Narcisism: a social symptom?

Abstract

This essay tries to develop an articulation between Marx´s "alienation" concpt and that of "narcisism" in psychoanalysis. Through this articulation it aims at showing: 1) that form the theoretical point of view, a radical incompatibility between those two theories does not exist; 2) that a deeper analysis of the structuring of the subjects, and by extension of the character of the social relationships under merchant-capitalist conditions, requires an articulation between the social history and the individual (oedipical) history, otherwise there is a risk of accepting, either a sociological  reduccionism or a psychological reduccionism, with no consideration of the dialectics between the subjective and the objective, between the social and the psychic.