The tragic man

“In this world only play, play as artists and children engage in it, exhibits coming-to-be and passing away, structuring and destroying... And as children and artists play, so plays the ever living fire. It constructs and destroys, all in innocence... Transforming itself into water and earth, it builds towers of sand like a child at the seashore, piles them up and tramples them down... The ever self-renewing impulse to play calls new worlds into being. The child throws its toys away from time to time - and starts again in innocent caprice. But when it does build, it combines and joins and forms its structures regularly, conforming to inner laws.”

(Nietzche)

In unveiling narcissism as a powerful undercurrent of human experience, Freud pointed to the similarities among the megalomania of the schizophrenic, the magical thinking of "primitive" (non-Western) people, the blind infatuation of the lover, and the "childish," doting adulation of parents toward their offspring. The common element in these states, Freud argued, is "overvaluation"-whatever is being considered, whether in oneself or in another, is inflated in importance, its powers exaggerated, its unique perfections extolled. The narcissistic overvaluations of the schizophrenic, the primitive, the lover, the parent, are all secondary derivatives of a more fundamental narcissistic condition, Freud argued, which constitutes the earliest stage of psychic development. Freud portrays the state of primary narcissism as one of total omnipotence, perfection, completeness. The infant imagines himself as constituting the entire universe, or certainly all that is good and pleasurable in it.

Illusion as Defense

Although the state of primary narcissism cannot be maintained for long in a world of inevitable frustrations and increasing parental expectations, the original narcissistic experience, in Freud's view, is not wholly renounced. Much of narcissistic libido is transformed into object libido, self-gratification replaced by drive gratifications facilitated by others as libidinal objects. Some of the original narcissism remains intact, however, and self-regard derives from three different forms in which narcissistic libido is preserved.

Some primary narcissism simply remains from its original state and serves, like the protoplasmic body of the amoeba, as a never-wholly emptied pool of libidinal resources from which pseudopodlike object libidinal cathexes are drawn. Sometimes narcissistic libido is transferred to the sexual object; here the object is not loved in an anaclitic way, modeled after those who provided drive gratifications, but in an idealized, narcissistic fashion, modeled after the inflated self-love of primary narcissism. Some narcissistic libido is set up within the ego ideal. Self-rapture in relation to the child's true attributes is no longer possible; but if the parents' values and expectations can be fulfilled, wholeness and perfection are once again attainable.

The common feature in these three vicissitudes of narcissistic libido is "overvaluation," which Freud identifies as the "narcissistic stigma" (1914b, p. 91). Whether the focus is actually oneself, one's wished-for self, or the beloved, the object is granted positive qualities beyond what is supportable by reality. Thus narcissism in Freud’s system entails the attribution of illusory value. His metaphor of the amoeba and its oscillatory protoplasm, now extending outward into the world, now retreating backward into the central body, highlights the· reciprocal relationship he saw between engagement with reality (and other people) and narcissistic illusions. For Freud, narcissistic illusions (even when they are transferred through idealization onto love objects), ultimately draw one away from real involvements with others and the gratifications they provide.

Although an explorer of the darkest, most irrational dimensions of human experience, Freud was a supreme rationalist in his sense of social, moral, and scientific values. Rationality, fueled by sublimation, represents the highest and most felicitous development of the human mind. The discontents we suffer in civilization are the necessary price of its uplifting advantages. Unless impeded by neurosis, developmental progress is characterized by a movement from primary process to secondary process, from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. Psychoanalysis as a treatment facilitates this process whereby the irrational and fantastic is brought under the sway of the rational and the real - "where id was, there ego shall be" (1933, p. 80).

Kaplan (1985) has described Freud's dedication to rationality in striking terms.

“If people must suffer the loss of their infantile hopes and fantasies, then they should suffer for the fact of this loss rather than for distortions of it in aesthetic bonuses, the empty promises of religion, and the negligible protections of social orders. Unremitting toil in the service of science - naked means toward real ends - was Freud's (1930/1961) alternative in Civilization and Its Discontents, at least for himself. Any other kind of life was ensnared by illusion, which was but a small step up from neurosis. (pp. 290-291)

In this larger context, Freud regarded narcissistic illusions as the inevitable residue of the most primitive and infantile state of mind, and therefore as both unavoidable and dangerous. Precisely because narcissism, by definition, entails illusory overvaluation, it runs counter to reality and beckons as an ever-tempting defensive retreat. Withdrawal from reality is always perilous, the ultimate threat being the total loss of connection with the real world (the schizophrenic state) and the less devastating threat posed by the vulnerable loss of self, suffered by the unrequited lover, whose narcissism is transferred to the beloved and never returned.

Freud's stress on the defensive function of illusions has been largely maintained in what one might consider the mainstream of contemporary Freudian thought, although exactly what is being defended against varies in different accounts, depending on the larger set of theoretical premises which shape that account. Let us consider, as examples of the traditional approach to illusion as defense, two of the most significant recent contributions to the literature on narcissism from within Freudian ego psychology, those of Kernberg and Rothstein.

Although Kernberg stresses his loyalties to Mahler, Jacobson, and the ego-psychological tradition, his contributions draw extensively on Melanie Klein's model of mental life, and his approach to narcissistic illusion is greatly informed by her theories. Klein portrays the infant as beset with terrifying anxieties involving the containment of aggression, and sees early development as a movement from paranoid and depressive anxieties toward a more integrated and secure sense of reality. Within Klein's vision, narcissistic illusions operate as defenses and regressive retreats from these frightening early anxieties: idealization is a refuge from persecutory anxiety and murderous rage toward bad objects; grandiosity is a "manic" defense against the depressive anxiety inherent in feeling small, helpless, and abjectly dependent upon another. Kernberg borrows heavily from these conceptualizations.

