By ANSELM JAPPE*
O The narcissist is much more than a fool smiling at himself in the mirror: he is a central figure of our time.
President Emmanuel Macron, always concerned about the competitiveness of French industry, certainly gave a boost to a very specific production: that of the word “narcissist”. From the book La pensée perverse au pouvoir from Marc Joly (Anamosa, 2024), which is based on the concept of “narcissistic perversion” by psychoanalyst Paul-Claude Racamier, to the indefatigable essayist Alain Minc, a repentant Macronist, for whom the president’s actions now simply “reflect a narcissism taken to a pathological level, with the corollary of a total denial of reality” (Le Monde, 11. 12. 2024), the word “narcissist” has never been used so much in politics as in recent years.
In everyday life, whether in the workplace, social relationships or married life, for decades people have been talking about the “narcissistic pervert” and his ability to manipulate those around him. The list of publications dedicated to this topic, both professional and for the general public, continues to grow.
The term “narcissist”, introduced in 1914 by Sigmund Freud in his eponymous essay and for a long time confined to the psychoanalytic sphere and its jargon, became common usage: it then meant, roughly, “selfish”, “egocentric”, “greedy”, “manipulative”, “lacking empathy”, “without consideration for others”, but also “excessively concerned with self-image and the search for recognition”, or simply “in love with one’s body and eager to seduce”.
Narcissism evolved throughout the 20th century: treated by Freud as a rather marginal pathology, compared to the importance of neuroses due to the repression of desires in his time, narcissism “conquered” little by little an increasingly important role, both in psychoanalytic discourse and in common consciousness.
It seems quite obvious that this evolution is linked to the deepening of capitalist relations in all spheres of life and, in particular, to the neoliberal phase of capitalism since the 1980s: any notion of collective solidarity is explicitly rejected, the welfare state and other structures of mutual aid are dismantled and the logic of enterprise and competition is extended to the whole of life. Everyone is invited to individually conquer his or her place in life, using all means and without worrying about the consequences for others or for society as a whole.
“Possessive individualism,” the pillar of liberal political theory, can be summed up in Margaret Thatcher’s phrase: “There is no such thing as society.” It triumphs everywhere: not only in the spheres of command, where it has always reigned, but at all levels of society. Narcissistic perversion would then be nothing more than the openly pathological side of this competitive mentality that contemporary capitalism constantly encourages, and even makes indispensable for its survival. It indicates the point at which the behaviors necessary for the functioning of the system run the risk of becoming non-functional and disrupting the functioning of the mega-machine, since they result in a denial of reality and destroy the minimum level of trust between individuals, without which not even the capitalist way of life could continue.
However, the connection between the increase in the “rate of narcissism” and the development of capitalism in the 20th century also exists on another level. Freud distinguished between “primary narcissism” and “secondary narcissism”. Primary narcissism constitutes a fundamental stage in the psychic development of each individual. The small child is not yet able to confront the outside world and compensates for his real impotence with an imaginary omnipotence: he denies his separation from the mother figure and feels connected to the world. External objects, especially people, are perceived only as extensions of the self, and frustrations are denied through hallucinatory satisfactions.
This is followed by the “Oedipal” phase, in which the child experiences an external world that opposes his unlimited desires (Freud's initial formulation of a father who prevents his child from accessing his mother was later recognized as being just a particular case, and linked to the context of the time, of a much broader psychic logic).
This renunciation of omnipotence represents a severe defeat for the child, but it also opens the way for him to recognize external reality – the “reality principle” – and thus to obtain limited but real satisfactions. However, this renunciation of childish desires can also be felt as unbearable – and in this case, the subject could limit himself to a more or less feigned recognition of reality, and continue, without realizing it, to interpret reality according to his previous non-separation from the world and his previous omnipotence. Thus, he sees people and objects as mere projections of his inner world. In severe cases, this attitude can lead to serious difficulties – but it often goes unnoticed and can even bring advantages in social life, especially in contemporary life.
In fact, “secondary narcissism” – resulting from the denial of the Oedipal situation – is “in phase” with postmodern, neoliberal capitalism, just as the personality marked by Oedipal neurosis – almost the exclusive object of Freudian investigation – was the psychic counterpart of the “classical” phase of capitalism. The renunciation of unlimited desires in exchange for identification with a protective and authoritative figure allows for a realistic knowledge of oneself and one’s own limits, and eventually a considered opposition to the world as it is. But it can also result in blind submission to authorities and hatred of one’s own desires – and this psychic structure can last a lifetime.
