The Legend of Narcissus

The Legend of Narcissus
Author(s): Martin S. Bergmann

Source: American Imago , Winter 1984, Vol. 41, No. 4, OTTO RANK: A CENTENNIAL
TRIBUTE (Winter 1984), pp. 389-411
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26303609
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The Legend of Narcissus 389
The Legend of Narcissus*

This essay deals with three quasi-mythological figures
which illuminate some of the complexities in loving. They are
the figures of Narcissus, Pygmalion, and Hermaphroditus.
All three derive from Ovid,1 whose life was contempo
raneous with the birth of the Christian era. Ovid's place in
the history of love is assured on the basis of two of his
books: The Loves (Amores), and The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria).
The three mythic figures are not logical concepts.
Hence, Narcissus is not interchangeable with self-love. For
Narcissus embodies a particular extreme form of self-love
which results in death. Even when Freud abstracted terms
from myths as he did when he coined the term Oedipus
Complex out of the myth of Oedipus and narcissism out of
the mythical elements of Narcissus, these concepts retained
residues of the mythic. Thus, Kernberg can say that narcis
sists do not really love themselves.
According to Ovid, Narcissus was a youth of wondrous
beauty. His mother, the nymph Leirope, was ravished by
the river god Kephissos who encircled her with his winding
streams. Leirope consulted the prophet Tireseas whether
Narcissus would reach old age. The seer answered "only if
he never knows himself." Edwards (1977) pointed out that
the significance of the seer's answer (si se non noverit) was
Ovid's ironical reversal of the classic Greek ideal: "Know
thyself" inscribed on the temple in Delphi.
The beautiful youth has many suitors, men, women,
*This essay is part of a forthcoming book The Anatomy of Love. An abbreviated

version of this essay was read before the Michigan Association for Psychoanalysis
at the Seventh Annual Richard and Editha Sterba Lecture on Saturday, March 31,
1984, with Dr. Richard Sterba as disscussant.
American Imago, Winter 1984, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 389-411.
Copyright © 1984 by Association for Applied Psychoanalysis, Inc., Brooklyn, New
York, 11218.
1 Ovid was not one of Freud's favorite authors. Freud quotes him only once
in discussing the wishful aspects of dreams (1916-1917, p. 215). "Though the
strength is lacking, the will deserves to be praised," The irreverent mocking poet
of Roman decadence probably had little appeal to the serious-minded young
Freud.

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390 Martin S. Bergmann
water nymphs, and mountain nymphs. He rebuffs them all.

One of the dejected suitors prayed to Nemesis, the goddess
of vengeance, imploring her to afflict Narcissus with the
pain he had caused those who loved him. Nemesis granted
the wish.
Among those enflamed by love for Narcissus was the
unhappy nymph Echo. Echo's story is of special relevance to
the myth. While Jupiter was dallying with nymphs, Juno
driven by jealousy went looking for him. Echo detained her
with stories long enough for Jupiter to escape. As a punish
ment, Juno condemned her to be unable to converse, never
to be able to utter the first word, but also never able to
remain silent when someone else was talking. This is how
Ovid describes the meeting:
Out of the woods she came with arms all ready to fling
around his neck, but he retreated: "Keep your hands
off," he cried, "and don't touch me. I would die before
I would give you a chance at me." "I'd give you a
chance at me," is all that poor Echo could reply.
(Metamorphosis, Book III, Humphries translation)
The reader will note that the nymph has some residual
power to decide where she would begin to echo. She uses
this power to communicate her feelings. She repeats only
what she wishes to communicate.
Returning from the hunt, exhausted from the summer
heat, Narcissus reaches a fountain whose waters are unruf
fled, never having been disturbed by man or beast. He looks
into the smooth and silvery water, and while he quenches his
thirst, a new thirst seizes him, for now he is smitten by love
for the image that stares at him from the water. At first, he
does not recognize the image as his own. Then comes the
moment of truth: "I am him." From this crucial phrase, he
knows that it is his own reflection he is in love with. Still, he
cannot tear himself away and succumbs to the fire that con
sumes. Evan at the banks of the Styx (the river that in Greek
mythology segregates the dead and is their abode), he gazes
into the water at his own image. Before he dies, Echo once
more appears to him, but is unable to tear him away from his
image. When those who loved him wish to give Narcissus a

