The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

258 Pages·2018·1.45 MB·English

by  Christopher Lasch

THE CULTURE OF
NARCISSISM
American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations
Christopher Lasch
Introduction by E. J. Dionne Jr.
W. W. Norton & Company
Independent Publishers Since 1923
New York • London
TO KATE
For she is wise, if I can judge of her,
And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she hath
prov’d herself; And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true, Shall
she be placed in my constant soul.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, II. VI
CONTENTS
Introduction by E. J. Dionne Jr.
Preface
I
The Awareness Movement and the Social Invasion of the Self
The Waning of the Sense of Historical Time
The Therapeutic Sensibility
From Politics to Self-Examination
Confession and Anticonfession
The Void Within
The Progressive Critique of Privatism
The Critique of Privatism: Richard Sennett on the Fall of Public Man
II
The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time
Narcissism as a Metaphor of the Human Condition
Psychology and Sociology
Narcissism in Recent Clinical Literature
Social Influences on Narcissism
The World View of the Resigned
III
Changing Modes of Making It: From Horatio Alger to the Happy Hooker
The Original Meaning of the Work Ethic
From “Self-Culture” to Self-Promotion through “Winning Images”
The Eclipse of Achievement
The Art of Social Survival
The Apotheosis of Individualism
IV
The Banality of Pseudo-Self-Awareness: Theatrics of Politics and Everyday
Existence
The Propaganda of Commodities
Truth and Credibility
Advertising and Propaganda
Politics as Spectacle
Radicalism as Street Theater
Hero Worship and Narcissistic Idealization
Narcissism and the Theater of the Absurd
The Theater of Everyday Life
Ironic Detachment as an Escape from Routine
No Exit
V
The Degradation of Sport
The Spirit of Play versus the Rage for National Uplift
Huizinga on Homo Ludens
The Critique of Sport
The Trivialization of Athletics
Imperialism and the Cult of the Strenuous Life
Corporate Loyalty and Competition
Bureaucracy and “Teamwork”
Sports and the Entertainment Industry
Leisure as Escape
VI
Schooling and the New Illiteracy
The Spread of Stupefaction
The Atrophy of Competence
Historical Origins of the Modern School System
From Industrial Discipline to Manpower Selection
From Americanization to “Life Adjustment”
Basic Education versus National Defense Education
The Civil Rights Movement and the Schools
Cultural Pluralism and the New Paternalism
The Rise of the Multiversity
Cultural “Elitism” and Its Critics
Education as a Commodity
VII
The Socialization of Reproduction and the Collapse of Authority
The “Socialization of Workingmen”
The Juvenile Court
Parent Education
Permissiveness Reconsidered
The Cult of Authenticity
Psychological Repercussions of the “Transfer of Functions”
Narcissism, Schizophrenia, and the Family
Narcissism and the “Absent Father”
The Abdication of Authority and the Transformation of the Superego
The Family’s Relation to Other Agencies of Social Control
Human Relations on the Job: The Factory as a Family
VIII
The Flight from Feeling: Sociopsychology of the Sex War
The Trivialization of Personal Relations
The Battle of the Sexes: Its Social History
The Sexual “Revolution”
Togetherness
Feminism and the Intensification of Sexual Warfare
Strategies of Accommodation
The Castrating Woman of Male Fantasy
The Soul of Man and Woman under Socialism
IX
The Shattered Faith in the Regeneration of Life
The Dread of Old Age
Narcissism and Old Age
The Social Theory of Aging: “Growth” as Planned Obsolescence
Prolongevity: The Biological Theory of Aging
X
Paternalism Without Father
The New Rich and the Old
The Managerial and Professional Elite as a Ruling Class
Progressivism and the Rise of the New Paternalism
Liberal Criticism of the Welfare State
Bureaucratic Dependence and Narcissism
The Conservative Critique of Bureaucracy

Acknowledgments
Afterword: The Culture of Narcissism Revisited
Notes
Index
INTRODUCTION
The Vocation of a Critic
The Culture of Narcissism seems to leap across the decades. Again and again, it
speaks to struggles two generations removed from the era that provided the
setting for Christopher Lasch’s enduring masterpiece.
Its contemporary feel arises in part because “narcissism” has been one of the
dominant words in American politics since the election of Donald Trump as
president in 2016. But even more impressive than the immediate relevance of a
single word is how a book published in 1979 identifies so many of the
discontents still roiling America’s social and political life in our day.
Lasch bemoans the degradation of truth, the growing distance between elites
and the less privileged, and the struggles of the American family. He warns
about the social and psychological costs of the American worker’s loss of
control over the conditions of labor. He explains the rise of “a pervasive distrust
of those in power” (a natural public concern in the wake of the Vietnam War and
Watergate) and mourns the transformation of politics into a quest “not for social
change but for self-realization.” He highlights the paradox that ours is “a society
dominated by corporate elites with an anti-elitist ideology.” It would be hard to
find a better phrase to describe what Trump is about.
After Trump’s election, the historian Kevin Mattson, a student of Lasch’s,
wrote of how often he was asked after the 2016 election if we were entering a
“Lasch moment.” The new interest in Lasch’s work focused more on The Revolt
of the Elites, his final book, than on this one. Yet many of the themes the
revivalists cited run through these pages as well. Jill Lepore, for example, spoke
of Lasch’s “uncanny” prediction of “a democratic crisis resulting from the fact
that ‘elites speak only to themselves,’ partly because of ‘the absence of
institutions that promote general conversation across class lines.’” Ross Douthat,
the conservative New York Times columnist, similarly lifted up Lasch’s critique
of “the professional upper class’s withdrawal from the society it rules.” And the
most unexpected praise for Lasch’s work, as Mattson noted, came from Trump’s
sometimes senior advisor and chief ideologist (presuming that Trump has an
ideology), Steve Bannon. Bannon told Axios’ Jonathan Swan that the 2016
election was a testament to Lasch’s predictive powers.*
If Lasch’s central preoccupations pointed to the dynamics behind Trump’s
rise, many passages in The Culture of Narcissism inspire unflattering jolts of
recognition about Trump himself—the lover of praise, the seeker after friendly
audiences, the creator of a world in which he is always at the center.
Near the end of the book, Lasch tells us: “People with narcissistic
personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a
conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence.
Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public
life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognizes no
boundaries between the public and the private realm.”
Or this, from the first chapter:
Notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist
depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an
admiring audience. His apparent freedom from family ties and
institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in
his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which
he can overcome only by seeing his “grandiose self” reflected in the
attentions of others, or by attaching himself to those who radiate
celebrity, power, and charisma. For the narcissist, the world is a mirror,
whereas the rugged individualist saw it as an empty wilderness to be
shaped to his own design.
We live in a time, Lasch observes at another point, when “all politics
becomes a form of spectacle.” The narcissist, he argues, “admires and identifies
with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a loser.” No one is more obsessed
with “winners” and “losers” than Trump.
Lasch might offer a wry smile at how accurately his descriptions of
narcissism fit Trump, but one can be rather certain that he would object to any
loose applications of a word he sought to define rigorously. There is irony here,
since debates over how Lasch chose to understand and deploy narcissism have