According to Wilhelm Reich narcissists ‘possess an attitude of superiority, are confident, arrogant, provocative, resenting of subordination, and are mildly sadistic in their relationships’
“The term ‘narcissism’ originated from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book III) in the first century story of Narcissus and Echo [which] later evolved into a highly specialized psychoanalytic term” (A Brief History of Narcissism, University of Michigan Library).
It was classified as a mental disorder by the British physician Havelock Ellis in 1898.
Narcissus, the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, rejected the advances of potential lovers including the nymph Echo (Oxford Classical Dictionary).
He was punished by the gods by making him fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water and when he realizes that the object of his love refuses to love him back, he pines away and dies (Wikipedia, Narcissism).
Ellis “characterized [narcissism as] an inflated self-image and addiction to fantasy.”
The person has “an unusual coolness and composure shaken only when the narcissistic confidence is threatened, and by the tendency to take others for granted or to exploit them” (Britannica, Science and Tech).
In 1913, it was “Ernest Jones [who first identified] narcissism as a character trait which he called the ‘God-complex.’
He described people with the God-complex as aloof, inaccessible, self-admiring, self-important, overconfident, auto-erotic, and exhibitionistic, with fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
At around this time, “Freud theorized that before children are able to invest their ‘libidinal’ energy in other people, they go through an adaptive period of primary narcissism in which they are egocentric and cannot take the perspective of others… [T]hus, when people progress from primary narcissism to object love, their own feelings of self-regard are lowered” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
“However, when individuals’ love objects are unable or unwilling to return the love, they regress to an unhealthy state of narcissism, called secondary narcissism, in order to love and gratify themselves as a compensatory mechanism.”
“He described a narcissist as someone… who was independent, not easily intimidated, aggressive, extraverted, high in activity, and unable to love or commit in relationships” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
In 1925, Robert Wälder “published the first case study of someone with a disordered narcissistic personality.
His patient was a scientist with an attitude of superiority… an obsession with fostering self-respect, a lack of normal feelings of guilt, selfish sexuality, and a marked independence from others” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
In 1933, psychoanalyst “Wilhelm Reich described a ‘phallic-narcissistic character’ in his book Character Analysis.
According to him narcissists “possess an attitude of superiority, are confident, arrogant, provocative, resenting of subordination, and are mildly sadistic in their relationships.” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
Karen Horney in 1939 “developed the idea of narcissism as a character trait, focusing mainly on more clearly defining the many ‘divergent’ portraits of narcissism… [H]orney defined narcissism as simply ‘self-inflation’ meaning that the narcissist ‘loves and admires himself for values for which there is no adequate foundation’” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
“Horney agreed with Freud’s idea that secondary narcissism stems from a lack of love from caregivers, and she thought this was expressed in either overly authoritarian or permissive and indulgent parenting styles.
“She thought that if parents did not love children for their ‘real selves’, children would respond by creating imaginary inflated versions of themselves…” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
In 1960, Annie Reich “hypothesized that narcissists suffer from an inability to regulate their self-esteem.
According to her narcissists ‘suffer regularly from repetitive, violent oscillations of self-esteem’, shifting dramatically from the heights of grandiosity to the depths of depression” (A Brief History of Narcissism).
“In the first phase of the cycle, narcissists engage in relatively minor activities and attach an inflated importance to them that others do not share.
“In doing so, narcissists become elated and ‘self-infatuated’ until they encounter some sort of reality check (e.g. a failure, critical feedback)” (A Brief History of Narcissism).