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Original Narcissism Or the Shadow of a Philosophy of History

Patricia Cotti
History of Psychiatry 2004; 15; 45
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X04039342
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http://hpy.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/45

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History of Psychiatry, 15(1): 045055 Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
[200403] DOI: 10.1177/0957154X04039342

Original narcissism or the shadow of a

philosophy of history
PATRICIA COTTI*
University of Paris, 7
Translated by
MIRABELLE ORDINAIRE

Upon reading again the third chapter of Totem and Taboo it becomes clear
that it was the English eighteenth-century philosophers and their followers
who inspired in Freud his conception of a universal history of mans evolution.
This paper analyses, in particular, the links between this Weltanschauung
and notions such as narcissism, omnipotence of thoughts and the Freudian
history of the libidos development (Entwicklungsgeschichte der Libido),
the latter usually being considered as the results of clinical observations.
Keywords: evolution; history of development; narcissism; narcissistic
neurosis; philosophy of history; primitive man

oday it is common to talk about narcissism pathologies. When one talks

about psychosis or borderline states, narcissism is always evoked. However,
people are often not familiar with the vision of the world (Weltanschauung)
through which Freud established the narcissistic neurosis category. They
are not aware of the historical and anthropological context to which
narcissism belongs.
This issue could seem a little too simple for specialists. Ritvo (1990),
Sulloway (1992) and Wallace (1983) have already shown that Freud was
dealing with an anthropological model he had known for a long time. But
our purpose is slightly different. Following the third chapter of Totem and

* Address for correspondence: Universit Paris VII, U.F.R. Sciences Humaines Cliniques, 107
rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis B.P. 120, 75463 Paris Cedex 10, France. E-mail: pat-ricia@
wanadoo.fr
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Taboo, we would like to show how Freud used this anthropological

perspective to set up a special kind of narcissism the original narcissism
which interfered with the understanding of neurosis. We will also see that this
anthropological influence stems directly from the Haeckelian notion of
history of development (Entwicklungsgeschichte) which connects narcissism
to a philosophy of history. We will finally give consideration to the way
narcissism was introduced into psychoanalysis in order to grasp the issues
covered by its various meanings.
The mistake of the primitive man
At the beginning of the third chapter of Totem and Taboo, it seems that Freud
was ready to provide his sources of information, as he made references to
works by Wundt, Tylor, Lang, Spencer and Frazer. To define animism he
followed Humes definition which he found in Tylors work: there is an
universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves
and to transfer to any object those qualities with which they are familiarly
acquainted and of which they are intimately conscious (SE, XIII: 77; GW,
IX: 956; see also Hume, 1993: 141). Freud turned this behaviour of the
primitive man into the first stage of the minds evolution: The human race,
if we are to follow the authorities, has in the course of ages developed three
such systems of thought three great pictures of the universe: animistic (or
mythological), religious and scientific. (SE, XIII: 77). Further on, he called
this three-phase evolutionary process history of the development of the
human visions of the universe.1 Thus, as Wallace (1983: 1215) showed,
this history was not purely a Freudian creation, and traces of it can be found
in the works of the so-called authorities from whom Freud borrowed ideas
about magic and sorcery. He reproduced Tylors principle concerning magic:
mistaking an ideal connection for a real one, a phrase which he repeated
several pages later, this time accompanied by a quotation from Frazer: men
mistook the orders of their ideas for the order of nature, and hence imagined
that the control which they have, or seem to have, over their thoughts,
permitted them to exercise a corresponding control over things (SE, XIII:
83, 87; GW, IX: 98, 103).2
Freud continued to follow Tylor, Frazer and thus Hume when he
explained that the magical phase was the result of associations of ideas. The
primitive man thought and acted according to resemblance and contiguity;
and in replacing the laws of nature by psychological ones he was mistaken.
Freud proposed to justify this associative theory by a dynamic factor, the
immense belief in the power of his [the primitive mans] wishes (SE, XIII:
83). Like the child who begins by satisfying his wishes in a hallucinatory way,
the primitive man used a motor hallucination (SE, XIII: 859; GW, IX:
1026) which was the manifestation of the omnipotence of his thoughts.
Freud was well aware of the pejorative significance of these quotations
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from Hume, Tylor and Frazer, for he specified that he intended to drop the
accompanying moral judgment (beigefgte Werturteil) (SE, XIII: 79; GW, IX:
98). However, we may wonder whether Freud really could adopt the principle
without having to accept the judgement. What makes it doubtful is that this
conception of the primitive way of thinking is a part of a specific philosophy
of history. Consequently, we have to understand how this philosophy of history
is taken up to explain the beginning of the childs psychic life.
From one history of development to another
According to Freud, the primitive mans solipsistic manner of functioning
can be spotted in neurotic people and a history of obsessive acts development
(Entwicklungsgeschichte der Zwangshandlungen) can even be traced in those
suffering from obsessional troubles.3 This unusual history is nothing more
than a series of symptoms and magical acts transforming evil wishes. The
term history of development turns out to be a leitmotiv that punctuates
Freuds demonstration and reveals his Haeckelian heritage.
At this point of the comparison between obsessional neurosis and the
primitive mans behaviour, Freud abruptly embarked on another historical
or rather evolutionary view:
If we are prepared to accept the account given above of the history of the
development of the human visions of the world (Entwicklungsgeschichte der
menschlischen Weltanschauungen) . . . it will not be difficult to follow the
vicissitudes of the omnipotence of thoughts through these different
phases. (SE, XIII: 88; GW, IX: 108)

