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Haven In Heartless Christopher Haven In Heartless Basic FIRST First Edition Thus, Sixth Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Basic Books, 1979. Octavo. Paperback. Book is very good. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 320845 Philosophy & Psychology We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
About the author
Christopher Lasch
31 books357 followersChristopher "Kit" Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist, and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester.
Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.'
His books, including The New Radicalism in America (1965), Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy published posthumously in 1996 were widely discussed and reviewed. The Culture of Narcissism became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).
Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period are considered contradictory. They are sometimes denounced by feminists and hailed by conservatives for his apparent defense of the traditional family. But as he explained in one of his books The Minimal Self, "it goes without saying that sexual equality in itself remains an eminently desirable objective...". Moreover, in Women and the Common Life, Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.
He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.'
His books, including The New Radicalism in America (1965), Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy published posthumously in 1996 were widely discussed and reviewed. The Culture of Narcissism became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).
Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period are considered contradictory. They are sometimes denounced by feminists and hailed by conservatives for his apparent defense of the traditional family. But as he explained in one of his books The Minimal Self, "it goes without saying that sexual equality in itself remains an eminently desirable objective...". Moreover, in Women and the Common Life, Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.
He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 31, 2026
Christopher Lasch was my first thesis professor at the University of Iowa in 1966, and I remember him as both a mesmerizing lecturer -- in the course he taught to both undergraduate and graduate students on modern US history (i.e., from 1865 on) -- as well as a stimulating and thoughtful leader in the seminar I attended for a much smaller group of graduate students. He was a young professor then; born in 1932 he was only 11 years older than I was!
It was only later -- after I had received my MA in US history and he had left the U. of Iowa for the U. of Rochester -- that I began to read his many books.
This one is one of his earlier ones and, frankly, one that I found both dense and, at times, a bit of a slog to read.
The reason? As one reviewer put it: he writes "densely." A bit of an understatement at times, honestly!
The man was brilliant and a voracious reader, something that becomes immediately apparent in the opening pages as he begins to discuss the impact that both the fields of psychology and sociology have had upon "the family" and its various members in the 20th century.
I remember how psychology continued to enjoy something of a popular reputation into the early '70s; if you're old enough, for example, you might remember the glossy magazine "Psychology Today" which enjoyed substantial readership for a time.
But today it has outlived both its quaintness and its early adherents' claims of breakthroughs in understanding. (I remember encountering a Freudian psychologist in the '60s when I was struggling with a sudden onset of agoraphobia, and I found his questions about my "interest" in my mother to be absurd!)
In this book, Lasch explores how the developing use of psychology in the first part of the 20th century sought to "explain" the modern family and some of its many alleged difficulties, including absent fathers, juvenile delinquency, and rising divorce rates. As such, the bulk of the book is more about psychology -- and its often less than helpful "observations" about and "suggestions" for resolving contemporary family issues -- than what was really going on with families at the time.
Frankly, I found the many generalities offered by successive psychological schools rather lame.
Lasch's central point, I think (after all, it IS a dense book), is that most of this stuff really didn't help families much at all, in large part because real families are, after all, made up of unique individuals who encounter many different challenges -- some of which are shared by others -- and the responses of those individuals depends upon many factors which just cannot be compartmentalized simply as "this kind of psychosis."
In closing, I wish to share this paragraph from his book which will give you a flavor of his argument which, at its center, was really a biting critique of our blindness to how our economic system of hands-off capitalism was steadily increasing pressures on families and individuals alike while at the same time eroding many forms of social community life so necessary for the flourishing of all.
"In their campaign to establish the family as the seat of civic virtue, the guardians of morality dwelled on the dangers lurking gin the streets, the demoralizing effects of 'civilization,' the growth of crime and violence, and the cutthroat competition that prevailed in the marketplace. They urged right-thinking men and women to seek shelter in the sanctuary of the family. From the beginning, the glorification of domestic life simultaneously condemned the social order of which the family alleged served the foundation. In urging a retreat to private satisfactions, the custodians of domestic virtue implicitly acknowledged capitalism's devastation of all forms of collective life, while at the same time they discouraged attempts to repair the damage by depicting it as the price that had to be paid for material and moral improvement."
It was only later -- after I had received my MA in US history and he had left the U. of Iowa for the U. of Rochester -- that I began to read his many books.
This one is one of his earlier ones and, frankly, one that I found both dense and, at times, a bit of a slog to read.
The reason? As one reviewer put it: he writes "densely." A bit of an understatement at times, honestly!
The man was brilliant and a voracious reader, something that becomes immediately apparent in the opening pages as he begins to discuss the impact that both the fields of psychology and sociology have had upon "the family" and its various members in the 20th century.
I remember how psychology continued to enjoy something of a popular reputation into the early '70s; if you're old enough, for example, you might remember the glossy magazine "Psychology Today" which enjoyed substantial readership for a time.
But today it has outlived both its quaintness and its early adherents' claims of breakthroughs in understanding. (I remember encountering a Freudian psychologist in the '60s when I was struggling with a sudden onset of agoraphobia, and I found his questions about my "interest" in my mother to be absurd!)
In this book, Lasch explores how the developing use of psychology in the first part of the 20th century sought to "explain" the modern family and some of its many alleged difficulties, including absent fathers, juvenile delinquency, and rising divorce rates. As such, the bulk of the book is more about psychology -- and its often less than helpful "observations" about and "suggestions" for resolving contemporary family issues -- than what was really going on with families at the time.
