Narcissism-epidemic discourse ignores the economic causes of self-engrossment

Evidence

When cultural commentators and medical experts refer in the present to a narcissism epidemic, they are labeling the phenomenon of self-engrossment and other-flattening that evinces the immediacy style of psychic life. Notably, however, such vocabulary neglects the explanatory purchase of economic context. You’re so vain—but it’s not about you. Psychoanalysis enjoins us to theorize with a lens other than moral panic—one that elucidates the historical and cultural conditions for the overvaluation of the imaginary. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 91

Categorization

• XREF: Plausibly connects to borrowed recent work on ‘moral panic’ framing around digital culture, which the reader has used elsewhere.