Psychopathy and Consumerism:

Two Illnesses that Need and Feed Each

Other
(An Interview with Dr. E.T. Barker)

.
May 12th, 1995 - Welcome to the University of Toronto,
Telemedicine Canada. I am Brian Jones. I am speaking to you from
Kingston Psychiatric Hospital, Kingston, Ontario, where I am
Director of the Forensic Service. Telemedicine system is a two-way
sort of thing. We are going to have a principal speaker, but I would
encourage everyone to listen and ask questions and raise issues
later on...
The topic today is Psychopathy and Consumerism: Two
Illnesses that Need and Feed Each Other, and I am certain
you are going to find Dr Barker an interesting one. With us from
his office in Midland today is Dr.Elliott Barker. Dr. Barker is a
forensic psychiatrist currently in private practice, and the principal
organizer and an active advocate of the Canadian Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Dr Barker has also had a lengthy and distinguished career in the
assessment and treatment of mentally disordered offenders,much
of this as their attending psychiatrist at the maximum security
Oak Ridge Division of the Mental Health Centre, Penetanguishene,
Ontario.
Although considerable of Dr Barker's pioneering work has been
with assessment and treatment of psychopathy, he now invests
the bulk of his energy into prevention. This is reflected in his
extensive work with the Society, and also as his role of Editor of
the Journal, EMPATHIC PARENTING. In addition, he has been invited
to speak at many international conferences as an expert on
childhood experiences in relation to antisocial behaviour.

I am pleased to have Dr Barker on the line today, and to introduce

him to you.
During the talk a number of slides were shown at each site, beginning with
a photo of the speaker. Each participant had received a copy of the
articles listed in the table of contents.For this website the transcript has
been edited for clarity and additional graphics and material added to
further illustrate the issues discussed.

Hi Brian.Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to he

able to speak about a topic that I feel strongly
about. I am always apologizing to others in this field
for not being a researcher. I think of myself as a
convicted promoter of what is already known about
the emotional needs of young children. I have had a lot of
practical experience with psychopaths in my work at Ontario's
Maximum Security Mental Hospital (Oak Ridge) and in my court
work and private practice. I don't claim to know what psychopathy
is or what causes it, but I am concerned about the topic which I
chose to talk about today. This is an area that ought to be of
enormous concern to all of us. It affects all of us and we tend not
to think about it. We tend to think about the sexual psychopaths
who do some dramatic killings and we follow it in the court and
the population is aroused by that.
The comment about psychopathy that means the most to me was
in DSM III, and III-R. It said, in effect, that partial psychopaths
make good politicians and businessmen.
I was really tickled a number of years ago when I heard Dr. Hare,
one of Canada 's foremost experts on psychopathy, talking at a
conference. He made a kind of aside saying that where he'd really
like to try and do evaluations and ratings of psychopathy was on
the Vancouver Stock Exchange. I 'm not sure whether he was wary
of whether there were reporters present or not, but that kind of
thinking really preoccupies me.
It's not the Bernardos or the Hillside Stranglers, -- the dramatic
psychopathic killers -- I think it's the other end of the spectrum of
psychopathy -- the partial psychopaths we ought to be really
worried about: because there are so many more of them, because
they "fit in" to so many parts of our sick society, and they create
havoc directly and indirectly for so many, many, many people.

Psychopathy and Consumerism

Two Illnesses That Need And Feed Each
Other

A psychopath or partial psychopath has an

impaired capacity to form intimate, trusting
mutually satisfying relationships with other
human beings as a result of impaired attachment
in the earliest years. Unable to find pleasure and
satisfaction from others, the psychopath or partial
psychopath must turn to things -- goods and
services, toys and travel -- to fill the emptiness
within.

The emptiness of the hollow man must be filled,

and consumerism has learned how.

It is said that a culture creates the kind of people

it needs. Maybe we're into frequent separations
and changing, shared, paid caregivers in the first
three years of the lives of our children so they will
grow up with an insatiable need to shop till they
drop.

If you're unable to obtain satisfaction from

BEING, which is based on love and the pleasure

of sharing, then the HAVING MODE, as Eric
Fromm put it, is your only choice. "The HAVING
MODE, concentrates on material possession,
acquisitiveness, power, and aggression and is the
basis of such universal evils as greed, envy, and
violence..."

1. PSYCHOPATHY
Psychopathy: What is it?
Introduction: An Interview with Dr.
The
Mask
of
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

Barker
Sanity

Partial Psychopathy
Incomplete Manifestations of the Disorder
The
Partial
Psychopath
If We Could Measure this Two Part Empathy

Psychopathy: What Causes It?

The
Organic
Red
Herring
How to Succeed in the Business of Creating
Psychopaths
How and Why Changing Caregivers Damage a
Young Child
Measuring
Attachment
The
Diseases
of
Non-Attachment
Empathic
Care:
A
Definition
of
"Care"
The
Infant's
Need
for
Empathic
Care
Deprivation of Empathic Care During Infancy

Psychopathy: What's Wrong With It?

Is There a Critical Mass for Psychopathy?
The Psychopath's Favourite Playground

2. CONSUMERISM
Consumerism: What Is It?
Nonrational Influences

Consumerism: What's Wrong With It?

The
Way
Out
of
Mimicking
Happiness
Nirvana
and
Vance
Packard
Consumerism, Materialism and Cruelty to
Children
To
Have
or
to
Be?
Big Brother Couldn't Foresee the Big C -Consumerism
You
Can
Never
Get
Enough
...
The
Poverty
of
a
Rich
Society
Is This a Culture We Can Afford to be Complacent
About

3. CHILDCARE
The Link Between Consumerism and Psychopathy
The
Brave
New
World
of
Childcare

Consumerism, Arbitrary Male Dominance and

Daycare

4. IS DAYCARE REALLY A NECESSITY?

Patriarchy
The
Real
Women's Liberation and Cruelty
Sexism:
A
Dangerous
Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye

Culprits
to Children
Delusion

Radical Feminism
The Feminine Utopia

Accepting the Existing Reality

The
Real
Do
Mass Media

Quislings
Not

in

America
Ask

The Socializing Mode of Childrearing

From Socializing to Helping Mode of Childrearing
The
Evolution
of
Child-Rearing
Modes
Guidance: A Plea for Abandonment

Social Science as Propoganda

Social
Over-reliance on Social Science
The
Role
of
A Dangerous Possibility

Science
for Proof
Research

Our Defense Mechanisms

Our
Defense
Mechanisms
The
Problem
of
Professional
Anxiety
John: A Distressing Film About Separation

5. WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Substituting Conserver Values for Consumer
Values
The Tendency to Confuse Difference with Equality
A
Return
to
the
Roots
of
Feminism
The
Challenge
Before
Us

A
Sense
The Politics of Meaning

of

Communion

End of Introductory Interview with Dr. Barker

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

"The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric
Association -- is the so called bible of psychiatry, at least in North America.
It gives the official diagnostic criteria of all mental illness. The latest
revision -- DSM-IV -- was published in 1994."
"Psychopathy has been called a lot of things since the condition was first
described by Pinel in 1806 and termed "mania sans delire." Pritchard
coined the term "moral imbecility" in 1835. For a time there was an
attempt to remove the moral stigma of the term psychopathy with the
term sociopath. The current term is APD -- Antisocial Personality Disorder."

