narcissus1I recently interviewed San Diego State University psychology professor Jean M. Twenge about her new book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. The book is quite an achievement and deserves all of the attention it’s been getting from Newsweek and other media outlets. Bringing together an overwhelming amount of evidence from recent psychological research and pop cultural observations, Twenge creates a pretty solid case for the fact that the tendency toward self-obsession, overconfidence, and downright self-centeredness that was born out of the 1960s emphasis on the liberation of the individual has reached epidemic proportions. And as Twenge says, we’ve taken this hard-won individualism, which has brought so many important benefits to society, a bit too far. You can listen to a clip of the interview below.
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