The Minimal Self · Psychic Survival in Troubled Times by Lasch, Christopher -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Title Page Dedication Contents Preface I: Introduction: Consumption, Narcissism, and Mass Culture

Materialism and Mass Culture Mass Production and Mass Consumption The Fantastic World of Commodities Consumption and Mass Culture Industrial Technology, Mass Culture, and Democracy The Decline of Authority Politics as Consumption The New “Personhood” “Selfishness” or Survivalism?

II: The Survival Mentality

The Normalization of Crisis Everyday Life Reinterpreted in the Light of Extreme Situations Large Organizations as Total Institutions The Cold-War Critique of Survivalism Shedding It All: The Spiritual Discipline of Survival Who Are the Doomsayers? Apocalyptic Survivalism and Ordinary Apathy Everyday Survival Strategies

III: The Discourse on Mass Death: “Lessons” of the Holocaust

IV: The Minimalist Aesthetic: Art and Literature in an Age of Extremity

The Roth-Cunningham Effect From Self-Assertion to Self-Effacement The Imperial Ego Effaced by Images The Aesthetics of Exclusion The Fusion of Self and Not-Self The Strategic Retreat into Paranoia Modernism’s Dead End

V: The Inner History of Selfhood

Oneness and Separation Early Fantasies of Reunion Gender Differences and the “Tragedy of Lost Illusions” Origins of the Superego The Ego Ideal Narcissism as Opposed to Ordinary Egoism Childhood in a Narcissistic Culture Man-Made Objects and Illusions

VI: The Politics of the Psyche

VII: The Ideological Assault on the Ego

Acknowledgments and Bibliographical Notes Index Copyright Page