The Culture of Narcissism - by Christopher Lasch

Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations was a best-seller when it was first published in 1979, and it stands as one of the most distinctive works of social criticism and commentary of the last three decades. Lasch used the term narcissism, a psychological term based on a myth, "as a metaphor for the human condition". Analyzing culture through a psychological, diagnostic metaphor is an experimental venture. Many writers fail. The bookstores and libraries are filled with half-baked social theories dressed up in medical jargon. And, of course, narcissism has become one of the catchphrases of popular psychology, with literally hundreds of self-help books mentioning narcissism in some way. Lasch's ideas stand out from a mass of inferior material.

Lasch was a student and teacher of American history, with an emphasis on populist and radical ideas and politics. He described himself as a radical and a populist. He was a critic of capitalism as practiced by modern corporations, criticizing the way advertising constantly undermines people's confidence in their skills, their abiliities and the quality of their lives, in order to sell them new products and services. He was also a critic of the educational system, psychology and social work, identity politics, celebrity culture, the destruction of tradition, the devaluation of ordinary skills, and the devaluation of families in modern society. He is basically a democrat and a humanist, with a strong sense that social limitations and social forces make people lead degraded and unhappy lives. This perspective makes him an ambivalent critic of popular culture. The fact that he is a critic of popular culture doesn't make him a conservative, but some aspects of his critique resonate with intellectual conservatives. Liberal philosophers and ideologues of individualism, identity, and self-actualization like Charles Taylor, writing in The Malaise of Modernity, associate him with Allan Bloom and other conservative social critics.

The term "narcissism", was relatively obscure in 1979. As Lasch noted in the Afterword to the 1991 Norton paperback edition of The Culture of Narcissism, by 1979, Tom Wolfe's identification of the 1970's as the "Me decade" was a journalistic and cultural cliche. Freud used the Greek myth of Narcissus in his own distinctive method of psychological analysis - psychoanalysis - to describe a particular pattern of feeling, thinking and acting. In classical Freudian theory, a very young child is the perfect narcissist. Radically dependent, and frightened of being alone, the child tries to be recognized by adults, to control adults, and find a sense of peace and security. This explains the child's fears, demands for attention, fantasy life, and extreme emotions. This kind of process is normal in children, but abnormal for adults. As we grow up, we learn about attachments, trust, and independence. We learn our limitations. Narcissists don't get it - they are so insecure about themselves that they constantly demand attention and constantly try to control other people. It is an elusive concept, because people responding to the same insecurities may act in dramatically different ways. A narcissist may appear to be neurotic, needy and passive-aggressive, or may present as a self-confident person, focussed to the point of being obsessed, perhaps a bully or a predator.

Article Author: Tony Dalmyn

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