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Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (W. W. Norton & Co., 1978; 1991) Americans, Lasch asserts in this popular screed, have created a greedy, self-absorbed society that relies on consumerism and opinion polls to find its sense of self. The competitive individualism of past heroic ages has given way to the individualism of the narcissist, which Lasch argues is not individualism at all, but pseudo-liberation. The antidote to the resultant alienation and despair, he proposes, is a "return to the basics" — self-reliance, the family, nature, the community, and the Protestant work ethic. Such paradoxical assertions could not help but raise controversies, and Lasch's work receives mixed responses to this day. The Nation's review accused him of masking his cultural conservatism: Jackson Lears wrote that "he clings to some of the honorable values in Victorian culture _ moral discipline, parental authority, the work ethic _ without making his allegiance explicit. As a result his critique loses polemical focus; sometimes it degenerates into a repetitive tirade." R.Z Sheppard of Time wrote of Lasch's "formidable intellectual grasp and the kind of moral conviction rarely found in contemporary value-neutral history and sociology." MORE: Theology Today book review "The Cultural Narcissist: Lasch in an Age of Diminishing Expectations" by Sam Vaknin Amazon |
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