Healthy Narcissism

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Freud’s school of psychoanalysis developed in the 1890s is in many ways similar to another psychological school, which is structuralism. Founded by Wundt, structuralism was discussed in the early 1900s. Structuralism focused mainly on studies of emotion, consciousness, and sensory perception. Titchener, a student of Wundt classified the thoughts of humans into different elements. It is possible that Freud adopted this theory as he discovered theories on the id, ego, and the superego (Freud, 1970). The id constitutes a person’s basic instinct and it begins at birth. The ego acts accordingly as it finds reasonable ways to please the id. The superego reflects the impact of cultural and parental guidance and influence. Because of the foundation …show more content…

Even though these are commonly used adjectives to describe people classified as narcissists, theorists have made it known that healthy narcissism and pathological narcissi, in fact do exists. Healthy narcissism might include an individual with high self-esteem and confidence in their skills, appearance, ethic, etc. Healthy narcissistic functions are a “sense of the right to one’s life, striving for the best in life, appreciation of health and beauty, and the ability to compete” (Freud, 1914). In psychoanalytic terms, it is defined as a positive investment in a normal function of self-structure. Pathological narcissism, is somewhat related to the description of narcissism by Freud in the 1900s. Around the 1950s, narcissism began to take a different path with ego psychology, self-psychology, and relational theory all defined narcissism …show more content…

Ego psychology was one of the earliest contemporary perspectives to offer an opinion on narcissism, as it addresses how the go facilitates adaptations for individuals and their surrounding environments. Heinz Hartmann believed that a person must take “value in distinguishing between the ego, the self, and personality in order to develop narcissism” (Hartmann, 1950). However, in order to define the self, the individual must be distinct from the object, which makes this task somewhat difficult (Herron, 1999). In addition to Freud, Hartmann’s views on the etiology of narcissism paved the way for future developments on the personality

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