Progress Report

...the self-knowing society is that society made up of self-knowing individuals, with an evolving tradition and educational commitment to self-knowledge, self-affirmation, and self-actualization...

...In this chapter, Keniston uses a technique similar to that used by Erikson in Young Man Luther...

...is a vision of itself and of man that transcends technology...

...There is much that is useful in books like The Uncommitted, but soon (meaning now) we must begin to take the personal—and collective—¦ risks prerequisite to transcending and integrating the false dualism: man and society...

...he tends to see man as a virtually helpless victim, as the injured prey of inexorable social maladies: "What our society lacks...

...All ages and stations are victims of alienation, but the issues are sharper in the young, the chances for change better...

...It exacts a heavy human toll not because technology exists, but because we allow technology to reign...

...Certainly, there is a vital connection between diagnosis and prescription...

...We tend to create the kind of society we deserve...

...It alienates so many not simply because they do not share its wealth, but because its wealth includes few deeply human purposes...

...Erikson used Martin Luther as the prototype of the disenchanted, rebellious, but sensitive and talented youth...

...But there is a crucial and creative leap between seeing what is wrong and doing something about it...

...By far the best of The Uncommitted is in the first part, "Alienated Youth," especially the chapter, "An American Ishmael...

...It is a society that too often discourages human wholeness and integrity, too frequently divides men from the best parts of themselves, too rarely provides objects worthy of commitment...

...Society does exact "a heavy human toll...

...Unfortunately, so-called behavioral scientists are apt to spend all their time and energy describing problems —describing them until, one feels sometimes, they have convinced themselves that remedies and solutions are merely a function of repeatedly describing and diagnosing...

...The themes of alienation provide only a useful framework to that end...

...Keniston, a psychologist, is no exception...

...This classic brace covers about the same areas, often in better, more seminal writing...

...By now it is a cliche: serious reformers begin in the nursery...

...But Kenneth Keniston's long and sometimes rambling book brings us up to date, focuses the problem of alienation (man from himself, man from man, man from worthy commitments) where I think it belongs—in youth...

...But I wonder if it isn't an evasion to make such a sharp distinction between man and society...

...Keniston's Ishmael is a broader and more widely useful prototype, covering a broader spectrum of the disaffiliated, the alienated of the everyday and the commonplace...

...It is my guess that the very commitment our youth are seeking is to be found in these yet-to-be-reached, daring solutions to difficult, vital, uniquely human problems...

...We must forego the relative ease of documentation and chance the creative effort of solutions...

...he builds a relevant stereotype from case-histories, from the clinic— and from his own creative insights and drives...

...Reviewed by William Mathes The is tempted to dismiss The Un-.committed and to suggest that readers turn, instead, to Freud's Civilization and its Discontents and Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther...

...the society that would change would know itself...

...Social ills and perversions are, at their base, the result of personal and individual ills and perversions...