You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Hardly a day passes in our era without adding proof that the chilling psychopathologies which make up the everyday life of Everyman have profound public—as well as private—sources and consequences. Freud never ignored this fact, but he also never truly placed it at the center of his argument, not even in his masterly Civilization and Its Discontents, written in 1930 at the climax of his career.
Dr. Rosen's chapters hold up to us the revealing mirrors of documentary social history and the comparative sociology of cultural process. The new angles of vision thus made available offer us a startling sense of the odd courses we have run and the invaluable problems we may find ourselves confronting tomorrow. Above all, Dr. Rosen allows us to see how profoundly our personal destinies and the fortunes of our central cultural institutions have continued to be enveloped in our collective psychopathologies, which have their roots and are expressed in our social arrangements and cultural definitions.
Dr. Rosen's work, therefore, constitutes one of the most exciting sequels to Freud's masterwork that we have had since Freud's death. Dr. Rosen is no match for Freud as poet, philosopher and interpreter of the spiritual destinies of civilization. Yet, there is a little twist in his focus which requires us to admit that Dr. Rosen helps us to advance