In Ecce Homo, the man, who by reconquering his own health laid claim to an ascendant vitality and a counterbalance to the ill health that dogged him, grasped that the most silent and most secret words are often those which presage the storm and that the thoughts which arrive on ‘doves’ feet’ are often those that change the world and point to the future.

There are moments, like the present, when a recent event has not, in fact, come out of the blue, but few people were able to read the warning signs. In other words, what has now happened was detected, foreseen and announced before it happened. However, few people had noticed and those few were not those best able and duty bound to pay attention to what was much more important than their own particular sphere of interest.

This happened, because what we today call the present was already emerging under the waters of what we think of as the past. It was moving silently and secretly towards the future of that past, which is now our present.

This movement took the form of a wave, imperceptible as it took form, and then stealthily growing into something fast moving and vast. This tide was approaching, at increasing speed, bringing a threat that could not be held back, as there were no obstacles strong or large enough to check its progress, to break its impetus or to change its course.

The current political era in the United States, no longer a new phenomenon, reproduced, by mimetic desire (René Girard), in so many other places around the world, appears – in the disruption, perversity and hazards it brings – to serve the purpose of fulfilling the prophesy contained in a book, which became a classic of its genre: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, published for the first time in 1979 by the historian and sociologist Christopher Lasch.

Lasch was a student, at Columbia University, of Richard Hofstadter, author, in the 1960s, of Anti-intellectualism in American Life and The Paranoid Style in American Politics, the latter concerning conspiracy theories in the radical and populist right. Earlier, in 1944, he had published Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860−1915, and, in 1955, The Age of Reform, about the idea that rural America was superior to urban America and its influence on the country’s political life, in the form of a cult of the agrarian ethos as a homage paid by Americans to the imaginary purity and innocence of their national origins. Reading these books, we arrive at a better understanding of what has been happening in recent years and what has again happened in the US.

If we look carefully at the winning campaign in the American presidential elections, we can conclude that the campaign was constructed as an unceasing, tumultuous and Dionysian vortex, centred on an omnipresent and overblown Self, flaunted and lauded, hypertrophic and obsessively self-named and named by all. This Self was excitedly displayed, precisely like the statue of the god Priapus, son of Dionysius and Aphrodite.

In this new and violent American god, which seeks to dominate the world and usher in (or might it be refound?) a new political and cultural religion, its sex is its Self – and that Self attributes to itself the lascivious and fertilising functions that the other and more literal sex claims to possess.

In its tireless to-and-fro between the mythical past and the misleading prospect of restoring that invented and illusory past, that colossal Self exercises the aggressively macho and ultramasculine functions that seek to re-establish, urgently and resentfully, a crudely brutal patriarchal, money-based and agrarian-inspired civilisation, which they claim is being frighteningly undermined, or even endangered.

The dark, chthonic and subterranean cult of this masculine and muscled Self, that only acknowledges and permits those who are the same and never the others, subjects and never equal, treats the world as a vast mirror in which to look at itself, where it sees itself in order to exalt itself and where it exalts itself in order to threaten, conquer, possess and dominate.

Unlike the Greek Narcissus, this American Narcissus (and also those of the other continents and countries that mimic him) exchanges the pool of still waters, in which the ancient face contemplated itself tirelessly, for the frenetic and fulminating flows of screens. It is these which afford him the amnesia that wipes out the past, the fear that stalks the present and the lie that manipulates the future.

Master of all the technical prowess and all the technologies that render him omnipresent and ubiquitous, this Self constructs itself from its contempt for the other and presents itself as the ‘self-made me’ of a ‘self-made man’ who owes nothing to anyone and to whom others owe everything.

He adores himself, like someone adoring an idol, in his image which is advertised, propagated and propagandised on the screens of the whole world. Catapulted, popularised and celebrated by televisual entertainment devices as a buffoon and a ruffian, he is a reverse Midas. To match this lack of gifts rendered into a gift, he has created an anti-aesthetic aesthetic and a style-free stylistics. Contradiction is his kingdom. The light falling on him casts a shadow that spreads and covers the world.

In him, everything has meaning, but what makes no sense is the meaning that this all has. The lie is his most highly acclaimed truth, vulgarity his most visible distinction, discredit his most powerful credit. It is on all this – and on managing to convince and succeed, with this and despite all this – that his narcissism feeds and fattens itself, with this that his self-esteem is infatuated and inflamed, that his self-assuredness finds confirmation and reinforcement.

This narcissistic attitude, which is psychological, political and ethical, also helps to explain a spiteful cult and shameless actions, in choosing people for high public office, where the prime criterion for appointment is family ties, the bonds of friendship or personal loyalty.

It is said, perhaps apocryphally, that the absolutist King Louis XIV of France proclaimed: ‘The State is me’. Even without saying it, the American says: ‘I am the State’, adding, ‘And the State is mine’.

This begs a question. How then is it possible that a ‘free and open society’, or one deemed to be so, should choose this figure to represent and lead it, placing him at the pinnacle of power?

The Culture of Narcissism speaks of disenchantment, of pessimism and even of despair which, when it was written, was starting to replace, in American society, the cinematic mythology that started with D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. This mythicised the ‘glorious pioneers’ trail’ and considered as justified by the fulfilment of a perpetual divine commandment (God bless America) the supre- macies and arrogance which secured predominance (pre-dominance) for the USA and gave succour to its patriotic mysticism. As we know, the painful feeling of disappointment and negative presentiments of decline are the great drivers of resentment, irrationalism, depression and regression.

Setting out from the classic psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism, a subject to which Freud devoted special theoretical attention, Christopher Lasch attributes to the individual phenomenon the reach, and the ability to adapt, refract and project itself, which situate it in the collective domain. Using this instrumental concept, he analyses cultural, political, social and anthropological phenomena in a light which shows what was hidden and not usually seen.

In, among other things, the burocraticisation of life, in the tiring proliferation of images, in therapeutic ideologies, in the emptying out of the inner life, in the cult of consumerism, in the radical transformations of family and social life, this American intellectual identifies the engines that powered the rapid advance of narcissism, conferring on it a different nature and a scale previously unknown.

This narcissism is seen in the process of an aggressive and hazardous meta‑ morphosis – turning it into less of an immoderate love of self and more of a savage hatred of the other. This is why, more than self-admiration or self-esteem, this narcissism is a form of renewed and uncontained rage and, above all, a defence – but an aggressive defence, one that is all too familiar and knows that its best weapon is attack.

Refusing to be a moralistic handbook that extols virtues and condemns vices, this essay, which has gained a reputation as lucidly prophetic, is nonetheless unwilling to pathologise what it observes, and acknowledges that individualism and egoism are inclinations shared by human beings of all ages and that ethnocentrism is a temptation for all human groups. But it does not hold back from identifying extreme cases of social narcissism and their out-of-control political effects of mass infantilisation.

About what has just happened in the US, it is interesting to ask another question: how has someone regained the power he had lost after profaning the highest and most sacred symbol of that power, of the State that gives him legitimacy and of the Nation in whose name that power is exercised?

The answer is simple and troubling: the fact is that the symbolic power of the profaner has become more potent and more appealing, more effective and more brutal than the symbolic power of the greater symbol he has profaned...

Of narcissism, as Flaubert said of stupidity (the ‘Subject’ of Electra 2), it can also be said that it is found in all ages, but each age has its own narcissism. That of our time has shown itself to be a seed omnipresent in all aspects of individual and collective life, active in the various political, cultural, economic and social systems, giving rise, directly or indirectly, proximately or remotely, to the greatest perversions, excesses and arbitrariness, undermining the primordial ethical codes and founding norms of life in society.

One of the fields in which this tendency has become startlingly clear, is in the decline of the educational system, in which the declining authority of the school has combined with a mutual potentiation of narcissism between parents and children, based on what the French call the ideology of the ‘enfant-roi’, the ‘child-king’.

The author of The Culture of Narcissism also observed a rupture and a decline in the meaning of historical continuity, with a loss of awareness of the succession of generations and the handing down of memory, an inheritance and a responsibility. Empirically, this situation means that we often hear older people commenting about those younger than themselves: ‘They think the world revolves around them.’

Lasch’s essay also notes the constant rush to live the moment, making this a cult of the ephemeral and a passion driving the search for egotistic and superficial well-being, giving rise to a hedonism of the moment that is ignorant of tragedy and death, swapping them for relentless humour and unflagging laughter.

This impulse, which runs after everything that is new and presents itself in the guise of novelty (‘The New’ is the ‘Subject’ of Electra 26), also generates the desire and the illusion of wanting to endlessly conserve and prolong youth (‘Forever Young’ is the central theme of Electra 5). It is narcissism that lies at the root of this quest, making it an existential compulsion, physical and mental, without precedent.

Today’s narcissism also contains within itself an unbridled urge to compete and, at the same time, a nervous fear of competition. This contradiction presents itself as a movement that attempts an impossible conciliation, as the will to compete is the will to win and the fear of competing is the fear of losing. At the current stage of capitalism, there are those who have recognised this bipolar attraction between gambling and the associated risk, fostering what some have called ‘casino capitalism’.

