Narcissism (Merleau-Ponty's Two Senses)

Merleau-Ponty's late-ontology redefinition of "narcissism" — not Freudian libidinal cathexis to the ego, but a structural-ontological name for vision's reflexivity, which operates in two senses, both running through the dehiscence of the flesh rather than through any ego-pole. The decisive formulation is at V&I 249 (May 1960 working note, quoted in Morin Ch 8 §1 p. 183): "the touching itself, seeing itself of the body is itself to be understood in terms of what we said of the seeing and the visible . . . it is not to apprehend oneself as an ob-ject, it is to be open to oneself, destined to oneself (narcissism) — Nor, therefore, is it to reach oneself, it is on the contrary to escape oneself, to be ignorant of oneself, the self in question is by divergence (d'écart)." Schilder's pipe-smoker-in-the-mirror passage (PoP 168 / EC 192) — where "the mirror carries the secrets of my own flesh away from it" and "my body lives out there at a distance from itself" — is the cardinal figure: narcissism is the body's being-at-a-distance-from-itself, not its return to itself.

Key Points

MP's narcissism is not Freudian ego-narcissism. The term is recast structurally: it names vision's reflexivity (the visible's capacity to turn back on itself in seeing), not libidinal investment in an ego-image. Confusion with psychoanalytic usage is a standing risk Morin flags explicitly (Ch 8 §1, end of p. 183)
Two senses, both non-egological: (a) the narcissism of all vision — vision is the visible's quest to be visible to itself, "to be seduced, captivated, alienated by the phantom" (V&I 139, cited via Morin Ch 8 §1); (b) the narcissism of my vision — desire-for-doubling that requires passage through the other, "the doubling of vision happens in and through the other, a visible that has the power to catch or gather my visibility" (Morin Ch 8 §2 paraphrase of MP's chiral structure)
Schilder's pipe-smoker is the cardinal figure. PoP 168 / EC 192: the pipe-smoker who sees himself in the mirror experiences not self-recognition but the carrying-away of his flesh's secrets — "my body lives out there at a distance from itself." Narcissism is this dis-location, not the closure of the self upon itself
Narcissism operates by dehiscence of the flesh, not in an ego. The reflexive structure ("seeing oneself," "touching oneself") is a property of the flesh's self-splitting, not of an ego that would have to be presupposed. This is the precision Morin gives to the V&I 249 passage: "the self in question is by divergence (d'écart)"
The écart-defense against the circle-of-self-presence worry. Morin flags (Ch 8 §1, p. 183) that "narcissism" appears to return MP to a metaphysics of self-presence — and answers it: both senses of narcissism go through the écart, which is the structural non-coincidence that prevents the return-to-self from closing. Narcissism without écart would be ego-narcissism; narcissism with écart is the visible's ongoing failure to coincide with itself, which is just the chiasm at the level of vision-itself
Categorial distinction from Freud/Lacan. Freudian primary narcissism is psychoanalytic: a developmental stage of libidinal investment in the ego. Lacanian narcissism is mirror-stage identification with an imaginary unified body. MP's narcissism is structural-ontological: a feature of the visible's reflexivity, prior to any ego or imaginary identification. The vocabulary overlap is a false friend
The anti-egological precision Morin gives. Morin's Ch 8 §1–§2 reading (pp. 183–187) sharpens the V&I 249 passage against any "circle-of-self-presence" misreading by showing both senses are intelligible only as the flesh's dehiscence; the term "narcissism" is licensed only because the écart is what prevents the self-relating from closing into ego-identity

The Two Senses

Narcissism of All Vision

The first and more radical sense: vision as such is the visible's quest to be visible to itself. The seer does not stand outside the visible looking in; the seer is of the visible, a fold by which the visible turns back upon itself and becomes visible to itself. This is "the narcissism of all vision" — narcissism not as a psychological condition of any particular seer but as a structural feature of vision itself, prior to any seer.

The formulation MP gives at V&I 139 (cited via Morin Ch 8 §1): the seer is "seduced, captivated, alienated by the phantom" of the visible. The vocabulary is significant: seduced and captivated register that the seer does not master the visible but is drawn into it; alienated registers that what the seer encounters in the visible is not simply the seer's own projection but a phantom that catches the seer up. The narcissism here is the visible's narcissism, not the seer's: it is the visible's structural reflexivity that makes vision possible at all.

This sense connects directly to flesh as element: the flesh is what makes the visible visible to itself, and "narcissism of all vision" is one way of naming what the flesh does. It also connects to the chiasm: narcissism of all vision is the chiasm at the level of vision-itself, the crossing of seer and seen within a common visibility.

Narcissism of My Vision

The second sense: the doubling by which I see myself seeing — the body's reflexive self-relating in vision. This is the sense that most strongly courts confusion with Freudian ego-narcissism, because it concerns my vision specifically. MP's precision: this doubling does not happen through an ego or a self-coincidence; it happens through the other.

The structure is chiral. "I see myself" is intelligible only because there is another visible (a mirror, another's gaze, the gaze of things) that catches my visibility and reflects it back. "The doubling of vision happens in and through the other, a visible that has the power to catch or gather my visibility" (Morin's Ch 8 §2 paraphrase of MP's mirror-and-chiral-reversibility analysis).

