The portrait of Dorian Gray as Narcissus' ID

Abstract

Aim through the analysis of a fiction novel, to review contemporary social relations where narcissistic issues manifest themselves. The modern Homo Psychologicus, a human being of the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, more and more resembles the Narcissus captured by enthusiastic self-adoration. The extreme importance of how people demonstrate themselves in society, the escalated investments in personal image, claims of omnipotence and superpowers are combined with formalism and coldness, fear of human intimacy, shame and hiding one's own underside. The narcissistic problems have long ceased to be the domain of a psychoanalyst's office and have become a part of social relations. Oscar Wilde is one of those writers who timely reflected the underlying dynamics of the essence of interpersonal communication and intrapersonal interactions with one's soul. He demonstrated how our personal and collective narcissism is reinforced and becomes more and more apparent. His literary analysis is quite relevant to psychoanalysis, which emerged a little later, a method where the clinical study of narcissism came to occupy a key position, and later extended to the social sphere as well.