Damaged Life: The Crisis of the Modern Psyche (Part 1)

*See reference at bottom of post.

My initial impression of Tod Sloan’s Damaged Life is that in the first half of the book he presents a very detailed picture of the all the different facets that feed into what it means to say “modern” and refer to “modernization.”  I did not find that, in this portion of the book, there were too many of Sloan’s own arguments and opinions, but mostly commentary on previous research and writings within the field.  What I think I liked most about this particular portion of the book is that Sloan draws from a variety of fields that are all part of the topics he’s writing about (e.g.:  psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy).

In the early stages of the book (p.6-7) Sloan discusses a series of seemingly unrelated persons and their rather “normal” circumstances from various locations around the globe.  Sloan points out that they are only “seemingly” unrelated.  Yet he writes (p.7) that all of the people in the given examples are struggling through a process of self-creation and self-definition.  I think that Sloan is spot on with this.  The one thing I’ve found that all people, regardless of time or place, age, race, or gender have in common is that they suffer.  Everybody is struggling with something.  Call it small, call it big, whatever “it” is, all people have something that troubles and tries them.  Further, Sloan continues (p.9) with a list of responses people gave to the question, “What do you see as the main problem of modern life?”  The top five responses were:  the pace of change, the decline of certainty and belief, unfulfilled expectations, the decay of morality, and meaninglessness.  Seeing these entries gave me an strange jolly feeling because much of my own research (especially in recent semesters) has localized itself around these kind of issues (i.e.:  post-modern and existential trauma).

“The solution commonly proposed is, again, a return to traditional morality, often to a set of moral values associated with a given creed” (p.13).  I don’t recall Sloan’s specific response, but my own interpretation is that it is exceedingly pretentious and superfluous.  I have heard this type of argument many times, particularly from more “conservative-minded” persons of my parent’s generation and older.  However, there is a problem.  Resetting our moral development (maldevelopment) to the proverbial zero only implies that the same numerical course of action(s) will take place and the resulting sum incurred again.  Bluntly put, it didn’t work the first time, why would it now?  Clearly, I believe Sloan alluded to this as well, those moral schemas and socio-paradigms left its participants lacking and ceased to fulfill the needs (spiritual, psychological, or metaphysical).

Sloan also discusses neo-colonization (p.21) which I didn’t take a particular interest in but I did find it to be a quite humorous political pundit.  Indeed it would appear that the socialization of other countries of the world by “modern” societies has been masked with a clever guise of “affording other the same liberties, freedoms, and opportunities.”  Call it what you will.  It’s colonizing.

“In the case of most North American researchers of the period, however, the social projects of modernization - capitalism, democratization, individualism, secularization, and so on - were so intrinsic to the constitution of their research questions and methods, not to mention their personal belief systems, that what now appears as ideologically-motivated work in the service of capitalist modernization was able to pass as value-free, objective social science” (p.30).  In many ways this summarizes the above paragraph, but it also points to a larger issue that persists across time.  Researchers and social service workers alike must be mindful of their own personal biases, preferences, and ideologies.  All too often, I find this in myself as well, researchers set out to prove something that is “near and dear to their heart” or to disprove something that they find abrasive to their worldview.  Nothing is truly ever “fair and balanced” or objective.  It is, if nothing else, always filtered through a socio-personally provoked perspective.

“The objectified relationships of capitalist society, money becomes the purpose of work” (p.43).  In this area of the book Sloan is referencing Habermas and the idea that the “desirability” of goods is no longer equated with “usefulness” but monetary value.  I believe DeLuze and Guattari hammered this point in Anti-Oedipus as well; stating that value and worth have become synonymous with (explicitly) monetary value.  Sloan and Habermas take this from the realm of material goods to persons and social systems.  I also believe it was in Tim Ferriss’s The Four Hour Work Week where the Ferriss stated that people do not want the money that rich people have, they want to do the things that rich people do.  It just so happens that money is the (assumed) currency of achieving doing those things.  The take-home point though is that many of the “main problems in your life” referenced above come from this assumption.  The purpose of work has become solely to earn money, rather than giving and creating something you want to contribute to the world, or hell, to yourself.

“Nevertheless, a certain cleavage between system and lifeworld seems to have occurred” (p.51).  The systems of our American culture today are often referenced in terms of end-users and developers.  You have the CEOs and the janitors.  The issue here is not the distance between these spectrum ends, but the resistance that is encounter along the line while transferring “wealth”, information, services, etc…  There is “cleavage” between many of the “end-users” of products and the corporate executives handing down the commands to developers who produce them.  Occam’s Razor seems important here, or rather the inverse.  More parts yield more complications, more complications increase the probability of system breakage.  However, nothing about people or their social systems is ever simple, I doubt it has ever been so.  But, they are certainly not going to get any less complicated (I don’t know that they should either).  What would be an appropriate response or countermeasure?  Perhaps the delicate smoothing of the interfaces of our social transactions.

Reference:

Sloan, T. (1996).  Damaged life: The crisis of the modern psyche.  New York, New York.  Routledge.  p.1-66.

The Social Construction of Reality (Part 2)

In general I thought that this second half of Berger’s book flowed much more smoothly in its arguments.  Interestingly enough I found that I was not as clear cut about a “likes” and “dislikes” section.  However, what I did find is that I began strongly agreeing with the base principles of Berger’s arguments but strongly disagreeing with concluding developments.

