Ryan Plunkett
Ray Setters
AMS 250
7 March 2013
The Culture of Narcissism Paper
For over the past 30 years there has been a prevailing idea that American society has changed drastically. While it is undeniable that every person is different and there are always plenty of exceptions to the norm, in many ways our modern society has become very similar to what Christopher Lasch predicted in The Culture of Narcissism. Unfortunately, it would be safe to say that some modern people are in a state that is extremely pre-occupied with the self. The idea of narcissism came from psychology and is mostly attributed to Sigmund Freud. It was considered to be an extreme preoccupation with the self that distorted ones relationship to reality. This resulted in an inability to make a clear distinction between themselves as the subject and what existed outside them. They were so focused on themselves that they lost awareness of the real beyond them. Because the narcissist does not recognize the separate existence of 'the other' they tend to use reality as a mirror to reflect messages back to the self. The other is there to impress, to be admired by, and to get pity from. The Narcissist is so identified with his/her needs that the other person is simply there to be available for them. In his book The Culture of Narcissism Christopher Larsch describes the Narcissistic personality, “the Narcissist can function in the everyday world - and is often very charming. However, his devaluation of others, together with a lack of curiosity about them impoverishes personal life. With little capacity for detachment the Narcissist must depend on others for constant infusions of approval and admiration. At the same time his fear of emotional dependence, together with manipulative, exploitive approaches to personal relations makes these relations bland, superficial and deeply unsatisfying.... The Narcissist tends to be bored, restlessly in search of instantaneous intimacy, looking for emotional titillation without involvement.” In some ways people can see the Narcissistic condition as a response to pain and loss in relationship to the outside world. Most people will accept that everyone needs others in order to gain healthy representations of the self. We cannot know ourselves outside of the context of community. If we are immersed in an environment in early childhood where we are valued we develop a healthy self-image. When this happens we are able to treat other people with respect and dignity. This happens as a result of being ingrained with this idea from very early on in life.
However, if we receive constant messages about the self that are negative, our images of who we are become bad. When this happens people compensate by constructing their own ideas of who they are. This is why Narcissists are extremely self- conscious. Every interaction with the outside world is done at the expense of another person with the objective of creating an image for themselves.
The condition, even though it usually doesn’t appear in a really obvious form, provides a model for understanding some of our culture today. There are factors at work that have produced a new character that is narcissistic. It can be argued that humans have universally been selfish, however narcissism is something unique. Understanding how the human condition works can help to show how some aspects of our culture can take on these traits.
It is also important to distinguish Narcissism from individualism. Individualism describes the pursuit of being able to function on your own. Narcissism describes the pursuit of creating an image of yourself through the reflection of others. This helps to recognize how some people in society operate. The narcissistic tendency is reflected across many aspects of our modern culture in America and abroad. Evidence of how some people in our society are in this state can be seen in many aspects of everyday life. For instance, some of our society insists on ignoring history and refuses to acknowledge that it reflects on the present. For some history has no meaning, it is just there. There seems to be no value in thinking that we are contributing to advancing mankind to bigger and better things. This is one of the unfortunate outcomes of Narcissism. When we allow ourselves to not be concerned with the world around us, what happened in the past is not important and only the now is relevant.
Eventually this can turn into a downward spiral which will be hard to recover from. The more we lose our sense of connection with history, the more it becomes less important in relation to what is happening now. Of course as the saying goes, those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. When a living connection with the past disappears we lose the power of history to point us to a bigger reality. A “culture of narcissism” is perfectly suited for a consumerist society which is a trend that has appeared lately. This is because making choices only for yourself is what drives people to behave in these ways. It makes our choices, our preferences and our desires the number one thing that needs to be satisfied on a daily basis. Eventually society starts to revolve around what every person wants for themselves. Consumerism is linked to the industrial revolution and the power of mass production. In the early days of the industrial revolution employers saw the workingman only as a producer. What became obvious is that if everybody is a producer there will be no one to consume the products. Few could see ahead, that a society based on mass production required mass consumption. In order for this to happen you needed to create consumer demand. This happened by creating a relationship between commodities and the everyday person that used them. Consumer items must be able to confer status and satisfy the needs of people. Advertising began to show the consumer how the product could solve an everyday problem or need that they had. This served just as much to give information about a product as promote what the product could do for the customer. Today when marketers are deciding how to sell a product they look at things such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. By connecting a product with a need they can sell things based on somebody’s need to satisfy themselves. This effect has a result on people and how they go about their lives. The feeling of well-being becomes more important than dealing with other things in life that get in the way such as paying off a credit card. The Narcissist desperately needs to have the feeling of personal well being and security. This is especially true in American life since we live in a society where we take for granted things that meet our most basic needs like food and water. In third world countries these are sometimes not readily available and since they are here, it makes pampering ourselves the chief priority. As a result we can become more and more preoccupied with ourselves above all else. One thing that is for certain is that narcissism is not a new phenomenon. It is something that has changed and evolved over the years. Other cultures long before us have dealt with these problems in different ways, some of which were successful and some that were not. The spread and advancement of technology among other things is one of the factors that present new challenges in dealing with not being overcome by narcissism. While there is plenty of evidence to show how some people are already deep into their narcissistic personalities that is something that may prove to be unavoidable. It has become part of the fabric of how the modern self deals with reality. However, we can’t allow this to completely take over our way of life.