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infant invests all its libido in itself, before it turns any love towards objects; secondary narcissism is libido later withdrawn from objects and brought back to the ego.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.
Development
1914
introduced by Sigmund Freud
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as an original libidinal investment of the ego from which object cathexes are later sent out and to which they can be withdrawn.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.
In Early Developmental States of the Ego. Primary Object-Love (1937)
1937
critiqued by Michael Balint
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.
In Early Developmental States of the Ego. Primary Object-Love (1937)
1983
reworked by Julia Kristeva
In Histoires d’amour Kristeva recasts primary narcissism as a structure rather than an objectless state, organised around an emptiness and sustained by primary identification with the “imaginary father of individual prehistory”.
In Tales of Love (1983)
Relations
- 1914 introduced by Sigmund Freud
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as an original libidinal investment of the ego from which object cathexes are later sent out and to which they can be withdrawn.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.
- 1937 critiqued by Michael Balint
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.
- 1937 opposed by Primary love
Balint puts primary object love in the place Freud's theory gave to primary narcissism. What can be studied at the start of life is the child's primary relation to objects, and the narcissism seen in the clinic is secondary, mixed with remains of a mutilated object love.
- 1983 reworked by Julia Kristeva
In Histoires d’amour Kristeva recasts primary narcissism as a structure rather than an objectless state, organised around an emptiness and sustained by primary identification with the “imaginary father of individual prehistory”.
- 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.
- gave rise to 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.
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).
- 1937
Early Developmental States of the Ego. Primary Object-Love
Balint presented this report at the first symposium of the second Four Countries Conference, in Budapest in May 1937. Its subject is the sharply conflicting theories of the earliest stages of mental life, which had grown into almost 'local' views in London, Vienna and Budapest. Balint holds that the clinical material is the same everywhere and that the disagreement comes from different standpoints, expectations and terminology. As common ground he takes Freud's description of infantile love in 'Female Sexuality' (1931): boundless, exclusive, insatiable and ambivalent. The London school, as Joan Riviere presents it, explains these traits by an innate oral sadism rooted in the death drive, by early projection and introjection, and by anxieties about bad objects. Robert Waelder's Viennese critique rightly disputes London's evidence and concepts, but it leaves the children's greed and hostility unexplained. The Budapest group (Alice Balint, Imre Hermann and Balint himself, following Ferenczi) treats the recurring formal features of the analytic situation as transference and as traces of the earliest experiences. Each member supports this from a different field: comparative pedagogy, primate studies and sexual theory. Balint reports that, deep in analysis, patients come to want small, primitive gratifications such as a kind word or being touched. When these are refused, the patients show despair, hatred and fear of retaliation. When they are granted, the patients fall into an addiction-like bliss that collapses at the first frustration. The wishes themselves are always aimed at an object, and when they are met at the right time and in the right measure they produce no more than a quiet sense of well-being. Two further lines of work point the same way. Hermann studied the instinct to cling, which develops in the human infant because it is torn from its mother's body too early. Alice Balint described the mother's equal libidinal share in the mother–child unity, and an archaic, naively egoistic love that assumes the partner's wishes are the same as one's own. From these lines of work Balint draws the concept of primary object love. It is an early phase that cannot be skipped and is not tied to any erogenous zone. Its aim is passive: to be loved and gratified without giving anything in return. Narcissism and active object love grow from it as detours. London and Vienna are both right and both wrong. London studied only the vehement reactions to frustration and missed the quiet experience of satisfaction. Vienna could explain the infantile phenomena only with ad hoc hypotheses. Both cling to the hypothesis of primary narcissism, which Balint names as the source of their confusion of tongues. Primary narcissism, he argues, is a negative concept reached by extrapolation and defined by 'not yet', and the play between 'already' and 'not yet' protects it from every objection. It has never been observed clinically: what appears is only secondary narcissism, mixed with remnants of damaged object love. It also fits poorly with everyday facts, such as the hypersensitivity and insatiability of narcissistic people, or a crying newborn who calms when picked up. Balint notes converging work by Glover, Federn, Isakower, Müller-Braunschweig and E. P. Hoffmann. He answers the objections that the infant knows no external world and that sucking and grasping are mere adaptations. He warns that the logically simplest state need not be the original one, as biology learned with the amoeba. Primary object love is also an extrapolation, but a shorter and testable one, and Balint offers it as a working hypothesis for the study of infants and psychotics.
- 1975
The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation
The book by Margaret Mahler, Fred Pine and Anni Bergman, published in 1975, is the first full theoretical account of normal separation-individuation. It grew out of the authors' observational research on mothers and young children in New York. It starts from the claim that the biological birth of a human infant and its psychological birth do not coincide. Biological birth is a single visible event; psychological birth is a slow inner process that unfolds over the first three years. Separation is the child's emergence from a symbiotic fusion with the mother. Individuation is the child's taking on of characteristics of its own. After an introduction and a history of the research setting, the book describes the forerunners of the process, normal autism and symbiosis. It then takes up the four subphases one by one: differentiation and the development of the body image; practicing; rapprochement; and the consolidation of individuality together with the beginnings of emotional object constancy. A further part follows five children, Bruce, Donna, Wendy, Teddy and Sam, through the subphases. Reflections follow on variations within the subphases, on the development of separation anxiety, basic mood and early identity, on core identity and the boundaries of the self, and on the significance of the rapprochement crisis. A final section sets out the research method: what data were collected, the reasoning behind the study and the strategies used to analyse the observations as systematic clinical research.
- 1983
A psychoanalytic and historical study of love that runs from Narcissus, Plato and the Song of Songs through Christian agape, the troubadours, Don Juan and Romeo and Juliet to the cult of the Virgin, treated in the essay 'Stabat Mater'. Kristeva situates love between narcissism and idealisation and traces its origin to a primary identification with an 'imaginary father' who comes before the Oedipal father. She treats analysis as a renewed experience of love within the transference. Leon S. Roudiez translated the book into English as Tales of Love (1987).
See also
References
- Early Developmental States of the Ego. Primary Object-Love1937Evidence for a relation
- The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation1975Evidence for a relation
- Tales of Love1983Evidence for a relation
- The Dual Orientation of Narcissism1921Evidence for a relation