He distinguishes normal from pathological narcissism, defining the former (following Freud, as amended by Hartmann, 1950, p. 127) as the libidinal investment of the self. What Kernberg means by normal narcissism, then, is the resultant of all the processes which bear on self-representation and self-regard. He sees pathological narcissism as a particular dynamic mechanism which generates both entitled grandiosity and primitive idealization. Following Klein, Kernberg characterizes these as primitive defense mechanisms, often operating in conjunction with other primitive defense mechanisms such as splitting, denial, and projective identification. Narcissistic illusions are a defense erected within the child's struggle with a "pathologically augmented development of oral aggression" (1975, p. 234), generating paranoid and depressive anxieties; the illusions are constructed from a pathological fusion of ideal self, ideal object, and actual self-image.

How do narcissistic illusions work? In Kernberg's account, the infant is overloaded with primitive aggressive impulses, due to a "constitutionally determined strong aggressive drive, or constitutionally determined lack of anxiety tolerance in regard to aggressive impulses, or severe frustration in their first year of life" (1975, p. 234). He experiences himself and, projectively, other people as well, as essentially sadistic, and this aggressive outlook dominates his early experience. Sticking close to Klein's account of "envy" (1957), Kernberg portrays the narcissistically prone infant as so frustrated and hateful as to be unable to tolerate hope, the possibility of anyone's offering him anything pleasurable or sustaining. So little is forthcoming, the child concludes, and with such ill will toward him, that it is better to expect nothing, to want nothing, to spoil and devalue everything that might be offered. Normal fantasies of self and other as ideal are fused with the child's own realistic self-perceptions, resulting in a ‘grandiose self' which is experienced as complete, perfect, and self-sustaining. "I am/have everything. You are/offer nothing." This position serves as both an expression of and a defense against explosive oral aggression, and the only secure solution in a world experienced as treacherous and sinister. Maintenance and protection of the grandiose self becomes the central psychodynamic motive, resulting in a contemptuous character style and disdainful manner of relating to others.

“A narcissistic patient experiences his relationships with other people as being purely exploitative, as if he were "squeezing a lemon and then dropping the remains." People may appear to him either to have some potential food inside, which the patient has to extract, or to be already emptied and therefore valueless.” (1975, p. 233)

Primitive idealization of others is also characteristic of personalities organized around a grandiose self, according to Kernberg, but the idealization has little to do with any real valuing of others. Rather, Kernberg's narcissistic patient projects his own grandiose self-image onto others when it becomes impossible to sustain within himself, and also uses idealization as a secondary defense, along with splitting, to ward off and conceal the hateful and contemptuous devaluation of others.

Thus, narcissistic illusions protect the patient from the dreadful state in which he spent much of the first several years of life, depending on others for protection and care, yet perpetually dissatisfied, victimized, and enraged. The establishment of the grandiose self removes the patient from the multifaceted psychic pain of this situation, and, once established, the grandiose self perpetuates the devaluing assumptions about others which made its establishment necessary in the first place. It creates a "vicious circle of self-admiration, depreciation of others, and elimination of all actual dependency. The greatest fear of these patients is to be dependent on anybody else, because to depend means to hate, envy, and expose themselves to the danger of being exploited, mistreated, and frustrated" (Kernberg, 1975, p. 235).

Narcissistic illusions have a perniciously sabotaging effect on psychoanalytic treatment. Based on the illusions of self-sufficiency and perfection of the grandiose self, they undercut the very basis on which the psychoanalytic process rests, the presumption that the analysand might gain something meaningful from someone else (in this case the analyst). Despite what might be considerable psychological suffering and a genuine interest in treatment, the analysand whose character is organized around a grandiose self cannot allow the analyst to become important enough to him to really help him. The analyst and his interpretations must be continually devalued, spoiled, to avoid catapulting the patient into a condition of overpowering longing, abject dependency, and intolerable hatred and envy.

Kernberg's technical recommendations are wholly consistent with this psychodynamic portrait-a methodical and persistent interpretation of the defensive function of grandiosity and idealization as they emerge in the transference (1984, p. 197). Anything else is a waste of time, since the narcissistic illusions systematically destroy the very ground upon which the treatment proceeds. Unless the workings of the grandiose self are continually brought to light and confronted, the impact of the treatment is often subtly but systematically vitiated. "The analyst must continuously focus on the particular quality of the transference in these cases and consistently counteract the patient's efforts toward omnipotent control and devaluation" (1975, p. 246). This traditional emphasis on aggressive interpretation of narcissistic phenomena derives from and is wholly consistent with Freud's early view of "narcissistic neurosis" as unanalyzable and narcissistic defenses as generating the most recalcitrant resistances to the analytic process. (See, for example, Abraham, 1919.)

Rothstein (1984) has presented a rich amalgam of dynamic formulations which he portrays as an "evolutionary" extension of Freud's structural model (from which he has deleted virtually all energic considerations). The result is a psychodynamic account which stresses conflict among various relational motives and puts particular stress on the importance of the actual relationship to significant others. The most pervasive influence on Rothstein's perspective, particularly with regard to more severe disorders, is Mahler's depiction of the process of separation-individuation from an original symbiotic matrix. Rothstein's approach to narcissism is a blend of Freud's original formulations and Mahler's more contemporary view of the child's struggle for relational autonomy.

Rothstein distinguishes Freud's phenomenological portrayal of narcissism as a "felt quality of perfection" from his metapsychological treatment of narcissism (as the libidinal cathexis of the ego). He adds symbiosis to Freud's account of primary narcissism and sees narcissistic illusions as based developmentally on pre individuated experiences of a perfect self fused with a perfect object. The loss of this original state of perfection is a severe narcissistic blow, an inevitable developmental insult which is traversed only by reinstating the lost narcissistic perfection in the ego ideal. By identifying with the narcissistically tinged images of the ego ideal, the child softens the otherwise unbearable pain of separation. "Narcissistically invested identification is the sole condition under which the id can give up its objects and is a fundamental concomitant of primary separation-individuation. The pursuit of narcissistic perfection in one form or another is a defensive distortion that is a ubiquitous characteristic of the ego" (Rothstein, 1983, p. 99).