Thus,
At the animistic stage men ascribe omnipotence to themselves. At the
religious stage they transfer it to the gods but do not seriously abandon it
themselves, for they reserve the power of influencing the Gods in a variety
of ways according to their wishes. The scientific view of the universe no
longer affords any room for human omnipotence; men have acknowledged
their smallness and submitted resignedly to death and to the other
necessities of nature. (SE, XIII: 88; GW, IX: 108)

Freud then returned to the individuals libidinal development, stating that

the exaggerated value which the neurotic person confers on his or her
thoughts was a manifestation of narcissism:
If we may regard the existence among primitive races of the omnipotence
of thoughts as evidence in favour of narcissism, we are encouraged
to attempt a comparison between the phases in the development of
mens view of the universe and the stages of an individuals libidinal
development.

Thus, the animistic phase corresponded to narcissism, the religious phase to

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object-choice and the scientific phase to adaptation to reality by renouncing

the pleasure principle (SE, XIII: 90; GW, IX: 111).
The if seems to testify to Freuds hypothetical approach, but in fact
it confirms the recapitulation law by the dual equivalence: animism =
omnipotence = narcissism. The Freudian reasoning is therefore entirely
based on anthropological data to which he stuck the notion of narcissism.
Freud described such a narcissism as original:
I will only briefly allude here to the fact that the original narcissism
(ursprngliche Narzissmus) of children has a decisive influence upon our
view of the development of their character and excludes the possibility of
their having any primary sense of inferiority (SE, XIII: 90; GW, IX: 111).

