The Americanization of Narcissism. By Elizabeth Lunbeck. Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 2014,  271 pp.

Recently at a party a friend asked, “Is a narcissist someone who always has to have everything she wants when she wants it, like a baby or a celebrity?” Another friend chimed in, “What about someone who always takes credit for everything even when he doesn't deserve it?” Still a third added, “I thought it was those people who always have to be the center of attention?” All sounded true; narcissism is an unwieldy, confusing, and elastic concept. In unpacking it one finds various clinical and historical narratives with which to contend. Untangling and organizing the narratives of narcissism is the project of Elizabeth Lunbeck, a professor of history at Vanderbilt University, in her new book The Americanization of Narcissism. A rigorous, fascinating, and exhaustive study of narcissism in the United States as a symptom, societal problem, and developmental achievement, Lunbeck's story centers around the tension between two figures of the 1970s, one for and the other against the book's subject. The psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut and his “self psychology” distinguished “healthy narcissism” from “pathological narcissism,” recommending empathy as a technique for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists working with patients suffering from symptoms of narcissism, itself a relatively new diagnosis at the time. On the other side of Kohut's view and of psychoanalysis was the cultural critic Christopher Lasch, accusing the 1960s hippie generation of materialism, self-indulgence, and