301.7 Antisocial Personality Disorder

Diagnostic Features
The essential feature of Antisocial Personality Disorder is a pervasive
pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in
childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.
This pattern has also been referred to as psychopathy, sociopathy, or
dyssocial personality disorder. Because deceit and manipulation are
central features of Antisocial Personality Disorder, it may be especially
helpful to integrate information acquired from systematic clinical
assessment with information collected from collateral sources.
For this diagnosis to be given, the individual must be at least age 18 years
and must have had a history of some symptoms of Conduct Disorder
before age 15 years. Conduct Disorder involves a repetitive and persistent
pattern of behaviour in which the basic rights of others or major ageappropriate societal norms or rules are violated. The specific behaviours
characteristic of Conduct Disorder fall into one of four categories:
aggression to people and animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness or
theft, or serious violation of rules.
The pattern of antisocial behaviour continues into adulthood. Individuals
with Antisocial Personality Disorder fail to conform to social norms with

respect to lawful behaviour. They may repeatedly perform acts that are
grounds for arrest (whether they are arrested or not), such as destroying
property, harassing others, stealing, or pursuing illegal occupations.
Persons with this disorder disregard the wishes, rights, or feelings of
others. They are frequently deceitful and manipulative in order to gain
personal profit or pleasure,(e.g., to obtain money, sex, or power). They
may repeatedly lie, use an alias, con others, or malinger. A pattern of
impulsivity may be manifested by a failure to plan ahead. Decisions are
made on the spur of the moment, without forethought, and without
consideration for the consequences to self or others; this may lead to
sudden changes of jobs, residences, or relationships. Individuals with
Antisocial Personality Disorder tend to be irritable and aggressive and may
repeatedly get into physical fights or commit acts of physical assault
(including spouse beating or child beating). Aggressive acts that are
required to defend oneself or someone else are not considered to be
evidence for this item. These individuals also display a reckless disregard
for the safety of themselves or others. This may be evidenced in their
driving behaviour (recurrent speeding, driving while intoxicated, multiple
accidents). They may engage in sexual behaviour or substance use that
has a high risk for harmful consequences. They may neglect or fail to care
for a child in a way that puts the child in danger.
Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder also tend to be consistently
and extremely irresponsible. Irresponsible work behaviour may be
indicated by significant periods of unemployment despite available job
opportunities, or by abandonment of several jobs without a realistic plan
for getting another job. There may also be a pattern of repeated absences
from work that are not explained by illness either in themselves or in their
family. Financial irresponsibility is indicated by acts such as defaulting on
debts, failing to provide child support, or failing to support other
dependents on a regular basis. Individuals with Antisocial Personality
Disorder show little remorse for the consequences of their acts. They may
be indifferent to, or provide a superficial rationalization for, having hurt,
mistreated, or stolen from someone (e.g., "life's unfair,' 'losers deserve to
lose," or "he had it coming anyway"). These individuals may blame the
victims for being foolish, helpless, or deserving their fate; they may
minimize the harmful consequences of their actions; or they may simply
indicate complete indifference. They generally fail to compensate or make
amends for their behaviour. They may believe that everyone is out to
"help number one" and that one should stop at nothing to avoid being
pushed around.
Associated Features and Disorders

Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder frequently lack empathy

and tend to be callous, cynical, and contemptuous of the feelings, rights,
and sufferings of others. They may have an inflated and arrogant selfappraisal (e.g., feel that ordinary work is beneath them or lack a realistic
concern about their current problems or their future) and may be
excessively opinionated, self-assured, or cocky. They may display a glib,
superficial charm and can be quite voluble and verbally facile (e.g., using
technical terms or jargon that might impress someone who is unfamiliar
with the topic). Lack of empathy, inflated self-appraisal, and superficial
charm are features that have been commonly included in traditional
conceptions of psychopathy and may be particularly distinguishing of
Antisocial Personality Disorder in prison or forensic settings where
criminal, delinquent, or aggressive acts are likely to be nonspecific. These
individuals may also be irresponsible and exploitative in their sexual
relationships, They may have a history of many sexual partners and may
never have sustained a monogamous relationship. They may be
irresponsible as parents, as evidenced by malnutrition of a child, an illness
in the child resulting from a lack of minimal hygiene, a child's dependence
on neighbours or nonresident relatives for food or shelter, a failure to
arrange for a caretaker for a young child when the individual is away from
home, or repeated squandering of money required for household
necessities. These individuals may receive dishonourable discharges from
the armed services, may fail to be self-supporting, may become
impoverished or even homeless, or may spend many years in penal
institutions. Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder are more likely
than people in the general population to die prematurely by violent means
(e.g., suicide, accidents, and homicides).
Individuals with this disorder may also experience dysphoria, including
complaints of tension, inability to tolerate boredom, and depressed mood.
They may have associated Anxiety Disorders, Depressive Disorders,
Substance-Related
Disorders,
Somatization
Disorder,
Pathological
Gambling, and other disorders of impulse control, Individuals with
Antisocial Personality Disorder also often have personality features that
meet criteria for other Personality Disorders, particularly Borderline,
Histrionic, and Narcissistic Personality Disorders. The likelihood of
developing Antisocial Personality Disorder in adult life is increased if the
individual experienced an early onset of Conduct Disorder (before age 10
years) and accompanying Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Child
abuse or neglect, unstable or erratic parenting, or inconsistent parental
discipline may increase the likelihood that Conduct Disorder will evolve
into Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Prevalence

The overall prevalence of Antisocial Personality Disorder in community

samples is about 3% in males and about 1% in females. Prevalence
estimates within clinical settings have varied from 3% to 30%, depending
on the predominant characteristics of the populations being sampled. Even
higher prevalence rates are associated with substance abuse treatment
settings and prison or forensic settings.
"We have more reason to fear the hollow man than the poor
neurotic who is tormented by his own conscience. As long as man
is capable of moral conflicts - even if they lead to neurosis - there
is hope for him. But what shall we do with a man who has no
attachments? Who can breathe humanity into his emptiness?"
Selma Fraiberg
"...Over
their
lifetimes
...
[psychopaths]
demand
a
disproportionate amount of time and money from society in
general and from health professionals in particular. Whether that
time is spent in managing their incorrigible behaviour as children,
dealing in consultation with their criminal offenses as adults, or
caring for their damaged or deserted families, antisocial
personalities cannot be disregarded by their psychiatrists...
Comprehensivee Textbook of Psychiatry

The
E.T.
B. Shipton, PhD

Partial
Barker,

Psychopath
MD

"A psychologist and I presented a paper on the partial psychopath at the

Ontario Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in 1988. I've excerpted a
piece here which is spelling out the lack of empathy in psychopaths -- a
special two part type of empathy -- not just putting yourself in another
person's shoes."
...In our experience, the dimension that correlates most closely with
psychopathy and which has been identified or is implicit in all definitions of
the illness is the concept of empathy -- but I have to say quickly, empathy
defined in a specific two-part way.
Empathy is loosely thought to be the capacity to put yourself in another
persons shoes. But this seems to be only one part of what constitutes
empathy in relation to the psychopath. What is different about the
psychopath is that he is unaffected or detached emotionally from the
knowledge that he gains by putting himself in your shoes. Thus, although
he is able to very quickly glean during the briefest encounter with another

person a lot of very useful information about what makes that person tick,
this knowledge is simply knowledge to be used or not as the psychopath
chooses. What is missing in psychopaths is the compelling nature of the
appropriate affective response to the knowledge gained from putting
himself in another persons shoes, in the way that this happens in the
normal person. This essential missing aspect of empathy, even in the
severe psychopath, is not in my experience easily seen and one does not
often get a second glimpse of it if one has been treated to a first one by
mistake.
What is missing in psychopaths is the compelling nature of the appropriate
affective response to the knowledge gained from putting himself in
another persons shoes.
A rather crude example might suffice. A young psychopath who had
inflicted multiple stab wounds on an elderly woman, and was charged with
attempted murder, appeared subdued and appropriately sad about the
offence during the early stages of a first interview. His eyes were moist as
he accurately described how the woman must have felt during and after
the attack. But later in the same interview, after good rapport had been
established, this boy blurted out, "I don't know what all the fuss is about.
The old bag only had a dozen scratches." To my knowledge, in all his
subsequent years in mental hospital, he stuck to all the right lines of
remorse which he quickly learned were more appropriate and useful. The
bright psychopath, the experienced psychopath, doesn't stumble like that
very often.
With luck and the right question about how the other person's feelings
affected him there will be a barely perceptable pause, or a puzzled look, or
even, rarely. the question "how am I supposed to feel?"
To repeat, the second part of this two part empathy for the normal person
is the automatic, compelling, intuitive, appropriate response to what the
other feels -- not the acting out of a chosen script. The psychopath can
follow the same script as a normal person, usually with all the subtle
nuances of a skilled actor -- if he chooses to do so. An observer is very
unlikely to note any difference from the real thing.
Thus the second part of this two part empathy in a psychopath is the
choosing and acting of a script. Unlike the normal person, he can choose
what script to follow. He is not compelled intuitively or automatically to
react to the way he knows you feel. And unlike the normal person, he has
been told, or learned by observing others, what he is supposed to feel.

