Abstract
. . . the processes of the formation of character are more obscure and less accessible to analysis than neurotic ones.
. . . if voters select narcissistic individuals as their leaders, they may end up with gifted stage performers who are persuasive and decisive. They may, however, also get a good deal more than they bargained for.
This elegant and informative contribution describes the personal, psychological, psychoanalytic, and sociocultural origins and up-to-the-moment development of the concept of narcissism, especially in North America. Perhaps the most creative aspect of the work is the integration and synthesis of intensely conflicting points of view. The author’s risk in taking on the issues and diversity of language among the various fields is managed with an extensive scholarship that devotes nearly a third of the book to endnotes. This research is supported by Lunbeck’s evenness of tone and respect for her sources.
The book comprises two main sections: the first offers a description of the issues and an overall look at the work of Christopher Lasch, Heinz Kohut, and Otto Kernberg in the 1970s and 80s; the second examines more specific aspects of narcissism from Freud up to the present. Contributors to the controversies surrounding narcissism include social critics like David Riesman and and William Whyte, as well as analysts like Jones, Ferenczi, Riviere, Winnicott, and Erikson, all of whom are considered in some depth. Again, a central theme is Lunbeck’s refreshing effort to reconcile opposing points of view rather than simply presenting the positive and negative aspects of the narcissistic character. This is done by including personality factors in the equation, as seen in letters and from material regarding the lives of the various authors, as well as in their formal, written work and therapeutic practice.
In several places, Lunbeck recounts how the early battle between the one- and two-person psychologies infiltrated into issues of character. It is represented in chapters on self-love, independence, vanity, gratification, inaccessibility, and identity. She elaborates the growing validation of analyzability for character disorders, though, as Freud suggested (see the epigraph above), it is more difficult than with neurotic symptomatology. The historical relatedness between homosexuality and narcissism, expansion and modification of pathological dependency, enlargement of the etiological roles of parental trauma, indulgence, and deprivation, and the centrality of conversations about narcissism and identity are among the subjects scrutinized from the various points of view. Throughout, the balance between male and female perspectives, within both practitioners and scholars, is rigorously maintained.
The book closes with a chapter on narcissism today. And again, the positive and negative aspects of the “state” are elaborated, its positive and negative role in charisma, leaders, and leadership addressed, and Lasch’s pessimistic position reassessed. Lunbeck appropriately leaves up in the air the role of normal and pathological narcissism in parents and the culture in relation to childrearing and the current epidemic in emerging adults that is identified as “failure to launch.” While her arguments are not entirely new, the approach is unique, the assembled data convincing.
Lunbeck’s stimulating book comes a century after Freud’s comment about the theoretical and technical gulf between neurosis and character, and it elaborates the issues in detail. I would have appreciated some speculation about how the gap between the idealized/grandiose and the denigrated/devalued selves contributes to the old-fashioned diagnosis of anxiety and subsequent problems with adaptation, especially regarding interpersonal relationships and motivation. She might have included more about the role of mentalization-based therapy and research on the diminished capacity for reflective function in narcissistic disorders. In the sociocultural area there might have been more about the impact on personality of the growing economic disparities in the U.S. And finally, many sentences required rereading, as so much was contained in them. These are small and more personal matters that do not detract from the book’s extensive scope and exceptional quality. I recommend it to those who have not gone through the evolution of these issues, as well as to those who have.