Thus, like Freud, Rothstein sees some residues of primary narcissism as inevitable, reestablished in the ego ideal. For Rothstein, with his Mahlerian perspective, the loss of infantile narcissism has an additional poignancy, since it represents not just the loss of grandeur and perfection, but the loss of the original symbiotic state. Accordingly, narcissistic illusions operate as defensive retreats not only from disappointments in reality in general, but also from anxiety and dread connected with separation. He holds that "narcissistic perfection is a defensive distortion of reality" (p. 98). Like many defenses within the ego-psychological model, narcissism itself is neither healthy nor pathological; some defenses are necessary and serve adaptive functions within the psychic economy. Although a total relinquishment of narcissistic illusions is impossible, it is the goal of analysis, in Rothstein's view, to identify and work through the salient narcissistic investments.

Although proceeding from a very different set of basic assumptions concerning the motivational and structural underpinnings of emotional life, the major theorists within the interpersonal tradition have taken an approach to the clinical phenomenon of illusions, the implications of which are quite similar to the mainstream Freudian approach from Freud to Kernberg to Rothstein. Sullivan sees idealization as a dangerous, self-depleting security operation and stresses the "cost" to the patient of "thinking the doctor is wonderful" (White, 1952, p. 134). He recommends challenging the patient's assumptions that the analyst is so different from other people, often a product ofinexperience in taking risks with others, and sees extended periods ofidealization as reflecting a kind of acting out of countertransference. "The effective restriction of idealization is dependent on the physician's own freedom from personality warp. In so far as he is capable of real intimacy in the situation with the patient, to that extent he can inhibit idealization... The measure of this capacity [is] intuited or empathized by any patient" (Sullivan, 1972, p.343).

Similarly, Sullivan regards grandiosity as a dynamic for covering over feelings of insecurity through "invidious comparison" between oneself and others, “an accelerating spiral of desperate attempts to prop up a steadily undermined security, with the result that the patient is more and more detested and avoided… If the patient will be alert to how small he feels with anybody who seems to be at all contented or successful in any respect, then he may not have need for this hateful superiority-which is hateful in part because he hates himself so much, being unable to be what he claims to be.” (quoted in White, 1952, p. 139)

Although Sullivan does not develop an explicit technical procedure for the handling of illusions, one gets the clear impression throughout his writings that the analyst is in no way helpful by failing to address the patient's overvaluation of either himself or the analyst. Both kinds of illusions are seen as self-sabotaging devices propping up a shaky sense of self-esteem, operating as an obstacle to the development of the analysand's own resources and self-respect.

Fromm takes an even dimmer view of the place of illusion in emotional life. He sees psychodynamics in the general context of certain inescapable realities of the human condition, among which are finitude and separateness. To this condition two kinds of responses are possible: progressive, productive responses which accept the existential realities and create meaningful ties to others; and regressive, destructive responses, based on a self-deluding denial of the realities of the human condition. The overvaluing of illusions concerning the self or others from whom one derives some compensatory reassurance are regressive self-deceptions from Fromm's perspective and must be dealt with as such. In fact, at several points Fromm accuses Sullivan, in his emphasis on protecting the analysand's need for security, of being in effect soft on illusions. Anything short of a continual interpretive challenge to the analysand's overvaluing illusions concerning both himself and the analyst would be an expression of countertransferential contempt on the analyst's part, a disrespectful collusion in the analysand's flight from reality and meaning.

Thus, although deriving from very different psychodynamic traditions and assumptions, the major lines of theorizing within orthodox theory, Freudian ego psychology, and interpersonal theory all converge in an essentially similar technical approach to the clinical phenomenon of narcissistic illusions. The latter are viewed as regressive defenses against frustration, separation, aggression, dependence, and despair. Transferential illusions concerning either the self or the analyst must be interpreted, their unreality pointed out, and their defensive purpose defined.

Illusion as Creativity

In recent years there has emerged an alternative view of infantile mental states and the narcissistic illusions which are thought to derive from them. This approach is closely connected with the developmental-arrest model of psychopathology and the therapeutic action of psychoanalytic treatment. The most important contributors to this very different perspective have been Winnicott and Kohut, each of whom in his own distinct fashion regards infantile narcissism and subsequent narcissistic illusions in later life as the core of the self and the deepest source of creativity. Here the prototypical "narcissist" is not the child, madman, or savage, but the creative artist, drawing for inspiration on overvaluing illusions.

Although Winnicott did not often write about narcissism per se, his entire opus revolves around the issue which we have seen is central to that domain: the relationship between illusion and reality, between the self and the outside world. For Winnicott, the key process in early development is the establishment of a sense of the self experienced as real. For this to happen, the child requires a very particular sort of relationship with his or her providers, the most distinguishing feature of which is, ironically, that the child must not know of the existence of the relationship, must not know that it is being provided at all.

The essential feature ofthe necessary "facilitating" environment provided by the mother is her effort to shape the environment around the child's spontaneously arising wishes, to read the child's needs and provide for them. The mother's actualization of the infant's desires makes it possible for the latter to assume that his wishes actually create the objects of his desire - that the breast, in effect his entire world, is the product of his creation. In fact, Winnicott characterizes the child's experience, made possible by the mother's perfect accommodation to his wishes, as the "moment of illusion." The virtual invisibility of Winnicott's "good enough mother" allows the infant a developmentally crucial immersion in an illusory, megalomaniacal, solipsistic state of "subjective omnipotence."

