/Lasch/

[Anonymous No.12086872]

Read this recently

>what did I think of it
>what should I read next from mr lasch
>what books should I read like this that aren't by Lasch

Also, /Lasch/ general I suppose. Do you think his pessimism is unwarranted? Is he a leftist or a conservative? Or something else? I kept getting communitarian vibes a la Alaisdair MacIntyre but then I read online that Lasch disavowed localism and communitarianism, so it's hard to get exactly where he's coming from politically.

[Anonymous No.12086889]

Try Gasset, Revolt of the Masses, and Zolla, The Eclipse of the Intellectual

[Anonymous No.12086916]

Society of the Spectacle
>Is he a leftist or a conservative?
Marxist Conservative

[Anonymous No.12086933]

>>12086872

this and then The Shallows.

[Anonymous No.12086945]

>>12086872
Lasch is difficult to pin down politically, largely because his views shifted as he aged. He was impressed by the Frankfurt School, but was also influenced by conservatives, especially Burke. You can't call him is a Republican. He was far too critical of their capitalist orthodoxy. Though he certainly wasn't a progressive. This freedom from any explicit political alliance is, I think, what enabled him to be such an incisive, clear-headed critic.

[Anonymous No.12086970]

>>12086945
Oh, and I forgot to add: you should read The True and Only Heaven next.

[Anonymous No.12087141]

>>12086889
Both sound interesting but pretty elitist. I think Lasch (at least in Culture of Naricissism) is pretty fundamentally a populist (despite some of his comments on education)

Can you say a bit more about these?

>>12086916
Can I just jump into Debord if I don't know a lot about Marxist theory? How accessible is he?

He gets a few citations in CoN if I remember correctly and I did have an instinct to check out his work from what was quoted of him by Lasch

>Marxist Conservative
Extremely underrated position.

>>12086933
Idk man, that doesn't sound a whole lot like Laschian narcissism. That quote on the front talking about entitlement and market competition make this book sound pretty cringe and bluepilled imo

>>12086945
>>12086970
Yeah I think I'll go with true and only heaven as my next Lasch. Thanks man

You're right about the clarity that comes from disabusing yourself of particular political alliances. The last book I read was After Virtue by Alaisdair MacIntyre which threads a similarly nonpartisan line through modern political ideologies, though his positions are substantially different from Lasch, given their completely different backgrounds. I think acknowledging the poverty of modern political choices is absolutely necessary in terms of achieving that kind of incisive pointed critical viewpoint that you mention in your post.

It's definitely good to hear a critique of progressivism from the perspective of someone who isn't either a capitalist or a starryeyed traditionalist. I think it's the robustness of his conservatism, which I think is moreso mourning the loss of a set of future hopes than any lost ideal past, which makes him more attractive than most critics of progressive ideology.

Not sure if all this makes sense, I'm very tired

[Anonymous No.12087144]

>>12086933
For some reason I simply refuse to read books written by people who include "P.h.D." as their title on the cover.

[Anonymous No.12087168]

>>12087141
>That quote on the front talking about entitlement and market competition make this book sound pretty cringe and bluepilled imo
cringe

[Anonymous No.12087233]

>>12087168
Boomer tier opiniom

[Anonymous No.12087270]

>>12086872

Lasch: The True and Only Heaven is his masterwork and the best sourced work he writes.

Ignore The Minimal Self, it's less focused than the rest of his work and IIRC focuses heavily on millenarianism and survival which isn't really that astute a choice of central theme.
RE other works:

Read Heinz Kohut, "The Analysis of the Self" next, he's very good on narcissism.

George Scialabba is also very good on Lasch in his reviews, so check out this:

http://georgescialabba.net/mtgs/archive-by-title.html

Also the blog "The Last Psychiatrist" is surprisingly good (but defunct) on narcissism and cultural criticism. There are god knows how many articles on there, it'll keep you busy for weeks. In particular "Wrong About Obama" has aged magnificently and been proven basically right by history:

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/01/wrong_about_obama.html

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/03/wrong_about_obama_ii.html
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/

>>12086933

Ignore this, Twenge has no idea what narcissism is. TLP did a good piece on this:

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/08/narcissism_run_rampant.html

[Anonymous No.12087299]

>>12087233
>Boomer tier opiniom
I weep for you and your kin. I cannot imagine how thoroughly anaestheticized you must be to your own suffering. Or maybe it's like cutting away at the brain: the suffering is simply gone, and your humanity with it.

I'll pray for you.

[Anonymous No.12087314]

>>12086889
>The Eclipse of the Intellectual
What is it about? Can't find a summary anywhere.

[Anonymous No.12087329]

Try pic related

[Anonymous No.12087352]

>>12087299

I doubt >>12087168 meant it this way but that quote alone strongly suggests the authors think all narcissism is grandiose. Which justifiably means it's halfway into the trash even before you open the cover.

[Anonymous No.12087367]

>>12087329
Is this one about globalization?

[Anonymous No.12087368]

He is a faggot that was too spooked to actually write something transcendental.

[Anonymous No.12087370]

>>12087299
I mean yeah, most people my age are anaesthetised to their suffering by mass media, I'm not sure how you can square that up with young people entitled when the very reason that this anaesthetisation is necessary is how divested of meaning modern life has become and how hopeless the future is. It's the same people who destroyed the moral and social foundation of society who now call the youth entitled and infantalized (the latter of which is true, the former not so much), and honestly we need internment camps for boomers.

Give me one reason I should care about being at "a terrible disadvantage in a global marketplace", why I shouldn't wash my hands of the war of all against all and instead wait for another, doubtless very different, saint benedict

[Anonymous No.12087384]

>>12087270
Do I need to read Freud before Heinz Kohut? Says he rejects Freudian orthodoxy.

