ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author wants to apply a developmental history of a person to the bigger social picture, to discover whether psychology could help throw light on our social and historical processes and the problem of how to achieve a more empathic society. She defines selfishness as the pursuit of self-interest without regard for others’ needs or interests. But selfishness is not just an individual failing. It is equally possible to have a selfish society, a society which sustains individualism, greed, and materialism at the expense of collective interests and the needs of the social group as a whole. In Christopher Lasch groundbreaking analysis, he described how the individual self had become weakened and infantilised by the consumer society. Lasch analysis was unusual because, unlike many social critics before and since, it did not assume that people’s selfishness or superficiality was the natural state of humankind.
