Walsh, J (2017) 'On the seductions of psychoanalytic story-telling: Narcissism and the problems of narrative.' Frontiers of Narrative Studies, 3 (1). 71 - 88. ISSN 2509-4882

Preview

Text Author final Walsh Narrative Narcissism.pdf - Accepted Version Download (172kB) | Preview

Abstract

In this paper, I argue for a particular reading of narcissism that challenges the privileging of narrative as a sense-making device, with important consequences for an evaluation of the story paradigm in psychotherapeutic work. I lean on the psychoanalytic mechanisms of Nachträglichkeit and trauma to trouble dominant therapeutic logics that support the primacy of the (narcissistically centered) narrative “I.” Rather than endorse the story of “me, me, me” that popular readings of narcissism invoke, I explore the possibility that, in psychoanalysis, narcissism’s modes destabilize the I, making the narrator constitutionally unreliable, and her accounts of all subject-object distinctions uncertain and constantly shifting.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Psychoanalysis, narrative, narcissism
Subjects:	R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0500 Psychoanalysis
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Department of
Depositing User:	Elements
Date Deposited:	05 Oct 2017 11:03
Last Modified:	21 Sep 2018 15:50
URI:	http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/20458

Actions (login required)

View Item