The word doesn't even appear in the index. Nor about Freud's shortcomings, his reductionism in particular. But Abe Maslow?In his desire to unmask the humanists and neoanalysts as hypocrites and philosophical dilettantes, Jacoby says next to nothing about their accomplishments-Karen Horney's modification of Freud's useless theory of women, Fromm's illumination of the flight from freedom, etc. Social amnesia: a critique of contemporary psychology 1996, Transaction Publishers in English.
The same with all these "we make our reality" New Agers whose mania is matched only by their denial. Social amnesia by Russell Jacoby, unknown edition. I can see using sarcasm and irony on, say, the get-rich-and-grow notions of a Deepak Chopra. Nevertheless, it's painful to see such pummelings inflicted on these men. (Compare this with Martin-Baro's insight that plenty of psychological pain is actually psychosocial rather than individual.)Fromm, Maslow, and Rogers get a particularly bad beating, and perhaps their counter-phobic and regressive cheeriness deserves it. By focusing on finding "meaning" and a "new attitude" in the face of societally inflicted adversity, psychologists do their part in making that adversity seem like business as usual rather than a form of injustice that ought to be protested. Jacoby presents convincing examples of how thoroughly the psychologies he discusses sell themselves out to the economic and political machinery of civilization-while regarding themselves as tools of "authenticity," "awakening," "sensitivity," and "self-realization."One example: by insisting on these nice goals in the face of, say, corporate takeovers, the implication is that the pain people feel is entirely subjective. The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Social amnesia: A critique of contemporary psychology. traditional Marxism lacked a psychological dimension to explain the dominance of the capitalist. S: Journal of the Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique, 8, 1-5. Whether the mood is justified is another matter. Social Amnesia: a Critique of Contemporary. and Jacoby holds none of them back when it comes to disembowling humanistic psychology, especially its neo- and post-Freudian fronts with their annoying Allportian optimism and their "cult of subjectivity." There are books that seem to have been written in one long bad mood, and this is one of them.