Topic 18- Therapeutic Culture: the Twentieth century

• A History of Character Ideals (Rieff)

  Political Man

  When: Ancient Greece and Rome

  Identity in life in the polis
• A History of Character Ideals

  Religious Man

  When: Middle Ages

  Identity in religious community ( the Church )
• A History of Character Ideals

  Economic Man

  When: 18th to early 20th centuries

  Identity in one's economic activity

  Homo economicus
• A History of Character Ideals

  Psychological Man

  • 20th to 21st centuries
  • Identity in inward quest for psychological happiness
• Freud's idea of the psyche

  • Id - instincts and impulses
  • Ego - reasoning faculty
  • Super-ego - internalized cultural norms
• Psychological man and society - a state of tension

  • Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930)
  • Super-ego frustrates self with its demands
  • Self and society out of harmony
• Authority Before Psychological Man

  Old Authorities:

  • Parents
  • Teachers
  • Ministers
  • Political figures

  Goals:

  • Formation
  • Social conformity
  • Harmonization of personal and communal needs
  • Based on objective norms
• Psychological man and the theapists

  New Therapists

  • Psychologists/psychiatrists
  • Counselors
  • Celebrities
  • Old authorities converted

  Goals

  • Elaboration of unique personal identity (improvement)
  • Self-expression
  • Removal of objective norms
• Psychological man and education

  • Education not for formation, but for self-expression
  • School - a forum for self-expression
  • "Safe-space" - student beliefs not to be challenges