Reviewing post-Freudian thought from the standpoint of Herbert
Marcuse and the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory, Jacoby attacks
the "pop existentialism and mysticism" of modern psychology. All of
it is tainted by a hatred of theory, expressed in the slogans "end
of ideology," "future shock" and "counterculture." This goes for
David Cooper and R.D. Laing as well, "whose work dribbles into
blind therapy and positivism." The book is focused not around
Laing, but around more Freudian psychologists. Adler's nominally
socialist banalities are rebutted with Freud's epithets; Jacoby
marks Adler as the beginning of the Freudian epigones' apologies
for an era of "synchronized capitalism." For the American
motivational engineers like Gordon Allport and Abraham Maslow,
Jacoby has boundless disgust: Maslow is "a genius of bourgeois
stupidity - except that Maslow is no genius." The book rejects not
only capitalism but the idea of progress itself, reviving Marcuse's
attack on Fromm for the latter's belief that it is possible to
love. Jacoby's treatment of H.S. Sullivan, Wilhelm Reich and
Theodor Adorno is a rambling, wholly unsatisfying account of human
subjectivity and Marx' view of private property. "Today human
relations are irregulars and seconds at the closing days of the
warehouse sale of life." For all his scorn of anti-theoretical
theorists, Jacoby hasn't exactly brought great conceptual weight to
bear on the problems of psychology: in the last resort, he doesn't
seem to believe in the science of psychology at all, and we are
left with "the potency of bourgeois society" from which "there is
no escape, not even for those who resist." (Kirkus Reviews)
Russell Jacoby defines social amnesia as society's repression of
remembrance--society's own past. In this book, Jacoby excavates the
critical and historical concepts that have fallen prey to the
dynamic of a society that strips them both of their historical and
critical content. Social Amnesia is an effort to remember what is
perpetually lost under the pressure of society. It is
simultaneously a critique of present practices and theories in
psychology. Jacoby's new self-evaluation has the same sharp edge as
the book itself, offering special insights into the evolution of
psychological theory during the past two decades.
In his probing, self-critical new introduction, Jacoby
maintains that any serious appraisal of psychology or sociology, or
any discipline, must seek to separate the political from the
theoretical. He discusses how in the years since Social Amnesia was
first published society has oscillated from extreme subjectivism to
extreme objectivism, which feed off each other and constitute two
forms of social amnesia: a forgetting of the past and a
pseudo-historical consciousness. Social Amnesia contains a forceful
argument for "thinking against the grain--an endeavor that remains
as urgent as ever." It is an important work for sociologists,
psychologists, and psychoanalysts.
General
| Imprint: |
Transaction Publishers
|
| Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
| Release date: |
June 1996 |
| First published: |
1997 |
| Authors: |
Russell Jacoby
|
| Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
| Format: |
Paperback
|
| Pages: |
224 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-1-56000-892-7 |
| Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
Psychology >
General
|
| LSN: |
1-56000-892-X |
| Barcode: |
9781560008927 |
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