The primary narcissism makes continuation in the theory of Freud to the car-erotic Stade. Freud introduces the term of Narcissisme in 1914, and thus indicates the moment of the psychic constitution of the child where, the reunified impulses take as object the Me.

The stage of the primary narcissism thus supposes the establishment of one Me joined together, and the covering of the component instincts by the sexual instinct.

It is at the time of the primary narcissism that the Ego ideal forges.

The primary narcissism corresponds to the period when the libido of the young child is completely related to itself, all that it does is to be used its narcissism for him (ego-libido). Then it grows and acquires the capacity to be different from the others (of his mother) and to invest them, it then carries its libido on other objects (object-libido). After having invested objects, the libido can make return on ego, it is the secondary narcissism.

However Freud during its work varied considerably as for the moment when it locates the appearance of the primary narcissime. In its texts of 1916-1917, it returns the primary concept of narcissisime in a primitive state of the life, former even to the constitution of ego, and whose intra-uterine life would be the prototype.