Frankly, I found the many generalities offered by successive psychological schools rather lame.
Lasch's central point, I think (after all, it IS a dense book), is that most of this stuff really didn't help families much at all, in large part because real families are, after all, made up of unique individuals who encounter many different challenges -- some of which are shared by others -- and the responses of those individuals depends upon many factors which just cannot be compartmentalized simply as "this kind of psychosis."
In closing, I wish to share this paragraph from his book which will give you a flavor of his argument which, at its center, was really a biting critique of our blindness to how our economic system of hands-off capitalism was steadily increasing pressures on families and individuals alike while at the same time eroding many forms of social community life so necessary for the flourishing of all.
"In their campaign to establish the family as the seat of civic virtue, the guardians of morality dwelled on the dangers lurking gin the streets, the demoralizing effects of 'civilization,' the growth of crime and violence, and the cutthroat competition that prevailed in the marketplace. They urged right-thinking men and women to seek shelter in the sanctuary of the family. From the beginning, the glorification of domestic life simultaneously condemned the social order of which the family alleged served the foundation. In urging a retreat to private satisfactions, the custodians of domestic virtue implicitly acknowledged capitalism's devastation of all forms of collective life, while at the same time they discouraged attempts to repair the damage by depicting it as the price that had to be paid for material and moral improvement."
March 24, 2022
read this 20 years ago and it went over my head. in '09, the culture of narcissism appeared on my phd comps list and it went down much easier (and is reviewed somewhere on here). but this is the real lasch, lasch truly doing the work as opposed to merely shooting fish in a barrel (the agony of the american left, the true and only heaven, et al.). here he makes the fairly complicated argument that all these back and forth efforts to redefine the individual and the family had the effect of changing both for the worse...but does so without lapsing into left or right propaganda points. this is also a book where, despite its seeming brevity, you walk away certain that the author really did the work of reading most of the referenced books from cover to cover (something i can't say for his other material), in part because of how dense some of the discussions are (so dense you're keenly aware he's keenly aware of all the distinctions he feels impelled to make, and is proceeding in an agonizingly slow fashion as a result).
February 2, 2022
A difficult if interesting read. Lasch takes a look at the family life and setup across several generations and the factors that have changed it. He also goes into the response from the health and scientific community and how they have intended to 'help' it and yet feels they may have only made things less ideal. Conclusion felt a little rushed and I wish there was some kind of a summary at the end of each chapter sad some bits are hard to take in.
April 27, 2022
This is the driest of Lasch’s works that I’ve read so far. This book is a critique of the history of sociological study of the family. He does touch on the family unit and it’s evolution a bit but it’s mainly focused on it’s relation to the rise of capitalism. He claims that sociological conclusions of the past ultimately resulted in the undermining and weakening of family life. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you work in the field.
February 22, 2017
Not Lasch's final word on a lot of the subjects he touches on—you can see much of it more fully developed in The Revolt of the Elite and The True and Only Heaven—and muddled in places by a determination to rehabilitate/explain Freud that is, whether it's ultimately right or wrong, mostly incomprehensible to modern ears. But here his familiar ideas are arranged to tell a compelling story about the inexorable, stalking-horse enervation of the family by new, medicalized forms of "social control."
January 16, 2025
I love is book
August 21, 2025
Insightful in parts but the conclusion/thesis is a bit unclear.
January 2, 2026
Ο υπέροχος κύριος Lasch σ' ένα ακόμα σημαντικό βιβλίο του. Υψηλού επιπέδου στοχασμός χωρίς φανατισμούς.
May 8, 2018
This book is a challenging read that sets out the authors ideas regarding the history of theories of the psychological development of children, the ways in which modern experts misunderstand the psychological development of children, and the social and political consequences of the mainstream acceptance of current theories.
I read this book because I have read a lot about Lasch, but actually read little of his work. I thought that he would provide a social, political, and economic analysis of how the family changed over the last one hundred years or so. Some of this material was present, but mostly as assertions and background assumptions. Much more of the work was an attack on those who attack Freud. That is to say, he presents convincing arguments that those who have attacked Freud in the middle twentieth century are wrong. They misunderstood him and the ideas they suggest should replace his are unconvincing. However, nowhere do I see any good explanations as to why someone should believe Freud in the first place. Lasch briefly explains some of Freud's ideas, but does this mostly to explain why his critics misunderstood him. I found most of the references to a century worth of anthropological, sociological, and psychological theories confusing. If you don't have a good background in any of these topics, you may want to choose another of his works.
I read this book because I have read a lot about Lasch, but actually read little of his work. I thought that he would provide a social, political, and economic analysis of how the family changed over the last one hundred years or so. Some of this material was present, but mostly as assertions and background assumptions. Much more of the work was an attack on those who attack Freud. That is to say, he presents convincing arguments that those who have attacked Freud in the middle twentieth century are wrong. They misunderstood him and the ideas they suggest should replace his are unconvincing. However, nowhere do I see any good explanations as to why someone should believe Freud in the first place. Lasch briefly explains some of Freud's ideas, but does this mostly to explain why his critics misunderstood him. I found most of the references to a century worth of anthropological, sociological, and psychological theories confusing. If you don't have a good background in any of these topics, you may want to choose another of his works.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews