Concept
Dual orientation of narcissism
Lou Andreas-Salomé’s view, set out in 1921, that narcissism runs in two directions at once: toward the assertion of a separate, bounded self, and back toward an original state in which self and world were not yet divided. On this view narcissism is not a stage that is outgrown but a lasting undercurrent of all libidinal life: object love seeks to restore the lost oneness, sublimation, art and religious feeling draw on the same source, and illness regresses into it.
Development
1921
introduced by Lou Andreas-Salomé
In ‘Narzißmus als Doppelrichtung’ (Imago, 1921) Andreas-Salomé argues that narcissism moves at once toward the self-assertion of a bounded ego and back toward an undivided unity with the whole, and follows this double movement through object love, art, religion, ethics and illness.
In The Dual Orientation of Narcissism (1921)
Relations
- 1921 introduced by Lou Andreas-Salomé
In ‘Narzißmus als Doppelrichtung’ (Imago, 1921) Andreas-Salomé argues that narcissism moves at once toward the self-assertion of a bounded ego and back toward an undivided unity with the whole, and follows this double movement through object love, art, religion, ethics and illness.
- derives from Primary narcissism
The backward pull of the dual orientation is toward the undivided subject–object unity that precedes the ego, the state Freud called primary narcissism; Andreas-Salomé makes that origin a permanent current rather than a superseded stage.
Works
- 1921
The Dual Orientation of Narcissism
An essay in four parts that reads narcissism as running in two directions at once: toward the assertion of a bounded self, and back toward an undivided state in which self and world are not yet separate. Narcissism is thus not a stage that is left behind but a lasting accompaniment of all libidinal life, at work in object love, in sublimation, in art and in religious feeling. Published in English as “The Dual Orientation of Narcissism” (Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1962).
See also
People
References
- The Dual Orientation of Narcissism1921Evidence for a relation