Narcissus. An article by Murray Stein.

Narcissus. Article by Murray Stein.

Murray Stein, Ph.D., is a member of ISAP/IAAP. He is a teacher, analyst, and supervisor at the International School of Analytical Psychology ISAP-Zurich. He served as President of the IAAP from 2002 to 2004 and as President of ISAP-Zurich from 2008 to 2012. He is the author of several books on analytical psychology.

Translated by Evgeny Ermakov.

Murray Stein donated this book to Sim and Me and gave us permission to publish articles from it. We were preparing this translation for the collection "Initiation of an Analytical Psychologist: The Transmission of Tradition," but didn't have time to publish it. The article was published in the second volume of Murray Stein's collected works "Myth and Psychology," published by Cogito. Our translation, however, remains unpublished. Therefore, with enormous gratitude to the author and translator, we have decided to publish this article on our websites and social media. Enjoy!

Narcissus (1)

History and its interpreters

Interpreters of the myth of Narcissus, its corollaries, and its lessons are numerous and varied. This mythologem has been subjected to analysis and various forms of sermonic hermeneutics by everyone from Neoplatonic philosophers to Christian theologians, literary scholars, and psychologists. (2) The story continues to fascinate us and excite our imagination, despite eluding definitive interpretation. The myth's elusiveness is one of its strengths, and it is precisely this quality that prompts us to deeper psychological reflection. In addressing the mythologem of Narcissus, I will consider several interpretations from the perspective of depth psychology.

The story of the young Narcissus has come to us from antiquity in several variations, with the classic narrative appearing in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In all versions, the main theme of this story is love and unfulfilled passion. It belongs to a group of myths and fairy tales that explore the complexities of erotic love.

Narcissus is a handsome young man who falls in love with his reflection in a pond. Frustrated by his inability to connect with the object of his love, he slowly withers and dies, leaving behind a narcissus flower. It's a story in its most basic terms: one of passionate love, disappointment, and death.

The element that distinguishes this story from other love stories is the nature of Narcissus's love object: his own reflected image. It is precisely this feature of Narcissus's love story that has aroused such interest among its readers and interpreters.

The unhappy end of Narcissus has led many to regard this mythologeme as a cautionary tale. The narcissistic complication amidst the many vicissitudes of the world of Eros is dangerous and destructive; it is pathological and should be avoided. The main problem, however, is determining what exactly should be worried about. Is this story a warning against gazing into still waters? James Frazer argued that the story reflects a primitive belief that water spirits lurk in ponds and streams and are able to abduct the soul (that is, the reflected image of oneself) if it comes within their reach. (3) Or does the story speak of the dangers of vanity, as early Christian commentators believed? (4) Here, interpretations moralize against excessive mirror-gazing, preening, and carnal admiration. Or should we perceive it as a warning against violating other impulses of love, which offend Eros itself? This was the interpretation of the ancient Thespians of Boeotia (5), and it is revived in psychoanalytic discussions of pathological narcissism. Or, finally, should we follow the Neoplatonists and accept this story as a parable of the soul's descent into matter?

Each of these perspectives requires psychological research, and each offers distinct insights that nonetheless coalesce around this fascinating myth and relate to its complex symbolic meaning. In this essay, I will attempt to honor each of these interpretive approaches without necessarily favoring one over the other.

Narcissus and Death

Frazer traces the roots of the Narcissus myth to a primitive belief “that one should not look at one’s reflection in water, lest the water spirits drag the reflection, which is the soul, beneath the water and leave one soulless.” (6) According to Frazer, the original version told of a young man who gazed at his reflection in a pond with such rapture that he forgot the danger and gave his soul to a lurking water spirit, whereupon he died. This version of the story is not found in ancient literature and is purely speculative. Frazer essentially re-mythologized the story. However, rather than criticize him for this, I will attempt to “examine from a psychological point of view” his interpretation. (7)

According to Ovid, Narcissus's parents were Liriope, a "river naiad," and the river god Cephisus. W. H. Roscher, a nineteenth-century German compiler of classical mythology, considered this genealogy of Narcissus to be a mythological way of saying that the narcissus flower originates and appears in the vicinity of rivers and springs. (8) He explains that it is unlikely that anyone can determine whether the flower was named after the youth or the youth after the flower. In any case, both are closely associated with water, and Fraser's deadly water spirit is associated with the youth's mother. Narcissus thus becomes another example (along with Adonis, Tammuz, and other mythological figures) of a young man (puer aeternus) who loses his life by becoming entangled in a mother complex.

