“Narcissism” has had many meanings over time, but few have had much to do with Narcissus himself, that young man whom we remember (dumbly) for falling in love with the beauty of his own reflection on the water.
When German psychologists and psychoanalysts of the late 1800s tried to diagnose people overtaken by obsessive auto-eroticism (i.e., mostly men who touched themselves a bit too much), they called them “narcissists.” Throughout the twentieth century, we’ve cried “narcissism!” to many human characteristics, self-obsessive and otherwise (especially gays who love people of the same gender).
But I want to try to read past all this historical baggage and return to the myth of Narcissus as it was recorded by Ovid over two thousand years ago. In this post, I’m going to forget the long-worn conclusion that Narcissus’ crime was simple vanity. I want to peer a bit deeper than Narcissus’ lovely reflection and try to say what his story means to me.
Narcissus was conceived when the river god Cephius raped his mother, a nymph. She was called Liriope, and the prophet Tiresius told her that her son would only live a long life as long as he never “knew himself.” If we had to translate the name she gave him, we might call Narcissus “the Unfeeling One,” after the Greek root narke, meaning, “numb.”
(And perhaps that name was only his mother’s well-meant wish that her son never feel the pains she’d suffered herself?)
Narcissus was beautiful from birth. By the time he matured, men and women alike fell madly in love with him. And Narcissus let his would-be lovers touch him and confess their love, but he’d never touch them back. He never reciprocated their love. He only ever spurned their affections. One young man who’d felt the sting of Narcissus’ rejection prayed to the gods that “[he] may himself love as I have loved him–without obtaining his beloved.”
One day when Narcissus went hunting, he was seen by the nymph Echo while she wandered in the woods. She fell in love with him immediately and wanted speak to him, but she’d been cursed by Jupiter, king of the gods. He’d stolen her voice. She couldn’t speak for herself anymore. All she could do was to repeat what others said to her first. Narcissus heard the sound of Echo following him in the woods and urged whoever it was to come out and meet him. Overjoyed, Echo responded, “come out and meet!”
What follows in the original text is a conversation of vagaries and doubles-entendres as Echo and Narcissus fail to understand each other. But that conversation doesn’t translate well. Suffice it to say that Echo, for a time, thought Narcissus was inviting her to touch him when he was actually rejecting her touch. When he finally pushed her away and ran off, Echo retreated to a cave and turned to stone.
Seeing Narcissus’ impact on Echo and the other countless men and women he’d spurned, the gods finally answered the prayers of the people Narcissus had rejected (and this is where the story moves deeper than a reflection in a pool). The gods gave Narcissus the same punishment he dealt his peers–he was doomed to fall in love with someone who would never touch him back–his own reflection in a forest pond.
Falling in love with his own image was not the way Narcissus sinned. Instead, his fixation with his own image was the punishment that the gods dealt him to match his crime. In the end, they transformed him into a daffodil–a bifurcated flower with two colors that don’t mix.
I argue that Tiresius’ original prophecy about Narcissus proved correct. Narcissus thought he was someone who could walk away from relationships without consequences. But whether or not we want to, we become entangled with those who touch us. Tiresius’ prediction was that Narcissus would only die if he “never knew himself.” And Narcissus never did come to know himself. He never understood his own nature (our shared nature as humans).
Consequentially, he’s never died. He lives on as a flower, as a symbol, as a warning.
Narcissism is something different from self-obsession, auto-eroticism, homophilia, or egotism.
It’s numbness.
Humans touch each other with so much more than just skin. We touch each other in those moments when we give of our time and emotional energy to ensure each other’s wellbeing. We touch each other through the extended, often unconscious influence we exert on each other’s psyches, even long after we leave each other’s lives. Our stories become entangled when we spend formative moments together.
I say that Narcissus’ crime was that he was numb to all of this.
Narcissism, at its core, is a refusal to acknowledge one’s interconnectedness. It’s a refusal to take responsibility for the effect one has on others. A narcissist is a person who remains numb to everyone who has touched them.
What’s most profound about this story, though, isn’t Narcissus’ crime or his punishment. It’s his mother Liriope’s vain hope that her son could live without suffering to begin with. Perhaps Nietzsche was right that we should wish suffering on those we care for.
Narcissists teach us that numbness to pain only destroys our ability to love.