ABSTRACT:
In this article, our goal is to present some elements relatives to the history of appropriation of the myth of Narcissus by medical-psychiatric tradition, so trying to draw the origins of this important psychoanalytic concept. From a psychopathological point of view, the narcissistic phenomenon, defined initially as a particular form of fetish, began to be considered as a medical problem at the end of nineteenth century. The psychoanalytic appropriation of this notion was made in 1905, by Freud, with the introduction of the concept of autoerotism. The first psychoanalytical definition of narcissism itself, suggested by the Viennese psychoanalyst Isidor Sadger, was given in 1908.
Keywords:
narcissism; Autoerotism; history of Psychiatry; history of Psychoanalysis.