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The aim of this article is to reconsider the infantile specificity of the double component of pathological narcissism: inflation and collapse, in relation to the underlying depressive stakes involved. Through the account of an Oscar Wilde story, the accent is placed on the bodily and visual translation of motor excitation which takes the place of affect versus agitation and versus somatic disorganisation. All the ingredients of the myth of Narcissus and of its “ negative ” are transposed in the child in this text, with a backdrop of object loss, whether real or symbolic, reactualized by the misleading signal of the other’s gaze. They are questioned again in the psychologist’s clinical work which favors the longitudinal, projective approach.