Echoism - Donna Christina Savery

for Echo was a Nymph, in olden time,--
and, more than vapid sound,--possessed a form:
and she was then deprived the use of speech, 
except to babble and repeat the words, 
once spoken, over and over. 

-Ovid's Metamorphosis

This book introduces the importance of echoism as a clinical entity and a theoretical concept. In Ovid's version of the myth of Echo and Narcissus, the character Echo receives equal attention to her counterpart, Narcissus, yet she has been completely marginalised in the pervasive literatures on narcissism.

The author draws upon her work with patients who have experienced relationships with narcissistic partners or parents, and have developed a particular configuration of object relations and ways of relating for which she uses the term echoism. She uses psychoanalytic theory and existential philosophical ideas to underpin her formulations and inform her clinical thinking.

Donna Christina Savery is a psychotherapist and group therapist in private practice in Buckinghamshire and Harley Street, London.