Customer Reviews

The Road to Malpsychia: Humanistic Psychology and Our Discontents

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book reflects on pop culture and the way it developed from the Progressive era of the late 1800's into the 60's. These poisonous theories embrace by humanistic psychology sought to undermine an Anglo-American culture that had made America the greatest and fairest nation in recorded human history. In that vein this book is like "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson in the way it contrasts the way self anointed guru's of the last half of the 20th century live their own lives versus the way they recommend other's live theirs. By citing pseudo-intellectuals like Abe Maslow, Tim Leary, Carl Rogers, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Richard Alpert, the author reveals what many of us thought all along, these people are frauds who have perpetrated their absurd theories of human behavior by masquerading them as science. Recall that thousands of intellectuals were gulled into believing that Marxism was scientifically determined and that its conclusions were inevitable. All of it turned out to be nonsense on stilts, but we should use it as a lesson where we never forget that we can never dismiss man's incredible capacity for self-deception.

Joyce Milton outlines the central tenets of her subjects by citing their disdain for the family, religion and private property. It is interesting that Hanna Arendt, in her book "the Origins of Totalitarianism", recounts these themes as ones so destructive to what has made western culture preeminent in human history. Did this all just happen by accident? No. Joshua Muravchik covers this ground well in his book "Heaven on Earth; the decline and fall of socialism".

Milton explains New-Age spirituality, radical feminism and self-esteem psychology, and its origination of the hot tub, group hug societies so in evidence in many parts of America (such as Marin County California where anti-Americanism is a virtue.) She cites an interesting example of the confusion these people might possibly feel if they take their beliefs to a logical conclusion by quoting their intellectual guru, Karl Marx, who says at the end of his life, "I am not a Marxist". Who knew?

Milton posits that humanistic psychology is arrogant because it believes that a theory of the universe can be deduced from a person's own experience; and that it is socially irresponsible because it advises us to keep our eyes on the weather vane of our own conflicting feelings rather than on the lives of those around us. No society can function effectively under such a regime.

This whole project of humanistic psyche is being shown as "the emperor who is wearing no clothes" and with that behind us the world might perhaps get back to the real science of why we're the way we are. This is an excellent book that should at least be read by every college freshman.

As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst I have been exposed to many theories about the human mind. I have had ample opportunity to see which of these theories when applied to a given situation is most likely to be of help. It has been startling to me how many elaborate models of the mind and corresponding therapies are not only obscure but disorganized, unverifiable, and unaccountable. Joyce Milton's fast paced book is clear and concise in examining the parents of Humanistic Psychology and its theories. (I had not known where all that silly stuff about encounter groups,
LSD, etc. came from but now I do.) In examining this movement Ms. Milton suggests origins for many of the cultural and political aberancies which have been so antithetical to the best of American institutions and values.

The Humanistic Psychology Movement seemed to assert that the highest form of human mental activity was the quest for the Ecstacy of Self-Congratulation. Ms. Milton wryly describes the resultant frenetic, self-deluded, and self-serving Flakiness which often passed for Advanced Deep Thought and which justified in the mind of the affected the wholesale overhaul of everything. The ability to discern Nonsense in our culture has been greatly enhanced by this book. Another great part of this lively book is the dark humor to be continuously found in the absurdities of popular Psycholgy. I highly recommend The Road to Malpsychia...

It's easy enough to find fault with this book: it's poorly organized, there is a lot of material in it (on Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, for instance) that does not belong, and there is a lot that belongs but is not in it (many of the lesser lights of the T-group movement, for example). It's very gossipy ways that will offend even those with a prurient interest. Much of what the author claims is not documented. And so forth. But with all that, I found it a valuable book. Its overall story is valuable and persuasive. The T-groups, the Encounter movement, EST, the Esalen crowd, they are all shown for what they are, and convincingly so. The "humanistic psychology" movement was ( is ?) deplorable and a bit of a menace, and Joyce Milton, with all the faults of this book, has shown how and why this is so.

This is a wonderful book. The author tells the story of the rise and fall of the "human potential" movement of the 60s and 70s through portraits of the men and women who made it happen--Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead who were unofficial mentors to psychologist Abraham Maslow, who was the true prophet of the movement to build "a religion of the self," and Carl Rogers of the encounter groups and Timothy Leary, who carried the quest for selfhood into the psychedelic stratosphere after leaving Harvard to spread the good (secular) word. All of these people are given incisive portraits by Milton, who uses them to tell the story of how we got all balled up in what Lasch later called "a culture of narcissism." Milton's book explains a lot. Reading it gives you a feeling that you're looking at American culture in a time lapse mirror over the last 30 years. A classic.

