Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology from Adler to Laing

"Russell Jacoby defines social amnesia as society's repression of remembrance - society's own past. In this book, Jacoby excavates the critical and historical concepts that have fallen prey to the dynamic of a society that strips them both of their historical and critical content. Social Amnesia is an effort to remember what is perpetually lost under the pressure of society. It is simultaneously a critique of present practices and theories in psychology. Jacoby's new self-evaluation has the same sharp edge as the book itself, offering special insights into the evolution of psychological theory during the past two decades."--BOOK JACKET. "In his probing, self-critical new introduction, Jacoby maintains that any serious appraisal of psychology or sociology, or any discipline, must seek to separate the political from the theoretical. He discusses how in the years since Social Amnesia was first published society has oscillated from extreme subjectivism to extreme objectivism, which feed off each other and constitute two forms of social amnesia: a forgetting of the past and a pseudo-historical consciousness. Social Amnesia contains a forceful argument for "thinking against the grain - an endeavor that remains as urgent as ever." It is an important work for sociologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts."--BOOK JACKET

Russell Jacoby defines social amnesia as society's repression of remembrance-society's own past. In this book, Jacoby excavates the critical and historical concepts that have fallen prey to the dynamic of a society that strips them both of their historical and critical content. Social Amnesia is an effort to remember what is perpetually lost under the pressure of society. It is simultaneously a critique of present practices and theories in psychology. Jacoby's new self-evaluation has the same sharp edge as the book itself, offering special insights into the evolution of psychological theory during the past two decades.

In his probing, self-critical new introduction, Jacoby maintains that any serious appraisal of psychology or sociology, or any discipline, must seek to separate the political from the theoretical. He discusses how in the years since Social Amnesia was first published society has oscillated from extreme subjectivism to extreme objectivism, which feed off each other and constitute two forms of social amnesia: a forgetting of the past and a pseudo-historical consciousness. Social Amnesia contains a forceful argument for thinking against the grain-an endeavor that remains as urgent as ever. It is an important work for sociologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts.

Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology from Adler to Laing......Page 1 Introduction to the Transaction Edition......Page 2 Introduction......Page 9 Preface......Page 18 I - Social Amnesia and the New Ideologues......Page 25 II - Revisionism: The Repression of a Theory......Page 43 III - Conformist Psychology......Page 70 IV - Negative Psychoanalysis and Marxism......Page 97 V - The Politics of Subjectivity......Page 125 VI - Theory and Therapy I: Freud......Page 143 VII - Theory and Therapy II: Laing and Cooper......Page 155