Scott Rhee's Reviews > The culture of narcissism : American life in an age of diminishing expectations

Narcissism (noun): 1) excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance. 2)PSYCHOLOGY selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type. 3)PSYCHOANALYSIS self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder. —-Dictionary.com


I’m guessing that Donald Trump has never been, and never will be, a pet person. One has to be able to think beyond one’s own narrow self-interest in order to take care of a dog or a cat or even a lizard. I’m pretty sure Trump’s initial thought upon seeing any domesticated animal is “Can I eat it?”

But why pick on just Trump? After all, even his biggest fans know that Trump’s narcissism is merely a symptom of a bigger problem within our society. They would say that we’ve become too lazy, too soft, too apathetic as a society. Our ridiculous self-love is the least of our problems. Or is it?

Despite its publication date of 1979, Christopher Lasch’s now-classic “The Culture of Narcissism” could just as easily be read and appreciated today. If it’s not already on required reading lists for college psychology courses, it probably should be.

Lasch, in ’79, couldn’t have fathomed the level of self-indulgence in 2024. He couldn’t have foreseen the Internet and the subsequent generations of children addicted to an isolated virtual world. He couldn’t have foreseen the dangerous anonymity of social media where people can “speak” to millions of people but really only be speaking to themselves. He couldn’t foresee a political divisiveness that went beyond just a disagreement between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, but a hyper-dangerous mentality of “My opinion is the correct one, and anyone that disagrees with it is evil.”

Whether it’s the epidemic of depression and anxiety of young girls so obsessed with smartphone selfies and trying to be as beautiful as those AI-generated supermodels or the sharp rise in white Christian nationalists or the uptick in violent incidents perpetrated by young men who dub themselves “involuntary celibates”, a.k.a. incels, or elected politicians who deny the values they supposedly hold so dear in order to align themselves with a megalomaniac that allegedly has the power to end their political careers if they don’t agree with him, narcissism is at the root of most problems. We all want to look good, get ahead, keep up with the Joneses, regardless of whether we are making a better world. That doesn’t matter anymore. Today, it’s all about
making a better world for ourselves.

It’s really all about “optics”. You’ve heard the word, ad nauseam. It’s the buzzword in entertainment, sports, politics, law enforcement, business, education. It’s no longer “How can we fix this?” but rather “How can we spin this to make it look good?”

“For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which 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. Although he may resort to therapies that promise to give meaning to life and to overcome his sense of emptiness, in his professional career the narcissist often enjoys considerable success. The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in political and business organizations where performance now counts for less than “visibility”, “momentum,” and a winning record.” (p. 91-92)

Trump, as the archetypal narcissist, is all about “winning”. To his credit, Trump’s brilliance lies in his ability to convince a wide swath of Americans that he actually gives a shit about them, that he actually wants to help them. In truth—-and his own track record shows this—-Trump’s only out to help himself. For a narcissist, that is the end-all-be-all:

“The pursuit of self-interest, formerly identified with the rational pursuit of gain and the accumulation of wealth, has become a search for pleasure and psychic survival. Social conditions now approximate the vision of republican society conceived by the Marquis de Sade at the very outset of the republican epoch. In many ways the most far-sighted and certainly the most disturbing of the prophets of revolutionary individualism, Sade defended unlimited self-indulgence as the logical culmination of the revolution in property relations—-the only way to attain revolutionary brotherhood in its purest form. By regressing in his writings to the most primitive level of fantasy, Sade uncannily glimpsed the whole subsequent development of personal life under capitalism, ending not in revolutionary brotherhood but in a society of siblings that has outlived and repudiated its revolutionary origins.” (p. 131)

In a narcissistic society, all the trust-worthy institutions that we once turned to for help and security are no longer trust-worthy. The media is “fake news”. The government is “broken”. The family is “broken”. Our teachers and professors are “spreading liberal propaganda”. Businesses are “price-gouging”. Hospitals are “in bed with insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies”. Churches are either “too political” or “not political enough”.

“The superego can no longer ally itself, in its battle against impulse, with outside authorities. It has to rely almost entirely on its own resources, and these too have diminished in their effectiveness.” (p.342)

The end result? We’ve stopped caring. About our own families, about our friends, about our community, about our government, about our world.

“The narcissist feels consumed by his own appetites… He longs to free himself from his own hunger and rage, to achieve a calm detachment beyond emotion, and to outgrow his dependence on others. He longs for the indifference to human relationships and to life itself that would enable him to acknowledge its passing in Kurt Vonnegut’s laconic phrase, “So it goes,” which so aptly expresses the ultimate aspiration of the psychiatric seeker.” (p. 342-243)