Augustine: The reader as self-object

Abstract

My general thesis is that Confessions is written for an audience which Augustine uses as selfobjects...I do not formulate a diagnosis of Augustine's personality...I would rather emphasize the profound devaluation of narcissistic needs which animates the whole of Augustine's account. It parallels Freud's unanalytic denunciation of narcissism. What is denied and suppressed must, Freud taught us, reappear in a disguised form as symptoms and alienation.