EGO AND INSTINCT

by William & Daniel Yankelovich Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 29, 1969

An ambitious work. The authors see ""a crisis of fundamentals"" in psychoanalytic theory and attempt to probe ""in intimate detail how the interplay of public and private tensions affects the individual."" To do so they present a critique of orthodox Freudianism, question the largely pessimistic emphasis of its founder on childhood sexuality as the determining factor in neuroses, applaud the later restoration of the ego as developed in the theories of Hartmann and Erikson, Consider the debate between Levi-Strauss and Sartre on nature and history, and propose a metapsychology which in bringing together instinct, culture, and individual freedom will lead us away from the narrow channels of clinical formulae and bridge the gap between humanist values and technological progress. If this summary sounds like a Times editorial depicting the problems of modern man in search of his soul, it is not, alas, untrue to the general tenor of the work, both in its dispirited, peculiarly disjointed style of exposition (Barrett is a philosophy professor, Yankelovich heads a social research firm), and in its ponderous, yet basically vague or comforting, often repetitive handling of the controversial issues involved. These issues, needless to say, are fashionable, and not unexpectedly, when the authors stray from the particular structures of alienation and enter the ""human condition,"" names like Buber and Lorenz, Kierkegaard and Camus keep popping up. There are incidental passages of great interest, but compared to a truly radical analysis like Life Against Death, it is dim indeed.

Pub Date: Jan. 29, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION