Discussion of Joseph C. Solomon's Article, The Incredible Sixties: Psychodynamics of Youth

Dr. Solomon's paper shows, I think, how hard it is to generalize successfully about large populations on the basis of limited clinical evidence. Analyzing small numbers of disturbed individuals may provide insights into deviant behavior, but it is no substitute for the larger empirical studies that produce sociological and psychological profiles of significant groups. There is already a huge literature, much of it by social scientists, on youth in the 1960's. A bibliographic survey (Altbach) published as long ago as 1968 includes 44 printed pages of citations on student politics alone. Although I have not read most of these, and find it difficult even to summarize those I have, there is some agreement among social scientists that there were at least two generations of student activists in the 1960's, neither of which resembled Dr. Solomon's two case studies. The first generation, those active before 1968, consisted of upper-middle-class children with professional fathers, who were superior students majoring in the social sciences and humanities. Most of their families were liberal or radical, and supported their children's militancy. There was no generation gap. The second generation, a larger group active in the late sixties, had backgrounds more representative of the middle class as a whole, but they also tended to be superior students majoring in the humanities and social sciences. Their parents were less likely to approve of their political activities. Few experts seem to agree with Dr. Solomon that pathognomonic features were an important part of college life in the 1960's.

A further problem in this paper is that Dr. Solomon never really makes clear who his subjects are. He lumps together student activists, hippies, street people, and others, but the

evidence suggests that different elements in the youth culture had different origins and attributes. Hippies do seem to have been social misfits, passive, disturbed, unable to function effectively in normal envir