A Therapist Looks at Youth in the '70s
SLAVIN, MALCOLM O.
Perspectives A THERAPIST LOOKS AT YOUTH IN THE '70s BY MALCOLM O. SLAVIN A European friend who recently visited me remarked that he was surprised at how rarely one saw couples holding hands or...
...Have the pursuit of expressive closeness and the attempt to heighten interpersonal sensitivity been swept into the dustbin of history...
...Does this mean that a preoccupation with lonely, inner, individualistic concerns may reemerge...
...Especially conspicuous were those small assemblages-encounter groups, sensitivity groups, T. groups, and the like-in which several relative or complete strangers attempted to achieve some sort of closeness...
...And although the forms and rituals of the '60s have almost entirely disappeared, I would expect some elements of the vanishing quest for intimacy to be retained, to supplement and sustain whatever unifying set of ideals, whatever quest, might now be emerging to meet the realities of the coming years...
...The tension from this rivalry often caused young persons to seek psychiatric help...
...Nonetheless, I doubt we are simply undergoing a return to the existential mood of that era...
...Marijuana-the gentle catalyst for a quiet, intimate collective experience-remained in use, of course, but individuals increasingly reached out for an intoxicant that, for a moment, made them feel stronger than the forces weighing them down each day...
...Around 1971, I started to see in several of my patients a dramatic decline in political activity and a turning away from many aspects of the counterculture...
...Kenneth Keniston, in The Uncommitted, presented a social-psychological portrait of the alienated individual...
...A shrinking job market, particularly for every type of teaching position, was a quite realistic spur to heated academic competition and to drinking...
...The "counterculture" of the last decade-the segment of the youth movement involved with values, ideals, cultural images, and life styles-was characterized in part by what I would call a "quest for intimacy...
...In working for only a brief time with many of them, I discovered very pervasive feelings of disillusionment and sadness, and observed that their frenetic activity resembled the kind of grief reaction frequently seen in those who, having suffered some loss, believe they must redouble their striving to cover up their un-happiness...
...Erik Erikson gave it psychoanalytic and historical dimensions...
...None of us knew how to interpret this phenomenon, but I would be inclined to suggest that it may be a sign of the next-and possibly the final-stage in the extended period of mourning for the '60s...
...My friend's comment set me thinking about my experiences as a therapist in a university community...
...Not now at least...
...The most obvious form this took was an emphasis on emotional openness, unconventional directness and easy, relaxed relations between people...
...the outwardness of the "high '60s" has largely disappeared...
...In the early '70s, the images and symbols of the previous decade were still around...
...What was being grieved in this fashion, I felt, was the '60s' optimistic vision of a society that could nurture collaboration and intimacy...
...Much of the language of interpersonal closeness still remained...
...And I found myself wondering what they suggested about the changing nature of intimacy in the United States...
...This spirit stood in rather marked contrast to that of the preceding decade...
...There sprang up, as well, various experiments in communal living, and a vast array of manuals and institutes advocating intimacy-related virtues...
...Malcolm O. Slavin, a clinical psychologist, is the Associate Director of the Tufts Counseling Center...
...But the Greening of America had ceased to be a genuine possibility...
...The search for solidarity had turned into an exceedingly intense competitiveness...
...Cambridge, Massachusetts (compared, say, to Paris), is not a place where one sees easy and casual displays of intimacy among the young...
...Yet my patients exhibited a degree of frenzy, a sense of urgency, even desperation, that seemed unrelated to their financial worries...
...Seeking to create a meaningful internal world in the face of a society that appeared grossly materialistic, anomic and soulless, a society without a core of genuine values, the '50s "rebel without a cause" was constantly engaged in what might best be called a "quest for identity...
...The small group encounters were still to be had...
...Now, in 1975, talk can be heard about a return to the '50s...
...The theme of identity permeated both the social scientific literature and the arts of the period...
...and one can see superficial resemblances to the inner turmoils that produced the quest for identity in the '50s...
...This year, however, we may be witnessing another change-though it is too early to be certain...
...All You Need Is Love"-as the Beatles put it-became something of a motif for a whole generation...
...He had a point...
...In general, behavior associated with interpersonal awareness and expressiveness was highly esteemed during the '60s-as opposed to tendencies implying distance or alienation from the group or community...
...But I find that it is a bit less frenetic, and more overtly confused and sad...
...From a conviction that "all we need is love," there was a shift to all we need are grades-along with recommendations and board scores in order to gain entrance into professional schools and get good jobs...
...The quest for intimacy was dead, and its passing was about to be mourned...
...Similarly, at a meeting of therapists from university mental health centers throughout the Northeast that I attended a few months ago, virtually every one of the participants reported an astonishing increase in the number of undergraduates asking for help with emotional problems...
...The quest for intimacy generated myriad new social styles and configurations...
...Yet what struck practically all of us was the extent to which they were disturbed by internal matters-psychological states, feelings of distress, private confusions...
...The turning outward to peers in a united action for social transformation had been lost...
...Perspectives A THERAPIST LOOKS AT YOUTH IN THE '70s BY MALCOLM O. SLAVIN A European friend who recently visited me remarked that he was surprised at how rarely one saw couples holding hands or showing affection openly in Harvard Square...
...To be sure, a new and frightening uncertainty in the economic world was impinging directly on the lives of these young people at the start of the decade-far more than material concerns ever did in the '60s...
...The people who made up The Lonely Crowd, in David Riesman's view, were "lonely" not because of a lack of intimacy but because of a lack of "inner direction...
...The students, not surprisingly, were troubled in some degree by academic pressures, competition and career dilemmas...
...Moreover, on their own, they began to look for relief in that rediscovered drug, alcohol...
...Or, to put it another way, my patients seemed caught in that state between shock and true mourning, where there is a recognition that something has been lost, but where the will to realistically give it up has not yet developed...
...Holden Caulfield, J. D. Salinger's protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, became a heroic symbol for the struggle to create inner meaning, a struggle that also ran through the enormous literature of existentialism, as well as the dramas that together came to be identified as the "theater of the absurd...
...This transformation unquestionably indicates a turning inward, a search for more personal sources of meaning...
...The '50s-or the late '50s, at least-had a far more individualistic focus...
...In any process of mourning-be it for a relationship or a vision of existence-some portion of what has died is usually incorporated into what goes on living...
...My clinical experience-much of it with people in the college, post-college and graduate school years-has given me a firsthand opportunity to formulate some tentative answers to questions such as these...
...I do not mean to say that the mood of the persons who come to see me is much improved...
...The enthusiasm about groups, the vision of a changed social order, where open, close bonds would predominate, was unquestionably slipping...
Vol. 58 • April 1975 • No. 8
