Narcissistic mortification

Narcissistic mortification is a term first used by Sigmund Freud in his last book, Moses and Monotheism,^[1] with respect to early injuries to the ego/self.

It has recently been defined by Mary Libbey as “the primitive terror of self dissolution, triggered by the sudden exposure of one's sense of a defective self...death by embarrassment”.^[2]

The concept has been widely employed in ego psychology; and also contributed to the roots of self psychology.

Early developments: Bergler, Anna Freud, and Eidelberg

Edmund Bergler developed the concept of narcissistic mortification in connection with early fantasies of omnipotence in the developing child, and with the fury provoked by the confrontations with reality that undermine his or her illusions.^[3] For Bergler, “the narcissistic mortification suffered in this very early period continues to act as a stimulus throughout his life”.^[4]

Anna Freud used the term in connection with her exploration of the defence mechanism of altruistic surrender, whereby an individual lives only through the lives of others – seeing at the root of such an abrogation of one's own life an early experience of narcissistic mortification at a disappointment with one's self.^[5]

Ludwig Eidelberg subsequently expanded on the concept in the fifties and sixties. Eidelberg defined narcissistic mortification as occurring when “a sudden loss of control over external or internal reality...produces the painful emotional experience of terror”.^[6]

He also stressed that for many patients simply to have to accept themselves as having neurotic symptoms was itself a source of narcissistic mortification.^[7]

Kohut and self psychology

For Kohut, narcissistic injury - the root cause of what he termed narcissistic personality disorder – was broadly equivalent to the humiliation of mortification.^[8] Kohut considered that “if the grandiosity of the narcissistic self has been insufficiently modified...then the adult ego will tend to vacillate between an irrational overestimation of the self and feelings of inferiority and will react with narcissistic mortification to the thwarting of its ambitions”.^[9]

Object relations theory

Unlike ego psychologists, object relations theorists have traditionally used a rather different, post-Kleinian vocabulary to describe the early woundings of narcissistic mortification. Recently however such theorists have found analogies between Freud's emphasis on the sensitivity of the ego to narcissistic humiliation and mortification, and the views of Bion on 'nameless dread' or Winnicott's on the original agonies of the breakdown of childhood consciousness.^[10] At the same time ego psychologists have been increasingly prepared to see narcissistic mortification as occurring in the context of early relations to objects.

In the 21st century

Mary Libbey has recently highlighted anew how intolerable mortification underpins narcissistic defences and narcissistic character structure.^[11]

She also sees change in the analytic encounter as deriving from the mortifying re-experience of overwhelming object loss.^[12]

Literary uses

Narcissistic mortification at injuries to self-esteem has been seen as pervading Captain Ahab's motivations in his confrontation with Moby-Dick.^[13]

See also

References