The Culture of Narcissism and Modern Self-Help

We hear a lot about “Narcissism” these days. Is it because there is more of it around?

In his 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch demonstrates how “Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone.”

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the book’s relevance today. And particularly, how narcissistic culture reflects the modern self-help industry.

It blows my mind that this was written almost half a century ago.

The Myth of Narcissus

“People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognises no boundaries between the public and the private realm.”

Lasch’s interpretation of the myth portrays Narcissus drowning in his own reflection, never realising that it is only a reflection. He suggests that the story’s point is not that Narcissus falls in love with himself. Rather, it is that “since he fails to recognise his own reflection, he lacks any real understanding of the difference between himself and his surroundings.” Narcissists are often depicted as carrying too much self-love. However, Lasch has a more subtle understanding of it, with the main characteristic being a lack of security in their self-concept.

So the question we face is whether the proliferation of visual and auditory images, first through mechanically produced media and more recently via the online world, causes us to lose the healthy sense of separation needed for a secure ego to develop.

In other words, does a growing culture of narcissism influence who we are and how we understand and feel about ourselves? And how does the self-help industry contribute to and benefit from this reality?

How Celebrity Fuels Narcissistic Ideals

A culture of narcissism is one preoccupied with celebrity. We find a sense of our own identity in the public figures that adorn our screens and fill our ears. They influence the content of our own fears, desires, and beliefs. Their success feels like our success. And attacks on them (or accountability), feels like an attack on us. Influencers know this, and as such, seek to nurture parasocial bonds with their followers.

From Healthy Ego to Narcissistic Performance

A culture of narcissism is built on a performance. It values confidence over competence, shifting the definition of success to one of individual visibility and attention. Success, for the narcissist, is about being admired, revered, and relevant in the eyes of others. Their sense of existence depends on this image (they are their reflection in the pool). Our online social tools ensure and deepen these mechanics.

Two Lineages of Self-Help in a Narcissistic Age

The term self-help seems to reflect diverging roots. One is inherently practical and social. It relates to customs where people share knowledge, exchange skills, and develop collective competence to make everyday life easier and more sustainable, without needing intervention from external bureaucratic institutions.

The other is shaped by the rise of post-industrial neo-liberal capitalism, which depicts the self as the centre of everything. It is seen as a project to be refined, marketed, and optimised for an external system that measures and rewards confidence, image, and success.

Lasch also emphasises how, despite attempts to compare themselves with earlier industrial leaders, twentieth-century prophets of positive thinking like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill pivot from dedication to industry and thrift to an unrelenting love of and pursuit of money.

Advertising and the Narcissistic Gap

Mass consumption might appear centred on self-indulgence. However, Lasch clarifies how modern advertising aims to generate self-doubt rather than self-satisfaction to motivate it. It creates needs instead of fulfilling them and produces new anxieties rather than alleviating existing ones.

This also supports modern self-help. It must constantly generate new insecurities, doubts, and feelings of inadequacy in the people it “serves”. All of this takes place against a backdrop of aspirational images, telling us consumers that we deserve more. Influencers spread commodity propaganda, making people highly dissatisfied with what they have. They do this by displaying attractive images and connecting with their audience through the message that “if I can do it, so can you”.

The Antidote of Ordinary Unhappiness

The Culture of Narcissism echoes a hope that society can still be reorganised in ways that would provide “creative, meaningful work”. Not where “meaningful work” must reflect a divine purpose and be endlessly fulfilling.

Instead, aligning with Freud’s concept of ‘ordinary unhappiness,’ it is through accepting the contradictions rather than trying to fill them with self-help’s promise of wholeness, optimisation, and even overcoming death. These aspirations are rooted in a narcissistic culture that fails to recognise the elements of life that give human existence its mundane sense of meaning.

Politics in a Narcissistic Landscape

Lasch observed how this culture of narcissism erodes historical continuity. In politics, charisma outweighs competence. Leaders become symbols of personal fantasy rather than guardians of collective well-being, both now and in the future. This emptiness is quickly filled by the promises of self-help, which offer individual solutions instead of shared direction.

Lasch quotes an unnamed management book, which described success as, “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” This leaves us spinning our wheels, seeking shortcuts, and managing perceptions. Rather than getting anywhere with a long-view perspective.

Self-help often reinforces the pattern of “constant and never-ending improvement.” It depicts the self as permanently incomplete, always seeking the next insight, tool, or mentor. In other words, it keeps the focus on the individual as both the cause and the remedy for the instability caused by external forces.

Preoccupied with Youthfulness

Lasch asserts that “The real value of the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime is that it can be handed on to future generations.”

Knowledge is regarded as instrumental, a view reinforced by the internet. It is something to utilise rather than pass on through personal relationships. With rapid technological change, we are led to believe that the older generation has little to teach the younger.

This leads us to become obsessed with youthfulness as a matter of survival.

This fear of old age and death is closely connected to the rise of the narcissistic personality as the dominant personality type in modern society. Because narcissists have so few inner resources, they seek validation from others. They crave admiration for their beauty, charm, celebrity, or power, which diminish with time. Consequently, the narcissistic culture becomes obsessed with curing degradation and death. It does this rather than embracing it gracefully and enjoying its fruits.

Always Being Watched

Lasch wrote that “Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors.”

Nothing happens in private. But can we let life unfold quietly, slowly, and separately from the reflection in the pool?