Identity, Narcissism, and the Other

Practitioners of psychoanalysis find three central themes to be recurrent and ubiquitous in every analysis; firstly, issues around identity, the struggle to know the self, to understand the self and to be the self in an authentic way. Intricately entangled with self-identity is the problem of narcissism, essentially viewed as a defensive retreat to a mental state characterized by an unconscious belief in the special value of the self and the diminution of the Other. However, there are a multitude of inherent anxieties involved in close and intimate relationships. As Freud pointed out, even in our most intimate relationships there is an element of hostility. Threats to both the self and other, and various anxieties around libidinal contact, will be examined in this book using case material, and the relationship between these three important themes, identity, narcissism and the other, separate but interconnected, will be explored.

Introduction , The way to identity: an auspicious method? , Otherness and the other , Narcissism and unconscious phantasy , From omnipotence to ordinary potency and identity , Non-consummation: a narcissistic organisation , The other as alien: psychic atopia , Sexuality in psychoanalysis , Negative therapeutic reaction re-examined , Symbol formation and dreams: the art of Odilon Redon , Dreams as access to the primal scene , Arrested development: notes on a case of paedophilia