Hence he repudiates the competitive
ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist
development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports
and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply
antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in
the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in
the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate
goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the
acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy,
but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of
restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."
(Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an
age of Diminishing Expectations, 1979)
There is no single Lasch. This chronicler of culture, did so mainly
by chronicling his inner turmoil, conflicting ideas and ideologies,
emotional upheavals, and intellectual vicissitudes. In this sense,
of (courageous) self-documentation, Mr. Lasch epitomized Narcissism,
was the quintessential Narcissist, the better positioned to
criticize the phenomenon.
"Narcissism" is a relatively well-defined psychological term. I
expound upon it elsewhere ("Malignant self Love - Narcissism Re-
Visited").
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