While

Does the highlighted "while" in the following context mean "as" rather than "although"? Because,I do not see any contrast in the following sentences to justify the meaning of "although". What is your idea?

Context:
narcissism and primary masochism being closely related. It is worth remembering that narcissism is not a straightforward concept in Freud’s writing. The narcissism we refer to in everyday life is a secondary formation that evolves as a defence against the loss of primary narcissism. Primary narcissism, which is bound up with infantile omnipotence, is expressed in auto-eroticism which involves the taking of a fragment of one’s own body, a zone or orifice, as a source of pleasure that revolves in an unbroken circuit around the body. The introduction of the outside world interrupts this circuit, creating a rift which prompts the developing ego to look outside itself for satisfaction. In classical accounts of narcissism, secondary narcissism is akin to a compensatory attempt to remake an unbroken circuit of satisfaction around the subject. Now while there is an element of self-love in all relationships that Freud deemed necessary, this secondary formation is, as we have seen in Lacan’s ‘The Mirror-Stage’, neurotic, dependent on the projection of an idealised selfimage, which Freud calls the ego ideal and which for Lacan is founded on lack. The undoing of this secondary formation may reveal a gaping wound akin to the horror Iversen mentioned above, which was an approach to the relationship between art and psychoanalysis taken up in art criticism in the 1990s by art historians such as Hal Foster.