"TRYING TO EXTRACT SOME COHERENT view of narcissism from the ongoing controversy in the current psychoanalytic literature is somewhat like trying to chill Russian vodka by adding ice cubes; it is possible to do it, but the soul of the experience is diluted. Levenson's (1978, p. 16) suggestion that "it may not be the truth arrived at as much as the manner of arriving at the truth which is the essence of therapy", leads me to wonder if it may likewise be said that it is not the definition of narcissism arrived at as much as the struggle to arrive at one, which is the essence of recent progress in psychoanalytic thought. The struggle contains within it, an emerging shift in perspective that has begun to influence our conceptions of clinical diagnosis, the nature of human development, psychoanalytic metatheory, and the parameters of psychoanalytic treatment itself.
During the past two decades there has been a gradual but consistent movement of the mainstream of psychoanalysis in the direction of field theory, and toward the interpersonal context as the medium of both normal maturation and therapeutic change (See Bromberg, 1979a). This has brought the developmental models of psychopathology and analytic technique into closer harmony than ever before, and has focused attention on the growth of "self" as inseparable from the interrelationship of "self and other", whether in the parental environment or the therapeutic environment...
...It is a period in which the patient's fantasy is that there is no need for him to work; no need for him to obtain anything for himself, and that in spite of this the analyst has the power to make the analysis succeed. The proper balance between empathy and anxiety during this period is, as I see it, an analytic approach which begins to subtly challenge this fantasy without seriously threatening the patient's ability to use it to the degree he needs it transferentially. I do not share Modell's (1976) view that during this phase the patient's "cocoon" fantasy must remain unchallenged and that he will simply hatch out of it organically, nor do I agree with Kohut's (1971) similar position that narcissistic transference configurations will undergo a natural developmental evolution if the empathic "ambiance" is right. Both of these perspectives, in my view, underemphasize the fact that the patient is an adult whose ego functions are underdeveloped within a human relationship, and that he is not simply an infant in disguise. Interpretive work of a certain kind can and must be attempted right from the beginning if "empathy" is to have any meaning beyond a quasi-artificial technical maneuver designed to hopefully recapitulate infancy and repair what was originally lacking..."
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