The Culture of narcissism : American life in an age of diminishing expectations / Christopher Lasch

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The awareness movement and the social invasion of the self -- The narcissistic personality of our time -- Changing modes of making it : from Horatio Alger to the happy hooker -- The banality of Pseudo-Self-Awareness : theatrics of politics and everyday existence -- The degradation of sport -- Schooling and the new illiteracy -- The socialization of reproduction and the collapse of authority -- The flight from feeling: sociopsychology of the sex war -- The shattered faith in the regeneration of life -- Paternalism without father.

Argues that American society has become increasingly self-absorbed, focused on self-gratification to the exclusion of higher values, and that the mass narcissism of the culture is based on fear.