Ancient depictions of Narcissus show a soft, lazy youth, drowsily leaning over a pond. His name, like "narcissus," comes from the Greek narke, "stupor." Accordingly, there are various associations, both ancient and modern, with the narcissus flower: it is "beautiful and useless," it "withers after a short life," it is "sterile," it has a "somnificent aroma," and it is poisonous. (9) These emotional responses to the flower also speak to a collective reaction to the youth Narcissus and the state of consciousness he embodies: useless, sterile, poisonous. His lack of masculine virtue and his characterization as a carefree puer aeternus are further emphasized by the similarities between this "tired youth" and such figures as Dionysus, Hyacinthus, Adonis, and the "spirit of rest or death." (10)

The story of Narcissus does not involve a heroic journey into the world, leaving home, facing life, or overcoming the dragon mother. He begins and ends his life with the downward movement of water, into the shadow of death and the underworld. Ovid says that Narcissus sees his imago and umbra in the pond. Vinge notes that "the words for shadow and reflection (umbra and imago) have long remained interchangeable and also refer to the 'shadows' of the dead." She goes on to note that Schickel put it this way: “‘skia’ or ‘umbra,’ a sad word for Eurydice’s existence in Hades, is also used to describe the reflected image of Narcissus” (11), as if Narcissus, looking at his reflection, contemplates his own death and otherworldly existence. Ovid’s story does not end with Narcissus’s death on the shore of the pond; it continues as a journey to the underworld, where, crossing the River Styx, the youth continues to gaze longingly at his reflection in the water. (12)

The narcissus flower is also associated with death and the underworld. According to some sources, Persephone was gathering daffodils when the earth opened and Hades rose to abduct her. Narcissus flowers were often planted on graves and used to honor the dead. At Eleusis, where the mystery of death and rebirth was celebrated, this flower was symbolically used in ceremonies. (13) Opening himself to death and the underworld, Narcissus represents the secret and unconscious eroticism of death; he invites death, courts it, flirts with it, and craves its embrace—craving union with his umbra (Shadow).

Thomas Mann's novella "Death in Venice" is permeated with Narcissian aromas. The fatal passion for a youthful image of all-consuming beauty, the dissolution of ego structure and habits in Aschenbach (whose name means "stream of ashes"), the undercurrent of Dionysian temptations, the sickly sweet scents of decline and decay—all these are themes of Narcissus's mythologem. In both, we sense a passionate desire to experience the mystery of death and a yearning to descend back into the primordial waters of the unconscious.

The loss of a soul in these bottomless depths is tragic from the point of view of the living, who remain to grieve:

In the terrestrial world, the Naiad sisters

They mourned him, and the dryads grieved,

and Echo cried with them,

prepared the burial mound, the stretcher and the torches. (14)

From the point of view of the soul, the descent brings liberation from attachment to the ego, to the ecstasy of its dissolution in the embrace of death.

Narcissus and Vanitas

In early Christian literature, Narcissus became a symbol of vanity and its dangers. Clement of Alexandria expounded on this understanding of the mythologem in his "Pedagogus." Ignoring the male gender of Narcissus, he condemns vanity, especially in women, and uses the figure of Narcissus to illustrate the unhappy end that comes with the cultivation of physical beauty. As Vinge writes, the Fathers of the Christian Church strictly adhered to the notion that "only spiritual beauty is true and worthy of love." (15) Narcissus here personifies a value system that prioritizes appearance, superficial, bodily beauty, and cosmetics. This system lacks depth, morality, spiritual fortitude, and masculine "character."