Eventually the child learns to live in objective reality (introduced largely through the mother's incremental failure to accommodate herself to the child's wishes) as it becomes clear that objects and people have their own independent existence and are only minimally under the child's control. The distinguishing characteristic of the terrain between the original subjective omnipotence and the eventual objective reality, transitional experiencing, is an ambiguity about the status of the other. Is the transitional object (the traditional teddy bear, for example) a creation of the child, in some special relation to the child, under his or her control, or is it simply an object within the world of mundane objects, subject to being lost, damaged, discarded, washed? The good-enough parent of the transitional stage allows the child this ambiguity, participating in the child's illusions like the mother whose accommodation makes possible the earlier experience of subjective omnipotence, thereby enabling the child to solidify a sense of self as a consistent source of spontaneous wishes, longings, and resources.

Freud measured mental health in terms of the capacity to love and work; Winnicott envisions health as the capacity for play, as freedom to move back and forth between the harsh light of objective reality and the soothing ambiguities of lofty self-absorption and grandeur in subjective omnipotence. In fact, Winnicott regards the reimmersion into subjective omnipotence as the ground of creativity, in which one totally disregards external reality and develops one's illusions to the fullest. He originally presented his view of patients with fragmented, aborted (false) selves as a distinct diagnostic group reflecting more severe psychopathology and, employing the developmental tilt, he placed them developmentally as antedating oedipal neuroses. As is often the case with theoretical innovations introduced through the establishment of a new diagnostic category, the category spreads and the formulations take on more and more general relevance. Thus, many varieties of psychopathology came to be viewed by Winnicott as reflecting deficiencies in the establishment of a healthy self, as a consequence of insufficient experience of the illusions of subjective omnipotence and the transitional phase.

This view of the development of the self led Winnicott to redefine both the analytic situation and the analytic process. Whereas Freud saw the analytic situation in terms of abstinence (instinctual wishes emerge and find no gratification), Winnicott sees the analytic situation in terms of satisfaction, not of instinctual impulses per se, but of crucial developmental experiences, missed parental functions. The couch, the constancy of the sessions, the demeanor of the analyst these become the "holding environment" which was not provided in infancy. Freud saw the analytic process in terms of renunciation; by bringing to light and renouncing infantile wishes and illusions, healthier and more mature forms of libidinal organization become possible. Winnicott sees the analytic process in terms of a kind ofrevitalization; the frozen, aborted self is able to reawaken and begin to develop as crucial ego needs are met.

Although Winnicott does not apply this model of treatment to the problem of narcissistic illusions per se, its implications are clear. The patient's self has been fractured and crushed by maternal impingement, creating the necessity for a premature adaptation to external reality and a disconnection from one's own subjective reality, the core of the self and the source of all potential creativity. The analyst's task is to fan the embers, to rekindle the spark. He must create an atmosphere as receptive as possible to the patient's subjectivity; he must avoid challenging the patient in any way which could be experienced as an impingement, an insistence once again on compliance with respect to external reality. Narcissistic illusions, in Winnicott's model, are neither defenses nor obstructions. The patient's illusions concerning both himself and the analyst represent the growing edge of the patient's aborted self; as good-enough mothering entails an accommodation of the world to sustain the infant's illusions, good-enough analysis entails an accommodation of the analytic situation to the patient's subjective reality, a "going to meet and match the moment of hope" (1945, p. 309).

The more explicit technical implications of this new understanding of the meaning of narcissistic illusions were developed by Kohut, who, like Winnicott, introduced his innovations in connection with a diagnostic category of greater severity (narcissistic personality disorders), but who expanded those innovations into a broad and novel theory of development, psychic structure, and motivation. In his original 1971 presentation Kohut described two forms of transference, the mirroring transference and the idealizing transference, which, he argued, are very different from ordinary neurotic transferences. Here the patient is not simply transferring infantile impulses and conflicts onto the person of the analyst as a differentiated object. In the mirroring and idealizing transferences, the analyst and his responses function in lieu of missing psychic structures within the patient's own personality. In mirroring transference the patient experiences himself in terms of overvaluing grandiosity and requires the analyst's mirroring responses to avoid a disintegration of self. In idealizing transference the patient experiences the analyst in terms of overvaluing admiration and requires the analyst's allowance of the idealization to avoid a disintegration of self.

In Kohut's account, the appearance of narcissistic illusions within the analytic situation-primitive grandiosity or idealization-represents the patient's attempt to establish crucial developmental opportunities, a self-object relationship unavailable in childhood. These phenomena represent not a defensive retreat from reality (a la Freud, Sullivan, Rothstein, and Kernberg), but the growing edge of an aborted developmental process which was stalled because of parental failure to allow the child sustained experiences of illusions of grandeur and idealization. Thus, the appearance of narcissistic illusions within the analytic relationship constitutes a fragile opportunity for the revitalization of the self. The illusions must be cultivated, warmly received, and certainly not challenged, allowing a reanimation of the normal developmental process through which the illusions will eventually be transformed, by virtue of simple exposure to reality in an emotionally sustaining environment, into more realistic images of self and other.

Kohut stresses throughout that he is recommending an "empathic comprehension" of narcissistic needs and not "playacting" or "wish fulfillment." But empathic comprehension certainly entails a receptivity to the narcissistic illusions and an avoidance at all costs of anything which would challenge" them or suggest that they are unrealistic. "While it is analytically deleterious to bring about an idealization of the analyst by artificial devices, a spontaneously occurring therapeutic mobilization of the idealized parent imago or of the grandiose self is indeed to be welcomed and must not be interfered with" (1971, p. 164). Kohut sees the dangers of interference, analogous to Winnicott's notion of impingement, as very great indeed and warns against even "slight overobjectivity of the analyst's attitude or a coolness in the analyst's voice; or… the tendency to be jocular with the admiring patient or to disparage the narcissistic idealization in a humorous and kindly way" (p. 263). Anything short of warm acceptance of narcissistic illusions concerning both the self and the analyst-which illusions are assumed to simply express themselves, independent of the interactional field in which the analyst participates-runs the risk of closing off the delicate, pristine narcissistic longings and thereby eliminating the possibility of the reemergence of healthy self development.