Firstly, Berger writes; “What remains sociologically essential is the recognition that all symbolic universes and all legitimations are human products; their existence has its base in the lives of concrete individuals, and has no empirical status apart from these lives” (p.128).  This statement runs a deep truth with me, particularly when taken into the context of mental health.  What you would call in your universe or “world” and consider legitimate may result in considering a patient’s legitimizations to be absurd.  However, the fact of the matter is that they are symbolically and subjectively real to them and all the more to the point, have their roots set deeply into the individual themselves.

“What is most important for our considerations here is the fact that the individual not only takes on the roles and attitudes of others, but in the same process takes on their world” (p.132).  I find this passage to resonate on a personal note with myself.  I often have the revelation that I am acting out another person’s mannerisms.  However, these are usually not just some random acquaintance.  I can think of two (in my opinion equally likely) explanations.  The first (would fit Berger’s liking) is that these people that have “rubbed off” on me are people that I have spent a great deal of time with and become socialized to the “culture” constructed between the group of people interacting with each other.  The second is much more deeply seeded.  I think that the first case may have some resonance in the short term while the members of that sub-group are still engaged with each other.  However, I think that more longer lasting effects can be found by stating that these socialized mannerisms have been imparted to the individual by other persons whom the individual found to be admirable in some way or another.  In short, the subconscious is paying a homage to the persons that the entity of the self has dubbed “influential” (most likely framed in the positive).

Moving in a linear fashion through the book, I also thought it was interesting that Berger makes mention of the ways in which different cultures view children.  He mentions (p.136) that Western cultures often view children as “sweet” and “innocent” whereas some other cultures view them as “by nature sinful and unclean.”  I have no opinion one way or another other than being able to confirm (from my viewpoint) the Western stance Berger presents.  However, I did think it was worth some reflection and investigation.

Berger writes (p.141) that primary socialization cannot take place without an emotionally charged identification.  On the other hand, secondary socialization does not require this.  Berger uses the example that one is “required” to love one’s mother but not his teacher.  Perhaps it is due to the time in which the book was written, but I certainly don’t think that this is an adequate example.  One is not “required” (required by whom?)  to “love” anyone… in fact, that seemingly defeats the entire purpose of a “gift” of love.  At any rate, given the examples at hand I would have to disagree with Berger and say that his “primary” and “secondary” socializations may need to be reframed as “positive” and “negative” socializations; both influential societal auras that contribute to the development of a person’s “social-self.”

Berger states that the reality of our childhood is always regarded by the psyche as “home” (p.143) and that all other, later, realities are, by comparison, “artificial.”  I find this to be hauntingly true.  As Sartre put it, introspection is always in retrospect.  Any self analysis of the “present” is always filtered through the lens of the past.  We can’t help but compare our present situation to the days of old, particularly if we are fond of our former state/place.  Berger later (p.160) discusses that what is required is a “radical reinterpretation of the meaning of these past events or persons in one’s biography.”  I love stories, anthologies, and am a well known fan of postmodern-narrative therapy/psychology.  So this rubbed a good vein with me.  True enough, we may not be able to change the aforementioned “lens” but we can change where our focus lies, or add additional “lenses”, or recall that there are many pages left to be written in the metaphorical “biography.”

When Berger discusses “maximal success in socialization” (p.164) he seems to be advocating for his descriptions of “simple division of labor” and “minimal distribution of knowledge.”  However, I must disagree.  There is a reason Mayberry (The Andy Griffith Show) is a fictional place, and anyone not living under a rock for the last sixty years knows how socialism and communism have panned out on live scales.  Yet, Berger states that men have committed treason to the self once they've been socialized (p.170).  I agree with this part, at least when the socialization process becomes such that “the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.”  Such a proposition insists that there is nothing singularly significant about the individual and that it’s only purpose lies in being a function of the “whole.”

Nearing the conclusion of the book Berger writes; “Put simply, psychology always presupposes cosmology” (p.175).  I feel as though I can’t quite bring myself to get on board with this assumption.  Certainly, in some regards it is quite apparent.  Extreme behaviorists and cognitivists may apply here with a reduction to neurology and nature, but I don’t think its quite the case of other models of psychology.  Even more philosophical psychologies that are more concern themselves more with space, time, and freedom can’t all be cap-stoned with the causality aspect of cosmology.  Particularly if a psychologist were to truly emphasize and embody a “here and now” or “future oriented” mindset all the rules of cosmology are little more than filler in an prologue.

Lastly, there are Berger’s concluding statements.  “Man is biologically predestined to construct and to inhabit a world with others.  This world becomes for him the dominant and definitive reality.  Its limits are set by nature, but once constructed, this world acts back upon nature.  In the dialectic between nature and the socially constructed world the human organism itself is transformed.  In this same dialectic man produces reality and thereby produces himself” (p.183).  The first part is crudely true.  We are born, other people are born, we and other people inhabit the physical planet Earth.  Berger gets a bit off track in the next statement because everything in the preceding chapters implies that hermeneutics are more quintessential than sociology and that “that world” “becomes reality” in very different ways.  Indeed, man acts back against the world (Camus:  There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn) and a transformation takes place discursive (rather than dialectic) living of life.  Lastly, man does not “produce” himself by means of producing his reality, only manifests the embodiment of him(her)self.  My ever existential side feels the need to advocate that existence precedes essence.

Reference:

Berger, P., Luckmann, T. (1966).  The social construction of reality: A treatise in the

sociology of knowledge.  New York, New York.  Anchor Books. p.116-183.