Clement's comments on Narcissus may lead us into deeper psychological territory, which may be implied by this use of him as an antidote to feminine vanity. He writes, "Even the beautiful Narcissus, as Greek history tells us, did not find happiness in observing his own image." (16) This designation of Narcissus as "an observer of his own image" opens up a different kind of question than the simple vanity described above. One might expect it to be about egocentrism, a focus on one's own exclusive reality, egotism, and it is noteworthy that the Church Fathers did not pursue this line of argument in connection with Narcissus. However, as Vinge points out, Narcissus was never used in antiquity "as an illustration of conscious self-love." (17) Although his story can be understood as a psychologema illustrating the revaluation of materiality and appearance, this further step in its development as a symbol of self-love is blocked by the presence in all the texts of the “illusion motif”: Narcissus does not know that he is in love with his own image.

The story of Narcissus is a true love story, one that reveals his unawareness that the object of his passion is his own image. From Narcissus's subjective perspective, his love is object-oriented: he accidentally discovered a human form of perfect beauty and fell passionately in love with it. Narcissus's realization that he is in love with his own image, that his passion is self-love, not love for another, leads to the tragic denouement of Ovid's tale. This epiphany leads directly to despair and death.

The story of Narcissus parallels that of Oedipus in that the moment of tragic realization lies in the discovery of the true identity of the beloved. While the tragedy of Oedipus is rooted in the horror of mother-son incest and the archetypal incest taboo, the tragedy of Narcissus is rooted in the horror of solipsism and evokes the taboo on vanity. If we assume that taboos are prohibitions imposed on deep, natural tendencies of the libido, then the existence of the taboo on vanity suggests a deep, natural impulse toward loving objectifications (images, reflections) of oneself. In other words, there is a profound unconscious drive toward self-absorption, toward loving oneself in the mirror. The poet Yeats, quoting Shelley, writes: "We are born into the world, and there is something within us that, from the moment we live, craves more and more for its likeness." We have “a soul within our soul, which describes a circle around its true paradise, which pain, sorrow, and evil dare not leap over,” and we labor to see this soul in many mirrors, so that we may possess it more fully.” (18)

Psychologically, the taboo on vanity functions to keep a person "modest," fixating their gaze outward, away from reflections of their own seductive beauty. Looking too long at one's reflection in the mirror, overestimating one's own achievements, and accepting praise too enthusiastically is prohibited precisely because such attention is so captivating and seductive. It diverts a person from extroversion and adaptation to external reality and lures them into private isolation, into solipsism. When Liriope, Narcissus's mother, asked the wise blind old man Theresias whether her beautiful son would live to old age, the seer replied, "Unless he himself knows." (19) Such self-knowledge is dangerous and violates the taboo on vanity.

Narcissus's self-knowledge, however, is of a special kind. In Christian moralizing against Vanitas, Narcissus represents a loving knowledge of appearance and image, an excessive preoccupation with one's own superficiality and outward appearance. Narcissist self-knowledge should be distinguished from Saturnian self-knowledge, which "sees through" the surface of appearance to deeper character traits. Narcissist self-knowledge stems from the anima's relationship to the subject's appearance. In some stories, Narcissus loves his sister (his anima), who loves him back. When she dies, he goes to the water to look at an image that resembles her, and thus their relationship continues on this imaginary level. Narcissist self-knowledge is guided by the anima rather than the spirit, which would be a Christian preference, hence its focus on image and appearance. The inhibition mechanism associated with the taboo on vanity is aimed at overcoming the anima's return to the subject. For the subject, knowing oneself in the narcissistic mode means loving one's most superficial image.

Narcissus and the instinct of reflection

If the Narcissus mythologem is based on the taboo of vanity and the horror of solipsism, its "warning" also speaks of the pathological development of what Jung called the instinct of reflection. Reflexio means "turning back." The libido ceases to move outward toward the object, undergoes "psychization," and "diverts" into the endopsychic realm. (20) Jung ascribes psychological richness and complexity to this instinct. It is a uniquely human instinct, and without it, culture and internal psychological reality would be unthinkable. But, as Jung points out, each instinct (he lists five) has the potential for pathological development. Pathology usually manifests when one of the (five) instincts begins to dominate the others and limit their movement toward satisfaction. Narcissus provides an example of such a pathological development in the reflexive instinct: the activity of reflection (turning to oneself) dominates and excludes the intake of food, ordinary sexuality, activity and the entry of any new thoughts or impulses (creativity).

