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Concept
Narcissism
Summary
Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others.
Narcissism exists on a continuum that ranges from normal to abnormal personality expression. While there exist normal, healthy levels of narcissism in humans, there are also more extreme levels of narcissism, being seen particularly in people who are self-absorbed, or people who have a pathological mental illness like narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
It is one of the traits featured in the dark triad, along with Machiavellianism and subclinical psychopathy.
The term narcissism comes from the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, written in the year 8 AD. Book III of the poem tells the mythical story of a handsome young man, Narcissus, who spurns the advances of many potential lovers. When Narcissus rejects the nymph Echo, who was cursed to only echo the sounds that others made, the gods punish Narcissus by making him fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. When Narcissus discovers that the object of his love cannot love him back, he slowly pines away and dies.
The concept of excessive selfishness has been recognized throughout history. In ancient Greece, the concept was understood as hubris. Some religious movements such as the Hussites attempted to rectify what they viewed as the shattering and narcissistic cultures of recent centuries.
It was not until the late 1800s that narcissism began to be defined in psychological terms. Since that time, the term narcissism has had a significant divergence in meaning in psychology. It has been used to describe
a sexual perversion,
a normal [healthy] developmental stage,
a symptom in psychosis, and
a characteristic in several of the object relations [subtypes]. Paul Näcke and Havelock Ellis (1889) are the first psychiatrists, independent of each other, to use the term "narcissism" to describe a person who treats his own body in the same way in which the body of a sexual partner is ordinarily treated.
Official source
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