Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security.” ― Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.WARNER BOOKS DECEMBER 1979 PRESENTE DE NATAL PARA UM GAJO QUE SÓ SABIA LER FRANCÊS E O TROCOU POR DINHEIRO PARA UM PACOTE DE CIGARRILHAS RESUMINDO FOI UM LIVRO CARO POIS NENHUM DOS ALFARRÁBIOS DA ALTURA LHE DAVAM 20$00 PELO LIVRO E O DÓLAR CUSTAVA 200$00 OU PERTO DISSO....RESUMINDO FOI O LIVRO MAIS CARO DE 1979..."Christopher Lasch has gone to the heart of our culture. The insights into personality and its social context are stunning. This is a courageous, important book." -- Michael Rogin, University of California, Berkeley With an unsentimental eye, Christopher Lasch examines the new narcissism, product of "the dotage of bourgeois society." The narcissistic personality of our time, liberated from the superstitions of the past, embraces new cults, only to discover that emancipation from ancient taboos brings neither sexual nor spiritual peace. In their emotional shallowness, their fear of intimacy, their hypochondria, their pseudo-self-insight, their promiscuous pansexuality, their dread of old age and death, the new narcissists bear the stamp of a culture that has lost interest in the future. Their outlook on life--as revealed in the new consciousness movements and therapeutic culture; in pseudo-confessional autobiography and fiction; in the replacement of Horatio Alger by the Happy Hooker as the symbol of success; in the theater of the absurd and the absurdist theater of everyday life; in the degradation of sport; in the collapse of authority; in the escalating war between men and women--is the world view of the resigned. American society in the Seventies retreats from politics, but its only hope, Lasch argues, lies in reform of public life. He calls for new politics, new discipline, new love to replace narcissistic self-absorption. Lasch's reputation as a controversial social critic of courage and insight will be enhanced by this provocative, troubling, fascinating book PARA ADOLESCENTES COM PROBLEMAS DE FÍGADOLasch excoriates everything about modern life in an innovative way, combining a conservative respect for traditional life and morality with Freudian and to a lesser extent Marxist perspectives. The main argument: we are all narcissists. We have deep issues with self-esteem, are consumed with appearance instead of character, and are constantly in need of approval. Due to the demands of business, people are alienated from their labor, and work in gigantic bureaucracies where appearance is valued more than good work. Due to the centralization of the state and disintegration of traditional family and community structures, people's expertise in running their own lives is being eliminated. Where once people felt confident about their ability to cook, raise families, and do productive work, there is deep uncertainty, despair, and an over-reliance on "experts". As a result, we grasp onto charisma and bathe in the glow of those rare folks who seem to have an irrational confidence, even if they are psychopaths or hustlers. I find these arguments very persuasive and very much in evidence now in 2014Celebrity culture, undoubtedly much less a part of American life in 1979, has grown tremendously. Reality TV, the increasing profusion of prideful ignorance in the face of the biggest information glut in history, and the increasing feeling of hopelessness in the battle of the sexes are all prophesied. This book is conservative but not at all libertarian--in fact, it criticizes Van Mises's belief that problems of bureaucracy enter modern life solely because of statist intervention. Its approximate political labels (paleo-conservative communitarianism?) don't quite do it justice. The book noticeably doesn't cover religion, and it seems that Lasch respects tradition as a stabilizing, human force more than a set of particular (i.e., Christian OR ISLAMIC STATE OR ISRAEL BUT NOT HEBREW KILL THE AMALECITES TODAY AND NOT TOMORROW set of values.

The romantic cult of sincerity and authenticity tore away the masks that people once had worn in public and eroded the boundary between public and private life. As the public world came to be seen as a mirror of the self, people lost the capacity for detachment and hence for playful encounter, which presupposes a certain distance from the self. In our won time, according to Sennett, relations in public, conceived as a form of self-revelation, have become deadly serious. Conversation takes on the quality of confession." (28)

"Our overgoverned society, in which large-scale organizations predominate but have lost the capacity to command allegiance, in some respects more nearly approximates a condition of universal animosity than did the primitive capitalism on which Hobbes modeled his state of nature." (49)

"Overexposure to manufactured illusions soon destroys their representational power. The illusion of reality dissolves, not in a hightened sense of reality as we might expect, but in a remarkable indifference to reality." (87)

"Escape through irony and critical self-awareness is in any case itself an illusion; at best it provides only momentary relief. Distancing soon becomes a routine in its own right." (96)

"The decision to combine professional training and liberal education in the same institution, and the compromises necessary in order to implement it, rendered the faculty incapable of confronting larger questions of academic policy. These now became the responsibility of administrative bureaucracies..." (146)

"The best that can be said about the American university in what might be called its classic period -- roughly from 1870 to 1960 -- is that it provided a rather undemanding environment in which the various groups that made up the university enjoyed the freedom to do much as hey pleased, provided they did not interfere with the freedom of others or expect the university as a whole to provide a coherent explanation of its existence." (147)

"Strictly considered, however, modern advertising seeks to promote not so much self-indulgence as self-doubt. In seeks to create needs, not to fulfill them; to generate new anxieties instead of allaying old ones." (180)

"In the hierarchies of work and power, as in the family, the decline of authority does not lead to the collapse of social constraints. It merely deprives those constraints of a rational basis." (185)I read this book and thought This is a good book TO TROW AWAY AT SOARES OR TO SÁ CARNEIRO OU AO ÁLVARO CUNHAL JÁ O BREJNEV PARECE UM GAJO SIMPÁTICO .
I read this book and thought I've learned from this book.
I read this book and thought Kit Lasch is the bomb.
I read this book and thought Man can be as slippery as Saturday's soap.
I read this book and thought Man can be as silly as Bugsy Malone.
I read this book and thought This is a serious book, with serious thoughts, and serious insights, and here I am chewing gum and popping bubbles.
I read this book and thought I really like this book. It's aces.
I read this book and thought This book mirrors a society a mile wide and an inch deep.
I read this book and thought My mirror shows splintered eyes haunted by failure.
I read this book and thought This looks to be another let's see year for the Nucks.
I read this book and thought Thanks to —————, I haven't had a decent dump in six goddamn years.
I read this book and thought Man is like me, severely constipated.
I read this book and thought And when it comes out, it's hard and it hurts.
I read this book and thought Why can't I accept finitude?
I read this book and thought Ol' Kit fucking nailed it. He fucking nailed me.
I read this book and thought Why does everybody talk about me?
I read this book and thought And if they aren't, why?
I read this book and thought Are my lungs expelling septic stink?
I read this book and thought We've seen better days.
I read this book and thought Better days can still be had.
I read this book and thought Salad days and tart vinaigrette.
I read this book and thought My daddy didn't cry, so neither do I.
I read this book and thought Not even when he beat me.
I read this book and thought I'm lying, he never actually beat me.
I read this book and thought But if I was hypnotized, I might think that he did.
I read this book and thought I've read most of Kit Lasch's books. They are smart but gloomy, tempestuous like my stomach.
I read this book and thought My stomach after Harvey's at the airport.
I read this book and thought I loved this book. Does the book love me?
I read this book and thought Good stuff, Kit. Merci beaucoup.
I read this book and thought In Vancouver the sun can hide itself away for months on end.
I read this book and thought Despite this, the suicide rate in Vancouver hovers around the national mean.
I read this book and thought I haven't yet erased my map.
I read this book and thought I once saw SEVERAL PEOPLE  jump  THE FINAL STEP
I read this book and thought Cracked me inside like a beat-up eggshell.
I read this book and thought To a chicken, an eggbeater is a rooster accused of child abuse.
I read this book and thought With that and Woody Woodpickle, I'm always armed.
I read this book and thought But I've got lots and lots of books to go.
I read this book and thought This is a solid THREE stars IN A STARLESS UNIVERSE.
I read this book and thought Everybody should read this book ANALFABETOS E GAMAS INCLUSIVE .... 
Lasch, on the evidence of this book, is the American Adorno. He writes in a similar style; each sentence is perfectly formed, but often not so well connected to the preceding and following sentences. He has no patience for the conservative/progressive distinction, and would rather discuss the effects of an idea or practice rather than immediately laud or damn it (so, for instance, 'feminism' isn't abruptly praised or scornfully ignored; rather, the difficulties of putting feminist doctrine into effect, and the inadequacy of feminism as a theory of society, are outlined... without concluding that women are inferior to men). Finally, this is Major Theory. He is not 'making a space for conversation' or 'analyzing discourses' or adding one brick to the great Academic Wall. He has a theory that late twentieth century life is really messed up, he traces out how we got to be like we are and speculates about how we could stop being that way. And his theory does seem to explain an awful lot.

In short, the conjunction of progressive liberalism and capitalism destroys traditional forms of life without providing any satisfactory replacement. Since people can no longer rely on those traditional forms, we feel a) at a loss, homeless, as if the world is out to crush us, but also, b) we're completely and increasingly dependent on the world. Our psychological defense against this is to become 'narcissistic,' reliant upon others for praise to boost our self-esteem. That praise needn't be genuine, in fact, it's usually better if it's not, since then there's no danger of our becoming dependent upon anyone. Relationships seem to require co-dependence, rather than friendship or love. It's increasingly difficult for us to become mature adults. Nonetheless, Lasch doesn't seem to be advocating a return to feudalism or anything. Socialism - not bureaucracy, but the human control of the economy, state and society - is his chosen solution to these problems.

The big problem with the book is that it's all a little Freudy OR REICHY REICHEAN .But there's not a whole lot of the really whacky Oedipus stuff. Lasch relies on the later Freud's theory of the id/ego/super-ego, to suggest that the revolt against authority makes it impossible for us to form an effective ego. Instead, it's all id (uncontrolled instinct) and terrifying super-ego (crushing guilt and self-loathing). You can and should cherry-pick chapters, even if you don't like Freud.
I read this book and thought I did