Narcissus loves his reflection, which, as we saw earlier, is his umbra, his soul. This connection between the reflected self and the soul is age-old, and it is precisely this point that Fraser emphasizes in his interpretation of the myth. Under the influence of the anima, a person loves what they reflect on and reflects on what they love. Narcissus is in love with his reflection and therefore can never leave the still waters of the pond where this activity is possible. He is immersed in the reflection.

As a warning, this story seems to tell us: don't think too much about yourself, don't reflect on your path, don't contemplate your "inner world" of psychic events and images for too long, lest you fall deeply in love with what you see and with this activity itself, lest you become an egocentric (absorbed in the soul) navel-gazer (obsessed with yourself). The taboo ensures that we don't succumb to the instinct to mirror. In a culture as obsessed with action and practical, extroverted behavior as ours, the warnings against excessive reflection and attention to private, inner psychic events are especially harsh. These extreme warnings must be grounded in an extremely strong orientation toward Narcissism.

The danger of going too far along the narcissistic line of love for the soul and reflection lies not only in uroboric self-restraint, solipsism, and intrapsychic incest, but also in suicide. The narcissist essentially kills himself by refusing to eat. This anorexic suicide is motivated by disappointment: the image of the beloved, found in reflection, has no equivalent in the world of objective reality. The danger of narcissistic reflection is that the subject may find a soul image of such overwhelming attractiveness and beauty that he drowns in it and subsequently fails to find equivalent love objects in the external world; his motivation to adapt and engage in life dries up, and he prefers suicide to a second-rate external reality. Such disappointment in what reality can offer, as opposed to what reflection and imagination can produce, overcomes the need to adapt to external reality and poses a threat to the authority of practical-minded fathers. If the real world and its rewards can't compare to the value and beauty of the inner image, why join the system? Why adapt?

Narcissus and Projection

Narcissus's love is a genuine love for another, as opposed to mere egoism, but it is directed toward an image that has no independent reality. Psychologically, his love is purely projective, since what he loves is a reflection of an aspect of himself of which he is unaware. Ovid recounts how this came to be. According to the Augustan poet-lover's story, the enigmatic prophecy of Theresia was realized by Nemesis when she heard the prayer of one of Narcissus's many rejected suitors: "May Narcissus one day love himself like this, and not conquer the being he loves." It was a prayer that Nemesis fulfilled by making Narcissus see herself in a pond.

As Ovid recounts, Narcissus is an exceptionally handsome youth, courted by nymphs, naiads, oreads, and young men, yet he remains completely untouched and cold to their flirtations. This remarkable self-restraint of Narcissus has been commented on by many commentators and has even become one of his fundamental characteristics ("symptoms"). His deafness to the calls of love, to mutual sexual attraction, to relationships with others makes him similar to Hippolytus, the youth who devoted himself exclusively to the virgin Artemis and thereby provoked Aphrodite's angry vengeance. Both youths possess a quality of untouched virginity and innocence, evoking the erotic forces playing out around them, and both pay the price of archetypal retribution for this.

If we look at the psychological phenomenon of passionate love through the lens of Narcissus's mythologem, we come to the conclusion that love and projection are inextricably linked: love becomes possible only when a person finds a suitable reflective surface. From the perspective of this mythologem, the possibility of love is based on the possibility of projection. Passionate love is an experience in which the subject encounters the projection of the soul in the object of love and desperately strives to unite with it. Moreover, the object of love reciprocates and accurately reflects the subject's feelings:

He longs for my embrace.

Why, every time I reach out with my lips

to the sparkling lake,

he raises his face to me.

I could of course touch him,

so thin is this line that separates us from each other. (21)

Here, there is a perfect harmony of desires and feelings. They are both "in the same place"; the lover and the beloved move together in perfect synchrony of thought and feeling. The longing for unity is excruciating: they cannot come together, always separated by a "thin film of water," an intangible, invisible, impenetrable barrier. This mythologem identifies such a passionately desired union as a desire to merge with the unconscious aspect of the subject, and for this reason, it cannot find fulfillment in a relationship with another person. The nature of the attitude frustrates the fulfillment of the desire it ignited. From the perspective of Narcissus's mythologem, passionate love is an impossible love, based on projection and fueled by illusion.

