Social conditions that foster narcissistic adaptational patterns

The purpose of this paper is to examine the parameters of our current social structure that encourage the narcissistic solution as an adaptive pattern of our times. One parameter is the decline of personal authority, resulting not in an absence of superego processes, but in ones based on early reaction formations which are archaic and punitive. A second parameter is the disruption in the national idealized self. As our identity as Americans has become tarnished, the formation of the ego ideal is disrupted. A third parameter is the modern urban life style, whose characteristics of mobility and interchangeability, advertising of a materialistic life style, credit cards, and modern appliances all encourage immediate gratification and do not encourage hard work and delay of gratification. The paper concludes with a prediction of a self-correcting mechanism in society that will soon make the old verities adaptive again.