Schilder's pipe-smoker passage (PoP 168 / EC 192) is the cardinal figure here. When the pipe-smoker sees himself in the mirror, what he experiences is not recognition of an ego-image but the carrying-away of his flesh's secrets: "the mirror carries the secrets of my own flesh away from it"; "my body lives out there at a distance from itself." The mirror does not give the body back to itself; it discloses the body's constitutive distance from itself. Narcissism in this second sense names precisely that distance — the body is "destined to itself" (V&I 249) but never coincides with itself, because the destination passes through an écart that is never closed.

Distinction from Freud / Lacan

The vocabulary overlap with psychoanalysis is a false friend that the page should mark sharply.

Freudian primary narcissism is a developmental-libidinal concept: a stage at which the libido is invested in the ego rather than in objects, with derivative concepts of ego-ideal, narcissistic injury, and so on. The unit of analysis is the ego and its libidinal economy. MP's narcissism has no ego in this sense — the term "ego" plays no positive role in the V&I working notes' formulation; the "self" of "destined to oneself" is a self by divergence (d'écart), not a libidinal substrate.

Lacanian mirror-stage narcissism is closer in figure — both invoke the mirror — but categorially different. For Lacan, the mirror stage is the moment at which the infant identifies with an imaginary unified body-image, founding the ego on a méconnaissance. The mirror gives the body back as a (false) unity. For MP, by contrast, the mirror (Schilder's pipe-smoker, PoP 168) gives the body away from itself: it discloses the body's distance from itself, not its unity. The mirror is a figure of écart, not of identification.

The structural-ontological vs. psychoanalytic register difference is the load-bearing one. Morin's worry (Ch 8 §1 p. 183) — that "narcissism" risks pulling MP back into a circle-of-self-presence undermining the écart — is dispelled by showing that both senses go through dehiscence of the flesh, which is precisely the non-egological self-splitting that the psychoanalytic register cannot accommodate. The structural reading also distinguishes MP's narcissism from any reading of late MP as covertly Hegelian (where "narcissism" would name a return-to-self of Spirit); the écart prevents the return.

Connections

enacts chiasm — the narcissism of all vision is the chiasm at the level of vision-itself: the crossing of seer and seen within a common visibility, which the term "chiasm" names structurally and "narcissism" names from the side of vision's reflexivity
requires dehiscence — both senses of narcissism are intelligible only as the flesh's dehiscence; without dehiscence the self-relating would be ego-coincidence, and the term "narcissism" would collapse into its Freudian sense. Dehiscence is what makes MP's redefinition possible
shares mechanism with ecart — narcissism and écart both name vision's self-relating-through-difference. The two are co-extensive in MP's late ontology; "the self in question is by divergence (d'écart)" (V&I 249) makes the identification explicit. Morin's diagnostic (Ch 8 §1) turns on showing that narcissism without écart would be ego-narcissism — the écart is constitutive
is a case of flesh as element — narcissism is the visible's self-doubling within flesh, one of the ways flesh "incarnates" the reflexivity that flesh-as-element makes possible
contrasts with Freudian / Lacanian ego-narcissism — categorially distinct register: structural-ontological (about vision's reflexivity, prior to any ego) vs. psychoanalytic (about libidinal cathexis or mirror-stage identification). The false-friend risk is built into the vocabulary, which is why Morin's anti-egological precision matters
is the condition of intelligibility of reversibility of seer and visible — reversibility names the structural turning, narcissism names the reflexive register in which that turning becomes vision's self-relation

Open Questions

Does MP's narcissism reading sustain across the V&I working notes, or is it primarily a posthumous-text register? Anchored in V&I 139 and V&I 249 (May 1960 working note); a fuller cross-note survey would clarify how stably MP holds the two-sense distinction or whether it is provisional terminological experimentation late in his life
How does Morin's anti-egological reading hold against Madison 1981's reading of the same passages? Madison's reading of late MP's reflexivity has been read both as compatible with and as resisting the dehiscence-precision; a direct comparison on the V&I 249 passage would help calibrate
Is the Schilder pipe-smoker passage (PoP 168 / EC 192) load-bearing for the late-MP narcissism (1960 working notes), or does its work belong primarily to the Phenomenology of Perception register? The question matters for whether the two-sense distinction has a single body-schema lineage from PoP through V&I, or whether Schilder is reread in the late ontology with shifted weight

Sources

merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — V&I 139 (the visible "seduces, captivates, alienates" the seer — narcissism of all vision); V&I 249 (May 1960 working note: "to be open to oneself, destined to oneself (narcissism) . . . the self in question is by divergence (d'écart)"); Ch 4 — "fundamental narcissism" enters MP's primary-concept register
morin-2022-mp-nancy-sense-being — Ch 8 §1–§2 pp. 183–187: sharpens the two-sense distinction; flags the circle-of-self-presence risk and answers it via dehiscence/écart; uses Schilder's pipe-smoker (PoP 168 / EC 192) — "the mirror carries the secrets of my own flesh away from it"; "my body lives out there at a distance from itself" — as the cardinal mirror-figure for the second sense