The Story of Narcissus according to Ovid (Narcissism on a Spectrum)

The Metamorphoses by Ovid

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Narcissus was a very handsome young man. All the ladies—and even the men—were obsessed with him. He bathed by a stream where many people observed him. Especially attracted and obsessed was Echo, whose speech only allowed her to repeat the final lines of something anyone said.

One day, while Narcissus was standing near a pool of water by the stream, after he spoke aloud, sensing someone was there, Echo responded. She repeated his own words back to him. He became confused and frightened, uncomfortable.

At last she showed herself, arms outstretched, intended to enfold her confused lover. But Narcissus, taken aback, rejected her outright. He was not interested. He made this very clear. Echo begged the goddess Nemesis to avenge her shame and rejection by making sure that Narcissus never attained a love of his own.

Nemesis complied.

Echo ran deeply into the forest where she eventually died. All that remains of her is her eternal echo, which we still hear today when we yell in a canyon.

And so, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection which he gazed at longingly in the clear pool of water by the stream. He did not grasp that this was in fact his own image. He spoke to the beautiful young man reflected back to him but the image did not speak. He fell in one-sided love with this image. His tears rippled the pool and made the image somewhat dissolve. He begged the image to speak to him, to love him, to engage, but of course it never did. He was doomed to be tricked by his own folly.

Eventually, Narcissus himself dissolved and died of a broken heart, the cruelest sort of unrequited (self) love.

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I find this story intriguing for multiple reasons. Of course it brings to mind the clinical condition (and the vastly overused term) narcissism, the idea of falling in love with oneself to the exclusion of all others. A disconnected, toxic, confusing egocentric vainglorious sludge that infects some humans like a poison.

And yet, I am struck by this myth, this faery tale because more than anything, to my mind at least, it largely paints Narcissus as a victim, an egocentric, beautiful young man who knows no better and, through his own physical (and one must assume psychological) hubris, is doomed for all time to love a being (himself) which will never love him back. He is doomed to be eternally alone. He can only see himself; he is disconnected from all others, unable to love truly or to merge himself spiritually with anyone else.

This struck me as, more than anything, a horrible, cruel fate. Perhaps the cruelest fate of all, even. He was young, vain and naïve; he knew not what he was doing. He rejected Echo only because he was confused by her strange speech impediment. And this bad choice led to his psychological, metaphysical, emotional and finally physical downfall. It seems wildly unfair.

Also, it’s interesting that Narcissus was pursued by both women and men. (Much more normal back in early Greek and Roman times. Grown men even had sexual encounters with little boys. Men with little girls. The Overton Window, the social standards back in this epoch were not what they are today.) And, furthermore, that he in essence fell in love with a man. (That man being, of course, himself.)

This makes me think of people like Freud and Jung and early psychoanalysis which was in many respects based in part on ancient Greek myth. (The “Oedipal Complex,” for example.) In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries homosexuality was still demonized and seen as abhorrent. (Sadly.) Narcissus is a man who falls in love with another man. I couldn’t help making this connection. I’m not suggesting that the ancients were making any kind of commentary on homosexuality. (I don’t think so, no.) But rather that: I wonder how this squared in the mind of Freud and others thousands of years later, in European modernity using Greek myth as a foundation for new developing neuroscientific and medical and psychological ideas.

(There must be a whole literature on Freud and his analysis of narcissism. And of course there are clinical-psychological definitions one can pull from. I’m distinguishing here between someone of the clinical variety—almost certainly Trump—and someone who is more generally on some type of normal contemporary social spectrum—most of us.)

Narcissism is a fascinating concept. I have been accused of being a narcissist a handful of times over the years. I myself have hurled the epithet at many a woman, a few men, and most certainly my mother. In today’s climate it must surely be one of the most commonly used (or overused/abused) words of all time, right up there with “like” and “literally” and “toxic,” and “patriarchy,” etc.

There are clinical definitions and cultural understandings of narcissism. Probably at this point—with our influx of media, information, social media, online obsession, AI, etc—we’re mostly all (especially in the West broadly and America specifically) on some sort of “narcissistic spectrum.” I feel the same about gender: We’re all on a spectrum.

For example: I’d say that for me I’m put together with perhaps 75% masculine and 25% feminine. Maybe even more 70/30. I certainly have many traditionally “masculine” traits—backpacking, confrontation, standing my ground, speaking up for myself, expressing anger when necessary—yet I also very much have a feminine side: Reading books constantly (not that this is inherently “feminine” but I feel like it’s more or less become this way today), most of my best friends are women, my reliance in many ways on my wife, my need for emotional connection and comfort, my love of cats, my ability to talk about profoundly deep, vulnerable things with the right person.

If one were to score narcissism as a trait between 0-100, 0 being not narcissistic at all and 100 being Andrew Tate, I’d put myself perhaps somewhere around 50. Plus or minus. I certainly have some narcissistic traits, but I’m not full-blown obsessed with/in love with myself. I do think about other people, I do try to help others when I can, I did care for my father when he was dying for two whole years, I’m there for my mom and my wife when they need me, I can genuinely empathize with other people’s pain and suffering.

That said: I am also no saint. I was raised as a privileged only child in perfect, sunny Southern California with a doting mother and a distant but loving father. I had it all. I was taught—symbolically if not literally—that I was special, unique and different. That was the nonverbal, obvious message. I’ve always had a problem with selfishness in various forms. I’ve always traditionally thought more about myself than about most other people. I do like to help others, but it’s not easy for me. It takes great courage, resolve and strength.

A lot of my selfishness started to shift when I got sober from alcoholism in 2010, at the tender age of 27. And even then it took me a whole year before I really started participating in AA and “doing the work,” aka working the 12 steps, working with a sponsor, and finally sponsoring other people new to sobriety. That all helped. And when my dad got sick in 2021 with terminal cancer, my deciding to leave NYC and come caretake alongside my mom, helped. It was a joy and a privilege to care for my father. We had a good, hard two years, finally getting to know each other and learning to say goodbye.

My animals have helped, too. My wife’s beautiful Siamese, Kitty-Bear. My tuxedo cat, Lucius, the light of my life. And our lovely, warm Klaus who often sleeps on us at night, the safe, loving lump. I think about them often.

No human is perfect or without flaws, weaknesses, problems. They fuck us up, our mum and dad, Philip Larkin said. All parents. And this is profoundly true. Because all parents are human, and all humans suffer from human frailty, the fundamental human condition, the weakness that is imperfection and biological and psychological reality. My mother suffered incredibly as a child due to her own mother’s likely sociopathy and high (like 110 level) narcissism. My mom certainly did a much, MUCH better job than her mom. I decided against having kids. My wife has a son from a previous relationship. (He’s 19 and in college now.) We have our four-legged furry companions.

I have zero doubt that, had I decided to produce offspring, I’d have carried on many of the same traits as my mom did to me, and her mom to her, and my great-grandmother to my mom’s mom. It’s just the way it goes. Family cycles, down through the generations, the ages, the ticking of time.

So I think when someone says “Fill-in-the-blank is A narcissist,” I’m not sure that’s a fully articulate or accurate statement, at least most of the time. (Sometimes surely it is. For example, Donald Trump most certainly IS a narcissist. Hands-down. No questions asked. I stand by that one.) Like I said: It’s a spectrum; most folks are somewhere on that broad shifting arc.

Looking at oneself in the mirror is a fun and often terrifying exercise, isn’t it?