CONFESSIONS OF A CONFORMIST

An analysis of noncomformism is based on its effect in many areas -- education, business, popular culture, advertising, science, religion, and others -- and results in a spirited defense of conformism with its ""much healthier possibilities"". Finding that nonconformists are restricted by ""conspicuous rejection"", that it is conformism that permits the fulfilling of nonconformist demands, that the interrelation between the two creates a paradox, Mr. Freedman explores the manifestations of the beatniks, of ""car fever"", of town and country living; he questions whether college teachers teach, whether differences should be wiped out, whether contemporary nonconformism is genuinely meaningful, and if, instead, it is not the worst type of conformism --blind acceptance. An argument with much able rebuttal, this should be of controversial interest in more than one circle.