Introduction REFLECTING NARCISSUS

• Published in: Reflecting Narcissus p. 1
• Main Author: Bruhm, Steven
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States University of Minnesota Press 14.11.2000
• Edition: NED - New edition
• Subjects: 20th century; Behavioral sciences; c 1700 to c 1800; Civil rights; Cognitive psychology; Desire; Ego; Emotion; Emotional states; Freudian personality theory; Gay rights; Gays and lesbians; Gender studies; Homosexual relationships; Homosexuality; Human populations; Interpersonal relations; Law; Legal rights; Male homosexuality; Mothers; Narcissism; Personality; Personality psychology; Personality theories; Personality traits; Persons; Population studies; Psychology; Queer culture; Queer studies; Queer theory; Sexual orientation; Social psychology; Social sciences; USA; Women
• ISBN: 9780816635504; 0816635501

InNarcissism and the Novel(1990), Jeffrey Herman argues that the “richness of the [Narcissus] myth is inexhaustible. Narcissus dramatizes not only the cold, self-centred love that proves fatally imprisoning, but fundamental oppositions of human existence: reality/illusion, presence/absence, subject/object, unity/disunity, involvement/detachment” (1). A field in which all the binarisms of contemporary culture and theory can be detected, narcissism is for Berman a seemingly endless treasure trove of tropic and theoretical meanings, which he traces in authors from Mary Shelley to Virginia Woolf. But let us stress that this trove isseeminglyendless. When Berman gets to Oscar Wilde, the “inexhaustible”