The Theory of the Narcissistic Spectrum: The Pulse of Existence (EPUB)

Narcissism is the fundamental regulatory function through which every human being maintains and reorganizes the continuity of their existence, from the cell to the relationship and to collective life. The organs and nervous system may appear structurally stable, yet their functioning is continually regulated, disrupted, and reorganized. Psychic life unfolds within these living somatopsychic rhythms. This is the pulse of existence.

Regulation is primary. It begins in the body before birth and continues to operate largely unconsciously throughout life. Functional somatopsychic regulation is the substrate on which emotion and desire, phantasy and defense, inner conflict, language, thought, relationship, and personality are built; the processes explored by psychological and psychotherapeutic theories, as well as the phenomena classified by psychiatric diagnosis, also arise within this regulatory functioning.

From the very beginning, regulation develops through co-regulation with the Other and through Projective Identification, a bidirectional, recursive somatopsychic process that constitutes the first universal form of unconscious communication.

Regulation is always relational. Each person meets the Other with a narcissism of their own, and in every encounter each regulates and dysregulates the other. Through repeated experience, the Other becomes part of the person’s own regulation: the function of the Mediating Other is internalized and continues to operate even in the Other’s absence. In this sense, the others are also us. The same holds in the group and in collective life, where many people regulate and dysregulate one another together.

Regulation unfolds along a single, continuous spectrum, within which every person moves from moment to moment. The Positions, which take their names from the clinical tradition, serve as reference points along this spectrum; Combinatorial Dynamics describes how different modes of regulation coexist and modify one another.

Under pressure, regulation turns to earlier and more costly solutions, and the body assumes a greater role. Psychopathology emerges where movement becomes rigid; psychic health lies in the capacity to return, which therapy seeks to restore.

The book is organized in three parts: the theoretical framework; the Positions in everyday life, relationships, the body, and therapy; and clinical reading, the body, and the living field, from the session and psychosomatic expression to dreams and collective life. It integrates psychoanalysis with contemporary research on the body and on relationships.