There is a striking symmetry between these two different traditions of understanding narcissistic illusions; for each, the approach of the other borders on the lunatic. From Kohut's point of view, the kind of methodical interpretive approach to narcissistic transferences recommended by Kernberg is extremely counterproductive, implying a countertransferential acting out. For Kohut, Kernberg's stance suggests great difficulty in tolerating the position in which the narcissistic transferences place the analyst, arousing anxiety concerning his own grandiosity (in the idealizing transference) or envy of the patient's grandiosity (in the mirroring transference). Thus, Atwood and Stolorow argue that the oral rage Kernberg sees in borderline patients is actually an iatrogenic consequence of his technical approach. Methodical interpretation of the transference is experienced by the narcissistically vulnerable patient as an assault and generates intense narcissistic rage, which Kernberg then regards as basic and long-standing, requiring the very procedures which created it in the first place. From the vantage point of self psychology, Kernberg is continually creating the monster he is perpetually slaying.

Similarly, from the more traditional point of view, the Winnicott-Kohut approach is an exercise in futility. An unquestioning acceptance of the patient's illusions with the assumption that they will eventually diminish of their own accord represents a collusion with the patient's defenses; the analytic process is thereby subverted, and the analyst never emerges as a figure who can meaningfully help the patient. From the traditional vantage point, the Winnicott-Kohut approach suggests what Loewald (1973) has termed a countertransferential "overidentification with the patient's narcissistic needs" (p. 346). Loewald further suggests that Kohut's avoidance of any focus on "an affirmation of the positive and enriching aspects of limitations" of self and others constitutes a "subtle kind of seduction of the patient" (p. 349). As Kernberg notes, unresolved narcissistic conflicts in the analyst "may foster excessive acceptance as well as rejection of the patient's idealization… To accept the admiration seems to be an abandonment of a neutral position." (1975, p. 298).

Illusion as defense, illusion as the growing edge of the self-these two approaches derive most broadly from larger divergent perspectives on the relation between the individual and society that have a long history in Western culture. From one perspective (developed to its fullest by the Enlightenment philosophers of the eighteenth century), culture and civilization humanize the individual creature, whose personal subjectivity is beneficially renounced in favor of the higher objectivity and rationality of society. From the other perspective (developed to its fullest in the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century), subjective experience is a-higher form of reality; society threatens what is most precious in the individual, and conventional "rationality" is portrayed as an oppressive-repressive force.

These two approaches to illusion have generated an exciting controversy in the analytic literature, particularly because they are dramatically contrasting and mutually exclusive (which is often the case with competing psychoanalytic theories in their polarized swings of the pendulum). This controversy demonstrates dramatically the extent to which concepts like neutrality, countertransference, and empathy are theory bound.

It is a mistake to regard one of these approaches as more empathic than the other. They simply proceed (empathically) from different assumptions about the patient's experience. Kernberg's narcissist lives in an embattled world, in which he and all others are experienced as sadistic, self-serving, and exploitative. The only possible security lies in a devaluation of others, disarming them of their power to hurt him. From this perspective, an empathic response entails an appreciation of his endangered status (see Schafer, 1983) and a delineation of his narcissistic defenses, along with an effort to make some meaningful contact possible. To simply accept the grandiosity would be to empathize only with the most superficial level of the patient's defenses and not with what is presumed to be his underlying experience.

Kohut's narcissist, on the other hand, is a brittle creature who lives in a harsh and continually bruising world. The only possible security lies in a splitting off of important segments of the self (either vertically or horizontally) in an effort to protect the deep and tender feelings connected to them, often covered over by bravado or narcissistic rage. From this perspective, an empathic response entails an appreciation of the continual threat of self-dissolution and disintegration, and an encouragement of growth-enhancing illusions. To challenge the patient's illusions would be to perpetuate the repeated traumas of childhood. With narcissistic illusions, as with most analytic phenomena, empathy and countertransference are in the eye of the beholder.

I strongly suspect that the majority of analysts work in neither of these two sharply contrasting ways, that most ofus struggle to find some midpoint, undoubtedly reflective of our own personality and style, between challenging and accepting narcissistic illusions. Because subtlety and tone are crucial, it is difficult to formulate such a clinical posture in simple, schematic terms. The following description is offered as a framework for locating such an approach conceptually and in terms of technique, within an integrated relational perspective.

The more traditional approach to narcissism highlights the important ways in which narcissistic illusions are used defensively, but misses their role in health and creativity and in consolidating certain kinds of developmentally crucial relationships with others. The developmental arrest approach has generated a perspective on narcissism which stresses the growth-enhancing function of narcissistic illusions, but overlooks the extent to which they often constrict and interfere in real engagements between the analysand and other people, including the analyst.

It is possible to draw upon the clinical wisdom in both these contributions by viewing narcissistic illusions in the context oftheir interactive role in perpetuating the analysand's relational matrix. In viewing narcissism as either only defensive or as fundamentally growth enhancing, both traditions overemphasize what is taken to be the inherent nature of narcissistic illusions. What has been neglected is the key function of narcissism throughout the life cycle in perpetuating stereotyped patterns of integrating interpersonal relationships and fantasied ties to significant objects.

