On Need, Necessity, and the Source of Narcissism

Even Freud had a difficult time explaining narcissism. It may account for why he only wrote one paper explicitly concerning this topic. The author proposes that the field of affective neuroscience has developed theoretical concepts that were not available to Freud, and that have created the potential for discussion of how narcissism may begin to explain much of the rampant disagreements among psychoanalysts studying the field of psychoanalysis. Specifically, the author suggests that a source of narcissism in the mammalian brain/mind is beginning to be knowable through advances in knowledge from the collective baseline of neurophysiology, affective as well cognitive neuroscience, and psychoanalysis.