Freudianism as Culprit

...They see the solution to our problems in the resumption of adult responsibility...

...What the critics call an unmanly surrender to the irrational demands of our children may really be an anxious and inconsistent semi–permissiveness...

...as he himself defines it...

...LaPiere's interpretation of the psychological and social goals of Freudianism which needs to be analyzed and examined...

...They, too, associate the failures in the school and the home with such subversive concepts as "absolute equality" and '"absolute permissiveness...

...His dream is too real to be threatened dialectically...

...He hardly makes any distinctions between Horney, Fromm, et...

...and he possessed in high degree the indispensable virtue of civilization itself: the power to sacrifice immediate for long–range satisfactions...

...The trouble with the critics, however, despite the enormous truth of their cultural critique, is that they do not cherish—they do not really understand—the moral beauty of what has been gained...

...As a pragmatic sociologist...

...Sometimes, it is true, this takes the form of not asserting authority adequately—of not being able to set limits confidently to the child's behavior...

...In contrast to the ethic of the pioneer–puritan of previous centuries, for whom the "human individual" is "sturdy," "self–reliant" and '"responsible," the Freudian ethic, according to LaPiere, sees man as a "weak and irresolute creature without the stamina to endure the stresses and strains of living...

...Isn't it, rather, that we are actually not permissive enough, that we have been afraid to try a full and splendid permissiveness...

...In the darkness of their complacent certitudes they almost lost the way to sanity and happiness...

...What is real is our knowledge, our knowledge of what is best and our knowledge of our failure...

...The hard, self– reliant, middle–class entrepreneur of the 18th and 19th centuries is held up as probably the most successful type of human being that has yet evolved on the planet...

...Education, Miss Arendt writes, has failed, and must continue to fail, despite all the techniques of a mechanical progressivism, until our concepts are corrected and authority properly reasserted...

...They did not know what is best and did not know when they failed...

...If it is true that our modern "nation of weaklings" is descended from the "strong" men who subscribed to the Protestant ethic, how could this have ever happened...

...LaPiere's contrasting ideal of the Protestant ethic naturally tends to become a trifle naive...

...The result is one of the most stiff–necked, distorted and sometimes plainly false accounts that I have read on the "crisis" of the modern world...

...He describes psychoanalysis, for example, as a kind of intellectual education in which the analyst "convinces" the patient of the truth of Freudian doctrine, entirely overlooking the central role of transference in the therapeutic process...

...Americans may not be happy, but they instinctively know that the Freudian ethic will be more likely to bring them a reasonable happiness than the Protestant ethic ever could...

...It may be ridiculous to live by the American ideal of "everything for baby" (as LaPiere asserts), but how much more ridiculous to live by the old European ideal of "everything for the adult...

...Unfortunately, the combination in this case lacks both stability and vitality...

...The sons of the European ethic failed with their eyes closed...

...LaPiere's thesis is based on the contrast he establishes between the "Protestant ethic...

...It is not simply a question of going from one extreme to the other, as many intellectuals like to believe, for the old way is worse than the new...

...Yet even the best of them reveal a fundamentally distorted moral perspective...

...LaPiere subscribes to the view that the ultimate truth or falsity of Freudianism is less important than its cultural meaning, and that its cultural meaning needs to be analyzed and assessed with as little subjective interference as possible...

...Unlike the workers of the past and present and the new bourgeosie of our own day, who remain passive and resigned to their fate, the entrepreneur was supposed to be able to plan wisely for the future, take substantial risks in business, and be responsible for himself and for those who were dependent upon him...

...Self–control, thrift and the dignity of man collapse with the insidious whisper: Enjoy yourself, fool, there is no moral absolute...

...The author gives his case away when he admits, rather sadly, that "there is certainly some point at which even the most respectable and responsible man will begin to look with envy at the now equally respected but irresponsible one...

...When we fail we at least fail with our eyes open...

...I have no space here to analyze at length the writer's curious summary of basic Freudian theory...

