Νάρκισσος

Narcissist derives from Narcissus (Greek Nárkissos), a figure in Greek mythology who was so beautiful that he rejected all lovers. The nymph Echo, cursed to repeat only others' words, loved him and was spurned. The goddess Nemesis punished Narcissus by making him fall in love with his own reflection in a pool. Unable to embrace the image, he wasted away and died. A flower — the narcissus — grew where his body had been.

Ovid told the fullest version of the story in his Metamorphoses (~8 CE). His Narcissus is not simply vain — he is trapped. He knows the reflection is his own. He cannot stop looking. The tragedy is awareness without the ability to change behavior. Ovid's psychological insight anticipated clinical descriptions of narcissistic personality by nearly two thousand years.

Havelock Ellis first used 'Narcissus-like' to describe auto-eroticism in 1898. Sigmund Freud published 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' in 1914, establishing the term in psychoanalytic vocabulary. The word moved from mythology to clinical diagnosis in less than twenty years. 'Narcissist' entered common English speech by the mid-twentieth century, initially as a clinical term and then as a general insult.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) was included in the DSM-III in 1980. The clinical criteria — grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy — describe a pattern more specific than the mythological story. Not every narcissist is in love with their reflection. Most are in love with an image of themselves that does not match what others see. The gap between self-image and reality is the disorder's core.