Customer Reviews

Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology

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Jacoby's critique of Neofreudian psychology is still the best there is. With the kind of relentless critical thinking so characteristic of the Frankfurt school, in which Jacoby is deeply schooled, this book is at once penetrating and witty on almost every page. I'm rather shocked by the fact that he's almost always right. An astonishingly original book.

...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. Whether the mood is justified is another matter. In this case, it would seem so. 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. 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. (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. Nevertheless, it's painful to see such pummelings inflicted on these men. I can see using sarcasm and irony on, say, the get-rich-and-grow notions of a Deepak Chopra. Salesmen like him are asking for it. The same with all these "we make our reality" New Agers whose mania is matched only by their denial. 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. Nor about Freud's shortcomings, his reductionism in particular. The word doesn't even appear in the index. Cutting criticism serves a useful purpose, but this verges on throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Even so, Jacoby's concise, forcible, organized prose is a pleasure to read, even when one flinches at a particularly scathing observation.

This is one of the most insightful works on Psychology that I've ever read. His 'critique' is insightful but I found the book more edifying when he expounds on the relation between subjectivity and objectivism concomitant with his Marxian analysis on reification and the 'false' societal interactions as a corollary. I recommend Joel Korvel's work 'A Complete Guide to Therapy - From Behavior Modification to Psychoanalysis' as well.