Narcissism describes the trait of excessive self-love, based on self-image or ego.

The term is derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name, the narcissus.

Sigmund Freud believed that some narcissism is an essential part of all of us from birth and was the first to use the term in the reference to psychology.Freud, Sigmund, On Narcissism: An Introduction, 1914

Andrew Morrison claims that, in adults, a reasonable amount of healthy narcissism allows the individual's perception of his needs to be balanced in relation to others.Morrison, Andrew. Shame: The Underside of Narcissism, The Analytic Press, 1997. ISBN 0-88163-280-5

Narcissistic culture

Main: The Culture of Narcissism In The Culture of Narcissism,, Christopher Lasch defines a narcissistic culture as one in which every activity and relationship is defined by the hedonistic need to acquire the symbols of wealth, this becoming the only expression of rigid, yet covert, social hierarchies. It is a culture where liberalism only exists insofar as it serves a consumer society, and even art, sex and religion lose their liberating power.

In such a society of constant competition, there can be no allies, and little transparency. The threats to acquisitions of social symbols are so numerous, varied and frequently incomprehensible, that defensiveness, as well as competitiveness, becomes a way of life. Any real sense of community is undermined -- or even destroyed -- to be replaced by virtual equivalents that strive, unsuccessfully, to synthesize a sense of community.

Contrary to Lasch, Bernard Stiegler argues in his book, Acting Out, that consumer capitalism is in fact destructive of what he calls primordial narcissism, without which it is not possible to extend love to others.Bernard Stiegler, Acting Out (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

Narcissism in evolutionary psychology

The concept of narcissism is used in evolutionary psychology in relation to the mechanisms of assortative mating, or the non-random choice of a partner for purposes of procreation. An article published in 2005 by Alvarez summarizes the work in this field.

Evidence for assortative mating among humans is well establishedFact: date=April 2009; humans mate assortatively regarding age, IQ, height, weight, nationality, educational and occupational level, physical and personality characters, and family relatedness. In the “self seeking like” hypothesis, individuals unconsciously look for a mirror image of themselves in others, seeking criteria of beauty or reproductive fitness in the context of self-reference.