Quotes about Narcissism

A lack of relation to the archetypal dimension results in spiritual impoverishment and a sense of meaninglessness in life. But insufficient anchoring of the archetypal in the personal realm results in mere "head trips" and narcissistic preoccupation. There we merely speculate about archetypal meaning rather than try to discover this meaning through living concretely the prosaic and "trivial" problems and difficulties of everyday feelings and relationships-including those that arise in the transferential interaction with one's therapist.

Something in us doesn't want to be civilized, linked too closely with Apollo and all his humanitarian accomplishments--medicine, music, ideas. It doesn't want any kind of union, but desperately tries to preserve its individuality and integrity. Something in us wants to be wooden, untalkative, and impenetrable. It wants to revert to dumb nature. Something in us doesn't want to be loved or desired. A tree's beauty is purely unintended and purposeless.
Daphne is wooden. She is that which doesn't want to be communicative, available, friendly, present, or articulate. Instinctively she flees from the most noble of attentions, the most humane of admirers. She would rather be like a tree than a person, an it rather than a thou. The Daphne spirit is so pure that it has no use for the sentimentality of relationship.
Modern psychological thinking doesn't appreciate the necessity presented in this myth. We consider it normal and healthy to be intimate with each other and communicate well. We interpret flight from intimacy as neurotic, abnormal, and practically immoral. But within this myth, flight from interpersonal contact is the norm. Resistance to humanitarian sensitivity is valid. Disappearing from the human scene somehow protects and preserves Daphne in a completely acceptable way.
Rather than judge each other and ourselves for our failure to be sociable, we might reconsider our biases and assumptions, even our sentimentality, about relationship. Perhaps some of our narcissism is a symptomatic attempt recover as strong unrelated sense of self. How can we reach out to another anyway, if we don't have strong devotion to our individuality?

Acknowledging our inner divinity as a step on the path to embodying it is not to be confused with narcissism or individualism, since we must further admit that everyone’s divine birthright is the same limitless creational potential of unconditional love.

I know it’s not politically correct these days to say that one is doing something “new,” but at the risk of offending a few more people, I really believe I am. Perhaps it is just my narcissism, but in the end, history will be my judge. I know that this will never become a mass movement, because for all the reasons I’ve explained and more, it is just too demanding for most people. But nevertheless, I am convinced that our success in transcending the ego together, so that a truly enlightened consciousness and culture permanently emerges and becomes stable, is inherently of profound significance for our collective future.

When we are narcissistic, we are not on solid ground (earth) or thinking clearly (air) or cought up in passion (fire).  Somehow if we follow the myth, we are dreamlike, fluid, not clearly formed, more immersed in a stream of fantasy than secure in a firm identity.