The possibility of getting through a dinner party without someone referring to someone else as a narcissist does not seem to exist anymore. Forks and knives are still out for the more self-absorbed among us, dinner table psychologists confidently and stridently flinging out their diagnoses. Pointlessly really, or perhaps In Vain. For the more self-absorbed are just never listening. They are bored, or dreaming omnipotent dreams, or just regarding what anyone else says as stupid. Or they are staring into the French Onion soup starter. Deciding their own recipe is much better. Finding their distorted reflection among the bits of vegetable much, much more fascinating than any conversation thus far.
I have lost friends for months, who in the pursuit of recovery from time spent with the ‘narcissist’, have lost all eagerness to go into the world at all. Understandably perhaps, they would rather stay in and watch Terri Cole and Sam Vaknin explain how to deal with the zietgeist on youtube. There seem to be many people who now only read self-help books, or who have joined exclusive whatsapp groups reserved for ‘lightworkers’ and ‘empaths’. Labels for beings, who are uniquely imbued with gifts of intuition, sensitivity, insight and levels of compassion and understanding of invisible forces so rare, as to be miles and miles above most ordinary folks simply walking the streets of Umbilo. Well-meaning perhaps, but with ideas about being special as grandiose as those of the counterpart they so wholly despise.
Like a starving wolf*, I myself, have wasted hours trying once again to properly understand Melanie Klein and Object-Relations theory, and how it happened that envious, petulant, spoilt, controlling, blaming, competitive toddler-adults who yell in restaurants, are accountable to no one, and stamp their way up the ladder of life without so much as an understanding that anyone else worthy exists, rule the world. In vain.
And so perhaps it is better to leave Narcissus drowning in his own magnificence, and to direct one’s attention to what is on offer. Birds currently singing in the trees, or a happy dog, or an available, caring friend. Who loves you back. Perhaps to turn back to literature and the Greeks. I think a smaller, humbler figure from the classics deserves our attention.
Narcissus does, it turns out, have an opposite. A lesser nymph, Of Course. Sometimes quite irritating, not much to look at, equally tragic. Needless to say, few people remember about her. Because along the way she lost her own story. She quite simply, became, a reflection of another’s. A reverberation, or a useful amplification, sometimes. The one who tells the news but is not the news. PA to her husband, or married to an heiress, or engaged to a VIP philanthropist. An Echo to something much more grand. If Echo is a writer, and it would be a good choice of career for her, she is a biographer. Narcissus, an autobiographer, or in trouble with the editor for hyperbole.
Echo started off life okay. Like all babies. A mimic. You smile, the baby smiles. You say something, she says it. You mirror, she reflects. The way we all learn to be humans, I guess, or that I know of, at least. She is annoying sometimes: You say something you shouldn’t, and don’t necessarily want repeated; Echo repeats it.
According to Ovid, Echo’s tendency to answer back and all of her chatter angers the mightier gods and goddesses. Jealous wives don’t want nymphs talking about their philandering husbands. Hera, particularly, does not like how Zeus’s antics reflect back on her. And she doesn’t want to hear about it over and over again. So, instead of actually just ditching her husband, typically, she shoots the messenger, punishing Echo instead. She banishes her to the mountains, and curses her to only be able to repeat the last words anyone else says. Echo gets the tail-end.
And then when Narcissus, fed up with all company apart from his own, wanders into the mountains, lonely Echo sees him. She loves him, and she wants to talk to him, but she can’t. She follows him, but she stays invisible. She replies to him. Sitting by the water, gazing at himself he says: “I love you.” Echo repeats “I love you.”
His heart soars, thinking it is his reflection replying; his love requited.
And then just to check he says, “Where are you? I’m here.” And Echo repeats, “I’m here.” Proof once more, he thinks, that the beautiful image he sees, loves him back. He leans in for the kiss, and then he drowns.
And what becomes of Echo? Stripped of agency and grieving for a being who cannot love her back (even more so now that he is fact dead) she fades away. Until she withers to nothing, Ovid says. But I think, if we pay her some attention, she is still there. Not hiding and waiting anymore, just trying to work out how to break the spell.
*This is how Ted Hughes describes Echo, in Tales from Ovid.
**There are many versions of the myths. This is my own confabulation, mostly borrowed from Ovid and Hughes.