Haven in a Heartless World

...If the family had indeed been as catastrophe can justify the anguish one among ethnics for the anti-Semitic drained of its emotional intensity as feels) who will come to pick up the movements of the period correlated Commonweal: 156...

...government's long arm extend into the book in his headlong plunge into critiinterstices of inner life-through what cism and despair...

...handmaidens (here Lasch is right on tered soul...

...As the heartless public world But target in seeing essential links between is Lasch convincing-is his increasingly invades our private and applied policy sciences, the so-called most hallowed havens they, too, are "scientific study of society," and new rendered heartless or survive as pitifully JOHN F. KENNEDY and more sophisticated forms of inadequate atavisms, futile as bulwarks Catholic and humanist technological control...

...1929-1941, by Ronald H. most Americans...

...The family may be crisis...

...the theory and against the all-encompassing tawdriness by Albert J. Menendei practice of the "culture and personality" which surrounds them...

...the applied science of social predatory capitalist individualism, one control and its mainstream academic committed to his despair and cynicism as offering precious little succor for the bat- well...

...any long-term commitment to another $14.95 the wreckage...

...schools and social welfare socialization or subjected the family to weak holdout against the total victory of increasingly effective control," one is agencies...

...Our "apparent" move- human being is despised (along with parments of liberation are, finally, enting) as a sign of being "hung-up...

...For those who Bayor, The Johns Hopkins Univ...

...ConUnder the Lasch fronted with this roll call of horrors Lasch could not go on to proffer any hope that BAYER I N A HEARTLESS WORLD: place...

...reader alike: he is treating us to complex, tions...

...We should ternalized Lasch's view one will see the papers of Cardinal Spellman are not have meticulous, depth probing and in- world through his eyes...

...say why...

...shifted from its depersonalized abstrac- Lasch would do well to immerse him- While the book's title suggests a close tedness...

...and the coolness that has come to characterize domestic relations...

...179) Not much has been left out...

...Have families been drained of self in the later works of Robert Coles, a and contextual look at neighborhood their normative meaning in Midwest thinker and public figure quite unlike ethnic relations, only two are inspected at farming communities as well as urban- Lasch himself but one concerned with length, the Irish-Jewish conflicts in academic centers in the Northeast...

...But the result of all -Andrew M. Greeley those post-Freudian revisionists who the hyperbole is that Lasch's characteri- $12.95 bowdlerized psychoanalytic theory in zation of the present represents too order to make it more palatable or comwholesale a condemnation and too bitter patible with a number of political HUMANHOOD a denunciation to be fully convincing...

...that public school truth or the simple truth...

...that guidance to accept Lasch's characterization of Neighbors In Conflict is a social hiscounselors, therapists, and adminis- events and the implications which flow tory of ethnic relations in New York City trators sometimes intrude into the family from them, the result will ultimately be a during the depression years...

...For having in- Oral History Project...

...all self-righteous and priggish forces historical insight to realize that he was ognize their significance, something in- of organized virtue...

...Press, teachers sometimes treat parents with de- remain credulous and who are prepared 232 pp...

...Why is this happening...

...paradoxically of precisely that brutaliza- sonal interviews, and some transcribed But Lasch's thesis, if it is to convince tion of social life Lasch himself indicts as interviews from the Columbia University us, requires more and further evidence characteristic of our age...

...merely his outer but his inner life as well...

...He finds in the family a last, feminism...

...non-exclusive relationships" in which research, infanticide, euthaLasch salvages next to nothing from nasia, and DNA research...

...Students of ethnic relations will understand their own dilemma -would to be sure, tends at times to be a bit not find much new information nor any he offer them terms of analysis which Pollyanna-ish, but that's all right...

...insidious modes of social control force "not merely the individual's body but as themselves relentlessly upon human be- much of his spirit as it can preempt...

...ideologies and, in the process, eroded the Essays In Slamadlcal Ethics One expects intensity and audacity from liberatory ends Freud's work has pre- by Joseph Fletcher Lasch, and it is here in abundance, but saged...

...rision or sugary contempt...

...What "increasingly effective educators, and capitalist invasions...

...mands for conformist behavior, Parsocided that Haven's overinflated prose Menendez's volume deserves nian sociology in which social equilib- widespread interest and careful was necessary, first, to gain people's atrium or stasis becomes man's most noble readin...

...How does the what was meant to be the target of his Lasch...

...the "new family" of "life Situation Ethics discusses the into intemperate, hostile, and despairing styles" and "spontaneous, non-binding, ethics of abortion, suicide, fetal declamations...

...Would, or could, it gain ac- much, fret so much, lament so much, ect of depicting one-dimensional people ceptance in the eyes of social participants rejoice so much-despite the social and then wiping them out can be great themselves...

...As a result he knocks mediating agencies, institutions, and re- nearly everything that appears in his text In brief lationships...

...Perhaps Lasch de- John F. Kennedy, Mr...

...significant re-interpretations of the might enable them to see beneath the Coles's thirst for moral uplift is as pro- material...

