14
PARTISAN REVIEW
superego , it has been said, is the superstate. Formerly the internaliza–
tion of parental authority enabled the young to overcome childhood
dependency and to become morally autonomous. Today the wish for
dependence persists into later life, laying the psychological founda–
tions of new forms of authoritarianism .
The pursuit of self-interest, formerly identi(ted with the ra–
tional pursuit of gain and the accumulation of wealth, has degener–
ated into a search for pleasure that represents both the logical fulfill–
ment and the negation of bourgeois individualism. The work ethic
has given way to a "fun morality," the spirit of calculation to concern
with personal well-being and psychic health. Economic man has
yielded the stage to "psychological man, " who lives "with a
minimum of pretense to anything more grand than sweetening the
time." Where the economic man justified self-aggrandizement in the
name of a higher purpose, whether it was conceived as a calling
pleasing to God, the increase of national wealth, or the material
progress of the race, psychological man exists "with no higher
purpose than that of a durable sense of well-being. " Economic man
sought to impose his ego on others; his successor needs to assure
himself that he still has an ego. Economic man was selfish-ruthless
in the pursuit of his own interests and greedy for goods; psychological
man is merely narcissistic, equally insatiable in his appetites but
incapable of appeasing the inner emptiness from which they arise in
such profusion .
The recital of these contrasts should elicit neither indignation
nor sorrow . It is pointless to mourn the passing of an individualism
which cannot be revived by exhortation, and which in any case added
as much to the world 's misery as it ever contributed to the world's
spiritual enrichment.
It
would be equally pointless to hope for the
revival of the old-style family, so often romanticized at some earlier
point in its history. Pleas for the reestablishment of paternal author–
ity, sexual repression, and the work ethic will not reverse changes in
the structure and emotional organization of family life, which have
been under way for a long time and reflect basic changes in the
organization of production. These changes in family structure have
brought into being a new kind of personality . Instead of deploring or
