Customer Reviews

Haven in a Heartless World

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Compelling social commentary, and brilliantly written, perhaps not surprising since Lasch was not a social scientist, but rather a professor of English Literature, at Columbia if I recall right, but in any case, at one of the Ivy League colleges. Lasch became interested in social trends, and ended up writing this fine book on the decline and destruction of the family in American life. Although the book is 20 years old at this point, Lasch's ideas are if anything more relevant now than they were back in the 70's.

When people wonder why people turn in to who they are and form the society in wth which we live this book will help clarify things for them. If one wants a deep look at society's ills and its being formed by families, Christopher Lasch presents a very good insight, that for reasons of accuracy may not make everyone happy.

In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch mentions the importance of Haven in a Heartless World as a prelude document. Among other things, Lasch attributes the culture of narcissism to an attempt by various social agencies, academics, health professionals and bureaucrats to create space for themselves by proposing ways of solving problems that are ultimately unsolvable. We begin our lives with a sense of loss, the world being a colder and more difficult place than the warmth and freedom from responsibility afforded by the womb. Enter the professional nurturers who will build careers for themselves by promising to remedy that sense of loss through their various ministrations (which, once applied, prove to be more problematic than the ills they have purported to cure).

Haven in a Heartless World looks at the displacement of family responsibility by such individuals. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Lasch works his way forward principally through the study of sociological literature, most of which he finds radically wanting. While I agree with Lasch's critics that he spends less time articulating his own advice and principles than one might wish, his command of the literature at his disposal is very, very impressive. Haven in a Heartless World does not utilize the broad cultural materials of The Culture of Narcissism but it is an important step on the way to Lasch's major book.

While not inaccessible to general readers, Haven in a Heartless World will be of particular interest to sociologists and other social scientists. It remains relevant today, even though it appeared over three decades ago.

I really disliked this book for several reasons. Lasch isn't a clear writer; he rarely makes his own opinions or arguments apparent. Despite the book's polemical title, it mostly recounts intellectual history, namely the evolution of the concept "family" in the social sciences from the late 19th century. Lasch's style shifts abruptly from dryly summarizing and analyzing the positions of those he likes (Waller, Parsons to a degree, anyone remotely Freudian) to offhandedly dismissing those he doesn't (most radicals and feminists). He wastes a lot of space on marginal figures and keeps the really important ones (Marx, Freud) in the background as a sort of assumed ground for his analysis. This might be the most irritating aspect of the book: he's heavily invested in Freudian psychology and treats it as gospel, at times making grossly unfounded claims based upon Freud's speculations. The book is uneven too: these Freudian ideas appear mostly in the final chapters, while the book begins in a very Marxist frame of reference. Oddly, Lasch seems to use all these theories for rather conservative ends. And Lasch's own smarmy preface shows that other readers have had the same reactions that I do.

The main point of the book seems to be that the modern "haven" form of the family needs to be preserved against the "progressive" forces of modern society, especially the medical and psychiatric and other professions (i.e., Jacques Donzelot's "the social") that seek to replace it. Lasch seems to think that the haven family-by combining love with authoritarian discipline-is perhaps the only thing that can create strong, integrated, individual personalities. The permissive, friendly family and the intervention of "the social" professions only creates weaklings, nihilists, and totalitarian personalities. Lasch's support for this conclusion is unconvincing: he basically says that without the combination of love and discipline in the same unit (a mother and a father), the child will eventually come to see authorities as simultaneously personable and distantly oppressive. The result is the antisocial or "narcissistic" personality, premised on the avoidance of conflict and "liberation" from emotional entanglements. This personality also demonstrates a reliance on institutional forms of authority (e.g., mass media) combined with a conspiratorial suspicion of authority (due to lack of any real disciplinary figure-a strong father in other words). This seems like a conservative twist on Susman's character/personality distinction, Riesman's self/other-directed personalities, and the Frankfurt School's analyses of totalitarianism.

If the "haven" form of the family arose-ironically, as Lasch notes-out of modern society and capitalist culture, as a counterbalance to competition and so on, then how can it ever hope to be anything but a palliative measure? If work was ever to be "reorganized" along more humane lines (xvii), as he calls for in crypto-Marxist fashion, then why would the family even be necessary? Assuming that the intervention of the social actually is undermining privacy, why is privacy a good thing? Why try to prop up the haven rather than make the world less heartless? I think Lasch is a neo-liberal; he assumes that experts can't be controlled by society, he expects that any collective will be totalitarian and oppressive, and he defends privacy (the essence of private property) without question. He's also quite sexist, presupposing that only a father's authority can create a well-adjusted child.

If you're interested in family studies, I'd recommend the following books instead:
- Barrett & McIntosh. The Anti-Social Family.
- Coontz. The Way We Never Were.
- Foucault. History of Sexuality, Vol 1.
- Coontz. Social Origins of Private Life.
- Zaretsky. Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life.