Egomania
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Egomania is obsessive preoccupation with one's self and applies to someone who follows their own ungoverned impulses and is possessed by delusions of personal greatness and feels a lack of appreciation.
Nordau and modernism
Egomania was brought into polemical prominence at the close of the 19th century by Max Nordau, the first critic who perceived the centrality of the concept of egoism for an understanding of Modernism...[with] his wholesale attacks on the ideology of "egomania"'. Nordau distinguished egoism - as 'a lack of amiability....The egoist is quite able to look after himself in life' - from the 'ego-maniac...who does not see things as they are, does not understand the world, and cannot take up a right attitude towards it'.
Nordau's attack was aimed at the Avant-garde of the fin de siècle. 'His aim is to describe the "geniuses" as criminals and madmen..."culte de moi"'.
See also
