Psychotherapists and cultural pundits tell us today that contemporary society is fundamentally narcissistic. The therapeutic concept of Narcissism was propagated by Sigmund Freud in 1914, building on his immediate predecessors who had linked narcissistic personality traits with criminal homosexuality. In Freud's thinking, the story of Narcissus became the paradigm by which to distinguish infantile stirrings of libidinous energies set against the...