The Legend of Narcissus :: Greek Mythology

In Greek mythology, Narcissism has its roots from the legend of Narcissus, a young universe 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 in the end gave up and isolated her egotism. Narcissus was then cursed to become tenderly isolated and reviled due to his complete self absorption by loving his witness tincture 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 self-conceited Personality Disorder was first introduced by Heinz Kohut (1968), the founder of self psychology, and 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, finishedout the last century, the general term 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 ones capacity to maintain a relatively positive self-image through a variety of self-, affect- and field-regulatory processes. It underlies individuals inevitably for validation and affirmation as well as the motivation to overtly and covertly seek out self-enhancement experiences from the social purlieu (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 r egulatory 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 balance 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, 2008 ), whereas those researchers in clinical psychology focused more on the studies of pathological narcissism (e.