Malignant Narcissim: A Psychoanalitcal Study of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise

Abstract

Fitzgerald’s interest in abnormal psychology finds expression in his delineation of narcissistic characters. Fitzgerald has created them with ease and poise without excessively violating the behaviour of a normal man in society. His characterization seems to substantiate Grace Stuart’s comment on modern civilization: “Our civilisation suffers from the circumstance that some kinds of psychosis (of the paranoid-narcissistic type) are able to function in our midst because they are not as yet acknowledged as psychosis, but accepted as normal by a neurotic culture-pattern.”(Narcissus: A Psychological study of self-love, 98-99). As such, Fitzgerald’s narcissistic characters, unlike the victims of traumatic neurosis do not appear to be overtly abnormal, but a closer analysis exposes the psychopathological symptoms in them.