Some have characterised today’s society as comprising the commodification of subjects and objects, of beings and things, based on a complex system of exchanges which are voluntary or imposed by cunning, delirium or force. Such a society is one nearing the utopia, at once carnal, relieved of flesh and disincarnate, of the Marquis de Sade. Lasch says:

Christopher Lasch’s book also found plenty to reflect on in the work of the situationist Guy Debord. Narcissism and the ‘society of spectacle’ are constantly given over to a futile and illusory euphoria of the quest for celebrity, Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame (‘Fame’ is the ‘Subject’ of Electra 11). The great allies of this narcissistic society are propaganda and advertising, festivals and celebration (events, happenings, openings, after-parties, commemorations), enabling a continuous commodification of everything and everyone, and the objectification that confiscates, dominates, cancels, commands or controls all subjectivities.

Lasch also attributes to this cult of narcissism the sway of cynicism, that renders everything insignificant, indifferent, equivalent and unfeeling. Unlike traditional cynicism, which was rational and cold, this new cynicism is emotional and torrid: it trades away free feelings, considered useless or inconvenient, for a compulsory and superficial sentimentalism, which is gratuitous and vain and forces people to conform, of glaringly and even obscenely kitsch vulgarity, exploiting the most primal emotions and the aggressiveness of human drives. Idleness (‘Leisure and Idleness’ is the subject of Electra 21), in its contemporary iteration, is the state that corresponds to this existential, political and moral cynicism.

Published in the early days of the triumphant affirmation of neoliberalism (it was in 1979 that Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of the United Kingdom, two years before Ronald Reagan became president of the United States), The Culture of Narcissism succeeded in looking beyond what was seen. And it was able to decipher a number of subterranean signals that later emerged into the light, growing in importance until they were centre stage in the theatre of our time.

Since Lasch’s book, many others have studied the phenomenon and its growing institutionalisation. Of narcissism: individualism and self-love in the post‑modern era, by Jean Cristophe Torres, was published in 2012. Setting out to study the phenomenon that has become one of the main faces of our times, the book points to a kind of inversion which has altered the moral value of narcissism – no longer a defect, it has become a positive quality and even a valued instrument of affirmation, of recognition and of success (personal, amorous, professional, social, cultural, in the media and in politics).

Narcissism as a leading personality trait is now identified with the charm that seduces and pleases others. But ‘this individual characteristic is much more than simple coquetry or a distinguishing sign: it is the fundamental trademark of a new culture and the dominant reality of contemporary societies. We are all narcissists to varying degrees. Or rather, we are all very strongly urged to be so, and woe betide anyone who excludes themselves out of excessive weakness or modesty’.

An economy largely based on desire has to produce subjectivations that turn desire for oneself into a desire to buy and sell. If we add to this the crisis in traditional values and the decline of the old authority, in its various forms, models and places of exercise, we conclude that the psychological and social environment is in place to stimulate ‘uninhibited and immoderate love of oneself’, releasing people from all constraints, reserves or shame. All this creates great individual and collective tensions, giving rise to unprecedented cultural and social shocks.

In our age, of which it is a sign and a symptom, this passionate love of oneself is seen as virtuous, supported and valued in its multiple manifestations: from the cult of the enfant-roi to the glorification of bodies, from emancipation from affective ties to the explosive and obsessive craze for leisure.

For all these reasons, this edition once more reasserts Electra’s purpose of depicting the face, made of many faces, of our time. This could not be achieved without a ‘Subject’ given over to ‘Narcissism’.

As shown by current American politics, where the ‘we’ (We the People) has been cancelled, banned and replaced by the Self, rendered absolute and all-powerful, it is not possible to understand what is happening without taking a look behind the new Narcissus to catch unawares his ecstatic, and no longer melancholy, image in the mirror where he incessantly and adoringly contemplates himself.

From politics to schooling, from the family to contemporary art (‘About Contemporary Art’ is the ‘Subject’ of Electra 14), from the mass media (television and social media, the ‘Subject’ of Electra 4, are a permanent orgy of narcissism) to the culinary arts with their star chefs (‘Food’ is the ‘Subject’ of Electra 13), from the society of spectacle to eroticism, from the economy to philanthropy, from religion to literature, narcissism is the key that opens the doors that let us in to observe and seek to understand our time and our world.

If you’ve read this editorial, you must have noticed that, when speaking of themes to which the theme of narcissism connects, we have recalled previous editions of Electra which have addressed them. Never, in an editorial, have we referred to ourselves so often as we have here.

We hope the reader will see in this repeated narcissistic impulse the most eloquent confirmation that not only is narcissism highly opportune in these troubled and mirror-like times, but that, as a ‘Subject’, it is indispensable, precautionary and even cathartic.