The narcissistic patient who had become increasingly emblematic of this self-absorbed age, Lasch wrote, often experienced “intense feelings of rage,” “a sense of inner emptiness,” “fantasies of omnipotence and a strong belief in [his] right to exploit others”; such a patient may be “chaotic and impulse-ridden,” “ravenous for admiration but contemptuous of those he manipulates into providing it,” and inclined to conform “to social rules more out of fear of punishment than from a sense of guilt.”
