Normal Narcissism in the Age of Trump

Psychoanalysis is at once a theory of human development from infancy to adolescence, a therapeutic modality for the treatment of neurotic illness and character pathology in children and adults, and an interpretative strategy in the cultural analysis and interpretation of group pathology at the societal level (Galatarioutou, 2005). ‘Narcissism’ as a Freudian category offers an effective illustration of the appeal of this multi-level Freudian hermeneutics and the attendant limitations, particularly as narcissism carries normative overtones that invariably become political at all three levels of analysis.