From the Book - Norton paperback 1991 ed.
The awareness movement and the social invasion of the self. The waning of the sense of historical time
The therapeutic sensibility
From politics to self-examination
Confession and anticonfession
The progressive critique of privatism
The critique of privatism: Richard Sennett on the fall of public man
The narcissistic personality of our time. Narcissism as a metaphor of the human condition
Narcissism in recent clinical literature
Social influences on narcissism
The world view of the resigned
Changing modes of making it: from Horatio Alger to the Happy Hooker. The original meaning of the work ethic
From "self-culture" to self-promotion through "winning images"
The eclipse of achievement
The art of social survival
The apotheosis of individualism
The banality of pseudo-self-awareness: theatrics of politics and everyday existence. The propaganda of commodities
Advertising and propaganda
Radicalism as street theater
Hero worship and narcissistic idealization
Narcissism and the theater of the absurd
The theater of everyday life
Ironic detachment as an escape from routine
The degradation of sport. The spirit of play versus the rage for national uplift
The trivialization of athletics
Imperialism and the cult of the strenuous life
Corporate loyalty and competition
Bureaucracy and "teamwork"
Sports and the entertainment industry
Schooling and the new illiteracy. The spread of stupefaction
The atrophy of competence
Historical origins of the modern school system
From industrial discipline to manpower selection
From Americanization to "life adjustment"
Basic education versus national defense education
The civil rights movement and the schools
Cultural pluralism and the new paternalism
The rise of the multiversity
Cultural "elitism" and its critics
The socialization of reproduction and the collapse of authority. The "socialization of workingmen"
Permissiveness reconsidered
Psychological repercussions of the "transfer of functions"
Narcissism, schizophrenia, and the family
Narcissism and the "absent father"
The abdication of authority and the transformation of the superego
The family's relation to other agencies of social control
Human relations on the job: the factory as a family
The flight from feelings: sociopsychology of the sex war. The trivialization of personal relations
The battle of the sexes: its social history
Feminism and the intensification of sexual warfare
Strategies of accommodation
The castrating woman of male fantasy
The soul of man and woman under socialism
The shattered faith in the regeneration of life. The dread of old age
The social theory of aging: "growth" as planned obsolescence
Prolongevity: the biological theory of aging
Paternalism without father. The new rich and the old
The managerial and professional elite as a ruling class
Progressivism and the rise of new paternalism
Liberal criticism of the welfare state
Bureaucratic dependence and narcissism
The conservative critique of bureaucracy
Afterord: The culture of narcissism revisited.