Tag Archives: narcissism

Alejandra Pizarnik

Estuve pensando que nadie me piensa. Que estoy absolutamente sola. Que nadie, nadie siente mi rostro dentro de sí ni mi nombre correr por su sangre. Nadie actúa invocándome, nadie construye su vida incluyéndome. He pensado tanto en estas cosas. He pensado que puedo morir en cualquier instante y nadie amenazará a la muerte, nadie la injuriará por haberme arrastrado, nadie velará por mi nombre. He pensado en mi soledad absoluta, en mi destierro de toda conciencia que no sea la mía. He pensado que estoy sola y que me sustento sólo en mí para sobrellevar mi vida y mi muerte. Pensar que ningún ser me necesita, que ninguno me requiere para completar su vida.

Alejandra Pizarnik, Diarios, Barcelona, 2003, February 16th, 1956

Bertrand Russell

A narcissist […], inspired by the homage paid to great painters, may become an art student; but, as painting is for him a mere means to an end, the technique never becomes interesting, and no subject can be seen except in relation to self. The result is failure and disappointment, with ridicule instead of the expected adulation. The same thing applies to those novelists whose novels always have themselves idealized as heroines. All serious success in work depends upon some genuine interest in the material with which the work is concerned. […] The man who is only interested in himself is not admirable, and is not felt to be so. Consequently the man whose sole concern with the world is that it shall admire him is not likely to achieve his object.

Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, London, 1930, p. 22

Jon Elster

[W]e have all met persons basking in self-satisfaction that seems both to be justified and not to be justified: justified because they have good reasons for being satisfied with themselves, and not justified because we sense that they would be just as satisfied were the reasons to disappear.

Jon Elster, ‘Belief, Bias, and Ideology’, in Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 140