Concept
Primary narcissism
Freud's hypothesis of an earliest state in which the infant invests all its libido in itself, before it turns any love towards objects; secondary narcissism is libido later withdrawn from objects and brought back to the ego. Michael Balint argued that this first state can never be observed, that clinically one meets only secondary narcissism, and that the infant's first relation is already a love for objects.
- Broader concept
- Narcissism
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 4
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1914 Freud set out primary narcissism in 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914), as an original libidinal investment of the ego from which object cathexes are later sent out and to which they can be withdrawn. Balint's critique of 1937 takes the hypothesis as Freud's.
critiqued by
- Michael Balint 1937 Balint argues that primary narcissism has never been observed: what the clinic shows is always secondary narcissism, mixed with the remains of a damaged object love. The hypothesis may not be false, but by definition nothing can be learned about it, so it is superfluous; he blames it for the confusion of tongues between the Vienna and London analysts.
gave rise to
- Normal autistic phase Mahler framed normal autism in terms of Freud's primary narcissism: a closed, self-sufficient state of hallucinatory wish fulfilment that comes before any relation to an object.
- Dual orientation of 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the ego, the state Freud called primary narcissism; Andreas-Salomé makes that origin a permanent current rather than a superseded stage.