informal social structures that made it easy (and one of the reasons that the change was so short-lived was that this crucial influence of context and mutuality was insufficiently recognized). If the ideas in this book make sense to readers, they will not be put into practice by individuals one at a time. It will require efforts to provide mutual support and persistent input counter to entrenched ideas and pressures, and it will require as well work on a still broader front aimed at social and political reforms that can reinforce changes in values and grounding ideas.
In presenting my arguments, I have stressed the American context and provided examples mostly from American life and culture. That is not because I believe the situation I describe is uniquely American, but only because it is easiest and safest to focus on the familiar. I believe that the present analysis and the recommendations that flow from it are relevant as well to such societies as those of Western Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia, and hope that the book eventually finds a readership in those places. Recognizing the commonality of our situation will certainly increase the likelihood that benign changes can be achieved. I wish now to comment on a matter of style. There has been increasing concern in recent years that deeply ingrained linguistic habits may contribute to maintaining harmful stereotypes about men and women. The use of the male pronouns he, him, or his, for example, when one is referring to an abstract individual who could really be male or female (e.g., “when a surgeon faces his patient …”) may contribute to locking us into assumptions we need to transcend. I have struggled unsuccessfully to adapt my writing style to this concern. It will be readily apparent to the reader that my forte is not the simple declarative sentence. Something deep in my cortex has a fondness, or perhaps a need, for sentences with a fairly complex structure. When I try to change “he” and “his” to “he and she” and “his and her” what comes out sounds like German sentences with English words.
Other commonly offered solutions also have seemed to me to have an impact on how precisely and pleasingly the tool of language is employed. Use of “they” and “them” instead of “he” and “him” sometimes works, but often it lacks the immediacy that is required. Substituting “her” for “his” as the general form some of the time seemed to me at first the ideal way to reconcile aesthetic and moral concerns, but I found that when I encountered this form in reading others’ writing it was distracting. Locutions such as he/she or (s)he jumped off the page even more.
I am presenting my struggles with this issue in some detail because I do not want the linguistic choices I have made to be taken in any way as an endorsement of those who dismiss the seriousness of feminist concerns. Where the structure of particular sentences or the precise communicative intent permitted, I did use forms like “his or her” or shifted to the plural. In many places that did not seem possible without doing damage to what I wanted to get across. That is simply evidence of how deeply rooted in our aesthetic and linguistic sense are the very habits now being questioned. Let me ask the reader to be aware that there are numerous places in the text where words like “he” or “mankind” appear as the unfortunate legacy of centuries of bias and should be read as including that half of the human race that our language can seem to render invisible.
My work on this book was aided by a great many people (as well as a canine named Rascal, who seemed to know precisely when a visit from a creature of indomitable playfulness was precisely what was needed). At its inception, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities permitted me to spend a year at the Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Both time to reflect and stimulating people to argue with were provided aplenty in a heady interdisciplinary atmosphere. Will Gaylin and Dan Callahan, the President and Director of the Institute, were extremely gracious and supportive, and they, along with Ron Bayer, Ruth Macklin, and Marilyn Weltz, made very helpful comments on early drafts.
Because this book ventures into territory for which a clinical psychologist is not formally prepared, I found it necessary to conscript more than the usual number of friends and colleagues into the task of reading and commenting on the manuscript. The following all gave me valuable feedback on one or more chapters: Marsha Amstel, Arthur Arkin, Stephen Bendich, Marshall Berman, George Kaufer, Patricia Laurence, Stuart Laurence, Jane Lury, Ronald Murphy, Stanley Renshon, Oliver Rosengart, Lloyd Silverman, Robert Sollod, Deborah Tanzer, Michael Tanzer. My brother-in-law, Joel Finer, read every chapter with a commitment and energy that were especially appreciated.
Miles Orvell, in particular, helped shape this work during countless hours of conversation whose loops and byways no computer could track. To the degree that this book is “the real thing” it owes much to both the seriousness and the playfully bantering spirit of our dialogues.
I am grateful as well for the feedback offered by my students in seminars where portions of the manuscript were considered, as well as in more informal conversations. The PhD program in clinical psychology at City College is a remarkably open and intellectually fertile place. There are few clinical programs in the country where I could have received such consistent support for a project so disregarding of disciplinary boundaries, and none, I believe, where the commitment to critical thought at the very highest level is so ably carried through by students and faculty.
It is a pleasure to offer a very special note of thanks to Robert Coles, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Robert Heilbroner. The interest they showed in the book at a crucial stage was of inestimable value, and their comments were as perceptive as I had hoped. I wrote to them each as a stranger whose ideas I thought they might find congenial. The generosity of spirit they showed, in the face of extraordinarily busy schedules, is something I will long remember.
Very special thanks are also due Seymour Sarason, an inspiring teacher of mine at Yale, a friend to be counted on, and a mensch. Not the least of the many things I owe him is introducing me to Kitty Moore, my editor on this book but also a shrewd psychologist who managed my behavior with consummate skill and wrung from me a manuscript far better than the one that first caught her interest.
One final note of thanks: Once again my family has helped me to maintain the balance so many authors seem so proud of losing; they saved my evenings and weekends rather than my ruining theirs. We are all happier for it. But I cannot extend to them the ritual disclaimer I offer—with considerable truth, by the way—regarding all the others mentioned above: that what is meritorious in the book owes much to them and what is baneful owes to my stubbornness. The fact is, the heart and soul of this book comes from my experience with my wife, Ellen, and my children, Kenny and Karen. My view that feelings, relatedness, and human experience count more than the nonsense we are told today is “the bottom line” comes most of all from knowing and being with them; if that central idea is wrong, it is they who have led me astray!
ONE
Introduction
WE ARE USED TO THINKING OF economic concerns, of dollars and cents, as eminently practical and rational matters. In this book I will present a quite different picture. I will argue that our society’s preoccupation with goods and with material productivity is in large measure irrational and serves needs similar to those which motivate neurotic defense mechanisms in individuals. Despite the many benefits we have derived from our capacity to produce ever more and newer products, there are important ways in which our quest for abundance has become self-defeating.
A mood of pessimism and a sense of imminent decline have become increasingly evident. Sober warnings that the era of affluence is drawing to an end resonate with the daily experience of millions. It is not really affluence, however, that is threatened, but growth; we have confused the two for reasons that go to the heart of our national psychology.
Economic growth has been a foundation stone of our way of life. Whether viewing their current station in life as one of comfort and fulfillment or one of deprivation and discontent, Americans have viewed the future as rightfully providing them with more. Even those who doubted that the future would so provide had little doubt that