The second part of this two part empathy for the normal person is the
automatic, compelling, intuitive, appropriate response to what the other
feels.
As he rapes you or strangles you he is not compelled to feel your pain,
your terror, your helplessness. There is no automatic, compelling, intuitive
connection between what he knows you feel and what he feels. There is no
way he must feel. Thus there is none of this kind of restraining force on his
behaviour. Therein lies the danger of psychopathy.
Are experiences in the first three years critical in developing this two part
type of empathy? Yes -- if you accept that psychopathy can be created in
the first three years.
For about half a century we have known one unfailing recipe for creating
psychopaths -- move a child through a dozen foster homes in the first
three years. There are probably other things -- genetic, organic, or
biochemical that can sometimes predispose a person to psychopathy. But
that should not lull us into forgetting the one never-failing recipe. More
importantly, we should be mindful that less severe disruptions of
attachment, like a dozen different catregivers in the first three years can
create partial psychopaths.
For about half a century we have known one unfailing recipe for creating
psychopaths -- move a child through a dozen foster homes in the first
three years. If we had an unfakable way to measure this two-part type of
empathy we would be able to correlate such findings with clinical
impressions of severity of psychopathy, whether we are speaking about
psychopaths in prison, in politics, in business, or the day before they kill.
More importantly, we should be mindful that less severe disruptions of
attachment can create partial psychopaths.
To take the issue further, if a relative incapacity for this two-part type of
empathy is a key ingredient in the makeup of psychopaths, what are the
consequences for society if large numbers of individuals are functioning
without it. Isn't a capacity to be affected by what is happening to others a
necessary component in the makeup of a majority of persons in order for a
group to function as a group? From a sociological perspective, isn't this
one of the functional prerequisites of any social system? Is there a critical
mass for this type of empathy for a society to survive?...
Presented at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Ontario Psychiatric
Association, 1988.

"... if we had the capacity to measure this two-part type of

empathy we would be able to correlate such findings with clinical
impressions of severity of psychopathy, whether we are speaking
about psychopaths in prison, in politics, in business, or the day
before they kill."

Measuring

Empathy

E.T. Barker
If we could measure this type of empathy accurately it would make a big
difference.
If we were as preoccupied to measure empathy as we were to measure
I.Q. wouldnt it be interesting. The people you work with, let alone your
parents, where they would score on that, or where ones self would score
on that, if we had an accurate test to measure empathy, like a blood test,
a test that would really nail it down. Then maybe we could more
convincingly, if we decided we wanted people who had a good capacity for
empathy, go about creating child care arrangements which gave us human
beings, gave us adults that could live in peace and tranquillity and with
loving relationships and live co-operatively with each other.
I think weve created a society thats doing quite the opposite. I guess
working in a place like Oak Ridge makes you overly preoccupied about
these things. When reporters would call about the latest murder, and they
would ask, How can this happen? I always told them my surprise was
that there weren't more Bernardos or whoever the big name killer of the
day was. Thats the thing that is surprising to me, and I see teenagers now
in my private practise, conduct disordered teens, and the amount of latent
violence is incredible. The Oklahoma thing doesnt come as a surprise to
people who work with those people. What comes as a surprise is that it
doesnt happen more often.
But what's so scary about the Bernardo and OJ trials is the number of
people compelled to read and watch all the details. Why? I don't believe
healthy, well adjusted people have more than a passing interest in that
stuff. I believe our attraction to violence mirrors or reflects the amount of
violence we were subjected to as children -- emotional violence, physical
violence and sexual violence. Violent behaviour toward children is endemic
and sickeningly acceptable. Emotional violence toward children is
* normative*. People who think we're OK as a society except for sickos like
Bernardo should be looking in the mirror. The news media know what sells.

*Normative Abuse is the term coined by Karen Walant in her groundbreaking 1995 book Creating the Capacity for Attachment. Jason Aronson
Inc. ... "Normative abuse occurs when the attachment needs of the child
are sacrificed for the cultural norms of separation and individuation..."

The

Organic

Red

Herring

E.T. Barker
Let me say right off the top that I believe that psychopathy can be, if not
genetically predisposed to, at least biochemically caused by some toxic
process or organic damage that is not easily detectable. Ive examined the
parents of psychopaths, taking a detailed history starting six months
before conception, and I couldnt find what I thought was failure of
attachment or difficulties in the first three years. I am sure there are some
psychopaths whose pathology is caused by something organically wrong.
But to believe that psychopathy is always or mostly genetically or
biologically determined is not just a misconception, but a very dangerous
misconception. It's dangerous because it is so attractive. It's attractive
because it eases any guilt we may have individually as parents or
collectively as a society and it is attractive because if the cause is organic
there is the possibility of finding a cure that doesn't necessitate changing
the way we think about and do things. So we leap at any shred of evidence
that psychopathy is organically caused.
It gives us hope that it is not us personally that has caused the damage.
For the defence of rationalization, as we all know, no evidence at all is
sufficient! The fact that there is indeed some good evidence that some
psychopaths probably are organically caused is a guilty persons dream
come true. And a researchers dream come true, because the money for
further research will be more readily available.
But all of this flies in the face of the uncomfortable fact that we know that
any child can be made into a psychopath through failure of attachment.
We know that. We have known it for a long time. There is no doubt about
it. But we want to deny that because it means that we as parents may
have caused irreparable damage to our child, and that knowledge doesn't
feel very good. And as a society we don't like it because it means we have
to change a lot of established patterns or ways we do things -- our
priorities -- in order to arrange things so that nothing gets in the way of
attachment in the earliest years.

How to Succeed in the Business of Creating

Psychopaths
Without
Even
Trying
Paul D. Steinhauer M.D. FRCP(C)
"Here is an excerpt from Paul Steinhauer, a well known child psychiatrist,
from a talk he gave to Childrens Aid Society workers to alert them to the
hazards of moving a kid through a dozen or so foster homes in the first
three years. I like the way he puts it, and he puts it even more technically
and accurately if you look up the book where he later wrote about the
same thing.*
If you want to make a psychopath, and you want a really fool-proof
formula, just move a kid through 12 foster homes in the first three years.
What scares me is that paid group institutional daycare under age three is
taking the same fool-proof psychopathy producing formula and making
modifications. Why? Why are we messing around with variations of such a
dangerous formula. To me its analogous to a brain surgeon cutting
progressively closer slices off the centre of your brain, without knowing
more than the fact that if you cut close enough youll produce an
emotional vegetable.
Moving through 12 different foster homes in the first three years will make
a psychopath for sure. But will 10 moves or will 8 -- let's try 6. Let's try
daycare centres 10 hours a day, or 8, or 6 hours a day. Let's try with 2 year
olds, 1 year, 6 month 2 month, 2 week olds. If 100 separations and 50
changing caregivers will produce a psychopath, will 80 and 30 do it,
maybe we're safe with 50 and 20. We act like we don't see even the
remotest connection to the known danger.
We have been delivered up so completely into the values of consumption
as the most important thing in our lives that we seem quite content to be
deliberately creating childcare arrangements that risk producing
psychopaths and we rationalize that risk as either necessary or nonexistent, putting our hope and faith in social science studies to ease our
guilt."
* A more comprehensive description of these long-term effects of
incomplete or aborted mourning can be found on pages 73 - 75 of the
book Psychological Problems of the Child in the Family by Steinhauer P.D.
and Rae-Grant, Q. New York, 1983, Basic Books.
...when there is no single, adequate, continually available person to whom
the child can relate, or [that in which] the child is passed through a series

of placements where he makes only brief attachments. In either case, the

end result is a child who is afraid to put down roots, a child left unable to
relate in depth or to form stable, long-term attachments. Such children
either do not relate at all, or are shallow, superficial, totally narcissistic and
manipulative in their dealings with others. Others are valued only when
they satisfy the childs needs of the moment, to be discarded or turned
upon violently as soon as they fail to do so. Alternately, such children
combine exaggerated demands for closeness with an inability to tolerate
intimacy and a need to keep others at a distance.
Other associated long-term deficits include:

1. Persistent, Diffuse Rage

As Bowlby has stated, There is no experience to which the young child
can be subjected more prone to elicit intense, violent and persistent
hatred of the mother figure than that of separation. Unless worked
through, this rage, along with the defences called into play against it may
be dammed up, generalized, displaced and diffused, distorting the
developing personality, undermining and destroying potential relationships
and dominating both mood and behaviour.

