Book
Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism
Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort
A collection of André Green's essays on narcissism, some previously unpublished, by an author who had worked on the subject since 1963. Freud introduced narcissism in 1914 and let it recede after the revisions of around 1920: the opposition of life and death drives, the second topography and a new theory of anxiety. Green ties narcissism to that last drive theory. Beside the positive narcissism of the life drives, which seeks the unity of the ego, he postulates a death narcissism, which he calls negative narcissism, aiming at the ego's abolition in an aspiration towards zero. A first part treats the theory of narcissism (the same, the other and the neutral; primary narcissism as structure or state; anxiety), a second describes clinical forms (moral narcissism, the neutral gender, the dead mother), and a postface on the ego as mortal and immortal ends on the figure of a Janus-faced Narcissus. Published by Éditions de Minuit in 1983, it appeared in Andrew Weller's English translation as Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism (2001).
Main ideas
- Narcissism, which Freud set aside after his revisions of around 1920, must be tied to his last theory of the drives.
- Beside a life narcissism that seeks the unity of the ego there is a death narcissism, negative narcissism, which aims at the ego's abolition in an aspiration towards zero.
- Primary narcissism is examined as a question of structure or state, and narcissism is related to anxiety and to the values of the same, the other and the neutral.
- Narcissism appears in the clinic in distinct forms, among them moral narcissism, the neutral gender and the dead mother.
- The ego is divided between knowing itself mortal and believing itself immortal, a doubleness the book sums up in the figure of a Janus-faced Narcissus.
What it shows
André Green introduced Negative narcissism
Green postulated a death narcissism, which he called negative narcissism, beside the life narcissism that seeks the unity of the ego: it aims at the ego's abolition, an aspiration to zero. The papers collected in his 1983 book develop it.
André Green reworked Death drive
Green recast the death drive in psychic rather than biological terms, as a disobjectalising function that withdraws investment from objects and the ego, and tied it to a negative narcissism aiming at zero.
André Green reworked Narcissism
Green wrote on narcissism from the 1960s on and tied it to Freud's last theory of the drives, splitting it into a life narcissism that unifies the ego and a death narcissism that tends to abolish it.
Negative narcissism derives from Death drive
Negative narcissism is Green's narcissism of the death drive: where life narcissism binds the ego into a unity, it pursues the ego's extinction.
André Green introduced Dead mother complex
Green set out the dead mother complex in his essay « La mère morte », collected in Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort (1983): the child's inner world is organised around a mother who, though alive, has withdrawn her investment, usually through depression or mourning.