The Effect of Reality Perception on Psychic Structure: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Problem of the “Generation Gap”

A recording by the Jefferson Airplane (Kantner, 1969), a rock-and-roll group, puts forth the following challenge:

Who is this self-declared enemy, this “We” with whom the singers identify themselves? They don't leave any doubt about it: the “We” are the young—and they proudly announce that they are all outlaws in the eyes of America. Without hesitation, they declare to all those who are not young that they are themselves “obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent.” They also claim that whatever they are and whatever they do (“We steal cheat lie forge—hide and deal”) they must be and must do “in order to survive.” One may question whether the survival values—or antivalues from a traditional viewpoint—that these young have adopted do not imply a far more radical target than just “private property” in the