Mimetic Desire: Essays on Narcissism in German Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism.

MIMETIC DESIRE: ESSAYS ON NARCISSISM IN GERMAN LITERATURE FROM ROMANTICISM TO POSTMODERNISM. Edited by Jeffrey Adams and Eric Williams. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1995. Pp. ix + 225. $57.95.

The above volume is an important contribution to the study of narcissism, particularly as it relates to German-language authors, and to German culture in the broadest sense of the term. It is comprised of a highly instructive introduction and eleven essays; the latter are arranged more or less chronologically--from the late eighteenth century to the present. The editors' point of departure is a discussion of the myth of Narcissus. Originally a cautionary tale of the dangers of self-absorption and arrogance, the myth has been appropriated by modern depth psychology to characterize personality traits and pathologies originating in preoedipal or earliest psychic development. As for the history of the theoretical interest in the implications of the psyche's narcissistic desire, it began in the German Romantics' speculations on subjectivity and in their grand attempts to unite, conceptually and artistically, the spirit of the psyche with that which …