Νάρκισσος

The name Narcissus may derive from the Greek narkē (νάρκη), meaning 'numbness' or 'stupor'—the same root that gives us narcotic. The narcissus flower, with its drooping head and mildly toxic bulb, was associated with drowsiness and death. The Greeks planted it on graves. Whether the boy was named for the flower or the flower for the boy, the connection to numbness is older than either.

Ovid told the story in Metamorphoses around 8 CE. Narcissus was a young hunter of extraordinary beauty. The seer Tiresias prophesied he would live long 'if he does not come to know himself'—a dark inversion of the Delphic maxim 'know thyself.' When Narcissus rejected the nymph Echo and every other admirer, the goddess Nemesis led him to a pool where he saw his reflection and fell in love with it. He could not look away. He wasted and died, and a flower grew where he lay.

For eighteen centuries, Narcissus was a literary figure—a cautionary tale about vanity referenced by Dante, Milton, and Caravaggio. Then in 1898, the British sexologist Havelock Ellis used 'Narcissus-like' to describe a psychological tendency. In 1911, Otto Rank published the first psychoanalytic paper on narcissism. Freud formalized the concept in 'On Narcissism' in 1914, and a myth became a clinical diagnosis.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual added Narcissistic Personality Disorder in 1980. The word narcissist has since escaped clinical use and become common insult vocabulary—applied to politicians, celebrities, ex-partners, and anyone who posts too many selfies. A Greek myth about fatal self-knowledge became a Freudian concept became a social media accusation.