2. Chronic Depression
This is related to the degree to which basic needs for love and
security remain unmet. While presenting at times as frank
depression in the adult sense - overwhelming sadness; loneliness;
hopelessness; self-destructive behaviour (including the use of
drugs); suicidal thoughts or attempts - at other times it takes the
form of a continuing apathy marked by pervasive lethargy; failure
to develop or loss of interests; lack of drive or available energy;
deteriorating school performance; inability to get started or to
follow through; global persistent pessimism which may alternate
with bouts of acting-out and frequently antisocial behaviour which
can be dynamically understood as depressive equivalents.
3. Asocial and Antisocial Behaviour
Two sets of factors, usually in combination, account for the
frequency that asocial and antisocial behaviour are displayed by
these children. Many children show super-ego defects. These
result from discontinuity of relationships which keeps them from
forming the stable identifications which are the basis of effective

superego. As a result, they frequently show diffuse feelings of

shame and worthlessness, and lack the appropriate capacity for
guilt characteristic of the mature conscience. At the same time,
these children almost invariably show severe ego defects. They
might well be termed short-fused children. They lack the ability
to bind tension, leaving them prone to immediate and explosive
discharges of behaviour in response to the sweeps of rage to
which they are so vulnerable partly because of the greatly
intensified anger resulting from repeated deprivations and partly
because the lack of continuity and consistency in their upbringing
has failed to help them develop the necessary control over their
affects. As a result they remain impulse ridden and prone to
acting-out.
4. Low Self-Concept
This is derived originally from the childs never having felt loved or
cared about sufficiently to incorporate an inner picture of himself
as a valued and worthwhile person. This original lack is
aggravated by his compulsive though unrecognized need to set
himself up for repeated rejections (i.e. repetition compulsion),
thus proving again and again that there is nothing worthwhile or
loveable about him.
5. Chronic Dependency
Many such children never reach the stage of achieving emotional
self-sufficiency and independence. As if needing to obtain in their
adult life what they were deprived of in their childhood, they may
turn their exaggerated demands for nurture and support from one
person or agency to another. When they eventually succeed in
draining and alienating one source of supply they then turn to
another, thus remaining emotionally, socially and often
economically dependent.
A stage of permanent detachment occurs if and when the energy
and love withdrawn from the original mother fail to find an
adequate substitute within the critical period of time. As a result,
this energy remains unavailable to form relationships with others,
and is instead withdrawn and turned back onto the child himself.

a)Love and energy withdrawn from others may be re-invested in

the childs own body. Initially, this may result in excessive
autoeroticism (thumbsucking, rocking, masturbation). Such
children remain vulnerable to hypochondriasis and psychosomatic
complaints later in life.
b) The love and energy may become invested in the childs selfimage causing him to become increasingly narcissistic. The
narcissistic child is concerned only with himself and his own
needs. Shallow, superficial and self-centred, he will use others for
what he can get, giving as little of himself as he can get by with.
He may be totally plastic, relating in an as if manner by feeding
others what he thinks they expect rather than expressing what he
really thinks, feels or wants. His love and energy may become
overinvested in his own inner world of fantasy, which then
assumes more importance for him than external reality. This will
lead to a progressive withdrawal and an increasing turning for
gratification to fantasy rather than to real experiences or other
people.
These alternatives are not, of course, mutually exclusive. Together
they represent the end result of the process set into motion when
a child is forced to submit to the trauma of repeated separations.
Let me repeat again: the longer the interval between loss of
contact with the childs own mother and the time of permanent
attachment to a substitute mother, the greater the hazard of
severe and permanent damage leading ultimately to a child who is
asocial and/or antisocial, incapable of trust, warmth or true
intimacy with others...

Prisons,

Psychopaths

and

Prevention

E.T. Barker
"When, for a time, we created a program at Oak Ridge which had only
psychopathic patients in it, there was constant intense interaction. But it
was all heat and no light. It's tough for people with a well developed
conscience -- trusting, empathic, affectionate people to survive
emotionally in such a setting even with powerful protections built into the
system. Entropy seems to lie in the direction of the emotionally hardened,
suspicious, and uncaring."

...I don't know what proportion of the population of a prison is

psychopathic -- partial or complete, mild or severe. Obviously the
percentage depends on the diagnostic criteria used and the degree of
severity you want to include or feel you can measure. To me the more
important questions are "What proportion of the general population is
psychopathic? What are the consequences for society if there are too
many psychopaths? Is there a critical point beyond which a social system
cannot function -- a critcal mass for psychopathy?"
"It is possible, however, for individuals with some of the features
of the disorder to achieve political and economic success."
"Psychopathy presents a sociologic and psychiatric problem
second to none."

The Psychopaths
Business

Favourite

Playground:
Relationships

Ken Magid and Carole McKelvey

"Here I have excerpted a chunk from HIGH RISK:

Children Without a Conscience, a book by a
psychologist, Ken Magid. He is really saying what
we have been saying, that in the business world it
is ever more acceptable that if you can screw
somebody for a buck, then you're a sharp
businessman. You have to wonder where the end
of that is going to be. We seem to have developed
a society which glorifies psychopathy. Life in the
fast lane. The ubiquitous beer and pop ads tell us
that's where it's at. But what about the downside?
Magid, in his book, tries to address that. He
worries about early child care arrangements
producing partial psychopaths, and tries to alert
us to the danger of the ever increasing numbers."
"Our society is fast becoming more
materialistic, and success at any cost is the
credo of many businessmen."
...Certainly, there have always been shysters and
crooks, but past concern was focused on ferreting
out incompetents rather than psychopaths. As
Owen Young put it, "It is not the crook in modern
business that we fear, but the honest man who

doesn't know what he is doing."

Unfortunately, all that has changed. We now need
to fear the super-sophisticated modern crook who
does know what he is doing ... and does it so well
that no one else knows. Yes, psychopaths love the
business world.
"Uninvolved with others, he coolly saw into their
fears and desires, and maneuvered them as he
wished. Such a man might not, after all, be
doomed to a life of scrapes and escapades ending
ignominiously in the jailhouse. Instead of
murdering others, he might become a corporate
raider and murder companies, firing people
instead of killing them, and chopping up their
functions rather than their bodies."
Up until the early 1987 Wall Street woes involving
insider trading, white-collar crime was largely not
something we focused upon. Certainly, the
"penalties" administered in the business world are
far less severe than those for "blue-collar"
crimes." As Houston Police Chief Lee Brown
reports in the book Crimewarps, "Police do not
devote their efforts to get the white-collar
criminal. The crimes we devote our efforts to are
the ones the public is more concerned about street crimes. I don't foresee that changing."
Of course, the consequences to the average
citizen from business crimes are staggering. As
criminologist Georgette Bennett says, "They
account for nearly 30% of case filings in U.S.
District Courts - more than any other category of
crime. The combined burglary, mugging and other
property losses induced by the country's street
punks come to about $4 billion a year. However,
the seemingly upstanding citizens in our
corporate board rooms and the humble clerks in
our retail stores bilk us out of between $40 and
$200 billion a year."
Concern here is that the costume for the new
masked sanity of a psychopath is just as likely to
be a three-piece suit as a ski mask and a gun. As
Harrington says, "We also have the psychopath in
respectable circles, no longer assumed to be a
loser." He quotes William Krasner as saying, "They

- psychopath and part psychopath - do well in the

more unscrupulous types of sales work, because
they take such delight in 'putting it over on them',
getting away with it - and have so little
conscience about defrauding their customers."
Our society is fast becoming more materialistic,
and success at any cost is the credo of many
businessmen. The typical psychopath thrives in
this kind of environment and is seen as a business
"hero." Authors Norman Mailer and Michael Glenn
recognized the increasing presence of this type of
individual in society and have warned that this
Trust Bandit may be better adapted to meet the
goals we have now set for ourselves in defining
"success."...
"The combined burglary, mugging and other
property losses induced by the country's
street punks come to about $4 billion a year.
However, the seemingly upstanding citizens
in our corporate boardrooms and the
humble clerks in our retail stores bilk us out
of between $40 and $200 billion a year."
"Concern here is that the costume for the
new masked sanity of a psychopath is just
as likely to be a three-piece suit as a ski
mask and a gun."

Consumerism: What is it?

