The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times

by Christopher Lasch

"Even more valuable than its widely praised predecessor, The Culture of Narcissism." —John W. Aldridge

Faced with an escalating arms race, rising crime and terrorism, environmental deterioration, and long-term economic decline, people have retreated from commitments that presuppose a secure and orderly world. In his latest book, Christopher Lasch, the renowned historian and social critic, powerfully argues that self-concern, so characteristic of our time, has become a search for psychic survival.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Theory, Social Science

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Christopher "Kit" Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist, and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester.

Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.'

His books, including The New Radicalism in America (1965), Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy published posthumously in 1996 were widely discussed and reviewed. The Culture of Narcissism became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).

Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period are considered contradictory. They are sometimes denounced by feminists and hailed by conservatives for his apparent defense of the traditional family. But as he explained in one of his books The Minimal Self, "it goes without saying that sexual equality in itself remains an eminently desirable objective...". Moreover, in Women and the Common Life, Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.

He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Problem With Survival

Christopher Lasch was an intellectual hero of my youth. He was, in my still to be formed mind, a synthesizer of all the social thought that mattered. From psychology to politics, from technology to sociology, he seemed to have assimilated everything that was known about modern society and he re-formulated that knowledge with astounding skill, grace and judgment. Even so, reading him now after half a century, I find that I probably underestimated his thinking as much as I overestimated my ability to understand its implications.

The Minimal Self was written in the early 1980’s, a pivotal point in the cultural and political life of America. Greed was good. Communism was bad. Reagonomics reigned. And Americans were paranoid - certainly not for the first time but in a manner that was signally more desperate after their defeat in Vietnam, in the midst of profound economic woes and racial tension, and with a general feeling of being unable to control their lives. In a word, used by Lasch, the country was beleaguered.

Like the Boers in South Africa, Americans hunkered down. The national ethos became one of resistance - to ‘non-traditional values’, to economic and military challenges from elsewhere, but mostly resistance to itself. Its fear of what it might become in a future over which its influence was questionable had a dramatic change on its politics that few but Lasch noticed: an obsession with survival. Survival of a ‘way of life’, survival of the environment, survival of institutions like the family, survival of ‘democratic freedoms’. America had adopted a sort of “siege mentality,” the consequences of which wouldn’t be visible for decades as it persisted, festered and matured.

Politically, America had reached a pivotal ideological and cultural point: “The hope that political action will gradually humanize industrial society has given way to a determination to survive the general wreckage or, more modestly, to hold one’s own life together in the face of mounting pressures.” Lasch diagnosed this condition as a sort of national narcissism. Narcissism is not the equivalent of selfishness or egotism but a “confusion of the self and the not-self.”

“The minimal or narcissistic self is”, Lasch says, “above all, a self uncertain of its own outlines, longing either to remake the world in its own image or to merge into its environment in blissful union.” The narcissist inhabits a world of struggling fantasy, discovering and fighting battles against the world in general. Illusion is the narcissist’s life-blood. He (and I suppose she) strives continually to “attempt to restore narcissistic illusions of omnipotence.” Crucially the narcissist has no ideal as an end point of such striving, no vision, no strategy; merely the objective of being in control.

It is inevitable that one encounters Trump in this description of the emerging personality of America. Lasch also spots the Promethean pretense inherent in Trump’s Make America Great Again. This is a pretense because it masks profound feelings of inadequacy: “...narcissism...[is] a disposition to see the world as a mirror, more particularly as a projection of one’s own fears and desires—not because it makes people grasping and self-assertive but because it makes them weak and dependent. It undermines their confidence in their capacity to understand and shape the world and to provide for their own needs.”

Narcissism is not functional, either for an individual or a nation. It is ultimately destructive: “It seeks both self-sufficiency and self-annihilation.” The survivalist living in the Montana mountains, the racists provoking conflict wherever they can, the resentful rural folk who feel by-passed by what they perceive as urban-centrism, the nihilist electorate which doesn’t quite know what they want politically but it isn’t ‘this’, along with Trump himself are quite prepared to destroy American society in order to dominate it. This is the profound meaning of the ‘We don’t care’ response of his supporters to his increasingly clear mendacity, criminal associations, and incompetence.

The Trumpians are indeed driven by a passion. But this passion is not directed to anything in particular, not even the improvement of their own economic or political status much less that of the nation. According to Lasch: “Narcissism signifies a loss of selfhood, not self-assertion. It refers to a self threatened with disintegration and by a sense of inner emptiness. To avoid confusion, what I have called the culture of narcissism might better be characterized, at least for the moment, as a culture of survivalism.” Trump’s narcissism has led him just the point he wants to be - on the edge of survival. And he’s doing his best to put the rest of the world there as well.

Many parts of Lasch read like they were written yesterday not decades ago. He is sage in a manner that seems to have been largely lost among more recent social critics. I find him inspirational as well as astute. One could do worse, therefore, than to revisit Lasch and his frightenly prescient work today. I intend to, and recommend him highly to others.

Postscript 17Sept18: here is an analysis that also traces the problem back to the Reagan years in a rather interesting way: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/americ...

[Jenni Link · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up after it was mentioned in The Baffler's review of Elizabeth Lunbeck's 'The Americanization of Narcissism' (http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/amer...). I'm an absolute junkie for social psych / 'what makes society tick' books, and although this was published in 1984, it's still very insightful about the current day difficulty of figuring out how to live in a world that seems like it's falling apart around us. A follow up to and clarification of Lasch's more famous book 'The Culture of Narcissism,' it reminds us that Narcissus was not obsessed with himself, but with his mirror image in an object. Similarly, the epidemic narcissism of modern society is not really self-obsession or egoism, but the weakened, unmoored self (adrift in a sea of consumer culture, managerialism, mass marketing, and opinion survey-based indices of what's "normal" and "healthy") struggling to find some object, any object (a career, a cult, the newest smartphone, a 'personal brand,' a number of Facebook likes) to project itself onto and thereby convince itself that it still exists. The examples used to illustrate sections on art, politics, and therapy were particularly good. (Got me finally to watch 'My Dinner with Andre,' which is pretty much this book in movie form.) Maybe it shows how sick I am that I love reading books with the theme 'who wouldn't feel sick in this sick, sick society?'... but it's strangely reassuring to have someone point out all the ways that everyone's stuck (together!). Kindness, care, public action for justice and advocacy for one's fellow man: behaving humanely is the way to remain defiantly human. Mr. Lasch is not a cheery guy, but strangely, this book was a cheering reminder to do more than just survive from day to day.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A culture organized around mass consumption encourages narcissism— which we can define, for the moment, as a disposition to see the world as a mirror, more particularly as a projection of one’s own fears and desires— not because it makes people grasping and self-assertive but because it makes them weak and dependent."

"In real life, as opposed to pluralist fantasy, every moral and cultural choice of any consequence rules out a whole series of other choices. In an age of images and ideology, however, the difference between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly elusive."

I also read the author's "The Culture of Narcissism" which was released before this volume. Here he describes the world and the culture of the 70's and many of the attitudes and trends that are still with us. It was an era in which I went through high school and university.

BlackOxford wrote a great review of this book, just this year, that I cannot improve on in the least....

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

What Lasch anticipated come to fruition in Trump....

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/09/18...

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good stuff in this, but dated. The foundations of feminism and other progressive movements was interesting to follow. But, outdated over-reliance on Freud's ego, superego, id makes this a relic.

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

way less self-help than you'd predict from the title and way more scathing yet measured cultural critique leveled at basically everyone you've ever heard of and a bunch you haven't, but I still keep laughing imagining this next to "un-fuck your life" or "how to be fucking awesome at everything" type titles in a book store

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Minimal Self is a book written by Christopher Lasch, a historian, social critic, and cultural commentator. The book was published in 1984 and explores the idea of narcissism in modern society.

In The Minimal Self, Lasch argues that modern culture is marked by a preoccupation with self, and that this preoccupation has led to the development of a "minimal self" - a self that is characterized by a lack of depth, coherence, and continuity. According to Lasch, this minimal self is a result of the breakdown of traditional forms of community and social relationships, which has left individuals feeling disconnected and adrift.

Lasch also argues that this preoccupation with self has led to the commodification of identity and the rise of consumer culture, where people are encouraged to define themselves through their possessions and their ability to consume. This, in turn, has led to a society that is increasingly focused on the pursuit of immediate gratification and pleasure, rather than on the pursuit of meaning and purpose.

Overall, The Minimal Self is a critique of modern culture and society, and an exploration of the ways in which our preoccupation with self has shaped our values, beliefs, and behaviors.