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proper burial, they discover that a flower with a saphron

colored rim and white petals had appeared on the spot
where he died. The flower is still named after him. (Bunker,
1947, noted the etymological relationship between "Narcis
sus" and "narcotic." The flower was believed to have a stupi
fying vapor that could induce a death-like sleep. He also
noted that the name daffodil, a genetic variant of the narcis
sistic flower, derives its name from the Greek, asphodel, the
abode of the departed souls.)
According to Wieseler (1856), statues of Narcissus were
erected in Roman times near waters as well as on graves. At
times, the statue of Narcissus was accompanied by a statue
of Eros holding the torch upside down signifying death.
In another variation (not by Ovid), Narcissus kills him
self out of guilt. He had been particularly cruel to one of his
suitors when he sent him the sword with which the lover
killed himself at Narcissus' door. In this version, the myth
(Freeman Sharpe, 1943) warned the adolescent Eronemos
not to be haughty and spurn the love of the Erastes.
In still another version, Narcissus was the son of En
dymion and Semele, the Goddess of the moon. Endymion
was given a special boon by Jupiter—to die only when he so
desired. Thus favored, Endymion fell in love with Juno and
had intercourse with her reflection in a cloud. For this
transgression, he was sent to Hades with the ability to sleep
for eternity. Hence his affinity with the moon. The love
between Endymion and the goddess of the moon had great
attraction for poets and was the subject of a long poem by
Keats. That Narcissus is the son of Endymion, the eternal
sleeper, fits well into Freud's view that during sleep we re
gress into primary narcissism.
Another version of the myth is reported by Pausanias
(fl. c. 150 A.D.), (9-31-8), the famous traveller and geogra
pher who left ten volumes describing his travels in Greece.
In this version, Narcissus did not know at first that he was
looking at his own image, for he was mourning the loss of a
beloved twin sister: the siblings grew up close to each other
and regarded themselves as mirror images of each other.
They dressed alike and grew their hair in the same fashion.
It was the sister's image that Narcissus first believed he had

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rediscovered in the water; the discovery that he was looking

at himself was a relief from his mourning for the lost twin.
Understood properly, variants of myths contribute to the
understanding of the myth itself.2 The eternal mourning by
a brother for a lost sister or its reverse is a theme Shake
speare used frequently, and introduces the theme of Her
maphroditus into that of Narcissus. The two are not identi
cal, but they are related as both the ancients and psychoana
lysts have noted. Narcissus represents the archetype of love
for one's own body; Hermaphroditus, on the other hand,
represents the wish to be both sexes (Kubie, 1974). The fact
that the Hermaphroditic theme was introduced by Pausa
nias into the myth of Narcissus by making him mourn the
loss of his twin sister shows that the ancients too felt that the
love for the self and the wish to be both sexes are related.
The variation of the myth of Narcissus by Pausanias
makes Narcissus capable of narcissistic love. When his twin
died, Narcissus regressed from narcissistic love to narcissism
proper. A further distinction can be made. In Ovid's ver
sion, Narcissus dies of primary narcissism (never having
loved anyone besides himself). In Pausanias' version, he dies
of secondary narcissism, which results from a regression of
the flow of the libido back to the self after the loss of a
narcissistic love object.
2 In psychoanalytic work, we encounter misremembering myths and fairy

tales, or alternatively, condensations of two or more stories into one. These can be
understood as private variations on the myth. Such distortions are of special inter
est to the psychoanalyst; they suggest that the personal need of the analysand did
not coincide perfectly with the psychological need of the teller of the myth. Under
such conditions, the analysand creates his own version without being aware of
having created a distortion (Bergmann, 1953). An example of such a distortion
may be of interest in the current context.
While free-associating, my analysand told me that Rome was founded by the
twins Romulus and Regulus. Of the two, my patient continued, only Regulus
survived because he was so punctual and regular in his daily habits including his
toilet training, that his parents allowed him to survive.
Unknowingly, my analysand substituted Regulus for Remus. In history,
Regulus was a Roman Consul. He was captured by the Carthaginians and was
freed temporarily to carry a message back to Rome with the proviso that he return
to captivity if the proposals were not accepted. When he came to Rome, he urged
his countrymen to reject these proposals even though this meant his own death.
Living up to his promise, he returned to Carthage where he was tortured and
killed. This heroic and sacrificial conduct must have impressed my analysand, but
in his unconscious, the masochistic morality of the consul was transformed into the
punctuality of toilet training; hence the misremembering.

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The first to use the myth of Narcissus for philosophical

purposes were the Neoplatonists. For Plotinus (the founder
of Neoplatonism 205-270 A.D.), Narcissus was an example
of a youth who was lured away from divine beauty by the
deceptive beauty of appearance. He had not yet learned to
close his eyes to the beauty of the body and open them to
the beauty of the soul. In the writings of Ficino, the leading
Neoplatonist of the Renaissance, Narcissus is the soul of a
bold but inexperienced youth, who falsely admires the weak
body and seeks its reflection in flowing water. His fate is a
warning for the soul not to desert its own beauty and search
in vain to catch it in a shadowy body.
That it was Nemesis and not Aphrodite that punished
Narcissus obscures the similarity between Hippolytus and
Narcissus. It was Ovid's way of including self-love under the
domain of Aphrodite and therefore to see self-love as a
form of love. And, as such, it has remained up to later
developments. It was due to Ovid that, in Sonnet 62, Shake
speare can take it for granted that while self-love is sinful, it
is nevertheless a form of love. Narcissus personifies self-love
but one that leads to death. He also pesonifies a form of
self-love which rejects all forms of narcissistic love such as
that pesonified by Echo. Also, the image in the water should
be seen as a particularly unresponsive type of love-object.
Psychoanalytic Interpretation
In the first years, psychoanalysts examined myths to
confirm Freud's findings (Rank, 1912) that dreams and
myths are equivalent. Abraham (1909) found that dreams
were private myths and myths were collective dreams. With
the introduction of psychoanalytic ego psychology (1923),
the emphasis changed. Arlow (1961) stressed that myths
transmit the values of a culture; they help to mold individu
als to fit into a given culture. They can also be educational,
helping the ego to obtain mastery over the id.
Arlow (1964) also suggested that myths play an impor
tant role in the education of the younger generation. As
different societies have different ideals, they also have dif
ferent mythologies. Mythology can therefore be used as an

