Institutional Narcissism and Christopher Lasch
"This reinforcement of one institution by another is a potent factor - providing a sort of crossfire and sure-fire insurance - to enhance the effectiveness of institutional narcissism. The crossfire isn't limited to education and religion: a variety of fields of fire criss-cross from one institution to another - from each institution to most or all others - so as to involve, in greater or lesser degree, the whole multitude of institutions in a modern plural society.
In 'The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy,' Christopher Lasch offers an interesting insight into the way this crossfire operates in todayıs market economy. Especially since the collapse of communism, the market has become the sole determinant of value and the rich its custodians. The image of the unfettered market has then overwhelmed other institutions: schools and universities; the media - television, radio and print; social services, including private charities; cultural and sporting activities; and the family. As Lasch writes, the rampant market 'puts an almost irresistible pressure on every activity to justify itself in the only terms it recognises: to become a business proposition, to pay its own way, to show black ink on the bottom line. It turns news into entertainment, scholarship into professional careerism, social work into the scientific management of poverty. Inexorably, it remodels every institution in its own image.'²
Extract from The Human Mirror: The Narcissistic Imperative in Human Behaviour
http://www.onlineoriginals.com/catalog/showitem.asp?prodID=1120
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>From: Henry Vandenburgh <vandenbu@Oswego.EDU>
>To: schulte-baeuminghaus <cresscourt@chello.at>
>Subject: Re: Humanism: Hierarchy In the Forest: inequality is not the same as exploitation.
>Date: Mon, Jan 29, 2001, 8:37 pm
>
> In reference to the narcissism post, it would seem well to resurrect
> Christopher Lasch here. Lasch has the advantage of not needing to posit a
> trans-historical innate human narcissm. For him (Culture of Narcissism),
> narcissism results from humans being left with infantile, unfilled in by
> realistic experience with appropriate human authority, superegos in
> circumstances where human institutions fail to provide adaquate supportive
> (and controlling) socialization. This could either befall rich (the
> Kennedys?) or poor (the stickup man) individuals. These persons X-out
> their primitive punishing overweaning superegos and do as they please.
>
> Lasch believes that the weakening of appropriate group superego is
> directly due to anomic industrial society. This argument avoids needing
> to fall back on biological reductivism to explain narcisism.
>
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