Original narcissism is thus an initial awareness of ones ego that is prevalent

at the very beginning of ones existence, and which at that time verges on
immeasurable pride. However, narcissism is also a prerequisite for any reaction;
it determines the first defence mechanisms against exterior provocations, a
mechanism which Freud called projection. The cultural evolution, like the
libidinal evolution, entails a progressive reduction of this original narcissism
and of this omnipotence. The numerous quotations make it clear that the
German text (more than its translations!) focuses on the reconstruction of
two histories: on the one hand, the history of libidinal development that
leads to the understanding of neurosis, and, on the other, the history of
human visions of the world that leads to an understanding of animism.
Selfishness or the beginning of human history
Freuds demonstration ends up with the assertion that narcissism is the very
first stage of individual development as well as that of the human species.
Freud quoted authors like Spencer who also thought that, in the beginning,
human feelings were stamped with a primordial selfishness which was
progressively replaced by altruistic feelings. For Spencer, the feeling of
property had a biological and psychological origin deriving from a basic
appetite. Spencer also linked pleasure and satisfaction of desires to instinctive
necessities. In many respects, he provided a very good example of how a
philosophy of history could be expressed by using terms of a scientific
doctrine (Spencer, 1899).
In Germany, Fritz Schultze devoted much reflection to drives in the
framework of this historical perspective. Psychologie der Naturvlker (1902)4
describes a selfish and aggressive Naturmensch, whose only concern is to
satisfy his primary drives. At the other end of the evolutionary process the
Kulturmensch, who has developed secondary drives, is turned towards the
objects of the world and is always willing to work in order to conquer them
(Schultze, 1902: 142, 20954).
Like Schultze and Spencer, Freud thought it was need (Not) which forced
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man to adapt himself to reality. Thus, sexual drives became opposed to the
dynamics of discovery and to the taking into account of reality. It would
therefore be possible to consider this history of the development of the
human visions of the world as a sexual degeneracy, and the access to reality
as a progressive inhibition. From this point on, we may wonder if by
opposing original narcissism to reality, Freud did not imprison his sexual
theory in an evolutionary ideology.
About the origin of this Freudian anthropological views, Wallace asserted
that Nietzsche, like Hume, broached a dim anticipation of Freuds
projective system; Nietzsches derivation of the soul, spirit, and gods from
primitive misapprehension of dreams probably also reflects anthropological
sources (Wallace, 1983: 16). But Wallace overlooked the fact that Nietzsche
(1996) had challenged the conception of an introverted primitive man.
Nietzsche was opposed to Re and Spencer, and denounced these English
psychologists, these historians of morality, these microscopic researchers
of the soul who had read Darwin and thought in an essentially unhistorical
manner in basing morality on the antagonism between selfish and altruistic
feelings. This text was written in 1887 and testifies to the philosophers revolt
against a conception of history which stemmed from the theories of
association (Hume) and evolution (Spencer). These came to be known as
Social Darwinism (Nietzsche, 1996: 913) and underlie Freuds conception
of original narcissism.
History of religion: the late discovery of the true God
The fact that Freud found Humes sentence in Tylors book informs us that
this reasoning was not specific to the nineteenth-century Darwinians. Upon
reading The Natural History of Religion we understand that the theory of
association was used to support a certain historical perspective: the way
towards the discovery of Divine Providence. Hume demonstrated that the
savage imagined God was in his own image, i.e., full of passion and
imperfections. By switching from polytheism to monotheism, man became
closer to the truth. Once man finally managed to perceive the perfection of
nature, once his spirit had raised from base to superior thoughts, he could
only conclude that God existed and that He was omnipotent (Hume, 1993:
1413). Of course, neither Freud nor Tylor subscribed to this idea of
progression towards the revelation of the True Divinity; Freud only quoted
Hume in order to make readers understand that the world perceived by the
primitive man was the reflection of [his] internal world (SE, XIII: 85; GW,
IX: 105). It has been observed that from the outset the childs and the
primitive mans sexual development was determined by the mechanism of
projection, and only at a late stage by the discovery of the object. It should
be noted that such a tropism (discovery of the true God at a late stage),
based on eighteenth-century Christian theology, was to be resumed in an
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identical manner in Hegels Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1975).

