0834776/Ps1205/SB/2009
WHICH TERM DESCRIBES CONTEMPORARY CULTURE MORE ACCURATELY: 'NARCISSISTIC CULTURE' OR RISK CULTURE'?
In this essay I shall firstly describe contemporary culture, I will also include Stevens (1997) work on the lack of community and service which creates a new quasi-community of 'me, and what is important for me only', and by examining Christopher Lasch (1920) and his work on narcissism in culture, which is often pretentious. Sociologists have observed that in our contemporary culture which is increasingly individualistic and consumer orientated that we are becoming more and more self interested and self promoting. One cause of this has been located in modern western society's move to post-modernity. Religion is no longer the unifying force that binds society into a central belief system and the age of reason the faith in our capacity to be rational beings has waned. Science no longer promises all the answers. There are no core meaning values and individualistic aims have taken over changes like industrialisation, consumerism and the mass media has dominate inundated with images that life is all about self improvement, success and that how we look is integral to our identity.
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking ...
Statue of Sigmund Freud in London, with the Tavist...
English: Entrance to Freuds consulting roomWe need a deeper level of analysis to understand what Narcissism exactly is and we need to account for why some people are more Narcissistic than others.
Referring to the easy question, I am firstly going to elaborate on narcissistic culture by using Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who first described narcissism as self-love, or sexual gratification obtained by contemplating oneself in one of his book Three Essays on the Theory of sexuality .Freud later formed the view that it is a normal psychosexual stage of development, between stages of auto-eroticism. Freud was the psychoanalyst who referred to narcissism as the human personality.
In psychoanalysis one can refer to a healthy narcissism...