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

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When The Culture of Narcissism was first published in 1979, Christopher Lasch was hailed as a “biblical prophet” (Time). Lasch’s identification of narcissism as not only an individual ailment but also a burgeoning social epidemic was groundbreaking. His diagnosis of American culture is even more relevant today, predicting the limitless expansion of the anxious and grasping narcissistic self into every part of American life.


The Culture of Narcissism offers an astute and urgent analysis of what we need to know in these troubled times.

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

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About the author

Christopher Lasch

33 books274 followers
Christopher "Kit" Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist, and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester.

Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.'

His books, including The New Radicalism in America (1965), Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy published posthumously in 1996 were widely discussed and reviewed. The Culture of Narcissism became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).

Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period are considered contradictory. They are sometimes denounced by feminists and hailed by conservatives for his apparent defense of the traditional family. But as he explained in one of his books The Minimal Self, "it goes without saying that sexual equality in itself remains an eminently desirable objective...". Moreover, in Women and the Common Life, Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.

He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 419 reviews
Profile Image for Justin Evans.
1,572 reviews860 followers
July 27, 2011
Lasch, on the evidence of this book, is the American Adorno. He writes in a similar style; each sentence is perfectly formed, but often not so well connected to the preceding and following sentences. He has no patience for the conservative/progressive distinction, and would rather discuss the effects of an idea or practice rather than immediately laud or damn it (so, for instance, 'feminism' isn't abruptly praised or scornfully ignored; rather, the difficulties of putting feminist doctrine into effect, and the inadequacy of feminism as a theory of society, are outlined... without concluding that women are inferior to men). Finally, this is Major Theory. He is not 'making a space for conversation' or 'analyzing discourses' or adding one brick to the great Academic Wall. He has a theory that late twentieth century life is really messed up, he traces out how we got to be like we are and speculates about how we could stop being that way. And his theory does seem to explain an awful lot.

In short, the conjunction of progressive liberalism and capitalism destroys traditional forms of life without providing any satisfactory replacement. Since people can no longer rely on those traditional forms, we feel a) at a loss, homeless, as if the world is out to crush us, but also, b) we're completely and increasingly dependent on the world. Our psychological defense against this is to become 'narcissistic,' reliant upon others for praise to boost our self-esteem. That praise needn't be genuine, in fact, it's usually better if it's not, since then there's no danger of our becoming dependent upon anyone. Relationships seem to require co-dependence, rather than friendship or love. It's increasingly difficult for us to become mature adults. Nonetheless, Lasch doesn't seem to be advocating a return to feudalism or anything. Socialism - not bureaucracy, but the human control of the economy, state and society - is his chosen solution to these problems.

The big problem with the book is that it's all a little Freudy. If you're allergic to Freud, as many people seem to be, you'll find that pretty off-putting. But there's not a whole lot of the really whacky Oedipus stuff. Lasch relies on the later Freud's theory of the id/ego/super-ego, to suggest that the revolt against authority makes it impossible for us to form an effective ego. Instead, it's all id (uncontrolled instinct) and terrifying super-ego (crushing guilt and self-loathing). You can and should cherry-pick chapters, even if you don't like Freud.

The second problem is that this is not a book for people who don't know about sociology and psychology as traditions of thought. In that way he's like Adorno too- this isn't popular non-fiction, whatever else it is. How it became a best-seller I'll never know. I do think that someone who's done a good job with a core undergraduate education should be able to muddle through and get the point; but how many people have done that? This is frustrating, because I want to recommend it to everyone I know. And if I do that, half of my friends will think I've become a knee-jerk conservative, one quarter will say 'oh Justin, up to his commie tricks again,' and the other quarter will roll their eyes and wish I wasn't such an elitist. Well suck it up, friends- I'm a conservative, socialist, elitist. Maybe I just like this book because I already agreed with it.
Profile Image for Szplug.
467 reviews1,325 followers
November 17, 2011
I read this book and thought This is a good book.
I read this book and thought I've learned from this book.
I read this book and thought Kit Lasch is the bomb.
I read this book and thought Man can be as slippery as Saturday's soap.
I read this book and thought Man can be as silly as Bugsy Malone.
I read this book and thought This is a serious book, with serious thoughts, and serious insights, and here I am chewing gum and popping bubbles.
I read this book and thought I really like this book. It's aces.
I read this book and thought This book mirrors a society a mile wide and an inch deep.
I read this book and thought My mirror shows splintered eyes haunted by failure.
I read this book and thought This looks to be another let's see year for the Nucks.
I read this book and thought Thanks to —————, I haven't had a decent dump in six goddamn years.
I read this book and thought Man is like me, severely constipated.
I read this book and thought And when it comes out, it's hard and it hurts.
I read this book and thought Why can't I accept finitude?
I read this book and thought Ol' Kit fucking nailed it. He fucking nailed me.
I read this book and thought Why does everybody talk about me?
I read this book and thought And if they aren't, why?
I read this book and thought Are my lungs expelling septic stink?
I read this book and thought We've seen better days.
I read this book and thought Better days can still be had.
I read this book and thought Salad days and tart vinaigrette.
I read this book and thought My daddy didn't cry, so neither do I.
I read this book and thought Not even when he beat me.
I read this book and thought I'm lying, he never actually beat me.
I read this book and thought But if I was hypnotized, I might think that he did.
I read this book and thought I've read most of Kit Lasch's books. They are smart but gloomy, tempestuous like my stomach.
I read this book and thought My stomach after Harvey's at the airport.
I read this book and thought I loved this book. Does the book love me?
I read this book and thought Good stuff, Kit. Merci beaucoup.
I read this book and thought In Vancouver the sun can hide itself away for months on end.
I read this book and thought Despite this, the suicide rate in Vancouver hovers around the national mean.
I read this book and thought I haven't yet erased my map.
I read this book and thought I once saw a woman jump to her death.
I read this book and thought Cracked me inside like a beat-up eggshell.
I read this book and thought To a chicken, an eggbeater is a rooster accused of child abuse.
I read this book and thought With that and Woody Woodpickle, I'm always armed.
I read this book and thought But I've got lots and lots of books to go.
I read this book and thought This is a solid four stars.
I read this book and thought Everybody should read this book.
I read this book and thought I did.
Profile Image for A.
429 reviews43 followers
November 24, 2022
9.95/10.

Lasch, evolving from his radical and social reformist roots, dissects American life in the era of permissiveness. Bringing from his leftist beginnings a much-needed critique of corporations, "experts", and bureaucrats in general, he presents one of the best diagnoses of the current miasma of America ever written. Narcissism and infantilism its two defining traits, modern America has no future, no past — just the ever woeful present. Life having become so free of sensation and struggle through technological advances, modern life becomes one dull, muted pain. The problem never seems to present itself, but the melancholy remains. The solution? The revivification of sensation through drugs, drink, and porn. The carousel of infinite Netflix shows or Instagram pictures works just as well. Endless, useless novelty: the Last Man's favorite cup of tea.

Where has his purpose gone? It has been sucked away by a presentism that sees current affairs and decisions as utterly different than anything before. Due to the relentless innovations of technology and the hijacking of education by its "pragmatic" counterpart, adolescents are informed that today is a new day, a day where Science and Innovation have buried the silly ideas of dead White men. Presentism displaces any role of parents beyond love, as they can no longer impart wisdom to the next generation. More often than not it is the parents dressing up in the new, trendy fashions; trying with all their might to stay young; falling behind with the new technology. Wisdom is outdated in the minds of the youth. "Experts" take all the other roles of parents, displacing all familial functions to corporations and bureaucrats — doctors, psychiatrists, counselors, public schools, social workers, daycare providers. These experts — and wonderful new products for children — are ready to advise parents in all aspects. They can take care of everything for them — how great!

But, parents, one thing we should watch out for is authoritarianism. This can give a child a psychiatric illness for life, which your psychiatrist will inform you about. So can not feeding them enough milk . . . or not giving them enough vitamins . . . or not letting them play video games two hours per day. Thus are parents blamed on all failures of their child, which "experts" through "parental counseling" are sure to fix. Parents become neurotic and are told to follow the cult of feeling, whereby if one expresses one's true feelings to the child, all will be okay. No discipline: simply understand the child's feelings and all will be well. This immediately degenerates into a renunciation of all authority and a training ground for narcissism. With no spankings (nor any rebukes at all), the child begins to see themself as all-powerful. Instead of facing the reality that others have desires which are not your own, the narcissist continues to believe that others should be focused on his needs.

No morality is left to check this narcissism. Lasch traces the Protestant work ethic (PWE) thuswise. First, the Puritans believed that improving one's material station was a duty to the community, which was for God. Ben Franklin secularized this duty and made the virtues (temperance, chastity, courage, honesty) valuable goals in their own aspect. One should pursue them to become a virtuous person. Then, during the mid-late 1800s, they became externalized: one should be good-mannered and honest because such actions will get you more business and sales. P.T. Barnum advocated this mentality. Then, finally, in the early-mid 1900s, the PWE degenerated into "how can I manipulate people so as to rise as high as possible on the corporate ladder". How can I win friends and influence people through my interpersonal manipulation skills? Religious virtue has fallen into base greed.

And what motivator is that? How can that give one real purpose? Yet the cult of narcissism is hung in front of our eyes every day in the form of celebrity. Celebrity is not defined by achievement, but simply by the deification of one's being. "I want to be known as me" — the ultimate narcissistic line. And so we get the tabloids glorifying the personal feuds, breakups, and new releases of celebrities. Children are asked who they want to become. The answer? Themselves — but glorified.

Celebrities aren't just there, but remake our society and morals in their own image, especially their sexual looseness. Chivalry's slow destruction after the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries culminated in feminism, the freedom of women to be sexually degraded in every way possible. The pious deification of the female during patriarchal times has deformed into a war of the sexes, whereby each sex calumniates the other for its weaknesses ("unfeeling men", "emotional slaves"). We are bombarded with messages that we have no future ("global warming", "overpopulation", "nuclear warfare", "environmental degradation", "children are a money suck", etc.), turning relationships into short flings. No one wants real commitment, real self-divulgence. Most just want real sex instead of porn. Women are indoctrinated so as to despise what men have done to them in the supposedly terrible patriarchal past, while men silently harbor violent sexual fantasies about women, hoping to destroy them like their favorite porn spastic.

The sexes are being torn apart so each can become a consumer. They will be able to consume lots of therapeutic "advice" about their favorite love lives, paying tens of thousands of dollars to experts for what should come naturally. Even politics becomes therapy. LGBTIDGAF are emotionally harmed by mean policies. We must fix that! Parents are failing their children. The state must come in and fix that! Little Johnny is making strange remarks about Mexicans and Africans. Call in the psychiatrist! The therapeutic society and consumerism pair perfectly with permissiveness. Permissiveness atomizes everyone, thus driving them to goods and services (instead of families and communities) for consolation. Advertising continually creates new needs and desires in their heart, and it becomes enflamed to fill the hole that keeps ending up empty. As they become ever more lonely due to bureaucratic experts taking away all functions of loved ones, they turn to therapeutic "experts" for help, who are greatly willing to help — for a price. Ending up on an eternity of pills and looking at their fat faces continually more, they seep down into a perennial self-consciousness and self-criticism. Lonely and self-enamored, they cannot see any other goal than mere survival. Such are the "morals" of today.

Managerial experts invade the schools, telling of the great advances they will make with our children. Armed with PhDs and school board placements, they are eminently certified to teach our children. Beginning in the Progressive era, they began to make our schools more "practical". Civics replaced political science; social studies replaced philosophy; physical education and home economics replaced logic and rhetoric. These changes were necessary to make good citizens, as opposed to the useless verbiage of the ancients. A democratic country needed a democratic education: a truly mass education. Students should not be thinking about "the good life", but instead learning how to work with machines.

But something was forgotten. What happens to Western Culture when no one is taught it? It falls into oblivion. Mass education creates education in the image of the masses — that is, mediocrity. Thus we get a "literacy" rate higher than ever — if defined as the ability to sign one's name —, but a cultural literacy more debased and degraded than man has ever known. Biblical literacy — utterly lost. Classical literacy — gone forever. Latin and Greek — dead languages. Western literature? — forgotten in the dust of pragmatics and ethnic consciousness-raising. Our historical sense has waned, our mastery of foreign languages has declined, and our recollection of eminent minds and their works is nigh naught. Once again: we live in an eternal present. Not only do we turn our noses up at the past, but we don't even know what happened in it! That's what Wikipedia is for.

But cell phones are for a different purpose. They make us stars of the show of our own lives. Narcissistic furor makes everyone view themselves as if they are always on camera — as they now are (Lasch predicted this in '79). Everyone can be a star. They can show what they ate today, who they went to a concert with, and what party they went to. No, I forgot! The food, the concert, the party . . . none of those matter. All that matters is that I went to them and can show that to the world. Reality becomes a perennial spectacle, a display for a digital world of people who are not physically there. The cult of celebrity goes from nation to state to locality to town to high school. I'm sure it now infects preschool.

When children grow up, they get to experience the wonders of the consumerist university. Instead of a comprehensive and coherent general education, the students get what they want: a low-effort elective buffet. Shopping commences on RateMyProfessor.com, where the easiest professors can be hand-picked. From there, all learning takes the form of a course. Books are for classes, not learning. All knowledge becomes nicely packaged into a course that one can pay for, and all courses (except the easy ones) are dreaded as obstacles in the "survival" mentality of modern college students. The only books seen being read on campus are fantasy and sci-fi novels; non-fiction is anathema. Remember, courses are for learning, not books! As colleges expanded more and more (hospitals, recreational centers, parks, career centers, food places, etc.) the administrative octopus expanded as well. It took control of a sprawling menace whose purpose no student could decipher. With pragmatism usurping the humane letters and elective soup left as an aborted fetus, students devolved into apathy about all learning. Taking "Qing Literature", "Women in Medieval Europe", "Mexican Politics", and "African Music", they found absolutely zero coherence (assumed to come naturally by "experts") and left with a massive feeling of self-doubt about the pile of debt they accumulated and their intellectual ineptitude.

Just kidding. They never realized they were intellectually illiterate. Able to access any piece of information at any time (from Wikipedia), they were the experts. A peer-reviewed study always at their fingertips, they could back up their arguments strongly. Going into their career they were greeted with more permissiveness. Their employers told them to give them "constructive criticism" and advocated workplace democracy, as well as other social justice issues. Their boss always subtly suggested that they do things, but never directly told them. Was it soft manipulation? Was it all a farce? Doubts always raced through the mind.

Going back to their homes, they yearned for an escape. They yearned for eternal youth: eternal ignorance. They just wanted to play, to have fun! Riddled with self-doubt and without a purpose in life, sacrificing their life to the corporate Baal, they dreaded the future. More of the same, more of the same! Video games were their escape at night, but demons always came while they were in bed. With the help of their psychiatrist, psychotherapist, counselor, doctor, and social worker, they survived another day. No standards, no morals, no purpose, no telos, no God, no virtue — all that uplifted man washed away by permissiveness and therapists, a deluge of numbness fell upon them. Wake up they could not. The womb their ideal, numbness their reality, and conscience their demon, they couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. Was modernity a mistake? Experts liars? Standards real? God existent? The questions haunted them day and night, yet inertia pushed them onwards. Left foot, right foot — repeat the next day. Such is the life of he who has been tricked.
Profile Image for Bettie.
9,989 reviews10 followers
Shelved as 'wish-list'
January 12, 2019
Description from Robert Reich:
In 1979, when 33-year-old Donald Trump was building Trump Tower -- his first big narcissistic project -- sociologist Christopher Lasch published “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations.”

In his book, Lasch argued that a host of economic factors, especially rampant consumerism, had made people self-obsessed, hyper-competitive, cut off from reality, erratic, unempathetic, angry, and vindictive. As a result, he wrote, “truth has given way to credibility, facts to statements that sound authoritative without conveying any authoritative information.” Lasch cited the example of Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, who at one point “admitted that his previous statements on Watergate had become ‘inoperative.'”

The narcissistic personality, Lasch wrote, will “display… the prevailing obsession with celebrity and a determination to achieve it even at the cost of rational self-interest and personal safety. The narcissist divides society into two groups: the rich, great, and famous on the one hand, and the common herd on the other. … [Narcissists] worship heroes only to turn against them when their heroes disappoint them. … The narcissist admires and identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a loser. … his admiration often turns to hatred if the object of his attachment does something to remind him of his own insignificance.”

For Lasch, a person possessing such traits was unable to function as a rational or trustworthy member of society -- as a human being capable of kindness, empathy and attentiveness to others people’s reality.

37 years later, Trump was elected president.

What do you think?
Profile Image for Murtaza .
680 reviews3,393 followers
March 6, 2018
I was surprisingly a little underwhelmed by this book, not because its insights and criticisms didn't ring true but rather because they all seemed quite familiar already. This could probably be attributable to the fact that it was written several decades ago and the arguments have already been internalized by the broader culture (even if changes haven't really been effectuated). After reading Patrick Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed," this book seemed like a more granular retread of some of the points of that work.

Having said that I did really appreciate Lasch's class-based analyses, particularly his scathing depiction of modern society as an individualistic "war of all against all." This hyper-competitive and brutal way of living has trickled up from the poorest strata of society and thoroughly encompassed the middle classes as well, leaving only a small elite relatively free of its grasp. Although I liked some of the Marxist stuff I was less enthralled by the Freudian analysis that Lasch employs, which perhaps merely reflects my own biases.

The book is short and straightforwardly written and is probably worthwhile for galvanizing those not already aware of our deteriorating contemporary society.

Profile Image for Clarence Burbridge.
27 reviews18 followers
June 9, 2012
A bore. Reader, pass by! This farrago of ludicrous banalities could have been a good book: interesting, informative, critical. Instead, the author has squandered the opportunity — and the reader's time — with two hundred and sixty-eight dull pages of pompous, pious, neo-conservative cant. It's barber-shop talk — Sunday-school self-righteousness — gussied up in the pretentious, pseudo-academic argot of the chattering classes of New York City, circa 1979, with a liberal garnish of end notes masquerading as scholarly apparatus. The book is a fake: "All hat and no cattle!" There are no real arguments being advanced here in a coherent and logical discourse; merely a piling-on of assertion and anecdote. Its natural companion on the remainder table would be another fatuous best-seller of the era, The Greening of America. You'd learn more about mid-century America's culture of narcissism (and have more fun) by listening to Carly Simon sing, "You're So Vain (You Probably Think This Song Is About You)."
Profile Image for John David.
338 reviews320 followers
February 15, 2013
Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism” was originally published in 1979, and has been a major cynosure of cultural and social criticism ever since. English literary critic Frank Kermode called it, not inaccurately, a “hellfire sermon.” It is a wholesale indictment of contemporary American culture. It also happens to fall into a group of other books which share the same body of concerns that I have been working my way through, or around, in recent months: Daniel Boorstin’s “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America,” Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle,” Philip Rieff’s entire corpus (especially “Charisma,” but also his earlier work on Freud), and even the book I’m currently reading, Tony Judt’s “Ill Fares the Land.”

All of these books discuss some aspect of social anomie, loss of community, and subsequent feelings of dissolution. This isn’t by any means a new debate; in the field of sociology, it dates at least as far back as Ferdinand Tonnies’ distinction between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, a distinction that was almost a prerequisite for the invention of modernism.

First, a note on the word “narcissism.” It was formerly a clinical term to diagnose the individual, but has “gone global” - or at least national. Lasch doesn’t really mean for the term to be a diagnosis in the clinical sense, but rather a “metaphor for the human condition” in contemporary times. In his argot, the word means much more than just lack of empathy, a tendency toward manipulative actions and pretentious behavior. “People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security” (p. 7). Lasch is more interested in the dissolution of communities and relationships that makes us feel as if we live highly individualized, atomized lives detached from the concerns of others. The book spells out the ways in which these patterns are positively correlated with the rise of materialism, technologism, “personal liberation” (those bywords of sixties radicalism) and nominal egalitarianism.

His few words on contemporary corporate America will strike anyone who has ever worked in one of these organizational hellscapes: he states that corporate bureaucracies “put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs in order to validate his self-esteem.”

A la Debord, the politics of narcissism become more about “managing impressions” and “human relations” more than actually solving problems, citing Kennedy’s disaster at the Bay of Pigs as an example. To steal from the language of yet another late French thinker, it’s all about the simulacra. In a chapter called “The Degradation of Sport,” he notes that enormous amounts of corporate money have turned athletes into mere entertainers to be sold to the most prestigious sports syndicate. The central concept of the sporting even – the agon, the contest – has been displaced in order to sell products and personalities who will invariably be with the team for only a short time.

Lasch’s political affiliations are sometimes interestingly and tellingly misconstrued. Though often criticized for being a reactionary conservative simply because he points to the radicalism of the sixties as one of the desiderata under consideration, Lasch’s analysis is self-consciously informed by both Marx and Freud, two figures hardly recognized for being popularly co-opted by various brands of twentieth-century conservatism. Those who believe that Lasch is a blind ideologue on other side of the spectrum need to read him again: he explicitly faults both the right for their veneration of the market’s “invisible hand” and the left for their cultural progressivism. Lasch is in politics, above all else, a democratic humanist.

He writes in the Afterword, “The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted … that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness.” It might not sound like a prognosis abounding in optimism, but it drips with the sincerity of an honest, heartfelt critic of American culture.
Profile Image for Michael Perkins.
Author 5 books422 followers
August 13, 2019
Although the author did not position his book as such, it's turned out to be an extremely prescient book about my Boomer generation. I'm a mid-Boomer, born in 1955. When the author wrote the book, many of the front-end Boomers had already entered their 30's. The Yippies had become Yuppies. The common thread of self-indulgence and narcissism was intact and would remain for many until this day. We now live an era, a new Gilded Age, where some Boomers have become extremely wealthy. But many more have spent their way into near poverty, never having saved a nickel. We were supposed to learn from the mistakes of our parents, but we have not been so successful, such as getting entrenched in pointless wars. And we failed to imitate their strong points, such as fiscal responsibility. I can only hope the the Millennials learn from our mistakes.

==========

What I've written above was the fundamental insight I got from the first time I read the book many years ago and it has stood the test of time.

What I was reminded of this time around was how much I originally learned from the book even though surrounded by chapters of some dense Freudian analysis which I think is not so useful.

-----

A later book that Lasch wrote. "The Minimal Self," is a companion book to this one. Allow me to commend BlackOxford's review of that one....

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Profile Image for Bon Tom.
856 reviews48 followers
January 10, 2020
During reading, I was completely unaware how old this book was. Because it all felt so fresh, relevant, current and actual. All the time the author was talking about narcissistic preoccupations with ephemeral aspects of one's all too important self and celebrities, I imagined, for sure, it was all the physically impossible buttocks on Instagram and 50 year old dudes that look like 20 yo girls he had in mind. Turns out, the author died at least 20 years before this Gomora of new milenium stepped on the scene, and almost the same number of years AFTER he wrote the book!

The only clue I might have taken in right direction, but I didn't, was how heavy on psychoanalysis it is. Many things are over the top, for sure. I think Freudian analysts themselves, those rare specimen still in habitat, that is, sometimes take their own trade as sort of intellectual gymnastics and nothing more.

The other times, which is some 95%, it all rings more than true. It rings and hits right in the head. I regret the author didn't live to this day to witness the fruition of his predictions, which he thought were statements about the state of affairs in seventies. What would he say about this day and age?

Maybe I enjoyed this book so much because there's a lot of me in it.
Which means I am narcissist myself.

If there's no me in it, I'm still narcissist thinking that it was.

So. Yeah.
Profile Image for Tara Brabazon.
Author 26 books352 followers
April 14, 2020
This is an angry book. I like a tough, angry book. We know the story. From the position of the 1970s, Lasch is critiquing the permissiveness of the 1960s. The 1960s created permissiveness, staunch feminism and a decline of the family.

Because ... afterall, morality, women and the family were so happy, organized and successful in the 1950s...

While I disagree with much of the book, validating 'the past' through a nostalgic lens, there is great attention to the transformations of the individual and individualism. It was also fascinating to see a reclaiming of the 19th century rendering of Self Help in light of the 1960s and 'awareness.'

I love a bit of self-righteous anger at hippies. I disagree with the target and the mode of analysis. But what a ride.
Profile Image for jasmine sun.
149 reviews178 followers
January 30, 2023
i've been hearing lasch's name come up more and more, often from the red scare / new right / tradcath crowd (goodreads tells me that lasch readers also like camille paglia, mark fisher, michel houellebecq, and bronze age pervert, lol). upon digging deeper, i was surprised to find out that lasch identified as a secular marxist. this was intriguing enough to get me to pick up this book—the Culture War TM and many of the ex-left anti-woke contrarians who've led its charge have been a pet interest.

first off, the culture of narcissism has some serious bangers: when lasch is right, he's so right, and so eloquently and sharply so, that i'd end up highlighting entire pages of quotes. it's immediately obvious why his work has resurged in popularity despite being published in 1978—so many of his diagnoses (therapy culture, the rise of autofiction, bullshit bureaucracies) feel devastatingly 21st century.

as the book progressed, though, i found lasch overly cynical about modernity, overly romantic about the american past (many of these narcissistic impulses have always existed), and his sweeping cultural analyses dependent on a bunch of debunked and crudely applied psychoanalytic theory. nominally leftist or not, lasch is fundamentally conservative in his tastes: skeptical of all forms of diversity and self-expression, and correspondingly nostalgic for the return of religious authority.

i still think it was a good book for understanding the growing "socially conservative, fiscally liberal" strand of recent political thought. and i have a soft spot for provocateurs in general, or anyone whose writing forces me to think / argue with it, regardless of whether i agree.

anyway, here are some of the good bits:

on the retreat from the political to the personal:
After the political turmoil of the sixties, Americans have retreated to purely personal preoccupations. Having no hope of improving their lives in any of the ways that matter, people have convinced themselves that what matters is psychic self-improvement: getting in touch with their feelings, eating health food, taking lessons in ballet or belly-dancing, immersing themselves in the wisdom of the East, jogging, learning how to “relate,” overcoming the “fear of pleasure.” Harmless in themselves, these pursuits, elevated to a program and wrapped in the rhetoric of authenticity and awareness, signify a retreat from politics and a repudiation of the recent past.

on american pessimism:
Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.

on the irrelevance of mis/information:
The rise of mass media makes the categories of truth and falsehood irrelevant to an evaluation of their influence. Truth has given way to credibility, facts to statements that sound authoritative without conveying any authoritative information... Knowing that an educated public craves facts and cherishes nothing so much as the illusion of being well informed, the modern progagandist avoids using high-sounding slogans; he rarely appeals to a higher destiny; he seldom calls for heroism and sacrifice or reminds his audience of the glorious past. He sticks to the “facts.” Propaganda thus merges with "information.”

on PMC alienation and irony:
When jobs consist of little more than meaningless motions, and when social routines, formerly dignified as ritual, degenerate into role playing, the worker—whether he toils on an assembly line or holds down a high-paying job in a large bureaucracy—seeks to escape from the resulting sense of inauthenticity by creating an ironic distance from his daily routine... He takes refuge in jokes, mockery, and cynicism. If he is asked to perform a disagreeable task, he makes it clear that he doesn’t believe in the organization’s objectives of increased efficiency and greater output... By demystifying daily life, he conveys to himself and others the impression that he has risen beyond it, even as he goes through the motions and does what is expected of him.
Profile Image for Jayesh .
180 reviews107 followers
September 13, 2018
Important read for me personally. Forced me to rethink about a lot of my beliefs. Quite surprisingly, despite being originally published in 1979, little of this thoughtful analysis of American culture has dated. It's kind of eerie, honestly, to see all the current artifacts, from Trump to MRA to identity politics.


I can understand that it can come across as an old man curmudgeonly ranting at the world and the Freudian psychobabble doesn't help. But if you ignore that [*], it's probably the best steelman for conservative principles, not that anyone seems to care much about those right now. Some parts reminded me of James Scott's description of destruction of metis in Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. However, it's quite dense with some contradictory parts (like for all the psychobabble, the term narcissism is primarily metaphorically used).

And the funny thing is that you are still left with the same crippling self-doubt whether anything can be done about any if it, as an individual. Also see: premium mediocre .

Some interesting highlights:

On narcissism:

…the character traits associated with pathological narcissism, which in less extreme form appear in such profusion in the every day life of our age: dependence on the vicarious warmth provided by others combined with a fear of dependence, a sense of inner emptiness, boundless repressed rage, and unsatisfied oral cravings. Nor do they discuss what might be called the secondary characteristics of narcissism: pseudo self-insight, calculating seductiveness, nervous, self-deprecatory humor.


As an aside I do recommend reading the original story of Narcissus.

On authenticity:

In eighteenth-century London or Paris, sociability did not depend on intimacy. “Strangers meeting in parks or on the street might without embarrassment speak to each other.” They shared a common fund of public signs which enabled people of unequal rank to conduct a civilized conversation and to cooperate in public projects without feeling called upon to expose their innermost secrets. The romantic cult of sincerity and authenticity tore away the masks that people once had worn in public and eroded the boundary between public and private life. As the public world came to be seen as a mirror of the self, people lost the capacity for detachment and playful encounter, which presupposes a certain distance from the self.


Others:


As John R. Seeley noted in 1959, the transfer of parental knowledge to other agencies parallels the expropriation of the worker’s technical knowledge by modern management – “the taking over from the worker of the sad necessity of providing himself with the means of production.” By “helpfully” relieving the worker from “such onerous responsibilities” as the provision of his own and his children’s needs, society has freed him, as Seeley wrote, “to become a solder in the army of production and a cipher in the process of decision.”



The introduction of courses in home-making, health, citizenship, and other nonacademic subjects, together with the proliferation of athletic programs and extracurricular activities, reflected the dogma that schools had to educate “the whole child”; but it also reflected the practical need to fill up the students’ time and to keep them reasonably contented. Such programs spread rapidly through the public schools in the twenties and thirties, often justified by the need to make “good citizenship,” in the words of a dean of Teachers College, “a dominant aim of the American public school.”

[…]

Dimly recognizing that in many areas – precisely those that lie outside the formal curriculum – experience teaches more than books, educators then proceeded to do away with books: to import experience into the academic setting, to re-create models of learning formerly associated with the family, to encourage students to “learn by doing.” […] Two educators wrote in 1934, without any awareness of the irony of their prescriptions:

“By bringing into the school those who are practical doers from the world… to supplement and stimulate the teaching of those whose training has been in the normal school, education can be vitalized…”



The more closely education approximated this empty ideal, however, the more effectively it discouraged ambition of any sort, except perhaps the ambition to get away from school by one expedient or another. By draining the curriculum not merely of academic but of practical content, educators deprived students of challenging work and forced them to find other means of filling time which the law nevertheless required them to spend in school […] Though teachers and administrators deplored their students’ obsession with popularity, they themselves encouraged it by giving so much attention to the need to get along with others – to master the cooperative habits considered indispensable to industrial success.



Society no longer expects authorities to articulate a clearly reasoned, elaborately justified code of law and morality; nor does it expect the young to internalize moral standards of the community. It demands only conformity to the conventions of everyday intercourse, sanctioned by psychiatric definitions of normal behavior.


[*]: Although Lasch is guilty of taking it a lot more seriously than he should, Freud does make as a good metaphor. Consider this remark: "It is through love and work, that we exchange crippingly emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness"
Profile Image for Simon.
384 reviews79 followers
February 4, 2022
One of those books that are often mentioned but seldom read, though that might change. Its central thesis is that modernity undermining people's confidence in traditional authorities and social institutions has largely been for the worse, resulting in a neurotic inwards-looking people incapable of having a psychologically healthy relationship with any kind of authority or institution. Especially not when the gap has been filled by inhuman centralised technocracies in both the public and private sectors.

"The Culture of Narcissism" was published a year before Ronald Reagan's election by a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, and it shows. The narcissistic culture Lasch warns us against is basically a prototype for the popular caricature of 1980's yuppie culture. Indeed, it would not surprise me if Bret Easton Ellis wrote both "Less Than Zero" and "American Psycho" with a dog-eared and annotated copy of this book at his side! The context of the Carter administration also explains Lasch's initially baffling combination of Marxist economic analysis and American conservative moral values. I find it very noticeable out of the "recommended similar books" on here for "The Culture of Narcissism" 50% are by conservative authors (e. g. Camille Paglia, Michel Houellebecq) 50% by Marxist authors. (e. g. Mark Fisher, Slavoj Zizek)

As many valid observations as Lasch makes, though, I'm not sure if I follow through with all of it. Not only does he rely on Freudian psychological theories I'm not 100% on board with myself, but the afore-mentioned mix of Marxist economic theory and conservative morality results in his analysis often coming across as ideologically incoherent to me. To say nothing of the fact that my beginner level knowledge of economics, sociology and similar disciplines means that I am often not that sure exactly what Lasch means, a writing style that when you think about it undermines the anti-elitist political message of book...
Profile Image for Sean Chick.
Author 6 books1,057 followers
October 16, 2017
A stunning work, written by a man who defies our current definitions of conservative and liberal, which were born in the 1960s. The issues Lasch raises still plague us today because we have elevated capitalism to a religion and the baby boomers, who Lasch consistently blasts, are now in full control. If this book were written in 2012 it would still make sense.

None of this means the book is perfect. Lasch discusses obscure thinkers without describing their ideas. He is too Freudian and his afterword is dismissive towards the obvious thrust of his book: the rise of individualism, for if discussing the fallout from the decay of the family was his goal, then he failed to a degree, for that is never explicitly stated nor given a more prominent place in the text than his other points of discussion. The book seems to be discussing less a world without the family, and more so a world where the progressive and capitalist dreams were turning into iron cages. In that regard Lasch was right, and our poverty of ideas in the face of the current crisis is because of those cages we lavishly built for ourselves.
Profile Image for Mehrsa.
2,235 reviews3,634 followers
December 15, 2017
Meh. Here is a crank who used to have some good ideas who now overuses the word "narcissist" to describe everything he doesn't like in the left and "kids these days." He's sometimes right, but mostly just shouting meaningless things in words that sound somewhat scientific.
Profile Image for Evan Baas.
52 reviews1 follower
July 12, 2022
This book has a basically sound premise that modern post-industrial capitalism promotes narcissism. This connects socially conservative ideas to socialist economics by arguing that capitalism errodes these values. However, most of this book is just long digressions full of absurd non-falsifiable conjecture. A lot of these chapters are full of ridiculous similies (like arguing schizophrenia is a form narcissistic personality disorder). Basically, he writes a book with a lot of the ideas in psychology and sociology, but uses the methodology of philsophy, which is just giving out random opinions without justification.

He also uses a lot of random novels and movies from the 60s and 70s that no one has ever heard of to prove his points...idk why Joseph Heller's obscure book "Something Happened" get like 12 mentions.
Profile Image for César.
294 reviews76 followers
August 30, 2022
Echo de menos más ensayos de este tipo en castellano. Queda pendiente la traducción -díficil, intuyo- de Philip Rieff, en especial, su libro sobre Freud y "The triumph of the therapeutic", en el que acuña el tipo "hombre psicológico" y su organización en forma de "sociedad terapeútica". De ambos libros de Rieff creo que tira Christopher Lasch en este ensayo en torno a la cultura del narcisismo.

La tesis central es el dominio generalizado en nuestras sociedades occidentales de una estructura de la personalidad que responde a los rasgos del narcisismo patológico, sin que necesariamente se manifiesten en su extrema intensidad. Se trata del tono característico de la sociedad actual. La cultura de dicha sociedad estimula y premia de diversas formas el narcisismo.
En el desarrollo de esta tesis y a lo largo del libro el lector encontrará abundantes fundamentos psicoanalíticos, por lo que quien abomine de tal enfoque y disciplina, una de dos, o prorrumpe en sonoras carcajadas, o abandona la lectura buscando con ello evitar un shock anafiláctico.

Se parte de la familia, como buen análisis freudiano, y de su progresiva descomposición. El derrumbe de la autoridad paterna, la externalización de la crianza de los hijos, la figura del padre ausente, la insidiosa corrosión de la confianza de los progenitores, etc. ¿Qué consecuencias se derivan de una transformación semejante en una institución clave como es la familia? Pues Lasch nos lo cuenta. Además de la familia, toca temas como el reflejo del narcisismo en el arte, las consecuencias de la educación universal obligatoria, la guerra de sexos, la degradación del deporte, el mundo laboral y sus transformaciones paralelas a la evolución del capitalismo, la fama y la celebridad, y un largo e interesante etcétera.

No siempre es fácil seguir las ideas del libro, no sé si debido al nivel de densidad que alcanza el texto o a causas atribuibles a la traducción. También al hecho de que, aquí el lector, da hasta cierto punto y no más allá.
Profile Image for Nada Elshabrawy.
Author 2 books8,695 followers
January 26, 2024
I strongly disagree with most of the chapters on Education, but generally, it's a great book. It is worth every minute spent with it, although it wasn't what I needed for my research.
Profile Image for Sarah.
538 reviews1 follower
August 3, 2018
I'm so conflicted...

Christopher Lasch put forth the most cohesive explanation I've seen for the surreal nightmare we're living in 2018...in 1978.

"Narcissism," in this context, isn't merely a reference to selfishness or vanity. Indeed, it's nothing short of existential crisis. To be seen is to be humiliated; To be unseen is death. We save face by wearing masks of ironic detachment. Alienated from tradition and terrified of myth, we find ourselves driven farther and farther inward. This endless search for self ultimately amounts to circular rationalization. No wonder we're all such hypocrites. (He explains all this much better than I have.)

Though he primarily takes aim at the left, conservatives don't get off easy. Wherever you stand, ideologically, prepare to be confronted. This is us. And it's been forming in the shadows for decades.

My problem with this book...is a big one. Though he briefly touches on the subject of narcissistic parenting, he's far more critical of social workers and activists for interfering with families. This interference, according to Lasch, fosters detachment, panicky self-doubt and guilty permissiveness that ultimately do more harm than good. Fair enough. But what about the harm done by excessive discipline? While he stops short of explicitly advocating violence towards children, he quotes those who do, uncritically. He kinda just lets it go by. When he quotes Ellen Richards as saying that children are not "the property of their parents" but "assets of the state," he only addresses the latter part of her statement. The question of whether children are property goes unaddressed and unchallenged by Lasch. In framing this debate as "parents' rights" issue, he tacitly concedes that the rights of children are completely irrelevant. This is not only a huge oversight, it's a curious one given that his own mother was a social worker and his own father was an activist! That doesn't render all his points invalid, but it left a sour taste in my mouth.

No, Lasch doesn't have the answers. Still, this book is worth reading (with a grain of salt). (And then read some Alice Miller.)
Profile Image for Joe.
51 reviews9 followers
May 10, 2010
What a pity that a book about a very fascinating concept should turn out so awful; readers, be sure you have your PhDs in sociology, psychology, and vocabulary before embarking on this journey. The book is more dense than a black hole. I couldn't tell what the author was trying to say at all, his arguments are not easy to follow, etc. I feel like the author used this book as an ostentatious display of his own intelligence instead of a means of explaining his ideas.
Profile Image for Dan.
366 reviews98 followers
March 15, 2022
A nice critique of the post-capitalist culture in America from a Marxist and psychological perspective. As all the traditional institutions collapse under the pressure of new capitalism, the individual loses all substance and in turn collapses in his/her inner self in the company of self-pleasure and self-admiration. Therapy, marketing, experts, and all new institutions promote this new type of self-centered and free-floating individual. Since published more than 40 years ago, most of the references in this book are no longer familiar today – however one recognizes some old and still popular books that promoted this kind of narcissism: Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and similar.
Profile Image for Nathan Duffy.
59 reviews51 followers
June 29, 2016
Chock full of trenchant insights about what forms and constitutes our cultural narcissism. A tad too much Freud and Marx for my taste, but even those frameworks are utilized deftly.
Profile Image for mark.
Author 3 books46 followers
March 13, 2017
Can I give this six stars? I highly recommend this book for all serious, critical thinkers – now more than ever – even after forty years. The “culture of narcissism” in America has exploded beyond anyone’s imagination, would anyone disagree? But beware – this critique isn’t about the 45th president, Donald J. Trump, he was just getting started when the book was written, no it’s about you. Yes, you can recognize elements of Trump’s personality here, but as I’ve written about elsewhere, Trump is a mutant manic narcissist, totally unique; which I’ll return to his role later on in this review.
It’s impossible to pick out portions of this book to quote because there are just too many; but I’ll attempt to summarize the big idea. Lasch’s analysis is based on Freudian theory, and historical events. Because of the Industrial Revolution, he posits, and the subsequent absence of the father in the home as an authoritarian disciplinarian – general authority shifted from the home to the corporation and the state, which undermined a healthy sense of self and groundedness for all members of the family, and people in general, a life that was balanced and made sense. Slowly over time (it was not a revolution, but an evolution); the “Managerial and Professional Elite”; so-called “experts” replaced the father and mother as The Authority. Consequently, all members of the family became unmoored and set adrift – the natural response was a move toward narcissism, where nothing mattered but the here and now and the self. And the self’s instant gratification. The anchor of tradition, the past, and the expectation and hope that things would get better, the future, were lost. The tradition of family and the tribe, being central to existence, were replaced by one’s own feelings being front and center. Work lost its connection to life, due to the industrialization of production, concurrent with the explosion of the advertising industry – which combined – shifted people from prideful, respectful skilled workers, to consumers/clients/patients – the message being that if you possessed certain objects, commodities, and with the help of expert advice and counsel, the emptiness inside, a natural general angst that comes from living in a hostile world, would be relieved. But, as Lasch points out, “Instead, the new professionals themselves invented many of the needs they claim to satisfy.” (pg. 385) This is blatantly evident today, especially with regard to the mass media and the helping professionals, who deem their services, and themselves, indispensable. Pervasive is the culture of “narcissistic entitlement.” (Example: Obamacare and the current fight over its “repeal and replace.” In addition, there is a pervasive idea that higher education, as well as “health care” is a human right and ought to be provided for every and anyone who wants it. This is the epitome of primary narcissism—a baby’s, wherein they demand that all their needs and desires be met because they experience the world only from one perspective—their own, with no regard how it might impact the Other.)
Lasch attacks almost every Institution or Field as being culpable: art, education, work, housework/homemaking, child rearing, health care, social services, literature, politics, entertainment, comedy, sport, the courts, the family, psychology, sex (Although he does leave alone the military and religion, for the most part. Oddly, the Military Industrial Complex isn’t mentioned, nor the threat of nuclear annihilation, which I think played a part. Also not mentioned is the financial industry, banking, the stock market, and the increasing use of the credit card and debt, perhaps because that industry was just getting started as a ubiquitous part of American life.); and points out it wasn’t a conspiracy, or planned or designed – it just happened. The culture shifted from one of the Utilitarian Ethic – self-reliance and self-actualization, to one of dependence upon experts, and the “Therapeutic Ethic.” It no longer mattered what you did but how you felt. People forgot (my word) how to be and who they were; and grew into empty, narcissistic, robotic-like machines, pretending to care about others, but underneath harboring hostility and rage. Lasch calls this the “Cult of Friendliness.” A poignant excerpt:

In one of the families studied by Coles, [Privileged Ones: The Well-Off and the Rich in America (1978) Robert Coles.] which exemplifies to perfection this emerging managerial pattern of rootlessness and anomie, the father, an executive in a New England electronics company, drinks too much and wonders at times “if it’s all worth it—the struggle he’s had to get to the top.” The mother drinks in secret and apologizes to her children for “not being a better mother.” Their daughter, raised by a succession of maids, is growing up with ill-defined anxieties and resentments, with little guilt but much anxiety. She has become a problem child. Twice she has run away from home. Now she sees a psychiatrist and no longer feels “peculiar” about it, since most of her friends go to psychiatrists too. The family is about to move again. [Today, the escape via alcohol may have declined, but only to be replaced by marijuana and prescription drugs.]

That was almost 40 years ago. With a little tweaking for progress (my word) nothing has changed but has gotten worse. With the election of 2016 – Donald Trump, the super-narcissist billionaire, beating the establishment’s, the Deep State choice Hillary Clinton, who had defeated the Progressive’s choice, the Socialist Bernie Sanders – this latent rage now had a target, and with almost volcanic force erupted onto the public stage that is now the theater of America. In many ways, the election of Trump was like the terrorist attack of September 11th, 2001, in that it brought people together against a common enemy and for a while, it remains to be seen for how long, self obsession has been sublimated for collective hate, and the common cause of taking down Trump.
Donald Trump, and his consigliore, Steve Bannon, have called attention to the “administrative state” – and their wanting to “deconstruct” it. What Bannon describes is that which Lasch details in this book forty years ago—“The Managerial and Professional Elite as Ruling Class”; but, again, it’s gotten worse. The “narcissistic entitlement” is off the charts, as is the “grandiose illusions and inner emptiness.” The “professionalization” (replacing the natural/instinctual authority of the mother and father with experts) of authority has led to a substitution of “images of reality for reality itself. … It has undermined the family while attempting to rescue the family. … These things have been done, on the whole, with good intentions. (pg. 375) Lasch suggests we’ve replaced one manifestation of neurosis with another, one more in tune with the modern, and now post-modern, world.
So what did Lasch (he’s dead) propose as remedy? He didn’t know it, but what Trump and Bannon are offering. First Lasch. He wants, “A reassertion of ‘common sense.’” And also, ‘communities of competence’ [(He calls that “localism, self-help, and community action.”) sounds like Bannon’s “economic nationalism” and “state’s rights.”] Only then will the productive capacities of modern capitalism, together with the scientific knowledge that now serves it, come to serve the interest of humanity.” (pg. 396)
Which sounds exactly like what Trump’s been saying he’ll deliver if given a chance – a return to common sense and competence as governing basics. Or, meaningful work done right, a disintermediation of the managerial and professional elite that has come between people and self-actualization.
Trump, the super-narcissist, paradoxically, embodies what Lasch wants for the “human race” – a return to traditional Utilitarian values. Trump emphasizes family, work, and territory, as being essential to a vibrant, healthy life for all people – strong families, borders and boundaries, based upon the wisdom of the ages, to “Make America Great Again.”
March 12, 2017

Profile Image for Alicia Fox.
472 reviews28 followers
August 6, 2014
"We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves."

I absolutely loved this book. It's not an easy read; Lasch presupposes the reader will have some familiarity with philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, and economics. Apart from boring me a bit with Freudian stuff, it's a fascinating book.

There's no easily recognizable political spin here. One minute, it's, "OMG ultra-conservative," and the next minute, "OMG Marxist." Lasch isn't promoting any particular established agenda. He fully describes the shades of grey that are part of everything--paternalism, sexual liberation, women's rights, etc. If you're a card-carrying member of an intellectual "ism," this book will irritate you by pointing out flaws in your viewpoint. If you are more open-minded, and see both good and bad in popular theories, you'll like this book. It's not a book that will be enjoyed by those who are obstinately dogmatic and fearful of anything that might challenge their firmly entrenched opinions.

"The romantic cult of sincerity and authenticity tore away the masks that people once had worn in public and eroded the boundary between public and private life. As the public world came to be seen as a mirror of the self, people lost the capacity for detachment and hence for playful encounter, which presupposes a certain distance from the self. In our own time, according to Sennett, relations in public, conceived as a form of self-revelation, have become deadly serious. Conversation takes on the quality of confession."

"Escape through irony and critical self-awareness is in any case itself an illusion; at best it provides only momentary relief. Distancing soon becomes a routine in its own right."

"Strictly considered, however, modern advertising seeks to promote not so much self-indulgence as self-doubt. It seeks to create needs, not to fulfill them; to generate new anxieties instead of allaying old ones."

"In the hierarchies of work and power, as in the family, the decline of authority does not lead to the collapse of social constraints. It merely deprives those constraints of a rational basis."

"The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted … that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness."
52 reviews14 followers
January 2, 2021
A historical cliche is that the 60's are the decade of social consciousness and revolution, while the 70's are a cynical followup, marked by a withdrawl from culture, political apathy and general me-ism. Many thinkers at that time assumed this new attitude would last around a decade. However, reading this book felt like it was written yesterday, which perhaps extends the timeline on the aformentioned me-ism.

Before I tell you to buy the book, I want to write out here on some themes it's forced on my mind.

Starting earlier in the year, I had read partially through a half-dozen books about 60s and 70s politics, like e.g. nixonland, reaganland, what's the matter with kansas, after watergate, conservatives without conscious. The main goal was to piece together my own coherent story on our modern malaise and a blocker has been the lack of rationales in what seems like either overreactions to calculated political action, or lack of reaction to incoherent political action, and indiscriminate, incoherent violence.

The dynamics just didn't make sense. What did it mean for collective efforts when organizing leaders like Bobby Kennedy, Fred Hampton, MLK to kept getting shot dead? When does this kill a movement vs enervating others to take their place? Why did political leaders play kick-the-can with what they knew was a doomed, wasteful war? Where is the split between public and self interest? Why did yippie-like "revolutionaries" (e.g. Abbie Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dhorne etc...) constantly hamstring popular leftist movements, eschewing the Ralph Naders to a relatively isolated existence? Most of all, why did young progressives assume that, automatically, once Nixon was out of office, the country would be guaranteed anything more progressive?

Here's a quote giving some of our author's perspectives on these struggles:

"The struggle over desegregation brought to the surface the inherent contradiction between the American commitment to universal education on the one hand and the realities of a class society on the other. Americans in the nineteenth century had adopted a system of common schooling without giving up their belief in the inevitability of social inequality."


The puzzle piece this book unlocked, is the role of people's self-perception relative to a moving system of ambiguous values.

So first, what is narcissism? Is it just being selfish and rude? To a psychologist, it's a personality disorder. Defined by the APA it represents a need for grandiosity of the self, fantasies aound the self, need for constant approval to maintain self-image, an unreasonalbe and automatic sense of entitlement, interpersonal exploitativeness, lack of empathy, with a dusting of envy and arrogance.

In the book, Lasch, the author, uses the two freudian types of narcissism(one is more annoying), both of which are essentially the above APA bullet points but with the lore of stemming from "an inability to distinguish the boundary between the self and the world". Here's an illustrative quote of a personality type, the book is filled with these.


Economic man himself has given way to the psychological man of our times—the final product of bourgeois individualism. The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred by a paternalistic state. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. [...] The narcissist has no interest in the future because, in part, he has so little interest in the past. He finds it difficult to internalize happy associations or to create a store of loving memories with which to face the latter part of his life, which under the best of conditions always brings sadness and pain.


So it's essentially talking about how these personality traits manifest and are promoted in late 70s america in things like celebrity worship, externalization of responsibilities and denial of economic enfranchisement.

Before a phenomenon hits culture, politics, it's usually brewed elsewhere for a while. Lasch notes the increase in incidences of narcissistic personality disorder and links the cause with a lack of meaning in work, religion, community. Essentially, in late industrialization work has become trivial and the lack of material pressures indirectly weakens community bonds (e.g. by upending the central industries of towns) without anything to replace them. Society starts to change from community oriented to global, with little more contract between citizens than consumption of the same media. More recent authors would call this the atomization of the individual from neoliberalism.


