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The keystone of Freud’s social theory is an asocial individual: the leader. Alone in retaining his primary narcissism, this improbable superman is in reality the product of a purely logical imperative. To build his system, Freud must follow the same path that led Rousseau from the state of nature to the social contract. The envious narcissism of the members of the group corresponds to the form of self-love that Rousseau called amour-propre; the peaceable isolation that each achieves by channeling his narcissistic libido onto the leader’s ego is Rousseau’s amour de soi.1 As to the leader himself, he ought to embody—after the fashion of the general will—society’s exteriority with respect to itself, its self-transcendence. But Freud endows the leader with real transcendence, not seeing that the leader’s absolute love for himself is an illusion which rests upon the group’s love for him.