According to him, it was not relevant to talk in terms of religion when
considering the savage because:
Religion begins with the awareness that there is something higher than
man. But this kind of religion is unknown to the Negroes. The character
of the Africans shows the antithesis between man and nature in its earliest
form. In this condition, man sees himself and nature as opposed to one
another, but with himself in the commanding position; this is the basic
situation in Africa, as Herodotus was the first to testify. We can sum up
the principle of African religion in his declaration that all men in Africa
are sorcerers. This is, as a spiritual being the African arrogates to himself
a power over nature, and this is the meaning of this sorcery. Even today,
the reports of the missionaries carry the same implication. Sorcery does
not entail the idea of a God or of a moral faith, but implies that man is
the highest power and that he alone occupies a position of authority over
the power of nature. (Hegel, 1975: 1789; original italics)

What is of great importance here is that both Hegel and Hume presumed
that the savage was unaware of the true nature of God as the Supreme
Organizer and the Supreme Being, and was thus led to animism.
Consequently, the savage endowed himself with omnipotence. In fact, Freud
was far from seeing the stamp of a philosophy of history or of the
manifestation of Christian theology in such a historical perspective. At this
point he quoted all the titles of the works dealing with natural history, a
term upon which Hume himself had based his theory of religion. Thus, while
arguing so abundantly in favour of Natural History, Freud most certainly
intended to remain faithful to his old ideal of naturalist (Naturforscher).5
The fact that a philosophy of history had invaded anthropology and even
the anthropological works of Freud would not be so worrying for us if the
main points of this Weltanschauung did not so perfectly coincide with the
stages of the history of the libidos development (Entwicklungsgeschichte der
Libido) described by Freud in 1911 in Schreber (GW, VIII: 296). We are
therefore bound to wonder if the various stages of the development of the sex
drive are not the offspring of a philosophy of history rather than that of
clinical observations.
The meaning of history, a Freudian Weltanschauung
If we had to sum up what Freud and many others imposed on the history of
mankind, we should highlight the following points:
1. The beginnings: illusion, omnipotence of thought and narcissism.
2. Evolution: reduction of narcissism through an adaptation to reality. Such
an adaptation is triggered by need (Not or Ananke).
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3. Causality: Man sought satisfaction and pleasure. The evolution of the ego
was regarded as a slow progression from a most radical practice of the
pleasure principle to its qualification caused by the principle of reality.
Thus, the historical conflict led to the acknowledgement of the laws of
nature as well as to the struggle of science against the religious illusion
(Copernicus, Darwin, Freud).
Let us now consider another document which will enable us to understand
how Freud rallied such a historical perspective. In 1909 a book entitled Der
Sinn der Geschichte (The Meaning of History) was published in Vienna. Its
author Max Nordau, although now slightly forgotten, was then widely
known. He was a writer, chronicler and editor of the Neue Freie Presse, the
daily newspaper that Freud read. Thanks to Jones (1953), we know that
Freud visited Nordau during his stay in Paris in 1886. Apparently, Freud
considered him as conceited and stupid and did not seek to meet him
further. However, Freud did remain in contact with him (Jones, 1953).6
Nordau was a doctor and a former student of Charcot and in 1892/1893 his
book entitled Entartung (Degeneracy) met with great success. He also was to
become one of founding members of the Zionist movement.
Backed by many quotations from Schiller, Kant, Mommsen, Simmel, etc.,
Nordau demonstrated that the ego of the historian dominated all his writings
because history was nothing but a tale told by a storyteller. For him,
historical writing was unaware of historical reality (Nordau, 1909: 68, 25).
Having made these observations, Nordau wanted to reconsider history
from a scientific standpoint. It is 1909, and here is the basis of his new
historiography:
1. The beginnings of history are stamped with illusion (Wahn), as the
association of ideas encouraged dreaming rather than facing up to reality:
The psychic work through which people obtain an image of the world
which coincides with reality was the result of a considerable effort. It was
through art that man satisfied his inclinations and drives: to a certain
extent illness was nothing but a persecution (Qulerei) by an invisible,
and sometimes visible, enemy, and death a mere outward appearance
whereas eternal life was what was real (Nordau, 1909: 45962).
2. Evolution: In the ideal world of illusion in which man banished all misery
and suffering, he established a reign of justice and love that counteracted
the real world and his adapting to it. Nordau states, I define history as
a set of episodes in the human struggle for existence. It was the first ice
age that forced man to evolve (Nordau, 1909: 16, 1545, 453, 467).
3. Causality: All historical processes derive from needs, i.e., from unpleasant
feelings whose purpose is to preserve life. (Nordau, 1909: 4512)
Finally, Nordau also came up with a historical conflict: historical writing was
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an example of this conceit of man who rebelled against the theory of