An Integrated Relational Approach

All varieties of narcissistic illusions are generated throughout the life cycle, from the exuberance of the toddler to the nostalgic musings of old age: grand estimations of one's own capacities and perfection, infatuation with the larger-than-life qualities of others whom one loves or envies, and fantasies of an exquisite, perfect merger with desirable or dreaded others. The determination of emotional health as opposed to psychopathology, when it comes to narcissistic illusions, has less to do with the actual content of the illusions than with the attitude of the individual about that content. All of us probably experience at various times feelings and thoughts as self-ennobling as the most grandiose narcissist, as devoted as the most star-struck idealizer, as fused as the most boundaryless symbiosis seeker. The problem of narcissism concerns issues of character structure, not mental content; it is not so much what you do·and think as your attitude toward what you do and think, how seriously you take yourself. How can this subtle issue of attitude be conceptualized?

Consider Nietzsche's theory of tragedy (1872/1956). Life is lived in two fundamental dimensions, Nietzsche suggests. On the one hand, we live in a world of illusions, continually generating transient forms and meanings with which we play and then quickly discard. This facet of living Nietzsche terms Apollonian, Apollo being the god of the dream, art, and illusion. On the other hand, we are embedded in a larger unity, a universal pool of energy from which we emerge temporarily, articulate ourselves, and into which we once again disappear. This facet of living Nietzsche terms Dionysian, Dionysus representing reimmersion in this undifferentiated oneness and, in Nietzsche's system, the inevitable undoing of all illusions, all individual existence.

Nietzsche establishes "the tragic" as the fullest, richest model of living, and the truly tragic represents a balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian dimensions. The tragic man (this phrase must be disentangled from all pejorative connotations) is one who is able to fully pursue his Apollonian illusions and also is able to relinquish them in the face of the inevitable realities of the human condition. The tragic man regards his life as a work of art, to be conceived, shaped, polished, and inevitably dissolved. The prototypical tragic activity is play, in which new forms are continually created and demolished, in which the individuality of the player is continually articulated, developed, and relinquished. In the passage used as the epigraph for this chapter, Nietzsche uses the building of sandcastles as a metaphor for the dialectic he envisions as the underlying structure of life and the essence of the tragic.

Picture the beach at low tide. Three different approaches are possible. The Apollonian man builds elaborate sandcastles, throwing himself into his activity as if his creations would last forever, totally oblivious to the incoming tide which will demolish his productions. Here is someone who ignores reality and is therefore continually surprised, battered, and bruised by it. The Dionysian man sees the inevitability of the leveling tide and therefore builds no castles. His constant preoccupation with the ephemeral nature of his life and his creations allows him no psychic space in which to live and play. He will only build if his productions are assured of immortality, but unlike the Apollonian man, he suffers no delusions in this regard. Here is someone tyrannized and depleted by reality.

The third option is Nietzsche's tragic man, aware of the tide and the transitory nature of his productions, yet building his sandcastles nevertheless. The inevitable limitations of reality do not dim the passion with which he builds his castles; in fact, the inexorable realities add a poignancy and sweetness to his passion. The tragicomic play in which our third man builds, Nietzsche suggests, is the richest form of life, generating the deepest meaning from the dialectical interplay of illusion and reality.

The very word "illusion," Loewald (1974, p. 354) reminds us, derives from the Latin “ludere”, to play. Healthy narcissism reflects Nietzsche's subtle dialectical balance between illusions and reality; illusions concerning oneself and others are generated, playfully enjoyed, and relinquished in the face of disappointments. New illusions are continually created and dissolved. Winnicott (1971) has described the important connections between healthy illusion, play, creativity, and cultural phenomena in general.

In pathological narcissism, on the other hand, illusions are taken too seriously, insisted upon. In some narcissistic disturbances, illusions are actively and consciously maintained; reality is sacrificed in order to perpetuate an addictive devotion to self-ennobling, idealizing, or symbiotic fictions. This is the approach of the first man on the beach, blindly building and building. In some narcissistic disturbances, illusions are harbored secretly or repressed; preoccupation with the limitations and risks of reality lead to an absence of joyfulness or liveliness - even a paralysis. Any activity is threatening because it inevitably encounters limitations, and these are felt to be unacceptable. This is the approach of the second man on the beach, holding out for immortality and waiting in despair for the tide.

What is the etiology ofsuch disturbances? What determines whether one will be able to negotiate the delicate balance between illusions and reality in healthy narcissism, or whether one will suffer an addictive devotion to illusions resulting in either a removal from reality or a despair in the face of it? The key factor resides in the interplay of illusions and reality in the character-forming relationships with significant others. What is crucial, therefore, is the interactive function of illusions within the analysand's relational matrix.

The growth of the balance necessary for healthy narcissism requires a particular sort of relationship with a parent, in which the parent is able to comfortably experience both the child and herself in both modes, in playful illusions of grandiosity, idealization, and fusion, and in deflating disappointments and realistic limitations. The child naturally and playfully generates lofty self-overvaluations, glowing overvaluations of the parent, and boundaryless experiences of sameness and fusion. The ideal parental response to these experiences consists in a participation coupled with the capacity to disengage, a capacity to enjoy and play with the child's illusions, to add illusions of his or her own, and to let the illusions go, experiencing the child and herself in more realistic terms. Thus, the parent participates with the child in requisite experiences characterized by shifting idealization and aggrandizements - now the child is elevated, now the parent, now both together. The ideal parental response is neither a total immersion in illusion nor a cynical rationalism, but a capacity to play with illusions while never losing sight of the fact that this is a form of play Consider the position of the child in relation to a parent who, in one way or another, takes these kinds of illusions extremely seriously, whose own sense of security in fact is contingent upon them. Such a parent insists on specific overvaluations of the child or herself or both. These illusions have become addictive for the parent, and they become a dominant feature in the possibilities for relatedness which such a parent offers the child. The more addictive the illusions for the parent, the more unavoidable they become for the child, who feels that the only way to connect with the parent, to be engaged with him, is to participate in his illusions. Such a child must regard himself as perfect and extraordinary and be seen by the parent that way, to be seen at all; or he must worship the parent as perfect and extraordinary to become real and important to the parent. Further, children tend to pick up how crucial such illusions are for the parent's shaky sense of self-esteem. Deutsch (1937) long ago noted the role of parental "induction" in cases of "folie-à-deux," where adoption by the child of the parent's delusion represents "an important part of an attempt to rescue the object through identification with it, or its delusional system" (p. 247). Abandonment of parental illusions thus becomes an emotional equivalent of abandonment of the parents themselves, the avoidance of which, as M. Friedman (1985) has argued, is an underlying feature in many forms of psychopathology.