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index of the type of unconscious conflicts among members

of the group. Ovid recorded this in his Metamorphoses. The
myth of Narcissus can also be seen as an educational en
deavor to combat the danger of narcissism.
It was Plato who uncovered narcissistic love. In the
Phaedrus (255), Socrates explains:
the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself,

but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover,
both cease from their pain. But when he is away, then
he longs as he is longed for, and has love's image, love
for love [antieros] lodging in his breast.
(Jowett translation)
To Plato, all love was narcissistic and hermaphroditic,

whereas to Freud, narcissistic love was only one type of love.
Freud has used the term narcissism as did Havelock Ellis
and Naecke, but he did not make use of the myth itself for
the understanding of narcissism. Nevertheless, Freud's de
scription of narcissistic love gives us a tool to interpret this
myth. Here, I only emphasize that narcissistic love is a love
for a person other than the self, perceived subjectively as
part of the self.
The concept of narcissistic love can solve some of the
riddles associated with the myth of Narcissus. It enables us
to understand the connection between Narcissus and Echo.
So far as I know, this connection has remained unexplained
by mythographers. Echo could neither start a conversation
nor remain silent after another stopped talking. To be
unable to start a conversation is a symbolic way of saying
that Echo lacks an independent self. To be compelled to
comment when someone else is speaking is a symbolic way
of saying that Echo clings and cannot separate. To love a
woman who has no independent self burdens the narcissist
less than the demands made by a woman who has an inde
pendent personality and will. Bunker (1947) noted that
Narcissus was not even capable of a narcissistic object
choice, and this led to his doom.
Chekhov, in a masterly short short story called "The
Darling," describes such a woman. She marries a number of

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times, and her interests and philosophy alter completely

with every new love without a trace of an inner struggle.
Checkhov's "Darling" is a delightful figure, but in clinical
practice we encounter her as Helene Deutsch's (1942) "as
if"
the individual's whole relationship to life has something

about it which is lacking in genuineness and yet out
wardly runs along "as if" it were complete. Even the
layman sooner or later inquires, after meeting such an
"as if" patient: what IS wrong with him or her?
To the analyst it is soon clear that all these relation
ships are devoid of any trace of warmth, that all the
expressions of emotion are formal, that all inner expe
rience is completely excluded. It is like the perfor
mance of an actor who is technically well trained but
who lacks the necessary spark to make his impersona
tions true to life.
The same emptiness and the same lack of individual

ity which are so evident in the emotional life appear
also in the moral structure. Completely without char
acter, wholly unprincipled, in the literal meaning of the
term, the morals of the "as if" individuals, their ideals,
their convictions are simply reflections (emphasis mine)
of another person, good or bad. Attaching themselves
with great ease to social, ethical, and religious groups,
they seek, by adhering to a group, to give content and
reality to their inner emptiness.
[pp. 263-266]
Mythical Echo becomes the clinical "as if" which we under
stand as a developmental failure to internalize.
The Myth of Pygmalion
Ovid recounted another tale that deals with the subject

of narcissistic love but ends happily. The story of Pygma
lion, which antedates Ovid, is found in Philostephanos. Ac
cording to this version, Pygmalion was Cyprian king or king
priest who fell in love with the statue of Aphrodite. Ovid

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transformed this tale and made Pygmalian a sculptor who

was so upset at the behavior of the priestesses of Aphrodite
that he resolved to remain chaste. These priestesses had
denied the divinity of the goddess and had been punished
by her by losing all sense of shame. Once they lost shame,
they practiced incest.
Sacred prostitution was part of the worship of the god
dess of fertility throughout the Middle East. Both the He
brews and the Greeks, however, found the institution of
sacred prostitution morally offenseive. This is reflected in
the myth of Pygmalion, which transforms the sacred prosti
tutes from Aphrodite's priestesses into rebels against her.
After Pygmalion decided to remain chaste, he created
an ivory statue of a woman whose beauty surpassed all liv
ing women. He fell in love with the statue, caressed and
kissed it, brought it gifts of flowers and ornaments, covered
it with precious garments, and called the statue his wife. At
a festival to Aphrodite, Pygmalion made an offering to the
goddess and prayed: "If you can give all things, oh gods, I
pray my wife may be—(he almost said my ivory girl, but
dared not)—one like my girl." Aphrodite granted the wish.
Under his kisses and embraces, the statue came to life. "He
kissed her and she seemed to glow, he stroked her breasts
and felt the ivory soften under his fingers." Thus, Aphro
dite granted what Pygmalion preconsciously desired but did
not dare request. He was granted not only the right to
create his love but also to bring her to life in the sexual act.
Pygmalion was creative as an artist as well as a lover.
Psychoanalytic Interpretation
The full impact of the story becomes clear if we com

