narcissist

Etymology

From 'narcissism,' coined in 1899 by the German psychiatrist Paul Näcke in a study of abnormal self-love, derived from the Greek mythological figure Narcissus (Greek 'Narkissos,' Latin 'Narcissus'). In Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (Book III), Narcissus was a youth of extraordinary beauty who, having spurned all lovers — most famously the nymph Echo, who could only repeat his words back at him — was punished by Nemesis to fall in love with his own reflection in a still pool. Unable to embrace or leave the image, he pined away gazing at himself until he died and was transformed into the narcissus flower. The name 'Narkissos' connects to Greek 'narkē' (νάρκη, numbness, stupor, the paralysis of sensation) from Proto-Indo-European *snerǵʰ- (to twist, to constrict — producing a numbing contraction of sensation). The same Greek 'narkē' gave English 'narcotic' (a numbing substance) and 'narcosis' (induced numbness or unconsciousness). Sigmund Freud adopted 'narcissism' in his 1914 paper 'Zur Einführung des Narzißmus' ('On Narcissism'), giving the word its clinical meaning: libidinal energy directed wholly inward at the self rather than outward toward others. The form 'narcissist' — one characterised by narcissism as a personality organisation — followed as the type was codified in psychiatry. The word carries two interlocking etymological strands: the mythological proper name of a beautiful self-absorbed youth and the somatic Greek word for numbing paralysis, implying that self-absorption is a kind of self-administered anaesthetic — the world outside goes numb while the self remains the only living thing. Key roots: narkē (Greek: "numbness, stupor (possibly)").

Narcissist traces back to Greek narkē, meaning "numbness, stupor (possibly)".