The Narcissism Epidemic
Living in the Age of Entitlement
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- USD 13.99
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- USD 13.99
Descripción editorial
The author of Generation Me explores the spread of narcissism in today’s culture and its catastrophic effects at every level of society.
Narcissism—an inflated view of the self—is everywhere.
Public figures say it’s what makes them stray from their wives. Teenagers and young adults hone it on social media, and celebrity newsmakers have elevated it to an art form. And it’s what’s making people depressed, lonely, and buried under piles of debt.
Dr. Jean Twenge joins forces with W. Keith Campbell, PhD, a nationally recognized expert on narcissism, to explore this new plague in The Narcissism Epidemic. Even the world economy has been damaged by risky, unrealistic overconfidence. Drawing on their own extensive research as well as decades of other experts’ studies, Twenge and Campbell show us how to identify narcissism, minimize the forces that sustain and transmit it, and treat it or manage it where we find it.
Filled with arresting, alarming, and even amusing stories of vanity gone off the tracks, The Narcissism Epidemic is at once a riveting window into the consequences of narcissism, a prescription to combat the widespread problems it causes, and a probing analysis of the culture at large.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twenge (Generation Me) and Campbell (When You Love a Man Who Loves Himself) argue that the U.S. is suffering from an epidemic of narcissism, as real and as dangerous as the more widely reported obesity epidemic. Although Christopher Lasch's 1979 bestseller The Culture of Narcissism identified the phenomenon, this book draws on far more extensive research findings to claim that one in 10 Americans in their 20s suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, a psychocultural affliction and unanticipated consequence of the emphasis placed on self-esteem and self-promotion in modern parenting and the media and fed by Internet social networking sites that reinforce an obsessive need for admiration and ego-enhancement. At times, the authors sound like old scolds, but they themselves are members of the "Me Generation" and support their generalizations with persuasive evidence, particularly data derived from surveying 37,000 college students. Suggesting that the current financial crisis is, in part, a consequence of the narcissism epidemic affords the book an unexpected up-to-the-minute dimension, and the authors conclude with a dash of optimism, positing that straitened circumstances might cure Americans of all ages of narcissism.
