Richard Gipps, 'The temptation of narcissism: a Wittgensteinian investigation'

Ludwig Wittgenstein saw his philosophical work as an ethical endeavour - the endeavour of overcoming what he called his pride. I suggest that Wittgenstein's inner battles are best understood in terms of the psychoanalytical notion of narcissism. Narcissism involves a person being caught up in a phantasy that he or she could be his or her own 'object'. That is to say, it involves someone falsely and defensively imagining that they could meaningfully offer themselves ratification, reassurance, love, containment, otherness - that they could be mentally and emotionally self-creating and self-sustaining. Wittgenstein's inner protagonist, the one known as the 'private linguist' of Philosophical Investigations (256ff), is, I suggest, helpfully understood as the consummate narcissist. And the private language arguments are, I argue, helpfully read as Wittgenstein's attempts to give a voice to, but then expose the illusions of, this narcissist's endeavours. By reading Wittgenstein's arguments through such a psychoanalytical lens we can also take something back for psychoanalysis: we can refine our understanding of the logic of narcissism.