bine the two versions. Aphrodite grants Pygmalion, who
may have been her priest, the wish to have sexual inter
course by bringing her statue to life. If art and religion are
sublimations of the sexual drive, then Aphrodite's gift is an
example of re-sexualization. In the Middle East, sacred
prostitutes symbolized Aphrodite and were her substitutes.
The Greek Pygmalion refused this compromise and became
chaste; by refusing the symbolic representation of Aphro

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dite, he obtained the goddess herself by resexualizing the

work of art.
What is tragic in the story of Narcissus has a happy
ending in Pygmalion. As long as Pygmalion loved merely a
statue, Ovid hints, the relationship was masturbatory. When
she came to life, it was transformed into a narcissistic rela
tionship. Narcissus could not even love Echo; Pygmalion fell
in love with his own creation. Hermaphroditic wishes may
also be latent in the Pygmalion tale. We may assume that
Galatea represented the artist's own feminine aspects. If so,
then the artist was trying to bring his own feminine wishes
to life. The hermaphroditic wish is a greater stimulus to
creativity than the self-absorption of Narcissus. A Pygmal
ion-type of love is evident in many relationships where the
beloved is not idealized but one of the partners tries to
transform or mold the mate so that the mate will become
the ego ideal.
Velveteen Rabbit, a popular children's story by Majorie
Williams, gives us a clue that the transformation of the in
animate and yet loved object into an animate being may
have its origin in what we call the transitional object (Winni
cott, 1951). In popular language, the transitional object is
often called "the hugger." In the story by Williams, Velve
teen Rabbit is inseparable from the boy; although it be
comes increasingly dirty and torn, this had no visible effect
on the love of its owner. After a bout with scarlet fever, a
malevolent physician decreed that all toys associated with
the scarlet fever must be thrown away. Under this edict,
Velveteen Rabbit was discarded. At that point in the story,
Velveteen Rabbit shed a real tear, out of which emerged the
nursery's magic fairy, who kissed and embraced the dis
carded Velveteen Rabbit, and made him come to life and
live happily ever after as a real rabbit in the forest.
It may happen that the need for a transitional object is
retained into adulthood. I know the case of an adult man
who confessed to his girlfriend that he could not sleep with
out some of his childhood toys. Their relationship was ce
mented when he discovered that she, too, needed her tran
sitional objects. They travelled happily across the country,
taking their respective transitional objects with them. After

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this trip, both noticed with amazement that they had lost
the need for the transistional object. This is indeed a psy
choanalytic fairy tale. It is conceivable that Pygmalion's
Galatea initially was such a transitional object.
The psychoanalytic understanding of perversions
opens still another door to the interpretation of the Pyg
malion tale. What happened to Pygmalion is the very op
posite of what transpires in fetishism and transvestivism.
In these perversions, the disappointment in the partner is
so great that the mate is replaced by some inanimate ob
ject. Unlike the living being, the fetish does not change,
has no wishes, and makes no demands. Pygmalion may
well have been such a fetishist before his wish was granted.
In that case, Aphrodite can be seen as a therapist who
helped him find the road back from fetishism to hetero
sexuality. Ovid gives us no further details. Did Galatea
become a real woman with her own personality, or did she
remain a statue endowed with locomotion and sexual re
sponsiveness? If she did become a real woman, would Pyg
malion be capable of accepting her individuality? Was he
able through this miracle to develop a human relationship?
Did the statue acquire both life and human independence?
Can one expect Galatea to love her creator or will she have
to find her own mate once her birth into womanhood has
been accomplished? To all these questions, Ovid gives no
answer. In Pygmalion, Bernard Shaw showed that, psycho
logically speaking, divine intervention is not necessary for
narcissistic love. The Pygmalion story is repeated in the
play though the education of a gutter snipe. Shaw should
be credited with the insight that Pygmalion is a variant on
the theme of Narcissus. The character of Professor Hig
gins is a composite of the two.
The Pygmalion story, so delightfully told by Ovid, rests
on deeper anxiety-evoking foundations. For an inanimate
object coming to life evokes feelings of the uncanny. In an
essay on the uncanny, Freud (1919) recapitulated Hoffman's
story where the student Nathaniel, already engaged to a real
woman, falls in love with the mechanical doll Olympia. In
Freud's interpretation, the mechanical doll (created by Na
thaniel's father in the split image of the all-bad father, the

