In Dalí's painting, he depicts the figure of Narcissus on the left side of the canvas crouched by a lake, with his head resting on his knee, and a stone hand clutching an egg mirroring the shape of his body on the right. From out of the cracked egg, a narcissus flower sprouts. In the mid-ground of the painting stand a group of Narcissus's rejected suitors. Among the mountains in the background rests a third Narcissus figure. Metamorphosis of Narcissus differs from Dalí's other double-image paintings, in which there are multiple images hidden in one, because Narcissus's figure is doubled in the stone hand.
On July 19, 1938 in London, Dalí met Sigmund Freud, whom the painter had admired since the 1920s after reading Freud's book The Interpretation of Dreams. During their meeting, Dalí brought his painting Metamorphosis of Narcissus in hopes of using it to discuss the psychoanalytic theory of Narcissism and his concept of critical paranoia, which he developed based on Freud's concept of paranoia. He also was given permission to sketch Freud. The meeting was arranged by writer Stefan Zweig and Dalí's benefactor, Edward James, who was also in attendance and ultimately gained ownership of Metamorphosis of Narcissus.