Summary of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 The end of the twentieth century has seen the rise of the belief that many other things are ending too. The Nazi holocaust, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the depletion of natural resources, and well-founded predictions of ecological disaster have all fulfilled poetic prophecy.

#2 The prevailing passion of today is to live for the moment, to live for yourself rather than for your predecessors or posterity. We are losing the sense of historical time, and this distinction is what makes the contemporary cultural revolution so different from previous outbreaks of millenarian religion.

#3 The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, but for the feeling of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.

#4 The Weathermen, and the American culture that produced them, were a product of their time. They were a mix of violence, danger, drugs, sexual promiscuity, and moral and psychic chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669382072

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Insights on Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The end of the twentieth century has seen the rise of the belief that many other things are ending too. The Nazi holocaust, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the depletion of natural resources, and well-founded predictions of ecological disaster have all fulfilled poetic prophecy.

#2

The prevailing passion of today is to live for the moment, to live for yourself rather than for your predecessors or posterity. We are losing the sense of historical time, and this distinction is what makes the contemporary cultural revolution so different from previous outbreaks of millenarian religion.

#3

The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, but for the feeling of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.

#4

The Weathermen, and the American culture that produced them, were a product of their time. They were a mix of violence, danger, drugs, sexual promiscuity, and moral and psychic chaos.

#5

The 1970s were marked by the rise of narcissism in American culture. The world is a mirror for the narcissist, who depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience.

#6

In the nineteenth century, the American imagination was captured by the promise and threat of an escape from the past. The West represented an opportunity to build a new society unencumbered by feudal inhibitions, but it also tempted men to throw off civilization and revert to savagery.

#7

The growth of bureaucracy creates an intricate network of personal relationships, and it makes the unbridled egotism of the American Adam untenable. Meanwhile, it erodes all forms of patriarchal authority and weakens the social superego.

#8

Modern society has no future, and thus no sense of obligation or duty beyond the present. The therapeutic sensibility reflects this mindset, and thus encourages patients to sacrifice their needs and interests for those of others.

#9

Rubin’s memoir describes the positive effects of his therapeutic regimen. He lost weight, and health foods, jogging, yoga, sauna baths, chiropractors, and acupuncturists helped him feel young at age thirty-seven. He learned to put sex in its proper place and to enjoy it without investing it with symbolic