The turning point in Ovid's tale occurs when Narcissus discovers his illusion and acknowledges the projective nature of his love. It is this moment of insight that turns into a tragic climax. He realizes that his love is unattainable, forever removed. The mythologem warns us against projected love, for disappointment will inevitably follow and lead to death. Here, Narcissus's taboo extends from vanitas to projection. The danger of projection lies in the fact that one confuses one's soul with another and loses this part of oneself to the other. But projection, as a reflection of the unconscious soul, also represents an opportunity for expanding consciousness and, in effect, for gaining access to this part of the self. Devaluing the projective experience renders it sterile and devoid of psychological value; it is viewed simply as stupidity or a mistake. This inability to transform projection into further reflection (reflection upon reflection, so to speak), which means continuing reflection after the illusion has dissipated, is a crucial psychological failure in the transition from literalism to a symbolic stance. It is the inability to turn reflection toward the projected content and utilize it creatively. Narcissus could have cured himself by taking another step forward and thereby overcoming his suicidal despair with wisdom.

Narcissus and Narcissism

In psychoanalytic theory, the name Narcissus was initially applied to the phenomenon of autoeroticism, and subsequently the term narcissism came to encompass all forms of libidinal attachment to the ego, all forms of self-love. At some point, Freud defined narcissism as egoism. Havelock Ellis, who first coined the term "narcissism" in an article on autoeroticism, acknowledges the somewhat tenuous connection between myth and psychoanalytic conception. The main problem is that in the myth, Narcissus is unaware of self-love and, as a result, "has never been used as an illustration of conscious self-love." (22) Autoeroticism does not manifest itself clearly in the myth. However, despite these caveats, we can penetrate deeper into the mythologem of Narcissus by considering how it affects the imagination of the psychoanalytic interpreter.

“Narcissistic neurosis” is the term Freud used to describe “a mental illness characterized by the withdrawal of libido from the external world and its direction toward the ego.” (23) This corresponds to the Narcissus we know in Ovid as he was before he fell in love: unreceptive to erotic advances, indifferent to friendship, emotionally withdrawn. “The charm of a child,” Freud wrote, “lies mainly in its narcissism, its self-sufficiency and inaccessibility, like the charm of certain animals.” (24) Narcissistic neurosis is seen as the opposite of transference neurosis: the flow of libido does not flow through the ego to create transference, but remains locked within it, as in a reservoir. (25) Thus, narcissism by definition excludes love for an external object. To the extent that the libido is influenced by narcissism, the person is self-absorbed and unable to show interest in the “other” or the outside world.

In the story of Narcissus, told by the first-century Greek author Conon, the youth is described as “very handsome, but proud of Eros and those who loved him.” (26) Narcissus’s behavior is seen in this story as “a crime against Eros,” and the outcome of his life prompted the Thessalians of Boeotia “to fear and honor Eros more in public services.” (27) This emphasis is consistent with what psychoanalysis finds in Narcissus, for narcissism is also an offense to Eros, object love, and erotic attachment to another person.

An ancient fresco depicts Narcissus leaning on his arm and dreamily gazing into a pond. Behind him stands a small winged Eros, holding a torch and extinguishing it on the ground in front of him. This action signifies the death of Narcissus. (28) In psychoanalytic theory, this is not physical death, but psychosis, since “the group of narcissistic neuroses includes all functional psychoses.” (29) Karl Abraham linked narcissism with schizophrenia: “The mentally ill transfers to himself alone, as his sole sexual object, all the libido that a healthy person directs to the animate and inanimate objects of his environment.” (30) Thus, the increased worship of Eros among the Boeotians (“fear and reverence” for him) can be understood as a preventative measure against psychotic disorders.

