American Therapy by Jonathan Engel

Author:Jonathan Engel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Narcissism

In the 1970s a “culture of narcissism” descended upon the country, in the words of cultural historian Christopher Lasch.1 Social structures and mores, weakened by the intergenerational rifts of the previous decade, gave way to alien forms of social discourse and organization. The journalist Tom Wolfe remarked on the “third great awakening” unfolding before him, while social critic Jim Hougan witnessed the rise of millenarian sects—cultlike groups of people who looked forward to a new messianic age to dawn with the coming of the third millennium.2 Many Americans, particularly the youthful baby boomers, jettisoned their place in the historical ferment and turned to self-gratification as a new faith. Lasch wrote that the narcissistic individual of the time gave “no thought to anything beyond [his] individual needs,”3 while Perry London, a California psychologist, described how the mantra of “do your own thing” had become a “hallmark of optimal adjustment.”4 Heinz Kohut, professor at the University of Chicago and the dean of academic psychoanalysis, traced the profound shift from the Oedipal to the narcissistic in his 1971 book, The Analysis of Self, in which he called narcissism the “paradigmatic” complaint of the era. 5

Narcissistic culture was a perverse outgrowth of the societal soul-searching of the previous decade. But whereas the idealism of the sixties had impelled many social critics to seek ways to heal society, the self-absorption of the seventies led many of these same social malcontents to seek ways to heal their own damaged selves.The “sick society” that had been blamed for poverty, violence, and social inequity was now blamed for angst, alienation, and psychic turmoil. Herbert Fensterheim, professor of psychology at Cornell, wrote that while human beings sought a life of “dignity and self-fulfillment,” modern society imposed life patterns that were “incompatible with these aims.”6 Psychologists examined the nature of happiness—a state which the original Freudians had tended to dismiss as infantile and unachievable—and found present life patterns to be incompatible with the ideal. One survey sought to rank sources of unhappiness and found that beyond economic and material want its major causes were “job,” “community, national and world problems,” and “personal characteristics.”7 By contrast, the primary sources of happiness were found to be children and marriage—supporting the notion that those with more traditional life trajectories were generally better off amid the dislocation of modernity.8

Society was changing. Americans were breaking economic, gender, and racial bonds, which, while liberating for millions, was also undermining the solidity and grounding of the culture. Many Americans fled from churches, fraternal organizations, civic associations, extended families, and communal ties. Unprecedented numbers relocated to attend university and then failed to return home. Large numbers continued to migrate south and west, devastating the old “rust belt” cities of the Great Lakes and northern Midwest, while at the same time the white flight from older urban cores continued into the suburbs and beyond. Gerald Klerman, a psychiatrist, wrote of how the “secular orientation and geographic mobility” of the time meant that “fewer friends and family were called upon for support when individuals [found] themselves lonely, disabled, or distressed.

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