The Legend of Narcissus :: Greek Mythology

In Greek mythology, â€Å"Narcissism" has its roots from the legend of Narcissus, a young man whom most deemed extremely handsome. A nymph named Echo developed an obsessive infatuation with Narcissus but he was unwilling to reciprocate such feelings to her or others. She finally gave up and isolated herself. Narcissus was then cursed to become socially isolated and reviled due to his complete self absorption by loving his own shadow from the pool (Wall & Loewenthal, 1998). Havelock Ellis (1898) first developed the concept of narcissism as a psychological construct referring to excessive masturbation by the people become their own sexual objects. Then this concept was adopted by Sigmund Freud (1914/1957) and other prominent psychoanalysts. Interestingly, the term â€Å"Narcissistic Personality Disorder† was first introduced by Heinz Kohut (1968), the founder of self psychology, and â€Å"Narcissistic Personality† by Otto Kernberg (1970) who is the major contributor of modern object relations theory. The DSM did not adopt the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder until in the third revised edition published in 1980 (Siomopoulos, 1988). Thus, throughout the last century, the general term â€Å"narcissism† has been usually seen in the literature rather than Narcissistic Personality Disorder. From a recent study by Pincus et al. (2009), narcissism has been conceptualized as â€Å"one’s capacity to maintain a relatively positive self-image through a variety of self-, affect- and field-regulatory processes. It underlies individuals’ needs for validation and affirmation as well as the motivation to overtly and covertly seek out self-enhancement experiences from the social environment† (p.365). Normal and pathological narcissism. Researchers usually use the terms normal and pathological features of narcissism to describe adaptive and maladptive personality structure respectively, representing different psychological needs for self enhancement, validation, and regulatory mechanisms (e.g., Kernberg 1998, Kohut 1977, Morf 2006, Pincus 2005, Ronningstam 2009, Stone 1998). Some believe that normal and pathological narcissism are situated on a single continuum or dimension from healthy to disordered functioning (e.g., Cooper, 2005; Miller, Hoffman, Campbell & Pilkonis, 2008; Paulhus, 1998; Ronningstam, 2005b & Watson, 2005), while others contended that adaptive and pathological narcissism may be two distinct personality dimensions (e.g., Ansell 2006, Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Pincus et al., 2009; Rathvon & Holmstrom, 1996; Wink, 1991). It could be found that the studies of social and personality psychology have more interest in the normal narcissism (e.g. Miller & Campbell, 20 08 ), whereas those researchers in clinical psychology focused more on the studies of pathological narcissism (e.