The myth of Narcissus appears to function in psychoanalytic theory as a lightning rod for the fear of being locked into a solipsistic system, a libidinal ouroboros. The taboo on vanity reappears in psychoanalysis, but now it has moved away from the Christian view of emphasizing the flesh and physical appearance to include more subtle psychological phenomena such as introversion. “Introversion means an inward turning of the libido,” wrote Jung in his original definition of the term, “in the sense of a negative attitude of the subject toward the object. Interest does not move toward the object, but withdraws from it into the subject” (31). A close similarity between introversion and narcissism is found in the standard dictionary of psychological terms, which defines introversion as “a kind of temperament or personality characteristic of individuals who are interested in their own thoughts and feelings rather than in the world around them.” (32) Freud himself was highly suspicious of introversion. In his General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, he wrote: “The introverted person is not yet neurotic, but he is in an unstable state; the next disturbance of the shifting forces will cause the development of symptoms if he cannot find other outlets for his pent-up libido.” (33) We see here an anxiety about “pent-up libido,” which has nowhere to go except along the uroboric circle.

The psychoanalytic use of the figure of Narcissus draws attention to his psychopathology, as well as to the potential pathology of introversion. This is not to say that extroversion does not also have a pathological (manic) potential, as demonstrated, for example, by Ovid's companion, the nymph Echo: an extreme extrovert, she has no inner life of her own, but merely echoes the sounds of the external world. If one of Jung's proudest contributions was to point out the richness and objectivity of the "inner world" and contrast it with our overvalued extroverted approach to reality, then one of Freud's most cherished, self-conscious missions was to deal a fatal blow to human narcissism (and with it, the egocentric tendencies of introversion). Freud believed that psychoanalysis was the instrument for the third and decisive crushing blow to human arrogance and egocentrism (narcissism, vanitas): the first had been dealt by Copernicus, who had displaced the earth from its central position in the cosmos; the second by Darwin, who had liberated man from his fantasy of uniqueness in the animal world; and the third blow came in Vienna, when psychoanalysis demonstrated the biological roots, and in particular the sexual origin, of the human spirit. All of these play a role in displacing human consciousness from the primitive animistic attitude, which “corresponds both in time and in content to narcissism,” and in its transition to the scientific attitude, to maturity, where the individual, “having renounced the pleasure principle and adapted himself to reality… seeks his object in the external world.” (34)

In Freud's construction of human development, narcissism is viewed as a primitive childhood stage, a position of clinging to the pleasure principle and fantasy and ignoring scientific objectivity: instead of seeing the world realistically and relating to it objectively, the narcissistic subject objectifies his own inner space and relates to this content of fantasy-thought. N. Walder, a pioneer of psychoanalysis, writes that narcissism is characterized by "creating a world for oneself (sich seine Welt zu dichten)", and "we can call a method narcissistic if it allows us to construct constructions from our minds relatively freely and arbitrarily." (35)

The omnipotence of thought, as opposed to the omnipotence of objective scientific fact, Freud wrote, has been preserved in our own civilization, in art. "Only in art does it still happen that a person, absorbed by his desires, produces something resembling the satisfaction of these desires, and this play, through artistic illusion, produces an effect as if it were something real." (36) Art is a return to primitive animism and a narcissistic act of self-gratification for the artist. Like Narcissus at the pond, the artist projects an image of himself onto canvas or paper, and instead of loving (in an adult way) a suitable other, he loves his own image. Here, Freud situates the entire artistic process within the mythologem of Narcissus.

Poetic and artistic imagination is thus rooted in the narcissistic movement of the libido and the thought process. Narcissus, gazing into a pond, becomes an image for imaginative activity, directed outward, toward the imaginary world, rather than outward, toward the objective world. In other words, to access imagination and the imaginal dimension of reality, the functioning of Narcissus in the psyche is required; the psyche moves toward imagination and the imaginal realm through the functioning of narcissism. Narcissism thus becomes a tool for becoming more creative and liberating oneself from the literalism of object orientation. Wallace Stevens's lines from "Tea at Hung Palace" stand in the tradition of Blake, Coleridge, and other Romantic poets who recognized the powerful liberation offered to the human spirit by its capacity for creative activity: "I was the world I walked in, and what I saw, heard, or felt, came from myself." By drawing libido back into the subject, narcissism enlivens the world of fantasy and imagination and activates images from within. Thus, the person's slavish dependence on the object is broken.