"When jobs consist of little more than meaningless motions, and when social routines, formerly dignified as ritual, degenerate into role playing, the worker-whether he toils on an assembly line or holds down a high-paying job in a large bureaucracy-seeks to excape from the resulting sense of inauthenticity by creating an ironic distance from his daily routine. He attempts to transform role playing into a symbolic elevation of daily life. He takes refuge in jokes, mockery, and cynicism. If he is asked to perform a disagreeable task, he makes it clear that he doesn't believe in the organization's objectives of increased efficiency and greater output. If he goes to a party, he shows by his actions that it's all a game-false, artificial, insincere; a grotesque travesty of sociability. In this way he attempts to make himself invulnerable to the pressures of the situation. By refusing to take seriously the routines he has to perform, he denies their capacity to injure him. Although he assumes that it is impossible to alter the iron limits imposed on him by society, a detaches awareness of those limits seems to make them matter less. By demystifying daily life, he conveys to himself and others the impression that he has risen beyond it, even as he goes through the motions and does what is expected of him."


The book is not primarily a critique of capitalism, and the role that a changing world plays into its story is in directing the change in an individual's self in relation to the rest of the world. Essentially Lasch concludes that while the pro-capitalist ideologies continue to erode traditional mores by means of austerity and economic stratification, the counter-balance force to this is not restorative but an equal and oppossing self-serving distortion. Some examples he gives are (a) sports, where the extreme commercialization takes the spirit of participation out of the viewer, and the popular contrary view is not to reduce commercialization but reduce the competitiveness and make it a more bland but inclusive product, and (b) work-labor-societal relations, where being ground into 80%-fat human capital is countered by being neatly bottled into grades of bromides.

While distinctly melancholy in tone, Lasch clinically dresses each and every part of daily life where he's sniffed a change in human's object-relations, past or present. One of the more interesting sections discusses the various factors leading slow transition into the 60s. Intellecutals in the 50s themselves were worried and aware of the trends of industrialization and the change of educational institutions from places of authority to businesses. I don't get the sense they were particularly pessimistic, and I wonder how this period could have been navigated differently.


"What precipitated the crisis of the sixties was not simply the pressure of unprecedented numbers of students (many of whom would gladly have spent their youth elsewhere) but a fatal conjunture of historical challenges: the emergence of a new social conscience among students acivated by the moral rhetoric of the New Frontier and by the civil rights movement, and the simultaneous collapse of the university's claims to moral and intellectual legitimacy. Instead of offering a rounded program of humane learning, the university now frankly served as a cafeteria for which students had to select so many "credits." Instead of diffusing peace and enlightenment, it allied itself with the war machine. Eventually, even its claim to provide better jobs became suspect."


So maybe there's somewhat of a lack of meaning, and a lack of a vision to work towards outside of the immediate gratificaitons of the self. You're creating hyper-aware individuals and giving them nothing to do, paired with pessimistic outlooks, they start devouring themselves. At the moment, I view personality disorders themselves as a way to rationalize within one's world-view their aggression onto others without percieving it as such. In an age of diminishing expectations, when there's not enough for everyone to be the start of their own shows, such personality disorders at least offer a way to meet ambitions from an earlier time, getting ahead in the short-term at the expense of others.

My take away, politically, is that the lack of a reformed, collective american identity after '68 resulted in conflicting subgroups of identity living in their own simplified worldviews. Each faction is inheritor to the american idea and privileges itself over others, explicitly or implicitly, by virtue of exclusion. The gradual bipartisan outcome of this split is the common denominator of the virtuous self vs the corrupt society. Anyone can claim to have an ideal and feel betrayed when the rest of the country doesn't agree, thereby justifing withdrawal from the collective. Consequentially, the me-movements of the 70s would then just a projection of separate ideologies that all happen to be the good guy. Perhaps then total neoliberalism seems natural. Maybe pillaging the commons is itself a revenge from the americans too ignorant to adopt your world-views? Reagan's unusually good numbers from this generation vouch for his popularity among former radicals, and the distance between his austeric, liberal rhetoric and actual bloated, regressive policies even mirrored the performative nature of 60s revolutions.

Self fulfilment won over social responsibility. It continues to reign supreme in varying degrees to everyone living here.

The ensuing social-relational maze is, I feel, also the part taken for grant in most of social texts, even Chomsky's macro-analyses. In fixing exploitative parts of our economy, and brutal parts of our foreign policy, the personal cost of unifying across class lines, aka finding a way to work out our differences instead of morally trampling over each other, is fighting against a tragedy of the epistemic commons. This I think most social philosophers trivialize when it's in-fact a structure as complex as any modern political system. The work of getting individuals to cooperate and even resolve their cornucopea of differences, which often stem from real justifiale not-immediately-solvable anger, is no more guaranteed than developing a multi-billion dollar jet, and similarly fragile and corruptible. Without taking into account the nature of these differences, which necessarily means humanizing others and letting go the narcissistic/borderline mechanism of dividing into good/bad, or more specifically useful people and in-the-way bodies, can we start to form lasting coalitions that might see even half-decde projects like dams, levees, reactors, etc... to completion.

What about cultural relevance now? In our modern day conflicts? Well, the most recent protests only became powerful after getting violent, which made people uncomfortable, but is inherently less performative. The battle of effective politics in the future, which really means cooperation in the future, depends on the ability to be less performative, dramatic, self-actualizing and more pragmatic, mission-driven and uncomfortable.

To project the chances of this, imagine that if the modern millenials were similarly economically enfranchised to previous generations, would anything be different or would we live the 60s over again? Are we so much smarter and empathetic that we would volunteer away parts of our egos and freedom to create a better world for all, or would we stay clutching our wealth while reciting market slogans to shun those complaining about not having enough. Can anything other than a painful collective struggle form cross-group empathy? I'm afraid to consider the answers to these questions.

The most important point is, we're all narcissistic today in some form. It's part of the core of our culture, for better or worse. We're the greatest nation on earth, but for what? We have the highest valued stock exchanges in the world, but sitting on overleveraged companies and federal reserve aid. We produce the most students through higher education in the world, though standards are declining and underemployment is rampant and we lost that lead since 2000. We produce the most intellectual, subversive, anti-establishment media in the world which then gets thoroughly integrated into the the capitalistic machine. We miss the point.

We look bafflingly at those intellectually handicapped people practicing religion, playing their rituals, clearly having no effect on the real world. To a modern intellectual, it looks like they're playing make-believe, role-playing back to a different time with different rules that don't apply anymore. Maybe they are dumb, but at some level it's perhaps a choice against the vacuum of meaning in our industrialized, materialistic society. Maybe given an archaic skill-set or disposition such an attitude is inevitable, but even with those, the modern liberated TV lifestyle may just not seem that enviable to them.

Anyway, this book made me think a lot. I read it twice in one week. It's real sociology, and it's worth a dozen other general-decline-depressing-nonfiction books(my favorite genre). If you want to think about how much individual psychological issues play into cultural and political solutions to inherently collective problems, this is should be your next book.
Profile Image for David.
157 reviews8 followers
January 2, 2021
Today is always a good day to admit what you’re reading, even if it’s written by esteemed, credentialed writers, is not doing it for you. There’s going to be that suspicion you aren’t reading it carefully enough or losing focus too often or not doing the necessary supplemental research to properly contextualize the content, but alas, sometimes all you have time to do is read a book through, as carefully as possible, once. I give “The Culture of Narcissism” one star. I didn’t like it.

I’d never heard of Christopher Lasch until six months ago. In a certain corner of the Left media ecosystem--podcasts, journals, Twitter--Lasch’s name comes up a lot. After circling around Lasch’s titles for several months, I ordered “Culture” and got going on it. There’s a lot to be said for putting words together is sentences in a captivating way. This goes a long way towards why someone is called a “good writer”: the words chosen; where punctuation marks are placed; the rhythm the words, sentences, and paragraphs create; and the voice that comes through. That’s a big one--voice. Have you found your voice? What is your voice? What is his voice? This is a very important metaphor because as you make your way through a text, that’s what you hear. You’re reading silently, but in your mind’s ear you hear the voice of the writer. Perhaps you can call it tone. How is this voice/tone created? Again, the words chosen, the places the punctuation is put, the punctuation marks chosen, and the rhythm the words develop as sentences. Lasch has an annoying voice. Imperious, haughty, cocksure, dismissive, terse, abstract, flighty, scattershot, disorganized. Those are nine adjectives that pop into my mind as I sit here and they all have negative connotations. Putting the content of the book to the side, it’s not enjoyable to read words in the way Lasch puts them together.