Humanistic psychology rolled over American culture like a vast tidal wave, leaving every school awash in classes on self-esteem, and every starlet appearing on Leno babbling about how this or that made her feel better about herself. What Milton points out in The Road to Malpsychia is the cost of our national fixation with narcissim. She also reveals a lot of ugly truths about the founders of our curent culture. Margaret Mead and Kinsey are proven to be charlatans and liars. Carl Rogers, pop guru the inner self, couldn't translate his intense love for himself into caring for another person. And best of all, Milton writes well. This book deserves more than 5 stars.

The author captures very well the ambience of the `50s, `60s and `70s. She describes the extraordinary influence on American culture of such humanists as Rogers, Maslow, and Leary, documenting the harmful consequences of the drug culture that their idealism fostered and the hypocrisy that lay behind such spin-offs as the encounter movement and student revolutions. For anyone who has lived through this era, this is a good book to read.
Too bad she chose such an abstruse title! Most of us never heard of the "eupsychia" it is intended to satirize.

How many of us had to go through "Diversity Training" or "DARE" or other groups and didn't feel quite right about it?

Everyone should read this book. It connects a lot of dots. The people discussed in this book may not be known by everyone, but everyone feels the effects of their ideas. Just knowing the origins of some of the revolutionary cultural influences in our society may be enough to somewhat innoculate you from the effects.

The humanistic psychology movement was indeed populated by intellectual mediocrities peddling dubious ideas at best. And it was subjected to withering critiques by a number of scholars in political science, history, philosophy, and psychology at the time of its ascendency in the 1960s and early 1970s. By far the best of these was Russell Jacoby's "Social Amnesia," first published around 1974 and subsequently translated into a dozen other languages and reprinted in this country more than once. But Joyce Milton cites neither Jacoby nor any of the other contemporaray critics of the movement. I think it's safe to assume that the reason for Milton's silence on these earlier works is partly a matter of self-promotion and partly a matter of political emnity. Most of the earlier works in this area--and certainly Jacoby's--were written from a left Freudian point of view by men and women who had been students of such figures as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, precisely the sorts of individuals Milton would like to lump together with the likes of Maslow, Rogers, et al.

Milton's book on the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was unfairly and rather stupidly attacked by many left-wing intellectuals--die-hards who can't seem to accept the fact that the American left had been (at least partly) wrong about the Rosenberg trial. The attack against Milton was based more on politics than on scholarly consideration and debate. In her latest book, Milton has returned the favor, producing a thinly disguised political screed masquerading as intellectual history. This book is simply the latest neocon effort to discredit the entire history of radical thought, from Hegel through the 1960s and on to the present, as a cauldron of metaphysical nonsense and irrationalism that inevitably results in moral relativism at best and, at worst, totalitarianism. Fans of Bill Bennett and Lynn Cheney will love this book. Anyone looking for an accurate and balanced history of the rise and fall of humanistic psychology should look elsewhere.

I read this book with an interest in the Human Potenial Movement. I had vague doubts about the movement and wanted to know more about its history and development. This was the book. It is not only a wonderful history of the culture of the 60's and 70's but an intellectual history of the 20th century. It also offers a wonderful biography of multiple personalities involved in its history and shows how the movement influenced present day concepts of psychology and the self. I have read this book three times over and have handed out copies to others who report reading it more than once.
I love this book. I wish I could rate this book 10 stars.

Who is Joyce Milton? We have no testimony as to her personage or her credentials. We know that she is something of a biographer, but does she have the background to merit her assessment herein as credible? Anyone might guess because finding information on this author is like doing research on a psychic presence in an abandon warehouse. Even Wikipedia, a notoriously hyperbolic source of quasi-information has no "knowledge" of this author.

The information in this book is scandalous, if not dubious. An entire field of expertise can be placed under scrutiny as fallacious if what Milton claims can be corroborated. Maslow, Rogers, and a whole host of pioneers to social-psychology work are portrayed as conniving narcissists with self-promoting agendas. According to Milton, these social "scientists" forsook good research for the sake of futhering the fame of their claims. If we are to believe this author, nearly all of what we may have assumed to be accurate premises behind counseling and education is nothing short of farcical.

Worth reading, Joyce Milton's work in "Malpsychia" may have more in common with the Lifestyles section of a local newpaper than with academic pursuits. There is a distinct tone of suspicion akin to a jaded journalist or even a gossipy neighbor. Still, the book may serve the purpose of reminding the reader that not everything is as it may seem, even in what we call science.