quotes from "The Family's Relation to Other Agencies of Social
Control"
Christopher Lasch
- Page 180 "Society reinforces these patterns not only through
'indulgent education' and general permissiveness but through
advertising, demand creation, and the mass culture of hedonism. At
first glance, a society based on mass consumption appears to
encourage self-indulgence in its most blatant forms. Strictly
considered, however, modern advertising seeks to promote not so
much self-indulgence as self-doubt. It seeks to create needs, not
to fulfill them; to generate new anxieties instead of allaying old
ones. By surrounding the consumer with images of the good life, and
by associating them with glamour of celebrity and success, mass
culture encourages the ordinary man to cultivate extraordinary
tastes, to identify himself with the privileged minority against
the rest, and to join them, in his fantasies, in a life of
exquisite comfort and sensual refinement. Yet the propaganda of
commodities simultaneously makes him acutely unhappy with his lot.
By fostering grandiose aspirations, it also fosters
self-denigration and self-contempt. The culture of consumption in
its central tendency thus recapitulates the socialization earlier
provided by the family."
- Page 181 "In the school, the business corporation, and the
courts of law, authorities conceal their power behind a facade of
benevolence. Posing as friendly helpers, they discipline their
subordinaes as seldom as possible, seeking instead to create a
friendly atmosphere in which everyone freely speaks his mind."
- Page 182 "The appearance of permissiveness conceals a stringent
system of controls, all the more effective because it avoids direct
confrontatons between authorities and the people on whom they seek
to impose their will."
- Page 182 "...parents rely on doctors, psychiatrists, and the
child's own peers to impose rules on the child and to see that he
conforms to them."
- Page 183 "The ideology of modern management draws on the same
body of therapeutic theory and practice that informs progressive
education and progressive childrearing."
- Page 185 "The growing acceptance of that view make it possible
to preserve hierarchical forms of organization in the guise of
'participation'. It provides a society dominated by corporate
elites with an antielitist ideology. The popularization of
therapeutic modes of thought discredits authority, especially in
the home and the classroom, while leaving domination uncriticized.
Therapeutic forms of social control, by softening or eliminating
the adversary relation between subordinates and superiors, make it
more and more difficult for citizens to defend themselves against
the state or for workers to resist the demands of the corporation.
As the ideas of guilt and innocence lose their moral and even legal
meaning, those in power no longer enforce their rules by means of
the authoritative edicts of judges, magistrates, teachers, or
preachers. Society no longer expects authorities to articulate a
clearly reasoned, elaborately justified code of law and morality;
nor does it expect the young to internalize the moral standards of
the community. It demands only conformity to the conventions of
everyday intercourse, sanctioned by psychiatric definitions of
normal behavior." "In the hierarchies of work and power, as in the
family, the decline of authority does not lead to the collapse of
social constraints. It merely deprives those constraints of a
rational basis. Just as the parent's failure to administer just
punishment to the child undermines the child's self-esteem rather
than strengthening it, so the corruptibility of public authorities
-- their acquiescence in minor forms of wrongdoing -- reminds the
subordinate of his subordination by making him dependent on the
indulgence of those above him. The new-style bureaucrat, whose
'ideology and character support hierarchy even though he is neither
paternalistic nor authoritarian,' as Michael Maccoby puts it in his
study of the corporate 'gamesman', no longer orders his inferiors
around; but he has discovered subtler means of keeping them in
their place. Even though his underlings often realize that they
have been 'conned, pushed around, and manipulated,' they find it
hard to resist such easygoing oppression. The diffusion of
responsibility in large organizations, moreover, enables the modern
manager to delegate discipline to others, to blame unpopular
decisions on the company in general, and thus to preserve his
standing as a friendly adviser to those beneath him. Yet his entire
demeanor conveys to them that he remains a winner in a game most of
them are destined to lose." "Since everyone allegedly plays this
game by the same rules, no one can begrudge him his success; but
neither can the losers escape the heavy sense of their own failure.
In a society without authority, the lower orders no longer
experience oppression as guilt. Instead, they internalize a
grandiose idea of the opportunities open to all, together with an
inflated opinion of their own capacities. If the lowly man resents
those more highly placed, it is only because he suspects them of
grandly violating the regulations of the game, as he would like to
do himself if he dared. IT NEVER OCCURS TO HIM TO INSIST ON A NEW
SET OF RULES."
Afterword: The Culture of Narcissism Revisited
- Page 239 "I was struck by evidence, presented in several
studies of business corporations, to the effect that professional
advancement had come to depend less on craftsmanship or loyalty to
the firm than on 'visibility', 'momentum', personal charm, and
impression management. The dense interpersonal environment of
modern bureaucracy appeared to elicit and reward a narcissistic
response -- an anxious concern with the impression one made on
others, a tendency to treat others as a mirror of the self." "The
proliferation of visual and auditory images in a 'society of the
spectacle', as it has been described, encouraged a similar kind of
preoccupation with the self. People responded to others as if their
actions were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an
unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time.
The prevailing social conditions thus brought out narcissistic
personality traits that were present, in varying degrees, in
everyone -- a certain protective shallowness, a fear of binding
committments, a willingness to pull up roots whenever the need
arose, a desire to keep one's options open, a dislike of depending
on anyone, an incapacity for loyalty or gratitude." [Tae ji hul
poem zeyr sha: juxtapose the practical causes of these traits and
the personality traits themselves, e.g. by showing a person trying
to break free of the traits only to be forced back in line.]
"Narcissists may have paid more attention to their own needs than
to those of others, but self-love and self-aggrandizement did not
impress me as their most important characteristics. These qualities
implied a strong, stable sense of selfhood, whereas narcissists
suffered from a feeling of inauthenticity and inner emptiness. They
found it difficult to make connection with the world. At its most
extreme, their condition approximated that of Kaspar Hauser, the
nineteenth-centry German foundling raised in solitary confinement,
whose 'impoverished relations with his cultural environment',
according to the psychoanalyst Alexander Mitscherlich, left him
with a feeling of being utterly at life's mercy."