The traces of this state of elation and megalomania, based on the notions of harmony and omnipotence, nevertheless provide a source of psychic energy that will remain active throughout life.
The child, and later the adult, will seek to preserve and return to this narcissistic mode of being, notably through music, passionate love, or mystical ecstasy.
Following an initial period of elation known as the "honeymoon", psychoanalytic treatment must succeed in bringing together the narcissistic elements of the self by integrating them into interpretations of reality: ego-libido and object-libido must arrive at a satisfactory compromise.
Building on his work, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel claims that 'it is indeed therefore narcissistic elation, the meeting of ego and ideal, that dissolves the superego'.
[7] With respect to a slightly later phase of early development, Margaret Mahler 'describes the practising junior toddler's omnipotent exhilaration (excitement) and narcissistic elation (joy)'[8] at learning to walk—the 'tremendously exhilarating, truly dramatic effect that upright locomotion had'—noting however that 'it is precisely at the point where the child is at the peak of his delusion of omnipotence...that his narcissism is particularly vulnerable to deflation'.
[16] In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a 'cold intellectual arrogance and narcissistic elation' have been identified in 'the highly ambitious speculations attributed to Stephen—the central protagonist—with respect to aesthetics.