"I thought it would be appropriate to add a brief bit about economic
theory, a subject not generally thought an essential part of medical
training, and certainly never part of mine."
The theory and measurement of consumer behaviour forms an important,
part of modem economic theory. It was first developed during the 19th
century on the basis of the following conceptions:
the purchase of any commodity gives the consumer a positive
satisfaction or utility;

the additional satisfaction derived from additional purchases of

the same commodity declines as the consumer's supply of that
commodity increases; and
with a given amount of money to spend, the consumer distributes
the expenditure among commodities to maximize the total
satisfaction or utility attainable from all those purchases.
This rather crude model of consumer behaviour has undergone
considerable refinement by modern mathematical economists...
Critics have often objected that the model assumes a rational person bent
on scrupulously maximizing his satisfaction and that the model is thus part
of a mechanistic stream of thought that has been substantially
undermined by 20th-century advances in psychology...
Nonrational influences
To be fully rational and consistent, consumers need to have access to
sufficient information on goods and their prices so that they can choose
those with the lowest unit price for a given quality. But consumers do not
always behave this way. Natural pearls are sold at a much higher price
than cultured pearls, though the difference between them is demonstrable
only by dissection or with X-rays, and their quality in use is identical.
Brand-name drugs sell better and at higher prices than unbranded drugs
that are manufactured from the same standard formula. To some extent
this is due to what an American economist, Thorstein Veblen, called the
desire for conspicuous consumption: part of the attraction of the good is
simply its high price. It is also the result of consumers' ignorance, made
more acute by the increasing sophistication of commodities whose
qualities must be measured in many dimensions. If it is costly in time for
the individual to become fully informed about the comparative qualities of
competing products, it is not wholly irrational for the consumer to take the
market price as an indicator of quality. The lack of information has given
rise to consumers' organizations in most industrialized countries; these
organizations test and report on a wide range of products for their
subscribers.
The influence of modern advertising techniques must also be considered.
Insofar as advertising informs the consumer of the range of alternatives, it
can be argued that advertising merely increases the consumer's
information; and insofar as advertising consciously or subconsciously
changes consumer preferences, it remains one of the many factors
determining consumer preferences that the economist takes as given.
Advertising, however, cannot persuade the public to buy whatever the

producer offers. Advertising is likely to be most effective in influencing

consumers to choose one of several almost identical products being
offered, such as toothpaste, cigarettes, or gasoline. But it may also raise
the demand for the group of competing products as a whole. In addition, it
can be argued that the total effect of modern advertising is to shift the
preferences of consumers in favour of luxury goods rather than
necessities, in favour of consumption rather than saving, and in favour of
employment rather than leisure
Role of Luxuries
The historical and social role of luxury consumption is a subject of much
interest...
...Adam Smith and most of the economists who succeeded him believed
that if the money spent on luxurious consumption by the rich was invested
in useful production, society would benefit as a whole. The Industrial
Revolution brought an increasing demand for funds for productive
investment and made possible a more rapid rise in general standards of
living than the world had known before. The classical economists thus
argued that all luxury consumption involved a selfish diversion of labour
and capital and acted as a brake on human progress.
This view was not seriously challenged until the English economist J.M.
Keynes published his General Theory of Employment, Interest and
Money in 1935-36. Writing at a time when millions of workers were
unemployed, Keynes argued that the consumption of luxuries was socially
desirable if it provided jobs that would otherwise not exist...
"The total effect of modern advertising is to shift the preferences
of consumers in favour of luxury goods rather than necessities, in
favour of consumption rather than saving, and in favour of
employment rather than leisure."

Consumerism:

What's

Wrong

With

It?

R. Altschuler and N. Regush

"In this well-written and freshly conceived approach to modern
alienation, Altschuler and Regush make the strong point that
industrialized societies have dug themselves a big hole called
consumerism
and
fallen
into
it..."
Publishers Weekly
The dominant message found in all the corporate ads is BUY, BUY, BUY.
The collective impact of this message has had its effects over the past fifty

years of intimately linking our most basic needs to consumer items and
channelling all our energies into the marketplace.
Henry Ford, who introduced the Model T in 1909, probably would have died
of a stroke if he had looked into a crystal ball and seen the May, 1973
issue of Playboy, which featured a pictorial on sex and the automobile. In
the photo-spread we see a woman, apparently in ecstasy, stroking a
steering wheel. The editors of Playboy seem to think that the automobile
was primarily invented to get sex off the porch swing and on to wheels.
Possibly so, but Ford basically wanted to produce effort-saving and
practical cars for ordinary people like himself. Even if the first car on the
road did more than just revolutionize transportation, Playboy shows us that
in our modern world people driving thier "babies" don't always need
human beings to love. We might also add that if Cotton Mather, a true
spirit of Orthodox Protestantism, who viewed business as a vital calling
and a part of religion, had foreseen the future development of huge
religious amusement parks he probably would not have been so eager to
sprinkle holy water on economic success.
The early American was continuously blasted by the aphorisms, verses,
lectures, or fables of the great apostles of individualism. Benjamin
Franklin, for example, spent much of his life talking about his rise from
obscurity to affluence. One must add Ralph Waldo Emerson to this group,
as well as Phineas T. Barnum. Both praised the virtues of material success.
Perhaps more than anyone else, Horatio Alger is responsible for the
American rags to riches saga. In his 135 books, he always portrayed his
hero as someone who achieved success through his diligence, honesty,
perseverance, and thrift. If you worked hard and saved your money you
succeeded.
Despite the ideology of the self-made man, the last decade of the
nineteenth century, and certainly the early years of the twentieth were
increasingly difficult times for American culture. The growing American
corporations appeared to be slowly changing the criteria for personal
success. Henry Ford was able to maintain a commanding lead over his
competitors by simply offering his customers the fundamental assurance
that his cars would get them to their destination and back. After the basic
mechanical features of the automobile became more reliable and
production problems were overcome, the consumer needed an innovative
jab. In 1927, when General Motors introduced the LaSalle, the first "styled"
car, Ford lost his number-one position. Henry wanted back in and came out
with his restyled Model A. We all know what has happened since.

As corporate development mushroomed, the consumer increasingly

became a passive observer of the technological process, but at the same
time he also became more of a challenge for the producers' selling
imagination. In 1900 there wasn't any American magazine with a
circulation approaching a million. By 1947 there were at least forty-eight.
Readers Digest, with a circulation of over 9 1/2 million in 1951, along with
its competitors bombarded readers with incentives to work harder and
harder in order to buy more and more goods. The work-to-buy ethic was
being generously instilled into the American consciousness. The Gospel of
Success was being democratized. This essentially meant that since
everyone was being sold on the illusion that opportunity for success was
equal, everyone was fair game.
Vance Packard was not the first to attack the Great Success Story. When
The Hidden Persuaders was published in 1957, however, public attention
was more aroused than ever. Packard heavily documented his argument
that two-thirds of America's largest advertisers had geared their
campaigns to a depth approach, using strategies inspired by what was
called motivation analysis. Consumers were seen as bundles of daydreams
with hidden yearnings, guilt complexes, and irrational emotional
blockages. Using research techniques that were designed to reach the
subconscious mind, it was hoped that advertising would mass-produce
customers for the Corporations just as he Corporations mass-produced
products. Packard tells of a scene from Lorraine Hansberry's Broadway
play, A Raisin in The Sun, in which the son, a reflection of modern ideas,
cries out, "I want so many things, it drives me crazy ... Money is life!" The
task of the motivation man was to carefully sort out what drove this young
man crazy and package the solutions into pretty bottles and boxes.
Packard raised very disturbing questions about the kind of society these
manipulators were creating through their ability to contact millions of
people through the mass media. He questioned the morality of playing
upon hidden weaknesses and frailties such as anxieties, aggressive
feelings, dread of nonconformity, and infantile hang-ups to sell products.
And he questioned the morality of manipulating small children even before
they reached the age when they were legally responsible for their actions.
Packard also severely criticized social scientists: He claimed that having
found the study of irrationality very lucrative, they were flying out of ivory
towers hoping to land big booty with the new marketeers.
David Riesman, author of The Lonely Crowd, described the emerging
consumer as "other-directed", as one who gauged everything he did in
terms of the expectations of other people. Riesman claimed that the otherdirected type reflected the rapidly increasing consumption mania. Fromm
echoed this interpretation saying, "Human relations are essentially those

