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Hendrik Ruitenbeek, editor of several anthologies dealing with psychoanalytic and sociological issues, here treats the problem of identity in the anxious mass society which is America. He traces, in psychoanalytic terms, what he conceives to be the recurrent crises of identity from medieval times to the present. He attributes the contemporary crisis largely to the breakdown of traditional family life, to heightened mechanization, increased urbanization, the decline of religion, the rise of mass culture, and above all to the conflicting demands and stresses of a rapidly changing society on the one hand, and its imperative on the other that individuals achieve a certain measure of adjustment merely in order to survive. Among the consequences, Ruitenbeek discusses homosexuality, adultery, high divorce rates, delinquency, crime, violence, side by side with apathy and conformity—political, social, and cultural—the inability or the unwillingness to make choices. He offers an existentialist approach to the problem of identity.
The difficulty the book faces is in its attempt to apply psychoanalytic concepts to sociological problems. What remains unanswered is why the anxieties of identity-crisis afflict some persons and not others. This is a “sick” society, to be sure, but not everybody in the society is sick. Here Ruitenbeek leans too heavily on secondary, often impressionistic sources. David Riesman and William H. Whyte, Jr. (not to speak of Paul Goodman and Jules Henry) may be among our better social critics, but they are not our only sociologists. Thus Ruitenbeek, like many others, declares that the American family has broken down. The fact is, however, that although it has been fragmented, the family survives: it is the most adaptable institution on earth. What is needed is a careful ananlysis of the ways in which the family adapts to new situations and demands.
Ruitenbeek's existentialist approach to identity leaves him open to the charge levelled by Herbert Marcuse aga