Classical capitalism, which was born with the “Protestant ethic,” developed in the 19th century and found its fulfillment in the so-called “Fordist” phase. It required individuals to work hard, save, enjoy as little as possible, and submit themselves throughout their lives to figures of authority: father, teacher, police officer, priest, boss, civil servant, president, or king. This permanent injunction often created submissive slaves or even enthusiasts (for example, in nationalism), but it could also stimulate opposition and revolt.
From around the 1960s onwards, capitalism has undergone a profound transformation that is constantly accelerating. Structures based on submission to authority, pyramidal hierarchies, repetition of the same and the repression of desires have not completely disappeared – and have even recently returned – but they are diminishing in the “third spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski/Chiapello).
In their place, we celebrate flexibility, networks, unbridled consumption (even on credit), horizontality, the differentiation of lifestyles, creativity, autonomy, individualism. Even if reality is often far from these promises, it is true that the typical individual in contemporary society is not “rigid”, does not submit his desires to a superego consisting of internalized prohibitions, does not “forbid himself anything” and is constantly encouraged to “believe in the reality of his desires”.
Often, identities are no longer defined by work, which can easily change, but by consumption, whether material or symbolic. In the “liquid society” (Bauman), the “man without gravity” (Melman) who performs “work without quality” (Sennett) fluctuates according to the stimuli given to him by the consumer machine.
An assertive character, unshakable convictions, loyalty to one’s origins, family, work, place, and way of life were the traits that defined a “solid”, “serious”, and “trustworthy” person in the previous phase of capitalism. Today, they are yet another obstacle to the individual’s “self-realization,” preventing him or her from taking advantage of all the “opportunities” that life seems to offer. The narcissist fits this situation perfectly: without a deep personality, without attachments, only looking for immediate pleasure and committed to the permanent construction and reconstruction of his or her “personality” according to the demands of the moment, he or she does not really love anything, because people and objects are interchangeable in his or her eyes.
It is to the credit of American sociologist Christopher Lasch for giving the concept of narcissism a social, and not just an individual, dimension in his books The culture of narcissism (1979) and Le moi assiégé. Essay on the erosion of the personnalité (1984). He notes a generalized psychic regression, in which the “adult” character, born of the Oedipal conflict, with its strengths and defects, gives way to behaviors marked by the archaic desire to magically deny the original separation. He finds this form of narcissism in phenomena as diverse as the complete management of life by bureaucratic organisms and large corporations, pseudomysticism New Age, minimalist art, the massive use of psychotherapies, the omnipresence of technologies in everyday life and seclusion in the private sphere.
However, although Christopher Lasch tries to understand the relationship between the spread of narcissism and capitalism, he does not fully succeed. To do so, it is necessary to refer to the logic of market value, abstract labor and money, which is at the heart of capitalism, yesterday as today. This logic erases all differences, reducing each commodity, regardless of its concrete qualities, to the portion of labor that was necessary for its creation and which is represented in a sum of money.
The market sees no difference between a bomb and a toy, nor between the labor required to produce them. This indifference to all content is an essential difference between capitalism and previous systems of exploitation and oppression. For a long time, capitalism struggled to free itself from pre-capitalist remnants and achieve its “pure” form, where subjects float freely, with commodities – material and immaterial – as their only horizon and guide. This is where narcissism triumphs, oscillating between the anguish of impotence and the intoxication of omnipotence.
Narcissistic logic, like commodity logic, reduces everything to the same thing and denies the autonomy of objects and people. Just as commodities are mere interchangeable “supports” of a quantity of labor and money, for the narcissistic subject, the world outside himself consists only of projections and extensions of his inner world – and this inner world is poor, because it is not enriched by contact with external objects and people, recognized as such.
However, the narcissist cannot escape the feeling of emptiness and the frustrations that the impossible dream of omnipotence brings him: this is why resentment, the inevitable result of narcissism, dominates the political landscape today in the form of racism and populism, nationalism and religious fundamentalism, and even other ways of venting one's hatred on those presumed responsible.
Thus, the narcissist is much more than a fool smiling at himself in the mirror: he is a central figure of our time. And it would be very easy to attribute this only to the rich and powerful, to Macrons and Musk: the desire to free ourselves from all the limits imposed on us by our biological condition, the idea that we have to exhaust all the “opportunities” in life, the use of technology to solve the smallest problem in life are all forms of narcissism. There are narcissists everywhere.
*Anselm Jappe He is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy. Author, among other books, of Credit to death: The decomposition of capitalism and its criticisms (Hedra). [https://amzn.to/496jjzf]
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
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