...He observes that Catholics in genFor most of us most of the time thickly textured portraits of real human eral did not support Franco, that many families, for better or for worse, remain beings, men, women, and children, in Catholics opposed Father Charles E. the locus of our most powerful, ambiva- real social locations, living in and Coughlin, and that ethnicity and religion lent, and meaningful emotional ties and through genuine political and moral were never the sole determining factor in self-identities...

...many of the same issues of the family, Washington Heights and in the South Would Lasch's discussion help them to social relationships, and politics...

...Angst may be "in" this season, either political endorsement or voting...

...But While his quoting of the Brooklyn Tablet instead the case that the argument for our Coles offers one enormous advantage to during this period seemed excessive to one-dimensionality is a one-dimensional the political thinker and the average me, Bayor makes the requisite qualificaargument...

...Human social life and relations, private virtue might flourish despite all THE FAMILY BESIEGED despite the saving patina of "appear- and the beleaguered family might surances," are crass, calculating, superfi- vive...

...He notes that the and that he fails to provide...

...book.' ribly popular case...

...not Jean Bettike Ellshtain ings in every sphere and walk of life...

...us, one-dimensional persons or is it not each and every hint of solace in sight...

...school one doesn't anticipate the repeated slides The distinguished author of counselors...

...Coles, Bronx...

...contemporary malaise, the "family be- and that society itself "has taken over bourgeois domination and its antithesis, sieged...

...That government and big flat, but by the book's end Lasch has not business have long collaborated to man- so much frightened us as put us on guard NEIGHBORS IN CONFLICT: THE IRISH...

...The projible one...

...But both...

...ipulate the American economy in ways that we are reading some things that are GERMANS, JEWS, AND ITALIANS OF NEW that constrain and control the lives of true but are by no means either the whole YORK CITY...

...Are we really, all of nounced as Lasch's impulse to quash will find it a useful reference book...

...scholars and others surface of things...

...the cult of domesticity...

...New and more Basic Books, $12.95, 230 pp...

...of American life and thought, turns his means exhaustive list of Lasch's villains that the citizen's "entire existence has attention to one of the benchmarks of our includes bureaucracies and bureaucrats...

...While scene armed with well-meaning advice, draining of the meaning of the family and Bayor relies mostly on written sources, well-laid plans and thinly-veiled threats...

...Lasch is a bold school whose commitment to a superfi- "Albert Menendez explores thinker who is willing to walk to the edge with skill, insight, and sympacial brand of environmental determinism of the abyss and peer over, a journey thy the religious dimension of and learning theory which led to a stress John F. Kennedy...

...and the "remoteness doing much more, that the law is the most dispensable to those who would con- and self-effacement of the American pareffective weapon against tyranny ever sciously and intelligently fashion the fu- ent, the desexualization of motherhood, devised...

...now been subjected to social direction...

...not merely the public realm but the NHaven in a Heartless World, Christ- Culprits and malefactors abound in darkest corners of private life, formerly opher L4sch, a distinguished observer Haven in a Heartless World...

...Lasch's desiccated husk but thus far it but if one has to construct cardboard He observes that many Jews too has stubbornly refused to blow away, people (I think they are sometimes called quickly found anti-Semitic implications despite the chill winds of apocalyptic so- "ideal types") in order to smash them in Italian and German non-political pride cial criticism and abominable public and their entire edifice down (for only of nationality...

...A by no inaccessible to political domination...

...Indeed, if one accepts Lasch's inChristopher Lasch terrelated thesis that the state controls cial, and anxiety-ridden...

...I think it's an excellent tention and, second, to make his not terachievement and his highest aspiration...

...of family relations as lived,a further ero- such as the ethnic presses, diocesan and that the traditional bases of commu- sion of the family's normative signifi- newspapers, and municipal archives, he nity have broken down or are in peril- cance coupled with the extension, also employs census tract data, some perall this and more is surely correct...

...Prowelhers Banks pseudo-movements which reinforce and cynical pop-psych gurus unambivalently 1200 Ka1sIngton Avenue hasten the decay and crisis they seek to preaching the death of the family and Buffalo, Nsw Yak 14215 cure and which spawned them in the first thus paving the way for total state con16 March 1979: 155 characterization a compelling and plaus- Lasch claims why do we still care so pieces, why, and to what end...

...But what happens next...

...Let's look a bit closer at his workers, bureaucrats, officious fun, I suppose, and it may even illumine views...

...He observes that support policies...

...As the first more timid' souls would shrink from in on "non-deviance" and enforced de- book in the 'rereappraisal' of terror or revulsion...

...By pointing to the history of our ture...

...some terribly important truths in the control" of the family and private life Lasch, I fear, has forgotton precisely hands of a provocative thinker like does Lasch have in mind...

...If the dreadful available and that he was disappointed terpretations of the self-understandings has already happened, it should not sur- with the sources housed at the Brooklyn of real families in a variety of social con- prise us that it happens again, everyday, Diocese Archives, although he does not texts in order that the discussion might be over and over...