Copernicus. In his anthropocentric illusion, man overstated his importance
and the significance of his species. He was the victim of his illusion of
grandeur (Nordau, 1909: 1045, 44752).
For all those who have read Freud, this will inevitably ring a bell! Upon
reading Der Sinn der Geschichte it is impossible to deny that the evolutionary
theory produced a vision of history (Geschichteanschauung) whose mechanisms
appeared in their most crude form in Nordaus work. It is also undeniable
that Freud himself used such mechanisms to describe the historical course of
mankind. And it appears that narcissism stemmed from a philosophy of
history popularized by the Haeckelian anthropology.
190911: opaque narcissism
In 1909, the year Nordaus book was published, Freud wrote his Rat Man
and added this short remark on history:
. . . we must above all bear in mind that peoples childhood memories
are only consolidated at a later period, usually at the stage of puberty; and
that this involves a complicated process of remodelling, analogous in
every way to the process by which a nation constructs legends about its
early history. It at once becomes evident that in his fantasies about his
infancy the individual as he grows up endeavours to efface the recollection of
his auto-erotic activities; and this he does by exalting their memory-traces
to the level of love-object, just as a real historian will view the past in the
light of the present. (SE, X: 2067; GW, VII: 4278; original italics)

Thus Freud, like Nordau, downgraded the historian to the rank of an

anachronistic storyteller. Now, as Vichyn (1988) showed, this unattractive
portrait of the historian was to be taken up many times in Freuds works.
This took the form of a set formula which ran thus: peoples, like historians,
create legends to hide their beginning, a beginning which they could not be
proud of. This formula can be found in Leonardo (1910), The Lectures
(1916), Wolf Man (1918) and in Selbstdarstellung (1924).7
Could this be considered as a reaction against what Smith-Dengler (1982)
regarded as the seminal influence of humanistic education? In Rat Man
anyway, as in nearly all Freudian texts, this vision of history is opposed to the
hypothesis concerning the reality of infantile seduction, a seduction which
the patient puts forward to conceal a straight history of practices concerning
onanism (Geschichte der onanistischen Sexualbettigung).8 This formula was
used, together with the hypothesis of narcissism, to cast away the threatening
shadow of seduction.
Sulloway (1992: 467) found that narcissism had already been described by
Havelock Ellis, Ncke and even Binet. He added that it was one of the
inconsistencies in psychoanalytic theory, a monistic view of instinct which
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controverted Freuds long and adamant dualism in explaining mental

