The Mirror Effect

Why are we so deeply interested in celebrity lives and loves, their endlessly repeated journey from rising star to inevitable flame out? In spite of extreme fame, fortune, and opportunity, why do their lives always seem so steeped in drama? And-most important - how are their lives changing ours? In this shattering new book, authors Drew Pinsky and S. Mark Young offer an eye-opening new look at our celebrity-crazed culture - from what drives people to seek fame in the first place, to how our obsession with celebrity is changing the emotional landscape. Drawing upon an unprecedented academic study of celebrity personality they recently published in "The Journal of Research in Personality (Sept: 06)" - the first such study to collect in-depth research data from actual celebrity sources - Pinsky and Young explore the widespread prevalence of narcissistic behavior among celebrities from all walks of fame, from actors and musicians to comedians and reality TV stars.
Their core finding was that individuals who become celebrities are more likely to have certain kinds of psychological damage - narcissistic personality issues, often rooted in childhood trauma, with attendant mood disturbances, melodramatic tendencies, and substance abuse problems. And those issues, in turn, lead to the private-and increasingly public-struggles of celebrities that ultimately command public attention. They also press further, exploring how these celebrities' constant public exposure (in every sense of the word) is being modeled on a 24-hour basis to the rest of our culture-and especially our children.