Echoism has been popularized by psychologist Dr. Craig Malkin, whose 2015 book Rethinking Narcissism introduced many to the personality trait, although echoism was first coined in a 2005 paper by psychoanalyst Dean Davis.
|
|
Narcissism and echoism can be thought of as opposite ends of a spectrum.
|
|
Echoism typically arises when someone is in a toxic relationship with a narcissist.
|
|
"Echoism, when it becomes extreme, is an attempt to cope with that," he says.
|
|
"Most people who struggle with echoism kind of hate their own needs," he says.
|
|
The concept of echoism is drawn from the Greek myth of Narcissus and Echo.
|
|
The data on whether women may be more likely to suffer from echoism is patchy.
|
|
First, it's worth noting that echoism, unlike narcissism, is not an officially recognized condition or disorder.
|
|
In fact, if you developed echoism in childhood, you might apply it to your adult relationships.
|
|
In romantic relationships, addressing echoism could help you feel not only happier, but also more sexually satisfied.
|
|
What we found is that there wasn't any difference between men and women in rates of echoism.
|
|
If they want to overcome echoism, they also have to figure out: Can I do it in this relationship?
|
|
"Being able to have a vulnerable way to share those feelings instead of blaming yourself—that's what helps people overcome echoism," Malkin says.
|
|
Malkin's online test for narcissism and echoism has been taken over 100,000 times, whilst the raisedbynarcissists support group on Reddit has 328,000 subscribers.
|
|
Malkin places echoism at the far end of the narcissistic spectrum he has developed: echoists have a fear of being needy, special, or selfish.
|
|
"The typical coping pattern of someone who copes with echoism is that anytime something goes wrong, their go-to question is: What did I do?" he says.
|
|
"I think people who are raised in a way that tips them toward echoism are more likely to be drawn into relationships with narcissistic friends and partners," Malkin says.
|
|
"Often people with echoism struggle with allowing themselves to be in contact with what they really need and that includes the need for excitement, things that help them feel sexually excited," he says.
|
|
Malkin estimates around 23 percent of the population exhibit narcissist behaviors, and many of these narcissists will have family members who may have been exposed to potential abuse, meaning that the concept of echoism resonates with a wide audience.
|
|
Compared to neutral observers, parents tend to overvalue the qualities of their child. When parents act in an extreme opposite style and the child is rejected or inconsistently reinforced depending on the mood of the parent, the self-needs of the child are not met. Freud contrasted the natural development of active-egoistic and passive- altruistic tendencies in the individual with narcissism, in the former, and what Trevor Pederson referred to as echoism, in the latter.The Economics of Libido: Psychic Bisexuality, the Superego, and the Centrality of the Oedipus Complex (2015) Where the egoist can give up love in narcissism, the altruist can give up on the competition, or "the will," in echoism.
|
|
Craig Malkin, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, wrote about healthy narcissism in his book 'Rethinking Narcissism'. According to Malkin, Narcissism exists on a spectrum and unhealthy narcissism occurs when there is a deficiency of narcissism, also known as Echoism, or when people become addicted to feeling special as in narcissistic personality disorder.
|
|
Karen Horney saw the narcissistic personality as a temperament trait molded by a certain kind of early environment. She did not see narcissistic needs and tendencies as inherent in human nature.Paris, Bernard J, Personality and Personal Growth, edited by Robert Frager and James Fadiman, 1998 Craig Malkin called a lack of healthy narcissism "echoism" after the nymph Echo in the mythology of Narcissus. Healthy narcissism might exist in all individuals.
|
|
It is more of a mental attraction than a physical attraction. Visually, we make interpretations on love based on the way a person looks. "Harmonism" and "echoism" are the ways a face is constructed that makes one physically attractive: the distance between the forehead and nose, distant between the mouth and chin, how close the eyes are together, the sweep of one's eyebrows.The biochemical level fluctuation of a person can also explain the question “Who We Love”.
|
|
The individual first has a non-ambivalent relations of fusion with authority or love figures, which are characterized by the egoistic or altruistic drives. Second, the individual can move to defusion from authority or love figures which leads to repetitions of ambivalent, narcissistic or echoistic relations. In the third movement, the individual becomes the dead or absent parental figure that never returned love to the echoist, or the perfect, grandiose parental figure in narcissism. While egoism and narcissism concern dynamics of power and inferiority/superiority, Pederson argues that altruism and echoism concern dynamics of belonging and inclusion/exclusion.
|
|