The Inner American/Mental Health in America
Eigen, Michael
Books: FEELING GOOD ABOUT OURSELVES IN LIGHT of these studies, the old European caricature of Americans as happy babies appears to have some substance to it. Franz Kafka, for example, once turned...
...The authors are not convinced that professional help can be the panacea once hoped for...
...Over two thousand adults were interviewed in each sample...
...Women tend to be more open with regard to problems and seek help more readily...
...According to the questions asked and answered, the authors conclude that "We are generally a happy culture, lacking anxiety, satisfied with our jobs, happy in our marriages, armed with positive orientations to ourselves, and buttressed by social support for problems we encounter...
...They may help one function in difficult times, yet somehow miss the point...
...Others over- or under-use friends or professionals...
...He feared psychoanalysis would get watered down here (it did...
...And our good feeling about ourselves may involve more than simply the euphoria of success...
...Some people do better on their own...
...For all but the educated and the young there was a significant increase of pessimism...
...Nevertheless, from my perspective as a depth psychologist I must also be cautious...
...It begins to appear that the sort of self the authors investigate is highly circumscribed, if rampant...
...In such instances we seem to wish to avoid the dramas we are called upon to pass through...
...These were government-sponsored studies undertaken by highly sophisticated and competent researchers...
...Most people use informal resources, such as friends and family...
...Prayer as communion in mystery with the depths of love has no real place in this study, perhaps because the authors found it not to be a significant variable today...
...A picture of widespread psychic anesthesia emerges, a psychological mindedness which is not psychologically minded, not fiercely searching...
...What quality of selfhood does his happiness define...
...And how much more pressing this question should the selves at stake prove shallow...
...In itself this is a commentary on who we are (or aren't...
...Of course, the tables turned and America the Exploiter took center stage...
...He would not be surprised at the brittle ring of such current terms as "self-fulfillment" or "psychological mindedness," compared with, say, Jung's more profound "individuation," which involves a numinous Self...
...It is the self in the mode of ambition, the competitive self: the happy American is one who gets ahead...
...I will have to be highly selective in order to convey the overall thrust, some details of interest, and a partial critique...
...Prayer is seen as a sign of resignation to uncontrollable problems, a way of handling remorse over sensed helplessness...
...If subjective well-being remains high, the way this well-being is organized shows an important shift from more social or institutionalized to more personal ways of structuring well-being...
...The authors themselves raise some question as to whether our happiness can last...
...As the latter become weaker, prayer diminishes...
...It is learning to live with this sense of catastrophe and the benefits it brings, rather than adopt a stance of pseudo-mastery, which may lead to our most far-reaching gain: our ability to experience our experience...
...The feeling which emerges from such overturning may, over and over, seem both sobering and miraculous...
...How long can people stand being thrown back on themselves in an increasingly ambiguous and dangerous milieu...
...I am struck by just how lethal "good feelings" can be to the evolution of experiencing...
...The portrait the authors paint of "the inner American.'' led a colleague of mine to exclaim, "What inner American...
...Franz Kafka, for example, once turned to America as the home of health and innocent good will...
...But who is the rather happy individual the authors are describing...
...Although in 1976 there was more tolerance for alternative life styles, marriage was viewed as life's greatest source of satisfaction by those who undertook it...
...For men the power element is most intense, for women affiliation is also important...
...Effective institutional guidelines are missing...
...The authors suggest that in these uncertain times, those who risk such an interpersonal commitment do so as a gesture of faith...
...Again, ". . . we as a nation are doing well in subjective mental health...
...The experience of helplessness is viewed as something to overcome, to be rid of as quickly as possible, as if it were an alien intruder and not an intrinsic dimension of our lives...
...This places great stress on the relationship...
...This is a complexity we may not be able to evade in the passage ahead...
...The Inner American presents data concerning such areas as subjective well-being, perceptions of self, marriage, parenthood, work, symptoms, and social support in times of stress...
...Quality is incidental...
...In general, the movement toward individual rather than more tightly socially organized styles of living is expressed by the greater likelihood of people in 1976 to be more psychologically oriented...
...Prayer is also tied to life as structured by religious institutions...
...They comment where in other eras marriage may betoken a wish for security, today "it is probably closer to the truth to read verve, omnipotence, and bouncy optimism in the act...
...According to the authors, prayer declines insofar as people feel they can do more for themselves...
...As society moves toward greater pluralism and ambiguity of roles, self-reliance and willingness to seek help increases...
...We are left in the position that defines the results of the study in general: the individual is thrown back on his/her own resources to work out the style best for him/herself...
...As noted earlier, there is an increased overall tendency for people in distress to seek help, both formally and informally...
...It may well be true that our ability to deny our sense of the uncontrollable itself constitutes a strength...
...Our subjective well-being may turn out to be a trap or enemy at the same time it helps see us through...
...I begin to feel a twinge when I read that where work is concerned the American in 1976 gains his happiness not so much from an intrinsic interest in the task at hand, but from success...
...I would like to suggest, however, that even seeking help can be part of a wish to ward off felt difficulties...
...To face oneself in God may well upset familiar images of oneself, one's idols...
...One can perhaps get a deeper sense of what American "happiness" means when one realizes that fifty-eight percent of the persons interviewed denied ever "feeling overwhelmed at least once in a while when bad things happened.'' While more Americans can admit problems and seek help than previously, more still ward off the sense of the uncontrollable (Catholics are the greatest deniers of problems, Jews least...
...An overall finding is that most Americans tend to feel good about themselves in just about every area, and this is as true in 1976 as in 1957...
...My work with many, many people has made me only too aware of the intimate interweaving of strength and fragility which marks our lives.The growth process itself - to face one's emotional truths, to see through oneself - may well feel catastrophic...
...The authors do not view the greater focusing on the self as a symptom of disintegration of values, but as an adaptive response to a heterogeneity and complexity of choice hitherto less available...
...Men, the authors feel, need more help (possibly educational) to enable them to let down and explore themselves...
...In their view we are an individualistic people becoming even more so...
...Within this rather upbeat framework, however, in 1976 people report more anxiety and worry...
...Often friends do as well...
...Because of the length required by this report it was broken up into two books (possibly more to follow), one developing a portrait of the U.S.'s "psychological well-being," the other concentrating on help-seeking patterns...
...The Inner American and Mental Health in America compare the findings of two national social psychological surveys made nineteen years apart, 1957 and 1976...
...This paradoxical dual tendency is probably part of a greater psychological mindedness...
...The authors link these symptoms with increased uncertainty about the future, inasmuch as the job market and family roles are in transition...
...As a psychoanalyst I often discover that a person's wish to control his life masks a fear of experiencing it...
...It was clear to him Americans were more interested in money than psychic life...
...The findings are too complicated to be summed up easily...
...Can our increasing psychological orientation compensate for the collapse of institutionalized guidelines...
...An emphasis on roles and social organizations gives way to increased interest in self-expressiveness and self-direction...
...Frued was prescient in his hatred of America...
...Mental Health in America indicates that people in 1976 were less likely to deny problems, could admit more ambivalence, and were more able to seek help in times of stress...
Vol. 109 • June 1982 • No. 11
