The Theory of Narcissism in the Work of Freud and Klein

Abstract

This chapter examines the development of the theory of narcissism in the work of Melanie Klein. Sigmund Freud says that Schreber's delusions are in a certain sense true and, what is more, are consistent with Freud's evolving theory of narcissism—namely, that when all the libidinal interest is withdrawn from the external world the result is an internal catastrophe, the end of the inner world. The narcissism paper is difficult to read because it contains a mixture of two different models of mental life— namely, libido theory and an implicit theory of internal object relations. On Narcissism starts with a statement of the method that bore so much fruit in Freud's first phase—that psychopathology is a study of developmental arrest, and so the study of psychopathology gives rise to theories of development. The chapter elaborates Freud's more intuitive notion of the destructiveness of narcissism.