Christopher Lasch

Who they are

Lasch was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on 1 June 1932 and died in Pittsford, New York, on 14 February 1994. He was a professor of history at the University of Rochester from 1970 until his death, after teaching at the University of Iowa and at Northwestern University from 1966 to 1970. These details come from a secondary encyclopaedia entry.

His major books were The Culture of Narcissism (1979), The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (1991) and, published after his death, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995, though the entry is inconsistent on the year). The Culture of Narcissism won a National Book Award in the Current Interest category in paperback, which the entry says Lasch was uncomfortable receiving.

The entry summarises the book's thesis as an argument that twentieth-century developments, including the Second World War and the rise of consumer culture, produced a narcissistic personality type, linked to fragile self-concepts, fear of commitment, dread of ageing and admiration of celebrity. It also ties the shift to changes in work and to a therapeutic sensibility.

Key papers

Lasch, C. (1979). The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. W. W. Norton. Not read by this publication. Quoted as in Harkness (2024), p. 199.

Lasch, C. (1991). The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics.

Key ideas

The passage Harkness quotes says that the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem and cannot live without an admiring audience. Her own response is that this sounds so much like today's world of social media that she flipped back to check the publication date: 1979.

That reaction is the basis of the Pre-Dating Test, a reasoning move in which a description written before a technology existed, and which fits the behaviour the technology is blamed for, is taken as evidence that the condition came first. See The Pre-Dating Test.

The limits matter. Lasch's description is compatible with a platform making an audience-dependent self cheaper to be and harder to escape, so the test shows the technology was not necessary for the condition, not that it plays no part. The page reference is Harkness's, and the quotation should be checked against a copy of Lasch's book before it is used anywhere that needs his exact words.

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