“Culture” was written in 1979. It’s dated as hell. Somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of every argument Lasch makes wends its way through a tortuously boring psychoanalytic breakdown. Sweet God was Freud hegemonic at this time. Reading this was like watching a Woody Allen movie without the comedy, charm, or arch knowingness (that some of these Freudianisms are poppycock). So we get Lasch going round and round analyzing everybody and everything through an increasingly complex Freudian psychological topography of id, ego, and superego, suppression and repression, good mother, bad mother, and object relations, and in what had to be the most laughably self-satirizing piece of 70s writing I’ve ever seen, a description vis-a-vis feminism of man’s fear of vaginas that will eat you and swallow you. God, large swaths of this book were terrible. I understand Freud was the hegemonic interpretive paradigm by which society, desires, inclinations, and social relations were discussed at this period, but much of this stuff is useless now.

Another problem with his book is I have no idea what Lasch’s project is. I don’t need a big project. How about just a discrete project for one chapter? One of the reasons Lasch’s name pops up in certain corners of the online Left is because of the bridge people feel his corpus provides from a left economic populism to conservative cultural issues and the coalition that could coalesce around these tendencies: that is, an economic populist coalition sheared of identity politics and woke anti-racism; an emphasis on localism and national sovereignty; and less focus on hot-button cultural issues like abortion, gun rights, etc. In the current political moment there are interesting writers and journals working in this realm: Michael Lind, Angela Nagle, and the journals American Affairs and The Bellows (for a very incomplete list). The people writing with the above political project in mind and connecting Lasch to it as inspiration must be doing so based on a better reading of him than I could muster or basing their affinity on his other books. Because trying to get a political orientation from “Culture” was nigh impossible, let alone a coherent political project.

The content of the book congealed together in an inscrutable slop of psychobabble and scattershot analysis. Even in what should have been a softball section, pun intended, about how modern society has screwed up sports turned into a mangled, cantankerous mess of a chapter. Through the reading I’ve done of Lasch (as a person) and the way I’ve heard him described by other people, I got the impression he was a complex, iconoclastic thinker. From what I understand he started out as a Marxist in the early sixties and from that point his thinking and writing became more heterodox. I get being disappointed with the New Left and the acceleration of the Democratic party away from any sort of working class/class based politics. So far so good. One of the reasons he’s so popular (I think) is what I understood to be his ongoing critique of the professional managerial class and the bureaucratization of the liberal political elite. This jibes with the critiques of Thomas Frank and others who have critiqued the meritocratic, neo-liberal ideological capture of Left politics in the United States. Furthermore, I can understand why a more ecumenical approach to some of the hottest button cultural issues is appealing because they are often used by the meritocratic, professional managerial class to move the Democratic Party away from the working class (or at least that part of the working class that is non-college educated, “red state,” and white). The ideological capture of the Democratic Party, elite media, academia, and Silicon Valley by woke identity politics and the realignment of the Democratic Party as the party of the upwardly mobile and wealthy has made it difficult if not impossible to implement a materialist orientation in that milieu. From what I understood of Lasch’s project, his discourse was a way of bringing together the dispossessed and alienated of different political traditions in the name of a new populist, socially conservative (or at least less culture war focused) coalition.

Maybe that project is more clearly elucidated in his other books about the family or in “The Minimal Self” or “Revenge of the Elites.” I couldn’t get it from “Culture.” At all. Not even a whiff of it. Sometimes he sounds like a “get of my lawn” old fart (in the sports chapter). Other times he sounds like an anti-welfare state, individualistic Reaganite. Other times he says that’s not what he is. But most of the time he doesn’t seem to be analyzing through a structural or materialist lens, which is the bare minimum for what it takes to be affiliated with the Left or even populist orientation. The whole book blurs together in a haze of choppy scattershot prose, and it sounded an awful lot like the individualist drivel I can catch any day of the week on Dennis Prager’s show.

The book stunk. The Lasch that existed in my imagination was much more interesting than the Lasch who became manifest while reading “The Culture of Narcissism.” Maybe I’ll return to another of his books and discover a better one. Someone posted a good essay he wrote for Tikkun in the 80s on Twitter the other day. I liked it. Perhaps there’s other stuff out there by him I’ll enjoy.
Profile Image for John.
39 reviews232 followers
August 11, 2010
Lasch pins the death throes of western culture on many factors, but three stand out: we have lost our sense of historical continuity, we have become dependent on corporate and government experts just to live, and women have been emancipated.

As for the first reason, it shows up in a devaluing of the past combined with a hopelessness for the future, both evidenced by our fear of aging and our desire to forestall childbearing.

As for the second, we have been reduced to near infancy in our dependence on experts to tell us how to raise the children we don't want to have, and how to be psychologically healthy. This dependency, according to Lasch, is itself a hallmark of the narcissistic personality.

Finally, the emancipation of women -- which Lasch equates with the unfettered release of female sexual desire -- has had a castrating effect on men, who are physically incapable of sating female sexual hunger, which is in fact insatiable. This in turn has heightened the animosity between the sexes and led to a state of sexual warfare.

Apparently the good life, in Lasch's estimation, is one where a man slips into old age and decrepitude buoyed by "loving memories" and secure in the knowledge that his children will carry on his life's work, whatever it is. And so Lasch pines for the days of less narcissistic values, which would make possible loving memories and a life's work for posterity to carry on (though it seems to me that a life lived through one's children as an extension of one's own values and one's own life's work is nothing if not narcissistic).

Specifically, Lasch admires the medieval cult of chivalry for how it empowered women and moderated the abuse that men heaped on women. And he admires the virtues of the now decadent propertied classes, in particular the plantation-owning southerners with their complementary sense of privilege and duty, their no-nonsense realization that equality is a myth and that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and the way parents inculcated aristocratic values into their children by means of horseback riding lessons and social galas -- which weren't all fun and games, Lasch reminds us, but were a method of teaching children aristocratic self discipline.

Lasch identifies with great precision the economic, social, and political forces that uprooted our sense of social security in the 20th century, and his book is valuable for that alone.

It is an added bonus that writing in the 1970s, he provides us with an insider's view of the conservative mindset at a time when the absence of fears of political incorrectness found right-wingers less guarded in their pronouncements. At the end of the day, Lasch represents a conservative archetype who looks fondly back to the days when men were lords, women were ladies, and negroes were chattel property.

A fascinating must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of conservative thought in the United States.

Profile Image for Andrew.
2,077 reviews781 followers
Read
January 22, 2022
Boy, it's really hard to know where I stand here. With so much social commentary, my main gripe is simple, and it goes like this:

(Sitcom cold open) Karl Marx enters the room with a flourish, audience whoops like they do with Kramer. He throws up his arms. "Where the material conditions at?" Canned laughter.

However, I can make no such assertions with Lasch -- he knows his Marx through and through. And he's interested in doing the sort of broad-scale diagnosis of society that simply isn't done anymore, but which was once the standard sort of commentary, back in those decades just after World War II when all of the sudden we had all this stuff and we didn't know what to do with it. And Lasch was one of the last people to author such grand theories (Allan Bloom was still doing it a little later, but he fucking sucked). And now Lasch's reputation has been revived, to a certain degree, by the Jacobin/Current Affairs left (of which I am a literal card-carrying member, DSA for the win), who reject the silliness and bullshit of American culture wars, preferring to return to first principles.

But the origin point of Lasch's analysis is pretty down-the-line Freudian, castration anxiety and all the rest, which I find pretty sus (do you really think dudes being way too into oral is a symptom of being stuck at the oral stage of sexual development? I'm pretty sure it's just because it requires absolutely no commitment or energy from one party, at least if it's unreciprocated, and let's face it, blowjobs rule, straight up). And he's all over the place -- he screams point after point at you in this endless Gish-gallop of information, ranging from the wise and profound to the banal. His sections on the fear of aging, though, in particular, are insightful and frankly poignant. I say as I look at the crow's feet around my eyes, and then at the woman a decade my junior still asleep in my bed.

Unfortunately, despite all the lambasting, there's no real positive program put forth, no vision of what a less narcissistic society would look like. Since what he describes as the culture of narcissism is so all-pervasive, I have to wonder what he actually wants our interactions to look like. Or is he just a curmudgeon in the mode of his mentor, Richard Hofstadter? I'd like, for starters, universal healthcare, strong labor unions, less alienation of labor, an expansion of worker cooperatives, the closing of the gender pay gap, and an end to the prison-industrial complex. Are my desires for a more just world still somehow subject to cultural narcissism? At what point is this just a purity test?
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