of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close to the

herd, and not being different in thought, feeling or action. While everybody
tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly
alone, pervaded by a deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which
always results when human separateness cannot be overcome." Thorstein
Veblen, critic of the conspicuous consumption of the American noveau
riche of the late nineteenth century, pointed out that the mass-circulation
newspapers, films, radio, the rise of mass political parties, and the special
interests of advertisers all anaesthetized the masses with what he called
laughing gas. And Herbert Marcuse describes the media-dominated
modern citizen as having a "happy consciousness". Happy consciousness
enabled a person to see his own behaviour as steadily progressive, always
coming closer to the cherished good life. The glorification and
perpetuation of the corporate state had become a built-in condition, a
string fastened around one's neck so tightly that a vested interest in the
system was fostered and the need for gobbling up every new gadget,
instrument, and fashion became as "natural" as the need to breathe...
Packard's greatest attack, though he did not phrase it this way, was on the
illusion of consumer sovereignty: the idea that the consumer himself told
the producer what he needed and the producer complied. The reverse was
happening, but because of the great stress on individualism in America,
Packard's thesis was a very difficult one for people to fully accept. The
reaction for the most part was very similar to that of the Midwestern
farmer who comes to New York City, looks at the Empire State Building,
shakes his head, and says, "I see it but I don't believe it".
The doctrine of consumer sovereignty was given its greatest criticism by
John Kenneth Galbraith. Writing in The New Industrial State, Galbraith
explained that since the turn of the century Corporations were increasingly
concerned with managing demands of consumers. "The one man in ten"
was carefully planned on the drawing board. Galbraith referred to the
control or management of consumer demand as a growing industry in
itself, made up of communication networks, merchandising specialists,
advertising agencies, research, and other related services. The early
Gospel had been transformed into a Great Machine whose primary
function was to sell goods. Consumer sovereignty was again seen to be
illusion, and only those afraid to face new realities could cling precariously
to the idea of the free consumer.
According to sociologist C. Wright Mills, people in the 1950's, were
increasingly told by carefully designed mass media formulas who they
were, what they should be, and how they could succeed. These formulas
were not geared to the development of a sensitive human being. People

were becoming increasingly lonely and simultaneously mimicking media

happiness. In Brecht's play In the Jungle of Cities, one person says, "if you
crammed a ship full of bodies till it burst the loneliness inside it would be
so great, they would turn to ice..." The modern consumer-citizen was
becoming increasingly alienated, and theorists like Erich Fromm
commented that alienation was becoming total, that it pervaded the
relationship of Man to Man, Man to his work and Man to the things he
consumed.
There is hardly a family that is not under the constant, everyday pressure
about "what the house needs next". If it is not a new TV it is a new
dishwasher, if not this, then new rugs or curtains or having the den
remodelled, or redoing the bathroom. For many couples who are estranged
but will not face up to it, all of this consumerism and household planning
often serves the function that a child does - it keeps the couple "together".
That is, it fosters the illusion that they are on an adventure together,
pooling their wits and energies to reach a common goal. Because of this, it
is not uncommon to see married couples in their luxuriously decorated
bedrooms - which they have put so much into that a harem chieftain would
be envious - uninterested in loving one another, sleeping there like two
celluloid movie stars, cold and plastic.
Many couples feel compelled to show they have made it together by what
they have accumulated. When the debts begin piling up, and economic
strain becomes a constant feature of the relationship, rather than cut back
on the good life, the husband, as mentioned before, begins to work more,
or, as is a growing necessity these days, the wife begins to work. The cycle
is apt to grow more vicious if, rather than admit that their way of life is the
source of the problem, the wife -- who is forced to work to help pay the
bills -- identifies with ideologies to justify her activity, and adds to the
problem by getting farther and farther away from its root.
It is important to get this argument clear in the context of the issues raised
by women's liberation. Many couples are in trouble because there has
been an historical oppression of women -- particularly economic -- in the
male-dominated household. Along with this, women have been assigned
the relatively menial tasks of household chores which can be, depending
on the woman, enough to make a brain rot. The revolution of roles is
therefore progressive insofar as it attempts to allow creative women to
express their creativity, and insofar as women free themselves from the
forced economic dependence and the host of identity problems that are an
adjunct of this.
To become an independent breadwinner and to express creative talents
requires in most instances that the woman seek employment outside the

home. So the new problems arise and must be dealt with: Who cleans the
house? Who takes care of the kids? Who controls the bank book? And so
on.
Most married women today are working out of economic necessity,
particularly wives of blue-collar workers, but this is by no means restricted
to that class. Many blue-collar men earn more than the clean-nailed white
collar male heads of households. The major argument given by the
women's movement leaders centres around expression of self, not
economic necessity. When expression of self is viewed in the abstract it
sounds very appealing -- and it is also very misleading. It is the highest
ideal for all women and all men to seek and express the unique self that is
repressed in modern societies. But how to do it?
How many men can find expression of self in their work? Sociological study
after sociological study shows that work is not a central life interest for the
great majority of men. Our society offers witless, repetitive, meaningless,
boring, exploitive jobs in most instances, and most women, unfortunately,
when they do work are consigned to the typewriter or some kind of front
work which exploits their looks or congeniality.
It is patently absurd, then, to press the argument and foster the grand
illusion that meaning can be found in the work world that should not
theoretically be able to be obtained through intimate contact with family
members. But yet, the undeniable fact is that in many households there is
no meaning to be found, either. This is the impasse that women's
liberation should be focusing on.
The relationship between men and women must be examined within the
total context of a society such as ours, which tyrannically and with
startling ingenuity sells dreams in the marketplace and fosters an
outmoded work-to-buy cycle to make these dreams a reality. This is not
the nineteenth century. We are living in a highly technological society
which holds a vast potential for providing us with the necessities of life and
at the same time freeing us from stupid, meaningless work. The emphasis
should be to utilize this technology so that we have less jobs and more
time to relate to each other as human beings and benefit from our true
creative expression.
The confusion which is rampant among married couples misplaces the
emphasis and fosters the illusion that the role problems between husband
and wife can be solved in the abstract. The illusion of liberation is kept
going by resorting to more mindless consumerism through fashion and
vacations, while underlying all of this is a dulling of the senses and closing
of awareness through alcohol, tranquillizers, and barbiturates.

A good example of this confusion can be seen in the activities of the

National Organization of Women (NOW), which, in attempting to solve a
problem of women, actually perpetuates the reality which is at the root of
the problem.
NOW recognized that women do not get credit as easily as men, and they
sought to rectify the problem. As reported in the New York Post
(September 27th, 1971) the reasoning of NOW went like this: We want a
woman to be able to get credit in whatever name she chooses - married,
maiden, professional or whatever. "There is a practical side to this", a NOW
spokeswoman explained. "This way, if a couple becomes separated or
divorced, she will have maintained her own credit rating, and will not be at
the disadvantage of having to re-establish credit ... What the liberated
woman wants today is a credit card in her own name, rather than having
adjunct credit extended because her husband is deemed a good credit
risk. And little by little this is becoming to pass."
The problem of women being dependent on their husbands and
discriminated against is a real one, but the credit problem is real only
insofar as it is the cause of the problem we are talking about. By pushing
for credit for women, without detailing its pitfalls, women who identify with
NOW will see this as a goal to be achieved and will fight for credit. The
credit problem, however, is part of the problem of a society which
pressures people to extend themselves beyond their means without
carefully considering the possible negative repercussions. NOW, therefore
may be unwittingly aiding the Corporations in their relentless desire to sell
us as much as they possibly can. Credit is one of their more ingenious
means.
The "young mama" - the image of the modern, whole, married woman
pushed by Redbook - is the prototype of the independent woman who
presents no challenge to the existing reality of the good life. She is a
Corporation's dream. Flipping through Redbook, one finds page after page
of glossy ads comprising about 70 percent of the magazine, a smattering
of anxiety-producing stories dealing with marriages in trouble and new
morality, and a smattering of articles such as "How to Redecorate Your
Home", the last mentioned being merely another version of corporate
advertising. The total impact is a not-too-subtle definition of what the
young, normal, married woman should do to affirm her identity and selfimage. In the process she is made a nervous wreck with a constant
barrage of questions such as "Are you sure your Tampon keeps you odourfree?" While pondering this important question, the rest of the appearance
industry does its work of creating anxiety and offering "solutions". And
here it is important to look at, in some detail, another major source of

