This book provides a comprehensive review of the existing perspectives and applications of narcissism as a psychoanalytic concept that has been extremely influential in the fields of psychotherapy, social science, arts and humanities.Ten authors from different disciplines have been invited to write on the topic of narcissism as it is approached in their specialist field. This resulted in an exciting and inclusive overview of contemporary thought on narcissism. This book is also a critical reader. Each author closely examined and analyzed the possibilities and limitations of different views on narcissism.

Anastasios Gaitanidis is a Permanent Visiting Lecturer in Psychoanalytic Studies at Goldsmiths College (University of London), an Associate Lecturer in Social Sciences at the Open University and a Visiting Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Kent. He is also a psychodynamic counsellor/psychotherapist in private practice. He is currently co-authoring the book Male in Analysis with Tessa Adams and Larry O’Carroll (Palgrave), and co-editing the book Authoring the Sublime with Tessa Adams (Karnac).

Polona Curk (Assistant Editor) holds an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies from Goldsmiths College (University of London) and is currently a full-time PhD candidate at Birkbeck College (University of London). Before coming to Britain, she worked as an architect in her country, Slovenia. She also worked as a counsellor-volunteer in a non-governmental organisation against violence. Her research is concerned with the concept of autonomy in the meeting of two subjects, and with the feminine and masculine subjectivity and their representations in the social realms, using psychoanalytic approaches and feminist theory.