[Anonymous No.12087396]

>>12087352
I'm the original poster and I meant exactly that, as well as the fact the quote on the front suggests that the main reason we should solve "the narcissism epidemic" is because it damages people's value as productive units in an increasingly """"""competitive"""""" society

I'm sorry, but that's not woke. It's cringe, and bluepilled

[Anonymous No.12087409]

>>12087270
The Last Psychiatrist takes The Culture of Narcissism into the 21st century, he's brilliant

[Anonymous No.12087434]

>>12086872
Another great work by Lasch is The Agony of the American Left, a history of both Leftism and populism from the late 1800s to the 1960s. On top of the groundbreaking historical research, it also has his outstanding analysis and prescription for a path forward.

Lasch has been a huge influence on my political thinking, right along with Jacques Ellul. The Technological Society is a fundamental text, but I also recommend the much neglected Betrayal of the West.

[Anonymous No.12087439]

>tfw almost all of society's ills can be explained by cultural narcissism but when explaining this to anyone you can't use the word 'narcissism' everyone's minds go straight to selfishness/grandiosity when those things are actually an incidental symptom of the condition

[Anonymous No.12087449]

>>12087434
>Betrayal of the West.

Can you give a brief description of this? This sounds like Yuri Bezmenov, cultural marxism crap.

[Anonymous No.12087478]

>>12087270
Thanks a lot man, this is a very thoughtful post. In particular thanks for recommending the George Scialabba articles. Never heard of him before but I googled around and he seems like a very interesting character

[Anonymous No.12087491]

>>12087384

No, but then again Beyond the Pleasure Principle is sufficiently short it's not going to inconvenience you to read it.

The field has moved past Freud, it's relatively safe to read that as a primer and move on even though Freud's own beliefs change over time and he has a lot written on the subject.

You could also look into Deleuze's conception of desire as a basic principle which is not goal oriented and compare that with both Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Sartre's concept of bad faith, but both Deleuze and Sartre write abominably and the signal to noise ratio on secondary literature on them is abysmal. For that reason stick to Kohut.

Still, keep that line of enquiry in mind if you really want to pursue it far.
It would make a nice undergrad thesis but you'd need a lot of time and someone qualified to keep you on track to guide you. I'm not kidding about the secondary literature, especially with Deleuze. It would be very easy to get caught up in pseud nonsense even though Deleuze himself had a lot to say that's worthy.

New thought for OP:

The Adam Curtis docs on freedom and individuality might be interesting to you:

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-trap/#top

[Anonymous No.12087500]

>>12087396

Agreed, it's dangerous nonsense.

[Anonymous No.12087518]

>>12087491
I think Adam Curtis' 'The Century of the Self' is more relevant to Lasch than The Trap, especially the bit in part 3 where he talks about the self-awareness movement of the 70s and how it degenerated into consumerism and produced the Reagan voters of the 80s

Watch both if you have the time though, and HyperNormalization too

[Anonymous No.12087532]

>>12087449
Ellul isn't a Marxist at all, I'm not sure why he's labeled as such. He's much more like a modern day Joseph de Maistre.

In Betrayal of the West, he defends the greatness (even superiority) of Western Civilization while offering an honest critique of its failures and excesses from a somewhat Catholic perspective.

As a National Socialist, I disagree with his moralizing, but the analysis is outstanding.

[Anonymous No.12087544]

>>12087532
Well fuck me. I misread what you said and ended up getting some American womans book about covert Soviet influence in America, sorry lad.

Thanks for the description though, think i'll check it out.

[Anonymous No.12087660]

>>12087270
Pleb blog he could do better if he exercised some brevity. Also Kohut is a hard read even for psychology grads (so not a good rec)

[Anonymous No.12087762]

>>12087660

He's partially ranting and playing a lot to his own sense of humor, but the analysis is great.

Kohut is definitely challenging but what's the alternative? I can't think of any longform, approachable books that aren't also basically nonsense that conflate narcissism and grandiosity. Please suggest something more approachable.

[Anonymous No.12087798]

Try James Burnham and Paul Piccone

[Anonymous No.12087807]

>>12087660
Brevity doesn't mix well with rum, matey

[Anonymous No.12088651]

>>12087270
>Ignore this, Twenge has no idea what narcissism is. TLP did a good piece on thi

Why are you trying to discredit a whole book full of pscological studies with one blog post, you brainlet?

[Anonymous No.12088783]

>>12086872
Lasch is speaking directly to everything that is happening right now. Check out Hostile Elites.

[Anonymous No.12089020]

>Putting money in an individuals pocket to encourage them to keep on publishing their own masturbatory ramblings about narcissism

A bit counter-productive /lit/, don’t you think?

[Anonymous No.12089246]

>>12088651

Appealing to the volume of studies cited by a book means nothing. If I believed "quantum theory means consciousness makes reality and if you believe hard enough things will happen", and cited a ton of arcane papers on quantum theory, does it make me right that I can wish my way to getting a car?


Secondly, discrediting a position because someone linked to a blog rather than pulled a similar statement out of their ass is a bad look. I guarantee you if the OP of that comment wrote "not all narcissism is grandiose so this quote means it's shit" you wouldn't reply the same way.

Why don't you find a more appropriate board for you?

>>12089020

Dude's dead. He's not earning anything.

[Anonymous No.12089257]

>>12089020
That's dumb, man. You don't know anything about the book. Are you just trying to be clever or something?

[Anonymous No.12090754]

bump

[Anonymous No.12091636]

This guy is pretty fascinating.

[Anonymous No.12092078]

>>12086872
His best booqs

[Anonymous No.12093590]

Flowcharts and guide for him when? Reading group maybe sometime guys?

[Anonymous No.12093681]

>>12086872
>>12086889
>>12087270
Good shit but I need more left-conservative recs.