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evil magician) represents the student's feminine wishes to

wards his father. Because these passive wishes are so strong,
he falls into what Freud called "senseless and obsessive love"
for Olympia. Freud concluded that relinquishing a real love
for a real woman in favor of a doll that represents Nathan
iel's own femininity is a form of narcissistic love, but because
it also transformed gender identity, we may also call it her
maphroditic love. Freud concluded ruefully:
The psychological truth of the situation in which the
young man, fixated upon his father by his castration
complex, becomes incapable of loving a woman, is
amply proved by numerous analyses of patients whose
story, though less fantastic, is hardly less tragic than
that of the student Nathaniel.
(Freud 1919, footnote, p. 232)
Psychoanalysts found that the creative urge in men is to a
significant degree a sublimation of men's envy of woman's
capacity to bear children. When this envy becomes too
strong, the artist may wish that his art work could come to
life, and when this wish becomes too strong, sublimation
may be partly or entirely undone. One of the reasons why
we admire Van Gogh's paintings is that they suggest the
intensity of being alive. Yet Van Gogh himself complained,
"Why am I so little an artist that I always regret that my
pictures are not alive?" (quoted in Gross and Rubin, 1973,
p. 353).
Following his psychotic break, the painter Edvard
Munch (1863—1944) arranged his paintings like sentries to
protect him from the outside world. He also mistreated
them by exposing them to cold weather. He could not bear
to be separated from them (Gross and Rubin, 1973). In
Munch's psychosis, the inanimate world came to life. I
would assume that he inflicted on his pictures the kind of
punishment that he himself suffered as a child. It is pictures
representing himself as a child, which he abused as he had
been abused by his parents. He also used the pictures for
the oppostie need as protective parents.
In Ovid's tale, there is no trace of the uncanny feeling
associated with the inanimate becoming animate. But we

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know that this is usually connected with a regression to

infancy. A nine-year-old girl told Judith Kestenberg:
"What I believe about dolls," she said, "is that they can
do things they will not let us know about. Perhpas Em
ily [the doll] can read, talk and walk, but she will only
do it when people are out of the room. That is her
secret. If people knew that dolls could do things they
would make them work. So, perhaps they have prom
ised each other to keep it a secret. If you stay in the
room, Emily will just sit there and stare. But if you go
out, she will begin to read perhaps or go and look out
of the window. Then if she heard either of us coming,
she would just run back and jump into her chair and
pretend she had been there all the time."
(Kestenberg, 1968, pp. 468-469)
The subject could be pursued further to include the cre

ation of the Golem by the twelfth-century rabbi of Prague
and the story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
The Myth of Hermaphroditus
As indicated, Narcissus and Hermaphroditus are re

lated both mythologically and psychologically.
The story of Salmachis and Hermaphroditus also
comes from Ovid. The water nymph Salmachis did not en
joy the hunt, preferring to look at herself in the water mir
ror and comb her lovely hair. Hermaphroditus, the son of
Hermes and Aphrodite, was a beautiful lad fifteen years
old. Like Narcissus, he came to a pool translucent to the
very bottom. It was the pool that Salmachis was using as
mirror to her self love. She sees Hermaphroditus, admires
his beauty, desires him and pleads for kisses. Hermaphrodi
tus is reluctant. Salmachis lures him into the water and once
there, serpentlike, she coils herself around him. She prays
to the gods, "May no day ever come to separate us." Her
prayer was answered. Their bodies merged, becoming one
person, both man and woman. While she finds happiness in
this merger, Hermaphroditus prays that all who enter the

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accursed pool emerge from it with half their masculine

strength. This story is an obvious variant of the fable told in
Plato's Symposium, but there, both lovers desire to become
one. In Ovid's version only the woman is made happy
through the union; the man feels castrated by it. Before
Hermaphroditus appeared, Salmachis was a narcissisa.
United forever with the male figure, she is transformed into
the hermaphroditic pair.
Jessen (1912) has examined the origin of the Hermaph
rodite in Greek culture. He found it rooted in their pro
nounced theory of bisexuality and in the general fear Greek
men had of women. In many Greek provinces, there was a
custom that on the wedding day brides and bridegrooms
exchanged their garments. In other provinces, it was the
custom of the bride to enter the nuptial bed dressed as a
man. In Cyprus, Aphrodite was worshipped as a bearded
goddess. There are a number of stories in which men are
transformed into women, and vice versa. The stories of
Iphis and Tiresias are the best known. In the fourth cen
tury, statues of Hermaphroditus became popular. Herma
phroditus was usually depicted as a full-breasted young
woman with a penis.
Basic psychological themes undergo little if any change
in the course of history. I will now quote a nineteenth
century French poem put to music by Sibelius.
The Tresses
He told me: "Last night I dreamed.

