURNIET / 75
Letter to Sigmund Freud
LEON GRINBERG/ 95
Narcissism in Freud
WlLLY BARANGER 1 108
A Contemporary Reading of “On Narcissism”
OTTO F. KERNBERG / I3I
The Theory of Narcissism in the Work of Freud and Klein
HANNA SEGAL AND DAVID BELL/ 149
From Narcissism to Ego Psychology to Self Psychology
PAUL H. ORNSTEIN / 175
Narcissism as a Form of Relationship
HElNZ HENSELER / I95
Narcissism and the Analytic Situation
BELA GRUNBERGER/ 216
List of Contributors 229
Index I231
This is the second volume of the series “Contemporary Freud: Turning Points
and Critical Issues,” the first being On Freud’s ‘Analysis Terminable and
Inrerrninable.” The series was proposed by Robert Wallerstein, who appointed
an IPA Committee on Publications under the chairmanship of Joseph Sandler;
the proposal grew out of the desire to provide the IPAs membership with a
new modality of intellectual interchange. Such an exchange seems more
urgent now than ever before because of the increasingly rapid growth of
psychoanalysis in different parts of the world, each with a unique and impor-
tant perspective.
Each publication in this series will begin with one of Freud’s classic
papers and will be followed by essays by a number of distinguished psycho-
analytic teachers from theoretically diverse and geographically dispersed
backgrounds. Rather than merely reviewing the pertinent literature, each
contributor has been asked to elucidate the essay’s important points, to clar-
ify what may be ambiguous in the essay, and to establish links between the
original paper and important aspects of our present state of knowledge. The
contributions are meant to be didactic and to express the contributor’s views
exactly as if he or she were conducting a seminar. Although each volume
vii
viii / Ethel Spector Person
may be useful as a teaching text, it will also be of immeasurable value to
anyone reading or re-reading Freud or exploring a given topic-in this case
narcissism. It is the hope of the IPA Committee on Publications that each
volume will draw the reader into an internal dialogue with the contributors,
thus serving as a kind of personal study group.
Given the importance of narcissism to current theoretical concerns, the choice
of focusing this volume on Freud’s classic essay “On Narcissism: An Intro-
duction” seems a happy one. Credit goes to Joseph Sandler, who served as
chairperson of the Committee on Publications at the time the choice was
made and who, with input from his advisory board, selected the contribu-
tors for this volume. They, in turn, have been generous in their participation
in this project, and the excellent results thereof are self-evident.
Special thanks go to Lynne McIlroy of the IPA office for her prodigious
help in securing permissions and coordinating such an international venture
and to Doris Parker of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for checking the
English references. I also want to thank Gladys Topkis, Eliza Childs, and
Cecile Rhinehart Watters for their indispensable editorial input and their
patience and care in bringing this volume into existence.
ETHEL SPECTOR PERSON
Introduction
Even to the casual observer of psychoanalysis it is abundantly apparent that
in recent years issues of narcissism have taken center stage. The concept of
narcissism is pivotal in revisions of theory, and the treatment of pathological
narcissism central to technical innovations and to the evolving theory of
technique. The growing interest in narcissism has found its way into popular
culture as well. with the term being used in a pejorative sense to denote self-
preoccupation and to describe certain aspects of contemporary life (although
this is quite different from what clinicians mean when they use the term).
But however contemporary the interest in narcissism may be, the first inkling
of its importance in pathology and in everyday life, in love, and in normal
development is to be found in Freud’s seminal essay of 1914.
Although there is ample evidence for Freud’s intuitive grasp of narcissis-
tic issues and even some attempts on his part to theorize about narcissism
prior to his writing “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” it is in that essay that
he first considers its broad implications for psychoanalysis. And, indeed,
the essay may justly be considered as one of a series of turning points in
Freud’s thinking, opening up our understanding of motivation as stemming
from something other than instinctual gratification, and presaging not only
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