Abstract

A conference on “Narcissism and the Crisis of Capitalism” was held April 3-5 at the State University of New York at Cortland. It was intended to contribute to the revitalization of intellectual life on campus and to come to a fuller appreciation of the dynamics of narcissism and their relation to advanced capitalism. The central questions raised were: Precisely what is narcissism? How does it differ from and what does it have in common with previous personality types associated with the development of capitalism (e.g., the entrepreneurial personality — the bourgeois “rugged individual,” the authoritarian character, the inner-directed and other-directed self)?