GPT

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I find there is much to reject in Lasch's attempt to explain 70s and 80s politics in terms of psychoanalytic schools of thought, one learns so much about the crisis of the new left as Fordism faded away. Furthermore, one could do much, much worse than Lasch for an intellectual history of Freudian and post-Freudian thought specifically on narcissism. Lastly this book makes Lasch's most famous work, Culture of Narcissism, more theoretically robust.

[Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads as a collection of essays across different disciplines or areas of thought. The subtitle is not very revealing. In part, the book questions, rather than endorses, the goal of "survival." Lasch says that the problem with setting personal survival as a life goal is that it is a very low standard. It ignores questions of human flourishing (including art, civilization, ethics, friendship, and so on), and it eliminates the possibility of altruistic self-sacrifice for those goals, as self-sacrifice is at odds with the maintenance of one's own bare life once the reasons for the self-sacrifice are taken away.

“A number of things give us hope,” write Ehrlich and Harriman in the conclusion to their environmentalist manifesto, How to Be a Survivor, a book full of alarming predictions of overpopulation, global wars, and ecological disasters. “The first is that survival itself is the issue. Once people understand that, they will fight like hell for it.” On the contrary, people committed only to survival are more likely to head for the hills. If survival is the overriding issue, people will take more interest in their personal safety than in the survival of humanity as a whole. Those who base the case for conservation and peace on survival not only appeal to a debased system of values, they defeat their own purpose.
* * *
When it comes to [preventing] nuclear war, no one can argue that a willingness to risk [conventional] war today will save lives tomorrow. No one can accuse opponents of nuclear war, as Mumford accused opponents of war in 1940, of forgetting that a life sacrificed at the right moment is a life well spent. Sacrifice has no meaning if no one survives. It is precisely the experience of mass death and the possibility of annihilation, among other developments, that have discredited the ethic of sacrifice and encouraged the growth of a survival ethic. A desire to survive at all costs ceases to be wholly contemptible under conditions that call into question the future of humanity as a whole. The same conditions have made the idea of timely sacrifice untenable. To ask people to lay down their lives in a nuclear war, on the grounds that the future “extends beyond the incomplete personal life of the individual,” is a moral absurdity. (pp. 78-79)

The final paragraph of the book is obscurely linked.

In the history of civilization, the emergence of conscience can be linked among other things to changing attitudes toward the dead. The idea that the dead call for revenge, that their avenging spirits haunt the living, and that the living know no peace until they placate these ancestral ghosts gives way to an attitude of genuine mourning. At the same time, vindictive gods give way to gods who show mercy as well and uphold the morality of loving your enemy. Such a morality has never achieved anything like general popularity, but it lives on, even in our own enlightened age, as a reminder both of our fallen state and of our surprising capacity for gratitude, remorse, and forgiveness, by means of which we now and then transcend it. (p. 259)

[Vassilis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ψυχική επιβίωση σε καιρούς αναστάτωσης
"Σε μια εποχή δυσκολιών, η καθημερινή ζωή γίνεται άσκηση στην επιβίωση. Οι άνθρωποι ζουν μόνο το σήμερα. Σπάνια κοιτάζουν πίσω για να μη παραδοθούν σε μια παραλυτική νοσταλγία. και αν κοιτάζουν μπρος, είναι για να δουν πως μπορούν να προστατευθούν από τις συμφορές που σχεδόν όλοι περιμένουμε σήμερα.
Η συναισθηματική ισορροπία απαιτεί σήμερα έναν ελάχιστο εαυτό, και όχι τον επιβλητικό εαυτό του πρόσφατου παρελθόντος."
Έτσι ξεκινά το βιβλίο του ο Κρίστοφερ Λας και στος τριακόσιες σελίδες που ακολουθούν στηρίζει τα λεγόμενα του.

[isabelllaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and I think I learned a lot! Prob should be a 5 but giving it a 4 bc it’s my own fault and I didn’t read the book preceding this. My main takeaway is that he’s saying that a “minimal self” doesn’t mean you should reduce your sense of self, but that you should be able to identify with something outside of yourself/find meaning for yourself in actions that improve the social life of others.

[Daniel Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Lasch is celebrated as an historian and social critic. His ideas can be simultaneously appreciated and detested by people across all spectrums of politics and beliefs—a sign he’s touched a nerve. This sequel to his famed The Culture of Narcissism explores more thoroughly the social consequences of a “therapeutic” mindset. The recent developments of the 20th century (i.e. World Wars, consumerism, technological advances…etc.) conditioned society toward a narcissistic disposition which seeks protection against a fragile self, fears commitment, dreads limitations, and seeks the promotion of self-image. This narcissism becomes concretized in the institutions of culture, infecting mass culture, politics, religion, art, and more. The therapeutic sensibility which normalizes dependency presumes upon an improper construction of the self which manifests in cultural pathologies.

Borrowing from a Freudian perspective, Lasch understands the basis of selfhood as "the acknowledgement of our separation from the original source of life [i.e., the mother, womb], combined with a continuing struggle to recapture a sense of primal union by means of activity that gives us a provisional understanding and mastery of the world without denying our limitations and dependency." (20). It is our task to reconcile our self with the fact of being thrown into a world of necessity via properly exercised acts of self-consciousness. A proper relationship with our self and nature becomes the end of our self-development. Such a state of the self is aware of both its limitations and its capacities. It is neither nostalgic nor fanciful. Pathologies occur when this relationship is improperly considered or imbalanced.

The substratum of Narcissism, according to Lasch, "originates in the infant's symbiotic fusion with the mother." This pathological perspective is immediately aware of being in a world which is alien to the kind of pure bliss experienced by infants and fetuses. Narcissism, therefore "is [a] disposition to see the world as a mirror, more particularly as a projection of one's fears and desires." (33) Contrary to popular thought, the phenomenon of Narcissism is less show in egotistical domination or unrestrained consumption but in a lack of self-awareness. What the ancient legend shows is not that "Narcissus falls in love with himself, but since he fails to recognize his own reflection, he lacks any conception of the difference between himself and his surroundings." (184). The world at large is merely a foil of our desires or a tool for our pleasures and loses its sense of other-ness. The self is tossed to-and-fro by a cascade of desires and ceases to conceive the external world as permanent, as continuing after their death.

Consequently, this disposition inevitably reenacts infantile feelings of helplessness. This, according to Lasch, fundamentally defines the pathology of the modern era. The concern for the narcissist is merely with psychic survival. "In a time of troubles, everyday life becomes an exercise in survival. People take one day at a time...Under siege, the self-contracts to a defensive core, armed against adversity." (15) This manifests in the desire for absolute material independence and self-sufficiency while also avoiding binding relationships. For this enclosed self, nothing seems worth the trouble except for the here-and-now. Meaningful relationships are reimagined as potential liabilities, family-life is considered burdensome, and limitations are obstacles demanding to be conquered. We sense life is constantly at the knifes-edge of catastrophe. And even supposedly future-oriented concerns like climate change activism only hijack this impulse when they articulate policy solutions as primarily being necessary for our "survival."

This perspective informs Lasch's analysis of his cultural milieu. He's able to see this "siege mentality" in many places. From left-right politics to minimalist art, the common consequence is a dissolved self. Once you notice it, you'll see it everywhere. The prevalence of mass culture, the promises of technology, the rampancy of consumerism, the never-ending doomsday narratives, and even the infatuation with victimization in politics all emphasize the troubled state of affairs within the culture of Narcissism. (Here, his criticism of capital “L” Liberalism which presumes upon an unencumbered self and the primacy of self-interest is very sharp). Different kinds of therapeutic techniques promise relief, but Lasch reveals how their efforts are often self-contradictory and do not properly reconcile the self with its external world.

His analysis offers a fresh perspective on the ills of our culture. In his view, the common man is less a selfish hedonist or "will-to-power" egoist, but a fundamentally vulnerable self which feels perpetually anxious. The solution is not a rigid moralism, stoicism, or libertinism, but a vision of the world which turns the narcissist's face away from his own reflection. A vision of the world which can be understood as not merely an extension of our own self-interests but as something other-than and permanent. The very fact the Narcissist is so on edge and feels this profound discontentment in the first-place hints that our self demands a higher existence. "If men were moved solely by impulse and self-interest, they would be content, like other animals, simply to survive. Nature knows no will-to-power, only will-to-live. With man, needs become desires, even the acquisitive enterprise has a spiritual dimension, which makes men want more than they need." Lasch ends with an Aristotelian alternative reminiscent of Alasdair Macintyre which considers man as having a nature not reducible to material existence. The application of practical reason (in contrast to technique) produces a more excellent self which is able to properly relate itself to the external world.

This jeremiad text from the 80s reminds us that so much has changed in 40 years and yet, not very much at all. His analysis of culture somehow reads more potent than the time of writing, and his words remain tried and true. Understanding the modern pathology as a "siege mentality" should recalibrate the perspective we hold of our neighbor and our culture. It also helps diagnosis the unconscious ways we ourselves have absorbed with way of thinking. His frustratingly brief explanation of an Aristotelian-like solution hints that our true remedy is more theological than he may realize. Additionally, I get the sense his diagnosis of Narcissism and its discontents can probably find a better home in a full Aristotelian tradition rather than with Freud (Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire by R. J. Snell or Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper would serve as interesting comparison pieces at this point). Lacsh knows something is wrong with culture but his own peculiar psychoanalytic background distracts from his diagnosis and seems ill fitted to his hinted-at solutions. Overall, readers will probably find his parroting of Freud very jarring and the middle part of the book distracting. His dated cultural references throughout continually remind the reader that they are reading a book 40 years old. Still, the book's age does not betray his central analysis and only shows that his prophetic warnings are still worth heeding.

[mindfroth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Multifaceted take on the nature of narcissism and its sociological ramifications. Delightfully Freudian. Biggest criticism is how bogged down Lasch can become in an academic style of lengthy quotations and heavy engagement with the predominant literature, which can become tedious.

[Justin Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Minimal Self by Christopher Lasch (1984) is a prescient work of cultural theory that anticipated our culture of survival by decades, exploring how and why our culture has devolved the way it has. When survival is the only watchword of our lives, it becomes increasingly difficult to think of ourselves as agents of social transformation. As Lasch wrote in the preface, “under siege, the self contracts to a defensive core, armed against adversity.” This “defensive core” is the basis for narcissism, which he defined as “seek[ing] both self-sufficiency and self-annihilation: opposite aspects of the same archaic experience of oneness with the world.” Narcissism, to Lasch, was a poor replacement for a real experience of selfhood. “Selfhood is the painful awareness,” he wrote, “of the tension between our unlimited aspirations and our limited understanding, between our original intimations of immortality and our fallen state, between oneness and separation.” A meaningful and positive understanding of the self, both individually and socially, resides in a dialectical relationship between our bounded material existence and our unbounded subjective experience.

Lasch also advocated for a politics where “the choice of means has to be governed by their conformity to standards of excellence designed to extend human capacities for self-understanding and self-mastery.” In other words, organizing society with deliberate moral aims at the outset. This can be achieved only when we acknowledge a healthy understanding of the self, which is rooted in “the critical awareness of man’s divided nature. Selfhood expresses itself in the form of a guilty conscience, the painful awareness of the gulf between human aspirations and human limitations.” Human beings are a product of material conditions, and we ignore these conditions at our peril. Lasch believed, despite its own shortcomings, a blending of moral purpose, technological development, and a communitarian spirit is the only path that might work.

The Minimal Self is an important, if overlooked, work in the canon of his thought; it articulated more directly his concerns and offered a clearer alternative than his more celebrated books.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

What can one make of this book? One needs to consider the authors views first, I think before one reads the book, because the author seems all over the place, at least it seemed so when this person was reading it. One minute you think you found someone who understands you (in my case because of his rejection of progressivism in particular feminism), the next you think where has he gone off to (again, in my case, because of the seeming moderate position he takes toward Progressivism).

Mr. Lasch, according to Wikipedia entry on him said that, he had fused social conservatism [especially for his support of the Traditional Family] with a Marxist critique of the economy, opposing Cold War Liberalism, and drew on Freudian psychoanalysis to demonstrate the decline of the West. Ultimately, he thought himself it would seem as Populist type.

All of this is of course very interesting, and is what makes the book very interesting, and at time entangling a read. He tackles in this book different aspects of society, to show how we are becoming an increasingly isolated peoples, yes there are more of us, but our minds are closing, and he shows us how in the various socio-cultural trends and politico-economic movements and ideologies that had emerged at the time he wrote this book back in 1984.

One could read this book and see how almost 30 Years Later, you could get the sense that he is writing this about contemporary society. Perhaps the same sense of Alarmism, Urgency, and Crisis that had gripped the Mid-80s either has never died or has re-emerged its head producing very similar results which we are seeing again today.

Its the reviewers contention that if Mr. Christopher Lasch was still alive today, he would probably look at society in the 80s and our Post-00's society and think its the 1980s Amplified to even more dramatic and louder heights, which would only point to how greatly our Self is Minimized and why we need to break out of such a Minimalist conception of ourselves, not only for our sakes but also, for the sake of Civilizations Survival, which in his view meant more so going back while recognizing where we are now and not becoming overly nostalgic.

[Ted Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work now feels distant, almost foreign, and certainly strange to me. When I first read it around 35 years ago, it seemed familiar, well written, and timely. I knew many of the writings he quoted, critiqued, or to which he simply referred. Now almost all the assumptions behind it fall into question. That is not a putdown but simply a measure of change. I read many of Professor Lasch's works with pleasure, respect, and gratitude. I still respect and appreciate his work. I still enjoy reading this book but the time has changed.t

BREAK:

Now only a few weeks later, I realize how timely this work remains just as it did 35 years ago. I love his insights from authors like Henry Miller, now not highly respected by many, but on review still prescient and wise.

Reading the appendix and notes is a fine review of literature from the late 60s and the early 70s. It is tour of what I had forgotten but once found engaging. A lot of Marxist and Freudian material blended with then contemporary reading emerges.

Lasch is more moralist than social scientist, who saves this work from my putting it aside.

[JV · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Christopher Lasch escreveu uma continuação de 'A Cultura do Narcisismo'. Se chama 'O mínimo eu'. Se alguém me perguntasse o que li nos últimos cinco anos que me esclarecesse alguma coisa eu diria que são esses dois livros. Lasch se refere ao narcisismo passivo. Acha que o mundo de hoje é dominado de tal forma pelo complexo de burocracias todo-poderosas que é difícil a alguém ganhar individualidade. A vida é um constante comercial de TV ao qual o espectador tenta se segurar e tenta seguir. Não consegue. Dois livros brilhantes. Não é que o que o Lasch diz seja novo. É que antes dele não conheço ninguém que tenha decifrado tão bem essa condição de narcisismo moderno"

Paulo Francis

Post Scriptum: Não tento aqui inflacionar minhas reviews. Antes aqui postei trechos do livro que me marcaram. Contudo, tenho essa política de preferir o português per acá. Grato pela compreensão.

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

The way forward is neither Promethean or Narcissism, both of which have been embraced by modern liberalism. The self must again find a way to cultivate creation instead of dominate it or symbiotically become a part of it. Lasch also gives a fair critique of conservative thought that seeks to turn back the clock to an authoritative view that rests on fear and respect alone. A good conservativism is one that seeks forgiveness and reconciliation. A good conservativism sees the self as always in tension between on weakness and moments of transcending our weakness through gratitude, remorse, and forgiveness.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the Freud and reaction to Freud makes this the most dated-feeling Lasch I've read so far, but the stuff about the titular minimal self and the survival mentality is a great reimagining of what was misunderstood in The Culture of Narcissism.

[Giuseppe D'Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lungimirante.

[Celeste · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fitting follow up to the Culture of Narcissism, Lasch uses psychoanalytical criticism to illuminate the modern, post industrial, post WW2 “impoverished self” a besieged identity of “survivalism” and “victimhood” mark the modern psyche that recedes from the world, failing to understand itself as separate from the outside world and seeking a relief from suffering at all costs. Mass consumption and technology both distract us and divert us from an honest confrontation of our own mortality and human condition. We seek a pre-birth union with our mothers in the womb that denies separation and suffering. We become smaller and smaller as we rely more and more upon experts, bureaucracy and technological innovations to solve our problems. There is in the modern post Holocaust man a growing and nurtured disenchantment in all the institutions that used to provide us with meaning and a measure of security in uncertain times: our government, law enforcement, the family, religion.

His analysis of times in 1984, when this book was written, seem more relevant today. Here are some gems from his book.

"Advanced technologies of communication which seemed merely to facilitate the dissemination of information on a wider scale than was possible before, prove on closer examination to impede the circulation of ideas and to concentrate the control over information into the handful of giant organizations."

"The growing belief that we are all victimized, in one way or another, by events beyond our control owes much of its power not just to the general feeling that we live in a dangerous world dominated by large organizations but to the memory of specific events in the 20th century history that have victimized people on a mass scale."

"The victim has come to enjoy a certain moral superiority in our society; this moral elevation of the victim helps to account for the inflation of political rhetoric that characterizes the discourse as survivalism."

"They cannot afford to weigh themselves down with a family, friends or neighbors except for the kind of friends whose death require no mourning and can be accepted with a shrug of the shoulders."

"Modernism in it s most 'advanced' form no longer explores new frontiers of sensibility, new dimensions of reality and a regression into a real...impoverished art in which 'mental and perceptual operations are so basic that they can't sustain any but the most undifferentiated emotions.' It is hardly necessary to add that advanced art thus embodies the survival mentality...a refusal to feel anything whether pleasure of pain."

"If art shares with technology the irrational compulsion to escape from the natural law of entropy...the only feasible alternative to paranoia seems to be resigned acceptance of irreversible decline, the gravity that pulls everything irresistibly down into nothingness."

"What distinguishes contemporary art from art of the past....is the attempt to restore the illusion of oneness without any acknowledgment of an intervening experience of separation."

"whereas the world's great religions have always emphasized the obstacles to salvation, modern cults borrow selectively from earlier mystical traditions in the West, from ill digested Oriental traditions, from mind-cure movements...in order to promise immediate relief from the burden of selfhood. Instead of seeking to reconcile the ego and its environment, the new cults deny the very distinction between them."

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lasch's message, is that we are becoming more and more a culture which breeds and fosters narcissistic psychopathology.

..........

Amazone

Toward A Psychology of Non-Being

For anyone familiar with Abraham Maslow's classic, Toward a Psychology of Being, my title will seem particularly relevant. While Maslow was interested in studying self-actualized and self-actualizing people, Lash tells us about minimally actualized people.

Lasch tells us that as a culture, we have become infantile, childish adults who won't grow up! He suggests that a paradigm shift away from our merger fantasies could help us to individuate more as moral agents and less as consumers of mass culture.

Individuation and radical self awareness are not new themes, but in this book the concepts are conceptually abstract.

Many readers may find Lasch's argument particularly difficult to follow. He uses language that is quite technical and specialized.

Maslow's thesis is far more accessible to the interested reader. Both authors address our needs for status, security and love.

The message in Lash's, The Minimal Self, is far less optimistic than the message from Maslow.
Reaching our full potential is quite unlikely in a culture consumed by materialistic sources of gratification.

Lash's message is that personal accountability is not synonymous with utilitarian morality.

Utilitarian morality tells us that the ends justify the means, any means.
It's the goal oriented style minus consideration for or of others.

Implicit in Lasch's book, is the belief that secular societies breed discontent.

---
Actually, Lasch's message, put simply, is that we are becoming more and more a culture which breeds and fosters narcissistic psychopathology.
----

However correct, as a theme, this idea is not that new. While I agree with the message, the vehicle itself is difficult to get through.

I am, therefore,recommending two other books on the topic of narcissism.

The first published in 2007, is written by Paul Smith.

It is titled: Primitive America: The Ideology of Capitalist Democracy.

The second recommendation, written in 2009, is titled: The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in an Age of Entitlement.

The authors are Twenge and Campbell.

The subjects of all three books, including The Minimal Self, overlap.

It might prove interesting to compare and contrast the similarities and differences of these various authors.

Also consider two Frontline reports I recently watched on PBS.
The first, Consumed.
The second, Generation Like.

Phyllis Antebi Ph.D

[Anusha Datar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series of interconnected essays asks questions about the way we think about survival and individuality in the face of external threats. Even though I often disagree with him, I generally appreciate Lasch's original and even-minded social and cultural critique. Some sections of the book are no different, and I especially found his exploration of the concept of "survival" compelling.

I think I felt less connected to this book compared to Lasch's previous work - some of his discussions around marginalized groups felt a bit lackluster, and I feel like he could have built the concept of the self out more fully than he did. I also didn't really enjoy his focus on Freud/psychoanalysis, but perhaps someone else might find more value in that than I did.

[Melting Uncle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars relative to Revolt of the Elites and Culture of Narcissism but five stars in the grand scheme of things

Amazing insight on the state of things in the world, very of its time (the 80s) but the truth and insight of it still holds 40 years later

[I will try to add good quotes later]

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book! Read it when it first came out.

[sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

feels like this was written yest

[Katie C.]

bruh that was so much psychoanalysis, i need to like think on that

[Antti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much prefer the Culture of Narcissism for more applicable content and less Freudian psychoanalysis