I had your tresses around my neck.
I wore your locks like a dark chain
Around my neck and on my breast.
I caressed them and they were my own;
And we were thus forever united,
By the same tresses, lips upon lips,
As two laurels often have but one root.
And gradually, it seemed to me,
So much were our limbs entwined,
That I became you,
Or that you entered into me, like my dream."
When he had finished,

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He gently laid his hands upon my shoulders,

And he looked at me with a glance so tender
That I cast down my eyes and trembled.
I suspect that most readers will respond negatively to
such a frank expression of Hermaphroditic love. They may
even find it offensive. However, the poem convincingly
demonstrates that hermaphroditic love is a form of love.
In a sublimated form, we find the same wish in Eliza
beth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portugese:
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life,
. . .What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
Elizabeth Browning's love feelings are more acceptable to us

because, although she is united with her lover, the two re
tain their individual autonomy. In the earlier poem, how
ever, the love object has been entirely taken over by the
dreamer.
While Narcissus resides, so to speak, in the center of
the psychoanalytic edifice, Hermaphroditus occupies a
peripheral position. The difference between the two is due
to an accident of psychoanalytic history. Under the influ
ence of Fliess and before he discovered the Oedipus Com
plex, Freud came close to assigning to bisexuality the ma
jor role in the etiology of neuroses as well as perversions.
Had this view prevailed, Hermaphroditus as a mythologi
cal image would have occupied the place of honor now
held by Oedipus. Some of this formulation still survives in
Freud's Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality (1905b).
In this theory, the neurotic suffers from the repression of
the other half of his Hermaphroditic self while the pervert
exhausts himself in a hopeless attempt to live out this im
possible position. In a historic passage (1905b pp. 141—

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149), Freud rejected psychic hermaphroditism as the basic

explanation for neurosis and perversion. While bisexuality
was given a subordinate place in Freud's thinking, it re
mained nevertheless an important component in every
neurosis. In 1908 (b), he emphasized that in psychoanalytic
treatment we must always be prepared for any symptom to
have a bisexual meaning. Masturbation in particular re
tains its hold over many people as the preferred form of
sexual expression because it lends itself to the feeling that
one represents both genders. Freud (1908b) cited a case of
a woman who with one hand pressed her dress down de
fending herself against a sexual attacker, while with her
other hand she played the role of the man and tried to
tear her dress off (p. 166).
In her personal memoirs, Helene Deutsch (1973) re
called a dream she had while in analysis with Freud in
which she had both a masculine and feminine sexual organ.
Freud told me only that it indicated my desire to be
both a boy and a girl. It was only after my analysis that
it became clear to me how much my whole personality
was determined by the childhood wish to be simultane
ously my father's prettiest daughter and cleverest son.
(p. 132)
This is an interesting example of self-analysis carried
out after the termination of the analysis with Freud. One
can observe in this passage how Helene Deutsch subordi
nated her bisexual wishes to her Oedipus Complex. As she
puts it, she wished to be both boy and girl to capture the
total love of her father.
In 1974, Lawrence Kubie published a long paper, The
Drive to Become Both Sexes. The title itself is of special inter
est: psychoanalysts do not speak lightly of drives, which are
psychological forces that operate below the surface and
never emerge directly in the psychoanalytic relationship; all
that psychoanalysts actually deal with are drive derivatives,
which appear in the form of wishes and dreams. For Kubie
to assign the wish to be both sexes the status of a drive was
by itself a challenge to traditional psychoanalytic way of
formulating psychoanlytic theory. Kubie took Virginia

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Woolf s (1928) Orlando as his basic text. Orlando has had

the capacity to fall into a trance and be reborn as a woman.
Kubie describes how, after Orlando's gender transmutation,
"she" lives as both man and woman. "Thus in this fantastic
marriage to herself-himself, she achieves the transmutation
so often sought with tragic futility in sex and marriage,
especially in neurosis and psychosis."
Kubie goes on to ponder the paradox that the human
race has been divided into sexes since time immemorial. One
would assume that gender identity had become deeply and
permanently engraved. But every psychoanalyst discovers
that even heterosexual men and women harbor the wish, if
not the drive, to be both sexes. The wish is dominant in all
perversions (p. 355). Kubie concludes with the observation
that, throughout his life, the human being is destined to
search for an idealized image of a bisexual father and
mother which will replace the parents. The wish to remain
forever the bisexual infant cared for by this imaginary bisex
ual partner is part of everybody's unconscious.
At this point, I would like to pay homage to Ovid as a
profound psychologist. Like Plato before him, Ovid ex
pressed his psychological insights through fables. The con
cept of narcissistic love enables us to see similarities between
a number of fables by Ovid which would otherwise not be
seen as having a common theme. In most variations on the
myth of Narcissus, there lurks in the background a narcissis
tic love object which takes the mythical form of Echo or a lost
twin sister. The abode of the nymph Salmachis is so similar to
that of Narcissus that Ovid must have been at least preconsci
ously aware of the fact that the two stories have something in
common. I call such a love hermaphroditic.
I would like to conclude this discussion with some com
ments on mirroring. Echo, the double, the self-portrait, as
well as twins can all be seen as metaphors for the mirror.
Whenever we reflect upon a subject, some metaphorical
mirroring is involved. One of Freud's most powerful meta
phors for the role of the analyst was to be a mirror to his
patients and reflect back only what is given to him. Elkish
(1957) presented interesting cases where psychotic children
demanded that adults repeat verbatim what they have said,

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thus becoming self appointed Echoes. These children also

spent hours looking at themselves in the mirror and, while
doing so, like Narcissus, they were oblivious to the environ
ment. Elkish felt that these children tried to retrieve in their
mirror images what they feel they have lost, their sense of
self or their ego boundaries. They also fight off sadness by
mirroring themselves. The artist can create his own mirror
when he paints a self-portrait. Rembrandt's unending fasci
nation with his own self-portrait comes to mind. What Elk
ish found to be true for psychotic children adds a deeper
dimension to the understanding of the self-absorption of
Narcissus. It is an emergency mechanism which restores the
sense of self as it also replaces the absent mirroring mother.
This seems to be the reason why the mirror had re
tained an uncanny aspect. Mirror-gazing is considered
dangerous particularly during a mourning period when
mirrors have to be covered. On psychoanalytic grounds, I
assume that the custom protects the mourner from convert
ing the process of mourning into self-love. Conversely,
there are customs which make it obligatory for a bride to
gaze into the mirror before her wedding, presumably to
increase her self-love before she gives herself to the bride
groom (Rohéim 1919). In recent psychoanalytic writings
(Lacan, Winnicott, and Kohut) the metaphor of the mirror
has been revived to describe the early relationship between
mother and her baby. Thus, Kohut (1971) speaks of the
mother's inadequate capacity to mirror which creates a de
fective sense of self in the child. The reader will note that
the mirror in Ovid is a non-responsive love object. Kohut
changed the meaning of mirroring and gave it a positive,
responsive connotation. In the light of these observations
the mirror of Narcissus can be seen as a psychological emer
gency device by which the child who has received inade
quate mirroring from the parents attempts by self-mirror
ing to make up for this deficiency. A clinical vignette may
help clarify this connotation. A homosexual man whose
mother died in his infancy was in the habit of dressing up in
women's clothing, including a wig, and masturbating in
front of a mirror. At first, the therapist thought that this
was only a reenactment of the hermaphroditic wish includ

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ing the affirmation of the phallic woman. In the course of

treatment, the idea became conscious to the patient that,
dressed as a woman, the image that stared at him from the
mirror was the mother as he imagined she looked before
she died.
The fact that the mother of Narcissus was the water
nymph Leirope has suggested to MacDougal (1980, p. 301)
that the pond into which he is gazing in vain represents the
non-responsive mother. In that case I would say that her
unresponsiveness has resulted in a deficiency in narcissism
and he has to learn to love himself before he can love
another. The fable represents a self-cure that has failed. An
analysand of mine recalled how, during long stretches of a
desolate childhood, she yearned for a twin sister. Particu
larly, when she was alone in crowds or in a movie, she
expected her twin sister to materialize and cry out, "I have
been looking for you everywhere." They will both love each
other and be happy. This daydream was resorted to when
ever the patient felt lonely.
The Myth of Narcisus in Medieval Christian Literature

That the myth of Narcissus has abiding unconscious
meaning is further demonstrated by the fact that it has
intrigued generations of writers in the Christian era. The
first Christian version of this myth comes from an unknown
Norman-French poet in the twelfth century. It has been
beautifully re-told by Frederick Goldin (1967). I will follow
his account although my understanding of the story differs
from his. (It is of interest to note that the name of Freud
does not appear in Goldin's book.) In this medieval version,
Narcisus (there is a change in spelling of the name) is an
ordinary mortal. The nymph Echo is replaced by a princess
named Dane. At first Dane does not know that she has
fallen in love; she only suffers from insomnia. She wakes
her nurse to change the sheets because she feels that her
bed is too hard. Slowly she recognizes that her sickness is
love, and Narcisus the only cure. She implores him to re
quite her love, and when she is rebuffed, she prays to the
God of Love that Narcisus be punished like herself. The

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punishment of Narcisus does not come from Nemesis but

directly from Amors, the God of Love. (His fate is thereby
brought in line with that of Hippolytus.) He is punished
because he refused to love. To the Christian poet, self-love
is not a form of love but an act of disobedience of love's
commands.
Narcisus comes to a fountain, and falls in love with an
image he believes is that of the nymph who guards the
fountain. The homosexual motif in Ovid has become het
erosexual. Narcisus cannot take his eyes from the image he
sees. "Her" face, figure, hands, every part of her body is
bewitching. He calls on the image in the water in terms
taken directly from Ovid.
Come here! Why do you hold back? Why are you

haughty towards me? I am hardly less beautiful than
you. My love has been sought by many. Now I feel
clearly how it was with them . . . Speak to me, come
forward! Wretched me ... She doesn't hear what I am
saying . .. Her lips are moving, but I cannot hear what
they are saying . . . When I sigh she sighs, when I weep,
she does the same . . . Either she wants to mock me or
else she is unable to come . . .
This is followed by the moment of recognition. The mono

logue continues:
I well know that the seer spoke the truth, my death is

near ... I have put my love in a mad place . . . Now
that I know the truth I cannot have any hope . . . Be
fore at least the sight was a pleasure to me . . . now I see
nothing ... I love myself, it is madness.
In the medieval variant, Narcisus and Hermaphroditus

have merged. At this point, the differences between the late
pagan and the Christian medieval view of the world become
sharply manifest. Narcisus continues his soliloquy:
Why does my mother not know anything about this? If

she came she could at least pity me and weep for me.
She might comfort me somewhat—at least there is that
maiden whom I found so beautiful the other day. . . .

