Accusing someone of narcissism has become one of the great and tempting insults of our
age. It is what we are inclined to label anyone who appears overweening, boastful, entitled
or excessively pleased with their own existence. But it’s possible to wonder whether the
word really fits the conceited and bombastic types we’ve grown used to applying it to
– and, a larger point, whether we’re really understanding, and therefore correctly addressing,
the origins of the regrettable behaviour to which it refers. Behind our enthusiastic use
of the term lies an implicit theory of human nature: that people seek undue attention for
themselves, grow pretentious and inclined to bombast when – at heart – they feel
an extraordinary love for who they are. It is their hugely high estimation of themselves,
combined with their robust pride in everything they are and do, that is at the root of their
tendencies to talk up their own achievements and to try to secure the admiration of strangers.
But, on closer examination, it seems that the agitation and peacock displays cannot
really stem from a feeling of being perfectly and requitedly enamoured of oneself. Those
whom we loosely call narcissists can’t actually think so well of themselves; they boast and
show off because they can’t find a way of being sufficiently content with who they really
are – and are driven on by a manic, haunting terror of their own invisibility and mediocrity.
The behaviours we associate with narcissism – the vanity, the greed, the lies – aren’t
symptoms of self-love, they are proof of its dangerous, tragic absence. Let’s recall
the original Greek myth from where the word descends. Narcissus was a hunter from central
Greece, the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. He had long flowing
locks, deep blue eyes, unblemished skin and full enchanting lips. One day, as he walked
past a quiet pool of water, he caught sight of his own reflection, failed to recognise
himself and was entranced with the image. He had never seen anyone quite so enchanting
– and could not stop falling profoundly in love with himself, the most admirable and
bewitching being he had ever spotted. Framed like this, narcissism sounds laughable and absurd. But derogatory
remarks make us lose sight of the genuine benefits of having been able, when young,
under the tutelage of kindly caregivers, properly to admire oneself without reserve, to have
been allowed to strut and sing and feel utterly home in one’s own skin and, for a time,
delight amply in the sheer wondrousness of one’s existence. There might be such a thing
as good narcissism: a phase of coming to love oneself that is the precondition for knowing
how to love anyone else. Most of the problems of the world are created by people who do not love themselves. Who cannot
inwardly believe in their own worth; those who grew up with a searing hatred and shame
about who they were – and who now cannot stop insistently claiming an attention of
which they were once deprived. One has to despise oneself really rather a lot before
it ever seems like a good idea to devote one’s life to trying to prove valuable in the eyes
of complete strangers. By contrast, the really self-contented ones among us are those who
have no burning need for adulation and know how to draw quiet satisfaction from nothing
more than their own unadorned, ordinary being. We should want to build a world not where
there are fewer people who have loved themselves but where there are many more, a world richer
in what we can term healthy narcissism. We will be modest and self-effacing, ready to
be quietly interested in and attentive to others, happy to forego baubles and manic
acclaim, when we’ve had a chance to gaze at our reflection awhile and think it really
pretty nice – nice enough for us to go out and start generously to spread kindness and
selflessness to those around us.
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