Psychoanalytic considerations about parental narcissism: review of literature

• Grant number: 18/13081-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2018
• End date: August 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Mary Yoko Okamoto
• Grantee: Bruna Bortolozzi Maia
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Narcissism is an important theme in S. Freud's work as a constituent element of the self, especially the narcissistic investment of parents in the child. This is because, according to S. Freud (1914), parents deposit in the child the narcissism they themselves received from their parents and had to resign, imposing on their child, ideals and expectations. The present project is based on the assumption that the linking, more specifically the bonds of the parental figures with the children, is extremely important since it is constituent for the structuring of a subject of the unconscious, that is inscribed in a certain society and culture. However, these social institutions are constantly changing, so the concepts of family and parenthood of contemporary society are based on consumption, on constant and immediate satisfaction and on narcissism itself. Transposing these characteristics to the parental scope, one notices the possibility of the difficulty in the generational and symbolic transmission. It is in the face of this problem that this project, whose theoretical reference is that of psychoanalysis, is constructed, with the objective of carrying out a systematic review of the literature on parental narcissism, to explore this theme in contemporary psychoanalytic studies.