Discussion of Charles Savage's Article, The Analysis of an “Outsider”

Reading Dr. Charles Savage's paper “The Analysis of an ‘Outsider‘” is, in the main, a disappointing experience, the more so because of the expectations engendered by others of his writings on the subject of culture and psychoanalysis. There are two principal shortcomings, both of which I feel merit attention, because they bear upon the general issue of the role of psychoanalysis in the elucidation of social problems.

First, Dr. Savage essentially eschews the relevance of social determinants of behavior in his presentation of the psychopathology of his patient. The introductory pages of his paper implicitly promise articulations between the intrapsychic dynamics of the patient and some very insightful perceptions of the social actualities of our day—Colin Wilson is quoted, as are Camus and Yeats and Dostoievski and Genet. But when we meet Dr. Savage's patient, we encounter only such mechanisms as were already familiar to the author of The Problem of Anxiety.

Perhaps the clearest illustration is Dr. Savage's subtle redefinition of the issue he purports to confront. On the very first page of his paper he quotes Colin Wilson's definition of the Outsider as “the man who has a perception of the unstable foundation that human life is built upon and feels that chaos and anarchy lie deeper than the order that most of his fellows believe in.” This is a rich statement—Wilson here has condensed the aspects of powerlessness, normlessness and meaninglessness which Seeman,1 Merton2 and other sociologists have painstakingly traced out as the component elements in the phenomenology of alienation.

But 14 pages later, when we have been given the outlines of the patient's history and of the course of the brief analysis, and we are

being readied for a look at the light the “analysis sheds on the Outsider and the drug