When Echo Met Narcissus or How Not to Drown

You’ve probably heard about Narcissus, the immature and self-absorbed lad who fell in love with himself and either drowned or withered away staring at his reflection in a pool. You might have heard of Echo, the unlucky nymph who loved Narcissus but who could only repeat what others had already said. In the famous 1930 painting Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse, Narcissus crouches to stare at his watery form while Echo looks on disconsolately. (Some wit created a meme a few years back by replacing the pool with a smartphone screen.)

Many an empathic, sensitive, and loving person can relate to Echo because such are the natural targets of narcissists in perpetual search for admiration and mirroring. One moment you are being love-bombed and idealized; the next, treated with contempt and retaliated against for protesting. This can play out in families, at work, among friends, or in romantic relationships.

In my upcoming class on Echo, Narcissus, and codependency, we will explore this dynamic, consider ways to avoid it, and examine how to heal from it. We will also look into covert narcissism, a variety much more difficult to spot than the obvious grandiosity and bragging we tend to be on the alert for. Introversion, charm, a split between public and private persona, pretend idealism, projected paranoia, passive aggression, quiet entitlement, manipulation through withdrawal, and character smears signal the covert narcissist at work behind the scenes where they prefer to stay.

If you’ve met someone who makes you feel seen and unique, just you and them against the world, only to suffer massive disillusionment, self-doubt, and character assassination, you might have been Echoed by a covert narcissist. It’s not your fault. They are experts at this, having made a life’s work of it. It’s what they do in lieu of maturing.

At the same time, an inquiry awaits into why our individuation needed this kind of trauma, confusion, and betrayal. What was the unconscious trying to tell us? How do we gain discernment? “There is no light without shadow,” Jung wrote in Psychology and Alchemy, “and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.” What old story were we in that required such a jolt in order to expand? What are we called to leave behind in service to a new story bringing new possibilities?

One thing is clear: Pendulum swings between the opposites of innocence and bitterness, naivete and cynicism, gets us nowhere. As Jung points out, the opposites appear when some new level of consciousness is at hand. Discernment is a useful third alternative to swinging back and forth as we struggle to heal from being wounded and manipulated and move forward into insight and empowerment. Then the poison can alchemize into seasoning.

In the course Codependency and Narcissism, Craig Chalquist will explore the painful entanglement between codependency in one person and narcissism in the other. We will examine how these two psychologies play out in families, at work, and in relationships. Click here to learn more.