CHRISTOPHER LASCH
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celebrating its emergence, we should attempt to understand more
dearly what distinguishes "psychological man" from his immediate
predecessor.
Twenty or thirty years ago, when the study ofculture, personal–
ity, and "national character" still engaged the attention of social
scientists, a number ofwriters attempted to identify the massive shift
in character structure that seemed to be taking place. David Riesman
in his concept of the other-directed man, William F. Whyte in the
"organization man," Eric Fromm in the "market-oriented" personal–
ity, Karen Horney in the " neurotic personality of our time ," Mar–
garet Mead and Geoffrey Gorer in their studies of American national
character, Philip Rieff in his "psychological man, " and more recently
Robert Jay Lifton in his analysis of the "protean man ," described
from different points of view the typical personality that our society
requires and seeks to produce through the agencies of socialization
and cultural transmission . All of these characterizations capture
essential features of the new man: his eagerness to get along well with
others; his need to organize even his private life in accordance with
the requirements of large organizations; his attempt to "sell him–
self" as ifhis own personality were a commodity with an assignable
market value; his neurotic need for affection, reassurance , and oral
gratification; his inability to internalize "dearly defined criteria of
right and wrong." Taken together, these characteristics define a
narcissistic personality dominated by pre-Oedipal impulses and by
the intolerable anxieties they arouse.
Clinical evidence supports the view that narcissism is the essen–
tial feature of the contemporary personality. Whereas psychiatric
patients formerly suffered from hysteria and obsessional neuroses,
now they suffer from "pervasive feelings of emptiness and a deep
disturbance ofself-esteem." Freud 's patients sought relieffrom guilt,
from the tyranny of the superego; "but guilt already presupposes a
'self ' which can feel it," whereas "the narcissistic personality disor–
ders, on the other hand, . .. have wounds indicative of still earlier
battles, fought and lost. " Unsuccessful struggles to overcome oral–
sadistic impulses against the mother , to conquer fears of the parental
penis and vagina, and thus to direct self-love to others, underlie the
"characterological disorders" with which modern psychiatry so often
has
to
contend. The same struggles, " fought and lost, " manifest