activity (pp. 3956). But Sulloway did not take into account the underlying
clinical issue.
In 1909, besides writing Rat Man, Freud was engaged in a debate with
Sadger over the role of narcissism in homosexuality. This exchange between
the two men lasted several years and was commented on by Vichyn (1984).
The whole point of it was trying to understand why the homosexuals sought
their own image in others. Was there an identification with the mother as a
primary object, or an identification with objects that the mother preferred? It
is not the answer that matters here, but the fact that at that time narcissism
always appeared as a symptom. It was necessary to go beyond it, to delve
into the patients history and to identify the seduction experienced by the
child.
In December 1910, while he was writing Schreber, Freud became positive
about this issue. In describing the stages of the history of the libidos
development, he explained that the paranoiac was stuck at the stage of selflove the narcissism stage and that the resulting homosexuality was
absolutely not produced by infantile seduction. Freud slowly progressed
towards a new conception of narcissism, which Vichyn called opaque or
even without object and which was not introduced in the debate with
Sadger. It is precisely this opaque narcissism that is to be found in the third
chapter of Totem and Taboo under the name of original narcissism.
The years 190910 thus turn out to be a crucial turning point in the
elaboration of Freuds theory. It was as if Freud had found in this Haeckelian
historical perspective a support for his distrust of history. Did Freud read,
browse through or merely hear about Nordaus ideas? Did he then guess that
this original narcissism without object would be the solution to these
embarrassing issues with which he was again confronted when he considered
the part played by homosexuality in Schrebers paranoia? Was this guess
inspired by Nordaus criticism of historical writing and by what he proposed
should replace such writings? As early as 1910, Freud had come across a way
of linking the history of the libidos development to an evolutionary view of
history, which he was to name history of the development of the human
visions of the universe in Totem and Taboo.
* * *
We have been able to demonstrate that Freud had inherited a Weltanschauung,
i.e., a vision of the beginnings of the primitive world. This was not only an
anthropological perspective but also an authentic philosophy of history from
which he derived his studies on the child. Furthermore, it is this evolutionary
viewpoint which Freud used to support what Jean Laplanche (1993) has
called the misleading biologization of sexuality by Freud (le fourvoiement
biologisant de la sexualit chez Freud).
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The narcissism issue appears to have been a Trojan horse through which
all the views known as history of development (Entwicklungsgeschichte) were
introduced into psychoanalysis. Although since Freud people have pretended
to have erased all substrate of this Haeckelian philosophy (Ritvo, 1990), the
theory of psychosis and of borderline disorders still bears the stamp of these
beginnings. Thus, in the psychoanalysis field it is almost universally thought
that the psychoses (Freuds narcissistic neuroses) are fixations at a very early
stage of the childs development. Likewise, if an Other is included in the
causality of such psychoses, this would tend to involve an anaclitic object or
rather the problematic lack of anaclisis. However, this Other is not
considered as an object of seduction which has provoked an immeasurable
sexual excitement in the child. Moreover, the psychosis issue continues
almost systematically to induce a pseudo-dialectics concerning the access to
and rejection of reality. This is a further consequence of this historical
perspective according to which the beginnings of both the species and the
individual were the era of omnipotence, introversion and hallucination.
Notes
1.
2.

3.
4.

5.
6.
7.
8.

Strachey translated die Entwicklungsgeschichte der menschlischen Weltanschauungen as

evolution of the human view of the universe (SE, XIII: 88; GW, IX: 108).
The English translation by Strachey does not make Tylors sentence stand out. In the
German edition, Freud himself did not put quotation marks on this sentence. He simply
used italics which naturally disappeared in the English version, so that it made Freuds
thinking blend admirably with those of the anthropologists!
Strachey wrote the course of development of obsessive acts (SE, XIII: 88; GW, IX: 108).
An implicit reference by Freud to Fritz Schultze seems to have been overlooked in the
first page of Totem and Taboo; see GW, IX: 5. Freud then speaks of Psychologie der
Naturvlker, putting this expression, which is also the title of Schultzes book, in
quotation marks. Freud actually possessed this work.
Freud (GW, IX: 95, 102) quotes the Natural History of Religion by Hume, the Naturalis
Historia XXVIII by Pliny and Natural History by F. Bacon.
Following the advice of Nordau, Freud sent his Interpretation of Dreams to Herzl in 1902;
see Yerushalmi (1991).
Vichyn (1988) discovered the origin of this reoccurring formula and mentioned all its
occurrences in Freuds work, except in Wolf Man and The Lectures.
In the Wolf Man, however, this curious vision of history was to be used to defend the
hypothesis of seduction.

References
Freud, S. (1940) Totem und Tabu. Gesammelte Werke, Bd. IX (London: Imago Publishing
Co.); originally published 19121913 [referred to in text as GW].
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originally published 19121913 [referred to in text as SE].
Hegel, G. W. F. (1975) Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
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Hume, David (1993) Dialogues and the Natural History of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University
Press); includes The Natural History of Religion, originally published 1757.
Jones, Ernest (1953) Life and Work, Vol. I (London: Hogarth Press).
Laplanche, Jean (1993) Le Fourvoiement biologisant de la sexualit chez Freud (Paris:
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