Freud framed narcissism as normal libidinal imbalance that only culture makes abnormal

Evidence

In colloquial references, narcissism is a condition characterized by grandiosity of self and a lack of empathy for others. The name comes from the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, a young man who found his own reflection in a pool so captivating that he could not tear himself away from water’s edge and literally wasted away into death. For Freud, such wasting unto death connotes an imbalance, so balance or equilibrium becomes one of the defining questions of narcissistic structure. Freud hypothesized that human subjects have a kind of scarcity of libido, and that narcissism rests in overallocating libido inward to the self and underallocating outward to the other. With his signature commitment to normalizing psychopathology, Freud took this matter of balance as fulcrum for arguing that all libidinal economies involve some degree of narcissism, since care of the self is required for self-preservation. This degree he deems “primary” narcissism, or even “normal” narcissism. Narcissism, in turn, becomes abnormal when contingent cultural conditions whet it. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 88

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines narcissism as Freud conceived it — not pathology but a normal, culture-whetted libidinal imbalance.
• XREF: Links to Mark Fisher and the general argument that immediacy is cultural rather than natural — narcissism as socially conditioned parallels the book’s case that immediacy is an economic product.