Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Program in Science, Technology, & Society

presents

SPECIAL SEMINAR



ELIZABETH LUNBECK
Vanderbilt University

"Transformations of Narcissism, from Vienna to Chicago"

Freud published his landmark essay, “On Narcissism,” in 1914, but was not until 
the Me-Decade 1970s that narcissism became the focus of heated psychoanalytic 
and cultural debate.  The Chicago-based émigré analyst Heinz Kohut effected a 
psychoanalytic revolution around it, outlining a healthy, life-sustaining, and 
non-pathological narcissism expressive of an American optimism.  At the same 
time, Christopher Lasch, in his 1978 book, The Culture of Narcissism, marshaled 
analysts’ narcissism to indict his fellow citizens for their greed and 
self-indulgence, weaving it into well-established narratives of social decline. 
 Charting narcissism’s clinical and cultural fortunes, the talk also explores 
some of methodological issues raised in charting the historical fortunes of 
this protean and now-indispensable concept.


Friday
15 February 2013
4 PM
E51-095

[cid:8BAB1F6E-70F2-41A1-8B51-CE7B6117D0A8]Reception at 3:30

<<inline: 8BAB1F6E-70F2-41A1-8B51-CE7B6117D0A8.png>>

_______________________________________________
Sci-tech-public mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sci-tech-public

Reply via email to