strain on married couples in our society, the fear of growing old and losing
sex appeal. As with singles, the husband-wife relationship is highly
affected by the physical appearance industry, which has convinced us that
it is shameful to grow old, be anything less than thin, smell human, or
dress in outdated apparel.
A college student, commenting on the growing rift between his parents
told us: "My mother has been grey since her early teens; this never
bothered my father until recently when so much fuss was being made
about the ease of colouring one's hair. He begins to wonder what my
mother would look like in black hair or in a black wig (wigs being so
acceptable today). My mother, in turn, begins to feel bad that my father no
longer seems to be happy with the way his wife looks. Also, there is so
much emphasis on being thin for beauty's sake (as well as for health
reasons) that in order to please my father, my mother secretly attends an
exercise class at the Elaine Power's Figure Salon."
The mother of this family secretly attempts to slim herself down. Whatever
her motive, secrecy is the symptom of shame. The husband, under the
bombardment of ads, is beginning to indicate his need that his wife mimic
youthfulness which, in turn, causes unhappiness.
The middle-aged couple is often in a pitiful position in a society which
makes one ashamed to age. They suddenly find themselves with wrinkles,
gray hair and sagging skin, and begin comparing themselves to images of
youthfulness presented in the ads. They gradually begin to look upon their
aging as an affliction which can be washed away, creamed away, dressed
away, but not accepted.
It may be argued that if one looks younger one feels better, but this logic
only holds in a society where one's self worth is identified with
appearance. In the bedroom, the middle-aged couple -- if they have had
the courage to wash the gook off their faces and heads -- are confronted
with each other as they really are -- the wigs off, the colours off, the sheen
off, and only a strong love for each other and an understanding of the
aging process will keep them from rolling over and dreaming of that young
stud or piece of ass who they know they can get to -- or at least
masturbate to.
A married woman told us, "I'm losing interest in my husband with every
hair he loses. It was getting so that I was ashamed to be seen with him, an
old man -- that's how he began to look as he got balder and balder. So I
made him get a 'Joe', that's a wig. If I wasn't going to stray from the nest
he just had to become a young man again."

Newsweek pointed to the return of "the good old days" and cites this
example of a thirty-four year old Connecticut housewife who says, "My
whole life revolves around driving my husband to the station, the kids to
school, the kids to the dentist, the kids to hockey practise, the kids to
ballet classes, the kids to a birthday party. Sometimes I feel as though I'm
on a treadmill. I'm glad the energy crisis happened. I think, perhaps
naively, that if I spend less time chauffeuring, I can go back to painting
and get to know my children better."
Newsweek suggested that many people may use the crisis as a way of
restoring community and family life. John Kenneth Galbraith is quoted as
saying that "if the energy crisis forces us to diminish automobile use in the
cities, stops us from building highways and covering the country with
concrete and asphalt, forces us to rehabilitate the railroads, causes us to
invest in mass transportation and limits the waste of electrical energy, one
can only assume the Arab nations and the big oil companies have united
to save the American Republic."
Hopeful as this sounds, it is utter nonsense. Galbraith has lost sight of the
much wider crisis and the fact that these recent developments must be
viewed from within the context of our entire way of life. The Connecticut
housewife has an edge on Galbraith. At least she intuitively feels that she
is being naive.
Time's perspective in its December 31, 1973 edition was somewhat closer
to the essential point: "as more Americans stay at home instead of taking
to the open road, they will buy more liquor, books, television sets,
swimming pools, and, say some pharmaceutical executives, more birth
control pills." More important is that if the consumer stops compulsively
buying because of a temporary recognition of the nation's economic and
energy problems, and waits for a better day when he can go on a rampage
again, very little will be gained. Furthermore, to believe that any major
restructuring of life in the consumer society will come about as the result
of an energy shortage without a major transformation of consumer
consciousness is to ignore the cold hard facts of American corporate
capitalism and the degree to which we have become enslaved to its
principal message...
Can we really be so naive to believe that we can turn the clock back, erase
the developing patterns of postindustrial society, and building a new way
of living, thinking, and feeling without a profound behavioural change, a
basic restructuring of our values about the total viability of our consumer
society and the manner in which happiness has been defined? Can we
really believe that we all will come to our senses because of an energy

shortage and that the corporate world will not continue its tactical warfare
on our consciousness in newer and more sophisticated ways?
The Western World, as we have heavily illustrated throughout this book,
has almost wholly accepted the illusion of material progress as a guarantor
of happiness. The common denominator of materialism is an uncritical
acceptance of the glittering competitive and success-oriented consumer
life as the only reality. The Corporations, their advertising appendages,
and the mass media have skilfully created consumer illusions, as our
everyday cultural world has built a screen in the human mind, shielding us
from our possibilities as a species. Our well-conditioned interests in, and
overwhelming concern with the world of material objects and gadgetry
leads us to depend on technical solutions to all our problems...
Excerpted from Open Reality: The Way Out of Mimicking Happiness
by Richard Altschuler and Nicholas Regush, published by G.P. Putnam &
Sons, New York. Copyright 1974 by Richard Altschuler and Nicholas
Regush. Reprinted with permission in the Summer 1981 issue of the
CSPCC Journal.

Consumerism, Materialism and Cruelty to

Children
E.T. Barker, MD, D.Psyc., F.R.C.P. (C)
"A perhaps overly blunt editorial I wrote in 1981. This kind of thing
certainly doesn't win friends and probably doesn't influence people, but I
thought somebody should say it regardless."
I have little quarrel with those childless adults or adults with older children
who choose or are led to believe that Consumerism and Materialism (and
status and careerism based on these values) are worth devoting their lives
to. I find it very upsetting however when I see a helpless infant being
permanently maimed emotionally because the parents place so high a
priority on these values that they fail to provide the empathic, affectionate
care their infant needs during the relatively few years such care is a
necessity.
Let us at least call a spade a spade. "We need two salaries just to keep up"
means "We value the whetting of our consumer addictions for these few
years more highly than our infant's future emotional health". "I need to
work in order to feel fulfilled and content, and it's not fair to my infant for
me to look after her when I'm unhappy" means "I believe I can find
happiness and fulfilment through Consumerism and Materialism (and

status and careerism based on these), and what I want for these few years
takes priority over my infant's future emotional health".
Considering the extent to which it is possible to choose if and when
parents will have children, it seems cruel in the extreme to risk a child's
permanent emotional health for a few years of ... what? Doing so should
be seen for what it is: Selling a child's birthright for a mess of pottage.
Let us also not delude ourselves by thinking that the way of life for which
infants are so frequently sacrificed these days is either the only way or a
necessary way. Let us hope that the Consumerism and Materialism that
are currently so fashionable will soon be seen for what they are and are
not, and will give way to values which are more compatible with emotional
health -- both infant and adult.
Editorial from Volume 4, Issue 3 (Summer 1981) of the Journal of the
Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

To

HAVE

or

to

BE

Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm's thesis in this remarkable book is that two modes of
existence are struggling for the spirit of humankind:
THE HAVING MODE,
which concentrates on material possession, acquisitiveness, power, and
aggression and is the basis of such universal evils as greed, envy, and
violence; and:
THE BEING MODE,
which is based on love, in the pleasure of sharing, and in meaningful and
productive rather than wasteful activity.
Dr. Fromm sees the HAVING mode bringing the world to the brink of
psychological and ecological disaster, and he outlines a brilliant program
for socioeconomic change that could really turn the world away from its
catastrophic course.

What Is the "HAVING" Mode?

Our judgements are extremely biased because we live in a society that
rests on private property, profit, and power as the pillars of its existence.
To acquire, to own, and to make a profit are the sacred and inalienable

rights of the individual in the industrial society.* What the sources of

property are does not matter, nor does possession impose any obligations
on the property owners. The principle is: "Where and how my property was
acquired or what I do with it is nobody's business but my own; as long as I
do not violate the law, my right is unrestricted and absolute."
This kind of property may be called private property (from Latin privare,
"to deprive of"), because the person or persons who own it are its sole
masters, with full power to deprive others of its use or enjoyment. While
private ownership is supposed to be a natural and universal category, it is
in fact an exception rather than the rule if we consider the whole of human
history (including prehistory), and particularly the cultures outside Europe
in which economy was not life's main concern. Aside from private
property, there are: self-created property, which is exclusively the result of
one's own work; restricted property, which is restricted by the obligation to
help one's fellow being; functional, or personal, property, which consists
either of tools for work or of objects for enjoyment; common property,
which a group shares in the spirit of a common bond, such as the Israeli
kibbutzim.
The norms by which society functions also mold the character of its
members (social character). In an industrial society these are: the wish to
acquire property, to keep it, and to increase it, i.e., to make a profit, and
those who own property are admired and envied as superior human
beings. But the vast majority of people own no property in a real sense of
capital and capital goods, and the puzzling question arises: How can such
people fulfill or even cope with their passion for acquiring and keeping
property, or how can they feel like owners of property when they haven't
any property to speak of?
Of course, the obvious answer is that even people who are property poor
own something -- and they cherish their little possessions as much as the
owners of capital cherish their property. And like the big property owners,
the poor are obsessed by the wish to preserve what they do have and to
increase it, even though by an infinitesimal amount (for instance by saving
a penny here, two cents there).
Perhaps the greatest enjoyment is not so much in owning material things
but in owning living beings. In a patriarchal society even the most
miserable men in the poorest of classes can be an owner of property -- in
his relationship to his wife, his children, his animals, over whom he can
feel he is absolute master. At least for the man in a patriarchal society,
having many children is the only way to own persons without needing to
work to attain ownership, and without capital investment. Considering that
the whole burden of childbearing is the woman's, it can hardly be denied

