Giving voice to Echo

This article explores the narcissistic problematic through the figure of Echo and clinical examples. Echo reflects the absence of a primary echo in the mother, the absence of what Didier Anzieu calls an “aural mirror”. Ovid’s text recounting how Echo lost the capacity of speech is interpreted here with the ideas of Racamier on the “incestual”. To the primary absence of the mother is added the absence of the third, and the incestual link/ligature where by the child is used to fulfil one or both parents’ narcissistic needs. Lastly, Echo talks about a feminine problematic, in the woman as much as in the man. In Echo instead of an open shell, we find a chasm often blocked by a defensive phallic position, by a narcissistic magnificence, and/or by masochism or sadism. Working through this chasm of the “melancholic feminine” is viewed as a necessary way for a differentiated and open feminine to emerge.