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Babies are … obviously narcissistic, but not in the way adults are, not even Spinoza's God, and I am a little afraid that Freud sometimes forgets that the narcissistic baby has no sense of self.
--
Jean Piaget, in The First Year of Life of the Child (1927), as quoted in The Essential Piaget (1977), edited by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Von?che

 

Sigmund Freud

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There are no really solipsistic philosophers, and those who think they are deceive themselves. The true solipsist feels at one with the universe, and so very identical to it that he does not even feel the need for two terms. The true solipsist projects all his states of mind onto things. The true solipsist is entirely alone in the world, that is, he has no notion of anything exterior to himself. In other words the true solipsist has no idea of self. There is no self: there is the world. It is in this sense it is reasonable to call a baby a solipsist: the feelings and desires of a baby know no limits since they are a part of everything he sees, touches, and perceives.
Babies are, then, obviously narcissistic, but not in the way adults are, not even Spinoza's God, and I am a little afraid that Freud sometimes forgets that the narcissistic baby has no sense of self.
Given this definition of solipsism, egocentrism in children clearly appears to be a simple continuation of solipsism in infants.. Egocentrism, as we have seen, is not an intentional or even a conscious process. A child has no idea that he is egocentric. He believes everybody thinks the way he does, and this false universality is due simply to an absence of the sense of limits on his individuality. In this light, egocentrism and solipsism are quite comparable: both stem from the absence or the weakness of the sense of self.

 

Jean Piaget

 

Lots of my friends have babies, but I don't have any babies. But I have lots of friends; babies don't have any friends. They all have those baby-monitors so they can hear the baby from the other room, which I consider a form of wiretapping. One day there's gonna be a really smart baby who makes a fake recording of some fake baby noises...gonna crawl out of the window and go to Italy. I need one of those baby-monitors for my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I'm really thinking about. Sometimes I talk to myself fluently in languages I'm unfamiliar with... just to screw with my subconscious. It's a good thing a lot of people speak foreign languages, otherwise those people would have no one to talk to.

 

Steven Wright

 

The principle of the brotherhood of man is that narcissistic one, for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.

 

Germaine Greer

 

Before I met him, I wasted so much time. I was just annoying and narcissistic, and smelled bad. He’s protective without being possessive, passionate without needing to show his temper. I’m sorry, I know I sound insipid.

 

Anne Hathaway

 

Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.

 

Abraham Joshua Heschel