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Showing posts from August, 2022

Narcissism

  With the word Narcissism much spoken recently, I thought I'd go back to the story – the real one, I was going to say, but the 'real' story is, well, as of course we all know, not true: it's really (!) no more than a story... This all gets a bit complicated – not least the story itself, along with the concept of reflection, giving as it does a true version of that which is reflected, yet not 'true', for the very act of reflection reverses – and so alters. (I'm especially aware of this, my wife being a printmaker – that which she carves in the wood when printed looks quite different, even though it's a direct print from the block). Be all that as it may, the Narcissus story is much deeper than the superficiality of the reflection, whatever it shows. So much so, that it's given its name to a psychoanalytic concept of great depth and complexity, as demonstrated by my friend Jeremy Holmes' masterly monograph on Narcissism*. He makes the point t