Spiritual Partnership and the Affirmation of the Value of Being

Ralph D. Ellis, Clark Atlanta University

Christopher Lasch, Heinz Kohut, Alice Miller, and many other authors have recently criticized contemporary culture for a ubiquitous narcissistic disturbance. What they mean is that our obsession with projecting attractive, invulnerable, and "superior" images or masks increasingly forces us into what Lasch characterizes as a Hobbesian "war of all against all" (Culture of Narcissism, 21). While narcissism is not the same as egocentricity, it does tend to exacerbate many of the egocentric dysfunctions of what Lasch has dubbed the "narcissistic culture," including the breakdown of the family and personal relationships that may result from a narcissistic preoccupation with proving one’s own superiority (or non-inferiority). Individuals thus suffer social isolation, economic insecurity, exaggerated competitiveness, and an inability to cooperate in addressing collective problems such as environmental destruction and the abandonment of the "underclass." The mere recognition that egocentricity exacerbates these social problems does not resolve them but only traps us into a prisoner’s dilemma wherein we feel powerless to unilaterally abandon egocentricity for fear of losing our competitive position.