People are obsessed with narcissism and narcissists. They want to know if they are a narcissist , if they are dating a narcissist, if their boss is a narcissist, if their dog is a narcissist – and on and on. But far fewer seem to be asking about the polar opposite of narcissism – echoism.
To understand this self-effacing trait, it’s worth first venturing into Greek mythology, whence the terms “narcissism” and “echoism” were derived. Echo was a nymph with a beautiful voice – a voice she used to keep up a pleasant conversation to distract Hera, the queen of the gods, so that she wouldn’t notice her husband’s (Zeus) infidelities with Echo’s friends (other mountain nymphs). Hera eventually understood Echo’s little game and punished her so that she no longer had control of her own tongue.
Echo was only able to speak when spoken to, and she could only repeat the last words of the person who had spoken to her. While the punishment took a heavy toll on Echo, her true suffering started when she fell in love with Narcissus, a hunter who had gained renown for his extraordinary beauty. Narcissus’s brutal rejection of Echo because of her inability to speak her own words caused her such grief that, in the end, there remained nothing of her except for her voice.
As in the myth where Echo helped other nymphs to mate with the king of the gods, echoists focus on meeting the needs of others to avoid considering their own. And they are unable to express their own desire.