In such circumstances, sustaining parental illusions becomes the basis for stability and for maintaining connections with others, the vehicle for what Fairbairn repeatedly terms the "tie to bad objects," or what Robbins (1982) more recently has described as pathological efforts at symbiotic bonding. Here illusions are no longer the spontaneously generated, transitory, playful creation of an active mind. Illusions are insisted upon with utmost seriousness by significant others, and they become the necessary price for contact and relation. Ogden (1982) speaks of

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the ever-present threat that if the infant fails to comply, he would cease to exist for the mother. This threat is the muscle behind the demand for compliance: "If you are not what I need you to be, you don't exist for me." Or in other language, "I can see in you only what I put there. If I don't see that, I see nothing.">> (p. 16)

This is true not just of infancy, but throughout childhood and later into adulthood. Every analyst is familiar with the dread adult patients frequently feel in connection with major characterological change; they anticipate a profound sense of isolation from parents (alive or dead) who related to them, seemed to need so much to relate to them, only through their now-loosened and about-to-be-transcended character pathology (see Searles, 1958).

The mithological figure of Icarus vividly captures the powerful relationship between the child and the parent's illusions. Daedalus, the builder of the Labyrinth, constructs wings of feathers and wax, so that he and his son Icarus can escape their island prison. The use of such wings requires a true sense of Nietzsche's dialectical balance: flying too high risks a melting of the wings by the sun; flying too low risks a weighing down of the wings from the dampness of the ocean. Icarus does not heed the warning he receives. He flies too close to the sun; his wings melt, and he plunges into the ocean, disappearing beneath a clump of floating feathers.

We have all been born of imperfect parents, with favorite illusions about themselves and their progeny buoying their self-esteem, cherished along a continuum ending with addiction to illusion. We have all come to know ourselves through participation in parental illusions, which have become our own. Like Icarus, therefore, we have all donned Daedalus' wings. It is the subtleties of parental involvement with these illusions which greatly influence the nature of the flight provided by those wings-whether one can fly high enough to enjoy them and truly soar, or whether the sense of ponderous necessity concerning the illusions leads one to fly too high or to never leave the ground.

The myth of Icarus points to another significant feature of generational interaction in the subtleties of narcissistic illusion. In most accounts Daedalus is portrayed as a caring father, at least in his warnings to Icarus to fly neither too high nor too low, and Daedalus himself is able to negotiate a successful flight to safety. Children of illustrious parents are particularly prone to narcissistic difficulties. With parents of distinction of one sort or another, it takes particular sensitivity to be able to help a child sort through and digest parental identifications to generate illusions and ambitions of his or her own.

In both prior approaches to narcissism, pathological grandiosity and pathological idealization are understood largely as forces operating within the internal psychic economy of the individual. They are viewed as internally generated phenomena, either as defensive solutions to anxiety, frustration, and envy, or as spontaneously arising, pristine, early developmental needs. The developmental-arrest approach suffers from this constraint just as much as the more traditional approach. Illusion is treated not as a normal product of mental activity throughout the life cycle, but is located within the earliest developmental phases. And illusions within the psychoanalytic situation are treated as reflective of the early developmental needs, in pure form, rather than as learned modes of connection with others, as the not-at-all-playful, stereotyped, compulsive patterns of integration they have become.

Ever since Freud's abandonment of the theory of infantile seduction, the legacy of drive theory for the subsequent history of psychoanalytic ideas has included an underemphasis of the role of actual relationships in the evolution of mental structures and content, and of the residues of actual interactions in fantasied object ties. With respect to narcissism, both traditions isolate the figure within the relational tapestry. In so doing, they overlook the extent to which grandiosity and idealization function as interactional modes, arising as learned patterns of integrating relationships, and maintained as the vehicle for intimate connections (real and imagined) with others. They focus on one dimension of the relational matrix, the self, but not on the self with others; to regard these phenomena solely in terms of self-organization is like working with only half the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

The major theorists we have been considering do not completely fail to notice these interactional facets of narcissistic phenomena. They are too astute as clinicians to do so. The problem is that the specifics of parental character and fantasied object ties do not fit into theoretical models emphasizing what are taken to be spontaneously arising, developmental phenomena, so they are noticed clinically and then passed over when major etiological dynamics are assigned or technical approaches developed. The subtleties of the parents' personalities, the ways in which they required the child to maintain narcissistic illusions, are lost; the parents are viewed in a binary fashion, either as gratifying or not gratifying infantile needs (drives or relational).

