569 - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
By Christopher Lasch
New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. 268 pp. $11.95.

"To live for the moment is the prevailing passion-to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity" (p. 5). Lasch does not intend this as a diagnosis of a lost soul here and there: "This self-absorption defines the moral climate of contemporary society" (p. 25). Narcissism is thus an inclusive and constitutive phenomenon; it will not yield to religious/psychiatric palliatives or nostrums. Readers of this book may recall that it was on President Carter's reading-list before he made his diagnosis of the "American Spiritual Malaise" this past summer; Lasch, too, has some prescriptions, though they are more valedictory than political-programmatic.

In order to make his prophetic indictment of contemporary culture stick, Lasch demands first of all a scientific/philosophic revision of a concept of narcissism. He argues that we must move beyond "moralistic platitudes" about self-admiration, etc., to an awareness of personal existence under unrelenting pressure from dominations of demonic power: "Self-preservation has replaced self-improvement as the goal of earthly existence" (p. 53). The self thus beleaguered and invaded cannot count on any natural good or unalloyed enjoyment for fulfillment or even for security: "The ethic of pleasure … has replaced the ethic of achievement, but … contemporary hedonism … originates not in the pursuit of pleasure but in a war of all against all, in which even the most intimate encounters become a form of mutual exploitation" (p. 65). The Happy Hooker, Lasch says, is the most compelling metaphor for grasping this condition. This is not the first time that The Harlot has been so used by a prophet.

Behind Lasch's use of the metaphor there is an updating of psychoanalytic concepts of ego/super-ego/id. Readers are encouraged to read Chapter VII with particular care if they wish to see this laid out. Here I note his conclusion, that the collapse of parental authority has devastating consequences for the coherence and efficacy of the self. It exposes children to predatory, if not cannibalistic, dominations.

Lasch tracks the narcissistic syndrome into most of the major structures and movements of American society: the business world, entertainment, the schools, sports, sexual relations, women's liberation, growing old. The upshot is that capitalism "has given rise to a new culture, the narcissistic culture of our time" (p. 218). More concretely this means that "narcissistic personalities … play a conspicuous part

570 - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence" (p. 231). There may not be more of them, but they are cast in leadership roles. They are the dominant paradigms of the Good Life.

This is a sort of gearing-down conclusion for Lasch's striking essay in prophetic discernment. Much of it is very like Original Sin Revisited, so telling are his commentaries on the passing scene, so inclusive are his judgments. (I wonder why Religion is omitted from his study; it deserves his attention.) But here at the end, we wonder whether some have not gone astray, are not infected with the disease, have miraculously-escaped the contagion. These appear to be "the custodians of culture" (p. 235), "those who knew the old order only as a broken promise, yet who took the promise more seriously than those who merely took it for granted" (p. 236). Echoes, as benign as unexpected, of a Covenant piety, the Rock of salvation in a dry and thirsty land.

Julian N. Hartt
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia