Books: The Pursuit of Happiness

THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM: AMERICAN LIFE IN AN AGE OF DIMINISHING EXPECTATIONS

by Christopher Lasch; Norton; 268 pages; $11.95

Like a biblical prophet, Christopher Lasch appears at the gates of our culture with dire pronouncements: "Storm warnings, portents, hints of catastrophe haunt our times ... Defeat in Viet Nam, economic stagnation, and the impending exhaustion of natural resources have produced a mood of pessimism in higher circles, which spreads through the rest of society as people lose faith in their leaders ... As social life becomes more and more warlike and barbaric, personal relations, which ostensibly provide relief from these conditions, take on the character of combat ... a desperate concern for personal survival, sometimes disguised as hedonism, engulfs the middle class ... the Protestant virtues no longer excite enthusiasm ... The happy hooker stands in place of Horatio Alger as the prototype of personal success."

Hookers, happy or otherwise, do not necessarily lack the puritan virtues of hard work, thrift and capital accumulation. Nevertheless, Lasch, a history professor at Rochester University, legitimately finds cracks of doom in our sanguinity. His thunderings shrivel our "ironic detachment," his term for a sense of humor.

Professor Lasch is not amused by what he calls a "cultural radicalism": the decadence of American individualism. Its chief symptom: "The pursuit of happiness to the dead end of a narcissistic preoccupation with the self." The Narcissus of mythology, infatuated by his own reflection, pined away because he could not consummate self-love. Lasch's new narcissist has similar anxieties but feels no guilt. He has drunk the waters of progressive education and popular culture, and has little memory of traditional values and religious beliefs.

The narcissist may appear relaxed and friendly, but inside, claims Lasch, he is desperate for a meaning beyond himself. He is also a pent-up competitor for the approval and rewards of a distant authority figure. To the author, this authority is now vested in the bureaucratic state, which offers neither moral guidance nor philosophical distinctions between good and evil.

Lasch relies on classic psychoanalytic theory to buttress his argument. Boiled down, it might be stated that a once rugged and resourceful America is now seething with a destructive Oedipal rage masquerading as the pleasure principle. But the heart of Lasch's critique is an involved analysis of capitalism that cannot be reduced:

"Having overthrown feudalism and slavery and then outgrown its own personal and familial form, capitalism has evolved a new political ideology, welfare liberalism, which absolves individuals of moral responsibility and treats them as victims of social circumstance. It has evolved new modes of social control, which deal with the deviant as a patient and substitute medical rehabilitation for punishment. It has given rise to a new culture, the narcissistic culture of our time."