Freud's paper "On Narcissism," for example, contains a wry and incisive description of parents' narcissistic investment in their children:

“If we look at the attitude of affectionate parents towards their children, we have to recognize that 'it isa revival and reproduction of their own narcissism, which they have long since abandoned… They are under a compulsion to ascribe every perfection to the child - which sober observation would find no occasion to do - and to conceal and forget all his shortcomings… They are inclined to suspend in the child's favor the operation of all the cultural acquisitions which their own narcissism has been forced to respect, and to renew on his behalf the claims to privileges which were long ago given up by themselves… The child shall fulfill those wishful dreams of the parents which they never carried out-the boy shall become a great man and a hero in his father's place, and the girl shall marry a prince as a tardy compensation for her mother. At the most touchy point in the narcissistic system, the immortality of the ego, which is so hard pressed by reality, security is achieved by taking refuge in the child. Parental love, which is so moving and at bottom so childish, is nothing but the parents' narcissism born again.” (1914b, pp. 90-91)

Freud calls our attention to the striking similarity between the parents' attitude toward the child and the child's attitude toward himself. The parent overvalues the child; the child overvalues himself. Freud does not, however, derive the child's narcissism from the parents' attitude! He points to the parents' often-compulsive need to use the child as a magic solution for their own limitations and disappointments. Yet he does not consider how such a set of parental expectations and needs might contribute to the child's sense of who he is and who he needs to be for others. Although parental values, internalized in the ego ideal, become important later on in recapturing the primary narcissistic experience, Freud derives infantile narcissism from the inherent properties of self-directed libido. Infantile grandiosity is an instinctual vicissitude; self-love generates narcissism, apart from the relational matrix. In effect, Freud derives the parents' narcissism from the child's, their own unresolved infantile narcissistic longings and the opportunity provided by their child's infantile narcissism to evoke their own. In viewing narcissism as a quality inherent in self-directed libido, Freud underplays the extent to which parental fantasies influence the child's sense of who he is and has to be for the parents. Infantile experience shapes adult character, and adult character through parenting shapes infantile experience, in a continually evolving generational cycle within the relational matrix. Kernberg similarly provides a vivid portrait of parental narcissism at work in the dynamic interactions within families producing children with later narcissistic difficulties.

Their histories reveal that each patient possessed some inherent quality which could have objectively aroused the envy or admiration ofothers. Forexample, unusual physical attractiveness or some special talent became a refuge against the basic feelings of being unloved and of being the objects of revengeful hatred. Sometimes it was rather the cold hostile mother's narcissistic use of the child which made him "special," set him off on the road in a search for compensatory admiration and greatness, and fostered the characterological defense of spiteful devaluation of others. For example, two patients were used by their mothers as a kind of "object of art," being dressed up and exposed to public admiration in an almost grotesque way, so that fantasies of power and greatness linked with exhibitionistic trends became central in their compensatory efforts against oral rage and envy. These patients often occupy a pivotal point in their family structure, such as being the only child, or the only "brilliant" child, or the one who is supposed to fulfill the family aspirations.(1975, pp. 234-235)

How could a child growing up in such circumstances become anything but narcissistic? become visible to his parents in any form other than as an extraordinary, larger-than-life creature? Why the need to evoke a hypothetical excess of aggression (either constitutional or based on great deprivation in the earliest years) to account for what is more simply and clearly derivable from the relational matrix? Like Freud, Kernberg sees the clinical relevance of parental values and expectations, the constricted forms of relationships they offer to the child; yet this factor is assigned only a peripheral etiological role in shaping later defenses against early conflicts. Kernberg's model of mind, still drawing strongly on the monadic framework of drive theory, regards pathological narcissism as an internally generated mechanism, established in the first years of life in the face of extreme oral rage. The mother is important, not in the subtleties of her character and the particularities of the relational patterns she offers the child, but in her gross role as frustrator of the child's oral needs and as an object for the child's oral rage.

Kohut's clinical reports reflect a similar striking discordance between rich observations of parent-child interactions and a theoretical model of narcissism which assigns the particular content of these interactions to a secondary role. Kohut describes patients who exhibit various forms of grandiosity, some noisily proclaimed, others secretly and shamefully harbored. Kohut considers these to be manifestations of "archaic" grandiosity, which was not allowed to establish itself and undergo normal transmuting internalization because of the parents' failures as self-objects. Thus, his model derives narcissism from the expression of inherent sources. Yet, Kohut often informs us (usually parenthetically) that the parents failed the child in quite specific ways, using that child as a narcissistic extension of themselves in precisely the manner in which the child then constructs his grandiosity.

Within both traditions there has been movement toward granting greater etiological importance to parental character and the specifics of child-parent interactions. From the drive-theory side, Rothstein (1984) has placed increasing emphasis on the role of the actual relationship in the generation and maintenance of narcissistic illusion, and Robbins (1982) has written of the ways in which narcissistic phenomena operate as shared illusions, drawing on grandiose fantasies of idealized objects. From the relational-model side, there has been discussion of the parents, not simply in terms of their failure to provide self-object functions for the child, but also in terms of their use of the child as their own self-object (Atwood and Stolorow, 1984).

I have suggested that in ideal parenting the parent participates with the child in a variable fashion that contains both joyful play with illusions and an affirming embrace of reality. Loewald has depicted the delicate interpenetrability between illusion and consensual reality that can develop from such interactions in a redefinition of the traditional concept of reality testing:

“Reality testing is far more than an intellectual or cognitive function. It may be understood more comprehensively as the experiential testing of fantasy - its potential and suitability for actualization - and the testing of actuality - its potential for encompassing it in, and penetrating it with, one's fantasy life. We deal with the task of a reciprocal transposition.” (1974, p. 368)

How does the analyst help the analysand arrive at such a balance between illusion and reality, at the capacity to live in and fuse both realms? Loewald suggests that the analyst's interpretations and demeanor convey a subtle double quality which makes this possible. On the one hand, the analyst's descriptions and interpretations enable the patient to advance his access to his own subjectivity and inner resources. On the other hand,

“There may be at times, in addition, that other quality to the analyst's communication, difficult to describe, which mediates another dimension to the patient's experiences, raising them to a higher, more comprehensively human level of integration and validity while also signaling the transitory nature of human experience.” (1974, p. 356)