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who begged me to love her ... I was so hard-hearted

and villainous she could never please me . . . perhaps
she would be able to save me, more than my mother,
father, or sister, if I could turn my heart to her, and so
bend my heart that I will forget this frenzy ... If I had
seen someone other than myself (in the water) I would
not be in this predicament. If only she would by chance
come now! She could be quite sure that she would win
my love and she would cast me out of this languishing.
Dane rushes back, but she comes too late; Narcisus has
fainted. He has lost his power to speak. (In this version,
Narcissus becomes Echo.) By his gestures he conveys to her
that he had repented of his harshness. He holds out his
arms, moves his lips to show her that he is now capable of
loving. Dane cannot stand the thought that her own cruel
prayer was the cause of his death. There is no comfort for
her; she must die with him.
Guilt, remorse, and Liebestod differentiate the medieval
Narcisus from the classical. In a truly Christian fashion,
Narcisus dies a repentent sinner.
From a psychoanalytic point of view, it is of interest to
note that Narcisus first remembers his mother, father, and
sister, and then his thoughts turn to the woman who loves
him. The author intuitively understood that the road back
from narcissism to love leads through the revival of the
infantile and incestuous love for the parents.
Another medieval version of the myth of Narcisus is
found in the Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris. In
this story, the hero is a dreamer who, in his dream, walks in
a garden and discovers the fountain of Narcisus. A plaque
explains that Narcisus died here; the dreamer is pierced by
Amor's arrow. Because the dreamer knows the story of
Narcisus, he will escape death, but he has to go through a
long inner struggle.
This is a pernicious mirror where proud Narcisus

gazed upon his face. ... In a painful moment I saw
myself there, misery! How much I have sighed since I
became aware of it.

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Goldin (1967) beautifully illustrates how a number of

poets of courtly love understood the similarity between nar
cissism and their worship of "the lady." They see that they
only loved themselves when they worshipped her. In their
own way, they knew the territory that psychoanalysis was to
conquer, namely the close relationship between narcissism
and masochism. We can learn from the medieval poets that
narcissism, when projected on the beloved, can become
masochism.
Alas how much I thought I knew about love and how

little I really know! For I cannot keep myself from lov
ing her from whom I shall have no requital. She has all
my heart, and me, and herself, and all the world; and
when she has thus taken all from me she leaves me with
nothing but desire and longing of the heart. Never
have I had power over myself nor been mine own,
from that moment when she let me look into her eyes
into a mirror that pleased me so much, till now, since I
beheld myself in you, my deep sights have killed me,
for I have lost myself as the beautiful Narcisus lost him
self in the fountain. (Bernard de Ventadorn; in Goldin
1967, p. 95.)
Translating de Ventadorn into psychoanalytic lan
guage, we can say that, through self-analysis, he learned
that he has exchanged self-love for a narcissistic love object.
The eyes of the beloved were the treacherous mirror in
which he lost himself. For this piece of self-analysis, he de
serves our admiration.
The story of Narcisus continues into the Renaissance.
Spenser (1552-1599), in the Faerie Queene, Book Three,
tells the story of Britomart, a feminine knight of chastity
who innocently looked into an enchanted glass which was
given to her father by the magician Merlin; the glass had
the power to reveal anything wished for by a lover. At first,
Birtomart saw only her own image; but when she thought
of what would pertain to herself, an image of an unknown
knight, Artegal, rose in the mirror. At that point, the "false
archer" shot her, but so slyly, that at first she does not even
feel the wound, but signs of love appeared: she became

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anxious and melancholy without realizing she was in love.

An old nurse recognized her symptoms, and tried to com
fort her, but Britomart insisted that her situation was hope
less. Her reasoning shows how well Spenser understood
narcissism—he makes Birtomart feel hopeless because her
knight is nothing but a mirror of her own fantasy. She
never met the knight of her love, only saw his likeness in
the mirror. Spenser thus shows deep understanding of the
dangers of narcissistic love. To my knowledge, he is the first
to recognize that mirror love, even when it is heterosexual,
is not love, a significant departure from the Greek tradition.
One analysand, disappointed in the woman he had
chosen, ruefully observed: "When I fell in love I wrote the
whole scenario myself and only later looked around for a
cast of characters."
Martin S. Bergmann
1130 nttn Ave.
New York, NY 10128
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The Legend of Narcissus

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Author(s): Martin S. Bergmann

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