Gotta love Ayn Rand and her incredible ability to make bare, simplified, polarising dichotomies out of rich, complex topics, then paint the extreme opposite to her as evil, without examining whether her own chosen extreme may be equally evil. I mean, she really has taken the "build a straw man and set it on fire" approach to an art form (quite literally... and I'd add that the Fountainhead is a great book, if thoroughly misguided from a philosophical point of view).
Altruism as she defines it is obviously crap. What she fails to do is to clarify the extreme egocentrism that she proposes in an equally critical way. Here's an amusing attempt to do so using her own format:
> "What is the moral code of egocentrism? The basic principle of egocentrism is that other people have no right to exist other than for your sake, that service to you is the only justification of their existence, and that their sacrifice for your good is their highest moral duty, virtue and value.
> Do not confuse egocentrism with self-respect, self-awareness or respect for your rights. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, egocentrism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of egocentrism, the basic absolute, is the total unimportance of the other—which means; not caring one whit about others, using them for your own means, sacrificing their feelings and even their lives if necessary—which means: the other as a standard of evil, the self as a standard of the good.
> Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not use people. That is not the issue. The issue is whether those people have the right to exist without being of use to you. The issue is whether you are really compelled to notionally support the existence, day by day, of people who are of no apparent use to you. The issue is whether your needs are the first mortgage on their life and the moral purpose of their existence. The issue is whether other people are to be regarded as sacrificial animals. Any man worth calling that will answer: “No.” Egocentrism says: “Yes.”"
As usual, the better place to sit is somewhere in the middle. No, you do not exist just to serve others, and total self-abnegation and sacrifice is certainly not a productive way to live. Neither, however, is total self-adoration and worship of your ego. Both are mistaken paths. The far better path is to realise that you need a balance of both respect for your own self, and connection to others, to live a good, fulfilled life.
For your own sake, fobcat, and not for mine, I hope you can read and understand the above...