...Although we know what is best, we are unable to do it...

...al., and people like Erik Erikson...

...The indispensable element in all education, she tells us, whether in the school or in the home, is the assumption of appropriate authority, the taking on by parents and teachers of adult responsibility for the world in which they live...

...The free enterpriser, we are told, was well trained in Spartan self–discipline, he subscribed to humanitarian belief in "the inherent dignity and integrity of the individual...

...He has not read, or simply not been touched by, such writers as Melville, Norris, Dreiser, James and Faulkner...

...Has the pendulum merely swung to the other extreme in reaction to the excesses of European rigidity...

...Much of what he writes is shared by more liberal, more profound, more responsible intellectuals today, particularly in America...

...Geza Roheim, Richard Sterba and Bruno Bettleheim...

...As a moralist, however, he is so disturbed—even horrified—by what he sees that his objectivity is seriously impaired...

...as defined by Max Weber, and the "Freudian ethic...

...Reviewed by C. Roland Wagner Assistant Professor oj Philosophy, University of Delaware IT IS CERTAINLY unusual and refreshing these days to encounter a moral sociologist, one who is not afraid to take a stand on the controversial cultural issues of our time...

...Not the shadow of a doubt crosses LaPiere's mind—or at least his page—about the truth of this myth...

...How did the snake crawl into that 19th century paradise...

...Thus the inner–directed father creates the other– directed son But is there anything serious in LaPiere s remarks about the loss of moral fiber in our culture, even if this loss cannot be legitimately associated with true Freudianism...

...The semi–permissiveness that results, the anxious uncertainty typical of our middle class parents, however, ought not to be taken for the real thing...

...Is it possible that the strong man's concern for what LaPiere calls '"family integrity" (in contrast to the modern 'weakling's" high divorce rate) was so much fakery...

...It is, rather...

...He even goes so far as to associate all the wilder cultural tendencies of our time—loss of authority in the schools and the home, "political maternalism...

...What these subversives have taught us about the giants of free enterprise, pursued by their Demons of the Opposite, those "godly, ungodlike" Ahabs striking their way across a continent to escape from their own hidden passivity, seems to have had no effect on this single–minded sociologist...

...The only explanation I can offer for this amazing parody of Freud is that LaPiere has confused watered– down Freudianism with the essential variety...

...LaPiere and other critics say essentially the same thing, but much less grandly...

...He sees a "complete absence of any sense of obligation toward others" in every doctrine and tendency even remotely related to Freudianism...

...Since Freud declared that instinctual life is forever at war with the demands of society and, by implication, that all men are at best repressed criminals and delinquents, the author concludes that therapy cannot do more than minimize the essential conflict of life: "The individual should not be required or even expected to submit to social authority whatever its character, to accept responsibility for his own or anyone else's welfare, or to be concerned with anything except the preservation of his precarious psychic balance...

...Apart from perfectionist theories, is it true that Americans are in fact too permissive, as LaPiere claims...

...Partly because of their false concept of absolute equality between adults and children, this responsibility has been abdicated by the adults of the modern world...

...Thus the "Protestant" spawns the '"Freudian...

...Still, even this transitional stage is better than what went before, better certainly than that blind and costly European system...

...Richard LaPiere has attempted to combine pure science with pure passion in this latest jeremiad against life in modern America...

...If the free enterpriser was such a remarkably responsible person, why is it that his children, or his grandchildren, have become so irresponsible...

...Granted that a new order of things, a sensible way of bringing children into civilization, has not yet been established...

...its final goal is "social irresponsibility and personal despair...

...But, more typically, Americans fail in the opposite way...

...Take the question of American permissiveness...

...con– formism, etc.—with essential Freudianism...

...The discipline of that ethical iceman melts with the first warm breath of the easy–going hedonist...

...The powerful and subtle critic, Hannah Arendt, implies that progressive education, for example, has become such a pernicious influence in American schools that education is weaker, essentially, than before the movement began...

...We are not secure enough to allow the child to set the pace for his own development...