Like imagination, archetypal thought is rooted in Narcissus. Jung comments on narcissistic thinking in his discussion of the introverted type. When introverted thinking reaches the extreme of its natural direction, he writes, it loses contact with facts and objective data and develops "ideas that increasingly approach the eternal reality of primordial images." (37) Thought becomes mythological, losing its connection with empirical data and observation. When thought and fantasy become lost in Narcissus and his gaze into the "pond" (the unconscious), they penetrate the archetypal world.

Narcissus and Neoplatonism

While psychoanalysis understands narcissism as a rejection of the objective world (objective reality) and subject-object relationships, Neoplatonists viewed Narcissus as a symbol of the opposite: a hopeless infatuation with and attachment to the material world of objects and phenomena. Neoplatonists focused on Narcissus in love, not on the dispassionate, detached, self-sufficient youth. For these thinkers, Narcissus embodies the victim of illusion, for whom appearance is reality, and thus the tragic entanglement in the seductions of the material world.

This interpretation is reminiscent of that of the Church Father Clement of Alexandria, with whom Plotinus was roughly contemporary. However, the Neoplatonists have a non-biblical myth that could interpret Narcissus's mythologem as a tale of the soul's fall into matter. A late classical anonymous mythographer of Narcissus writes:

For he did not drown in the water, but when he saw his own shadow in the stream of matter, that is, the life in the body, which is the final image of the true soul; and when he tried to accept it as his own, that is, filled with the love of this life, he drowned and sank under the water, as if destroying his true soul, that is, the true life that belonged to him. (38)

As Vinge points out, the identification of the mirror with matter is a common Neoplatonic device: the soul, gazing down from its transcendent state of pure form, sees its reflection in matter and falls in love; when the soul bends down to embrace the object of love, it becomes entangled in the material world and is trapped in corporeality. The soul falls from its purely spiritual state into the gross material world.

The 19th-century German scholar Kreutzer, in his book Symbolik und Mythologie, argues that this Neoplatonic interpretation represents the true meaning of the Narcissus mythologem. He found a parallel to this story in the Orphic myth of the Mirror of Dionysus. Plotinus wrote of this mirror: "The souls of men, seeing their reflections in the mirror of Dionysus, enter, as it were, this kingdom by a leap downward from the Supreme Being." (39) The soul's desire to enter material life is a consequence of its having looked into the mirror, "the very mirror into which Dionysus gazed before he turned to the creation of individual things." (40) The mirror serves to stimulate in the soul the desire for the body, for distinctiveness, for individuality. For the Neoplatonists, this movement also symbolized the descent from unity to multiplicity, from the one to the many, from the Pleroma to Creatura, to use Jung's terminology from his Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead).

The connection between Narcissus and Dionysus, as discussed by Kreutzer and the classical authors Philostratus and Nonnus, is based on a common misconception that (according to Kreutzer) truth and beauty exist in the material world of “ten thousand things,” rather than solely in the transcendental realm to which these things point and which they (deceptively) represent. This illusion is made possible by the “mirror effect” within matter. Kreutzer defined the symbolic meaning of Narcissus’s mirror, which is equivalent to the “river” of the anonymous mythographer, as “the pleasures in which human life flows.” To support this idea, he cites Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus’s words about the “stream of oblivion” and about “life as a reflecting stream in which the soul sees its image disheveled and distorted” (41).

Applying the language of depth psychology to a Neoplatonic interpretation, the myth of Narcissus likely represents the Self emerging from the depths of the unconscious and entering the phenomenal world in the form of the ego. The danger highlighted by the Neoplatonists is associated with the ego's loss of awareness of its origins in the Self. Kreutzer speaks of the soul's return to awareness of its archetypal origins:

The soul searches for itself. If it searches where it now is, in the real world, it becomes accustomed to this conditioned state of being, to this empty, immaterial (unimportant, ethereal) life, so that now it must sadly float in disappointment, for through this it cannot find satisfaction. Only when it seeks itself as it was and as it will be again, the essential, divine “I” – only in the gaze and spiral movement upward toward its Idea – can it find salvation and happiness. (42)

Only by looking back to its archetypal origins can consciousness find the answer to its desire. The myth of Narcissus teaches that trying to find the soul in a mirror (that is, in the world of material objects) is an illusion. Narcissus's mistake is that he seeks satisfaction for the soul in the world of material reality. The Neoplatonists teach us to shift our gaze from this "mirror" back to what is reflected, back to the soul reflected in the mirror, back from the perceived to the perceiver. There, the true reality of the soul can be found.

A Neoplatonic interpretation would agree with the psychoanalytic one that Narcissus symbolizes a state of alienation. But for Neoplatonists, alienation has a different source and meaning: it is not an alienation arising from a rift between subject and object, but an alienation between the subject and the archetypal source of its being. Both subject and object perceive the need to escape egocentrism, but the proposed escape routes lead in opposite directions. The psychoanalytic solution is to abandon the primitive, infantile state of narcissism; this is complemented by devotion to Eros, which guides libidinal attachments to external love objects. The Neoplatonic solution is to sacrifice attachment to the objective world and look within in search of archetypal origins. For both subject and object, Eros is the guiding and motivating presence of this search. But the route leads from the bearer of projection to the source of projection. It is a vicious circle. According to Kreutzer:

Eros is a heavenly genius who can lead people to bliss by causing in their bodies a reflection of divine beauty… through the contemplation of external beauty he causes a reflex of memory… of this divine, worthy of the soul, psychic and truly genuine and wonderful Beauty.” (43)

The Neoplatonic vision leads to a decision about what to do with projections, rather than simply dissolving them and allowing them to disappear into the unconscious. In this way, they could be used as images of the archetypal background, the realm of the soul. This "memory reflex" (memory reflection) connects ego consciousness with its archetypal origins.

1. This article was first published in Spring 1976 and later, with minor revisions, in Soul: Treatment and Recovery (Routledge, 2016). This version of the article is based on the second publication and includes the revisions.

2. For a detailed discussion of the various interpreters and interpretations, see L. Vinge, The Narcissus Theme in Western Literature.

3. J. G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 94. Frazer quotes Artemidorus, who said that according to Greek belief, a dream in which a person looks at his own reflection was considered an omen of death.

4. Vinge, op. cit., pp. 35-6

5. Ibid. p. 20

6. Frazer, op. cit., p. 94

7. For a psychological analysis, see James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, pp. 334ff.

8. WHRoscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, Vol. 3, p. 11

9. Vinge, op. cit., p. 18

10. Roscher, op. cit., p. 16

11. Vinge, op. cit., p. 12

12. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. III: 505-6

13. See Roscher, op. cit., p. 15 and Vinge, op. cit., p. 35

14. Ibid. 507

15. Vinge, op. cit., p. 36

16. Quoted in Vinge, ibid.

17. Ibid., p. 41

18. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions, p. 69

19. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. III: 348

20. C. G. Jung, “Psychological Factors Determining Human Behavior,” in CW 8, par. 241ff

21. Ovid, op. cit., Bk. III: 453-7

22. H. Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. 7, p. 359

23. J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, p. 258

24. S. Freud, quoted in Ellis, op. cit., p. 359

25. Laplanche and Pontalis, op. cit., p. 255

26. Vinge, op. cit., p. 19

27. Ibid. p. 20

28. Roscher, op. cit., p. 19

29. Laplanche and Pontalis, op. cit., p. 258

30. Ibid. p. 255

31. C. G. Jung, Psychological Types, para. 769

32. J. Drever, A Dictionary of Psychology, p. 145

33. S. Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, p. 326

34. S. Freud, Totem and Taboo, pp. 870-71

35. Quoted by Ellis, op. cit., p. 374

36. Freud, op. cit., p. 871

37. Jung, op. cit., pp. 637

38. Vinge, op. cit., p. 36

39. Plotinus, The Enneads, IV, 3:12 (p. 265).

40. Vinge, quoting Creuzer, op. cit., p. 318

41. Vinge, op.cit., pp. 36ff

42. Vinge, pp.38-9

43. Vinge, ibid., p. 322