Article
On Narcissism: An Introduction
Zur Einführung des Narzißmus
Freud's 1914 essay, published in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, treats narcissism as a normal state of the libido. It sets the libido invested in the ego against the libido invested in objects, and primary narcissism against secondary narcissism. It contrasts two types of object-choice, the anaclitic and the narcissistic, introduces the concept of the ego ideal, and separates sublimation, which concerns the drive, from idealization, which concerns the object.
Main ideas
- Narcissism is a normal libidinal state.
- Ego-libido is distinguished from object-libido, and primary from secondary narcissism.
- Object-choice is either anaclitic or narcissistic.
- The essay introduces the ego ideal.
- Sublimation is a process in the drive; idealization is a process in the object.
What it shows
- 1914
Sublimation diverges from Idealization
Freud separates the two: sublimation turns the drive toward a non-sexual aim, while idealization exalts the object without changing it. The ego ideal demands sublimation but cannot enforce it, so a lofty ideal is no proof that sublimation has succeeded.
- 1914
Sigmund Freud introduced Idealization
Freud speaks of an idealization of the drive in the perversions in 1905. In 1914 he defines idealization as a process acting on the object, possible with ego-libido as with object-libido, as in the sexual overvaluation of the loved object, and he ties it to the forming of the ego ideal.
- 1914
Sigmund Freud introduced Narcissism
The term was coined in clinical sexology (Näcke, 1899, as Freud notes); Freud used it from 1910 and in ‘On Narcissism’ (1914) made it a concept of libido theory, distinguishing primary from secondary narcissism and ego libido from object libido.
- 1905
Sigmund Freud introduced Libido
The word was in use among sexologists, and Freud had used it in his papers on anxiety neurosis in the 1890s; the Three Essays make it the psychoanalytic name for the energy of the sexual drive, which the 1915 section on the libido theory and the 1914 paper on narcissism divide into ego-libido and object-libido.
- 1914
Sigmund Freud introduced Ego ideal
In 'On Narcissism' Freud introduces the ego ideal as the heir of infantile narcissism: what the subject projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost perfection of childhood, watched over by an agency of self-observation. In 1921 he explains the bond of a group by its members putting the leader in place of their ego ideal.