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The concept of excessive selfishness has been recognized throughout history. The term "narcissism" is derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus, but was only coined at the close of the nineteenth century. Since then, narcissism has become a household word; in analytic literature, given the great preoccupation with the subject, the term is used more than almost any other'.〔Neville Symington, ''Narcissism: A New Theory'' (London 1990) p. 5〕 The meaning of narcissism has changed over time. Today narcissism "refers to an interest in or concern with the self along a broad continuum, from healthy to pathological ... including such concepts as self-esteem, self-system, and self-representation, and true or false self". ==Before Freud== 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 'lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour',〔Robert Graves, in Symington, p. 7〕 and finally pined away, changing into a flower that bears his name, the narcissus. The story was retold in Latin by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, in which form it would have great influence on medieval and Renaissance culture. 'Ovid's tale of Echo and Narcissus...weaves in and out of most of the English examples of the Ovidian narrative poem';〔Colin Burrow ed., ''William Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems'' (Oxford 2002) p. 19〕 and 'allusions to the story of Narcissus...play a large part in the poetics of the Sonnets'〔Burrow ed., p. 127〕 of Shakespeare. Here the term used was 'self-love...Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel'.〔Burrow ed., pp. 387 and 383〕 Francis Bacon used the same term: 'it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set a house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs...those that (as Cicero says of Pompey) are ''sui amantes sine rivali''...lovers of themselves without rivals'.〔Francis Bacon, ''The Essays'' (Penguin 1985) p. 131〕 Byron at the start of the nineteenth century used the same term, describing how, "Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens...to stumble on it."〔Quoted in Simon Crompton, ''All about Me'' (London 2007) p. 87〕 while Baudelaire wrote of 'as vigorous a growth in the heart of natural man as self-love', as well as of those who 'like Narcissuses of fat-headedness...are contemplating the crowd, as though it were a river, offering them their own image'.〔Charles Baudelaire, ''The Painter of Modern Life'' (Penguin) p. 49 and p. 109〕 By mid-century, however, egotism was perhaps an equally common expression for self-absorption — 'egotists...made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture in which it dwells'〔Malcolm Cowley ed., ''The Portable Hawthorne'' The twentieth century has largely defined the concept in psychological terms, with Otto Rank publishing in 1911 the first psychoanalytical paper specifically concerned with narcissism, linking it to vanity and self-admiration.〔Millon, Theodore, Personality Disorders in Modern Life, 2004〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of narcissism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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