that the production of children in a patriarchal society is a matter of crude

exploitation of women. In turn, however, the mothers have their own form
of ownership, that of the children when they are small. The circle is
endless and vicious: the husband exploits the wife, she exploits the small
children, and the adolescent males soon join the elder men in exploiting
the women, and so on.
The male hegemony in a patriarchal order has lasted roughly six or seven
millennia and still prevails in the poorest countries or among the poorest
classes of society. It is, however, slowly diminishing in the more affluent
countries or societies -- emancipation of women, children, and adolescents
seems to take place when and to the degree that a society's standard of
living rises. With the slow collapse of the old fashioned patriarchal type of
ownership of persons, wherein will the average and the poorer citizens of
the fully developed industrial societies now find fulfillment of their passion
for acquiring, keeping, and increasing property? The answer lies in
extending the area of ownership to include friends and lovers, health,
travel, art objects, God, one's own ego. A brilliant picture of the bourgeois
obsession with property is given by Max Stirner.** Persons are transformed
into things; their relations to each other assume the character of
ownership. "Individualism", which in its positive sense means liberation
from social chains, means in the negative sense, "self ownership", the
right -- and the duty -- to invest one's energy in the success of one's own
person.
Our ego is the most important object of our property feeling, for it
comprises many things: our body, our name, our social status, our
possessions (including our knowledge), the image we have of ourselves
and the image we want others to have of us. Our ego is a mixture of real
qualities that we build around a core of reality. But the essential point is
not so much what the ego's content is, but that the ego is felt as a thing
we each possess, and that this "thing" is the basis of our sense of identity.
This discussion of property must take into account that an important form
of property attachment that flourished in the nineteenth century has been
diminishing in the decades since the end of the First World War and is little
evident today. In the older period, everything one owned was cherished,
taken care of, and used to the very limits of its utility. Buying was "keep-it"
buying and a motto for the nineteenth century might well have been : "Old
is beautiful!" Today, consumption is emphasized, not preservation, and
buying has become "throw away" buying. Whether the object one buys is a
car, a dress, a gadget, after using it for some time, one gets tired of it and
is eager to dispose of the "old" and buy the latest model. Acquisition -transitory having and using -- throwing away (or if possible, profitable

exchange for a better model) -- new acquisition, constitutes the vicious

circle of consumer-buying...
Excerpted from the book To Have or to Be by Erich Fromm, published by
Harper and Row. Copyright 1976 by Erich Fromm. Reprinted with
permission courtesy Harper and Row Publishers Inc.
* R.H Tawney's 1920 work The Aquisitive Society is still unsurpassed in
its understanding of modern capitalism and options for social and human
change. The contributions of Max Weber, Brentano, Schapiro, Pascal,
Sombart, and Kraus contain fundamental insights for understanding
industrial society's influence on human beings.
** Sterner, Max, 1973. The Ego and His Own: The Case of the
Individual Against Authority. Edited by James J. Martin. Translated by
Steven T. Byington. New York: Dover.

Big Brother Couldn't Foresee the Big C Consumerism

Jay Scott
"Here is a nice little piece by a guy who worked for the Globe and Mail in
Toronto - comparing consumerism - in the way it controls us - to Orwell's
'Big Brother'."
"In street lingo, consumer capitalism is an equal opportunity
whore."
In a way, everything George Orwell predicted in the novel Nineteen EightyFour has come true. In a way, nothing he predicted has come true.
("Doublethink", he wrote, means the power of holding two contradictory
beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." The
power to doublethink has come triumphantly true.)
When Orwell predicted that Big Brother would have technology to watch
us, he was right. He was the Jules Verne of sociology. But he was wrong. He
did not predict that citizens would be keeping tabs on Big Brother. He did
not predict -- how could he? Who would have believed him? -- that two
reporters would watch a U.S. President so closely he would be forced to
resign, that a woman comedian would call a U.S. Secretary of the Interior
an "idiot" on nationwide television and refuse to apologize ("Oh grow up,
America!"), or that Big Brother would watch other Big Brothers -- that
politicians would live in mortal fear of having their secrets discovered by

other politicians, the press, the people. Orwell predicted the equivalent of
government dossiers, FBI files, CIA snooping. He did not predict That's
Incredible, People Magazine or the National Enquirer.
Orwell was a pessimist, a dystopian suspicious of Marxism's promise of
Eden on earth, and he was able to imagine all too well a society in which
everything was sacrificed to the state, a society in which every move was
monitored and engineered to echo every other move, a society in which
individualism was extinct. For Orwell, the future could be found in what
Mao's China was at one time thought to be, a vast panorama of -- to use
the term that became popular in the fifties, the decade Orwell did not
quite live to see -- conformism. "If you want a picture of the future," he
wrote in Nineteen Eighty Four, "Imagine a boot stamping on a human face
-- forever."
Maybe. But what about Pac-Man? Orwell reckoned without capitalism's
confounding capacity to avoid confrontation by merchandising it.
Capitalism, like Pac-Man, can munch up anything. Control and conformism,
the two Orwellian bugaboos, reckoned without behavioural psychology,
which teaches that the most effective form of control is achieved by
rewarding the organism, not by punishing it. Capitalism understands
behavioursim as totalitarianism does not. In totalitarian countries, there
are coups and revolutions and liberation movements. In capitalist
countries, there are sales.
Consumer capitalism hopes to attract consumers to things that make them
feel good, to things, that, in the language of behaviourisms, are
"reinforcing". (The dark side of the system is that the search for profits
leads capitalists to market things that look good but aren't good -cigarettes, the Corvair, militarism -- and to resist discarding them as long
as somebody is making a buck from them.)
Consumer capitalism stands ready to push ideas, ideologies and
revolutionary strategies with the same acumen it brings to marketing
perfume and defence contracts; in street lingo, consumer capitalism is an
equal-opportunity whore. If it makes consumers feel good to avoid Big
Brother, if it makes them feel good to think they are fighting against the
system, the system will sell them that feeling. Hollywood makes movies
that call into question the morality of the corporations that own Hollywood,
rock singers sing against the corruption of the record companies that
record them, TV talk shows talk about TV as a menace. (Try to imagine it:
each morning as the characters in Nineteen Eighty-Four get up, Big
Brother announces over the loudspeaker, "Beware, Big Brother"). The law
Orwell never took into account when foreseeing the future was this: If

somebody wants it, somebody will sell it. And the corollary: if somebody
sells it, somebody will buy it.
Orwell himself is marketed: Newspeak, doublethink and the adjective
Orwellian are part of the culture. Individuality is accorded prime
importance in the West, in the belief that individuality is the thing the West
has that the East wants, the thing that spells the secret of its
unprecedented ability to market life with such demographic exactitude
that it is called a style. Lifestyle. The system has institutionalized the
diversity Orwell feared would die out. The system is devoted to the
proliferation of variety -- to superficial variety (are those buns by Calvin
Klein or Valente?) perhaps, but to variety nonetheless.
The desires of minorities generate marketing strategies -- Jet and Ebony
magazines for blacks, Blueboy and Numbers for gays. Within limits, the
outsider is honoured and occasionally revered, especially if his jacket is
black and made of leather and especially if he dies young and in it, with
his Frye boots on.
Orwell's novel is a cautionary fable about a land in which everybody in the
same class had the same things, did the same things, a land that
exterminated any variation from the norm. (The Outer Party members
lived by strict rules: the Inner Party members had rules slightly less strict;
and the proles, the uneducated lower class, lived by few rules except that
they were exterminated, if they showed signs of intelligence or of causing
trouble.)
The sequel he never lived to write could have been about a land where
nobody was the same. In this non-Orwellian strange new world, there
would be one law, and it would not be to revere Big Brother, and there
would be one measure of success, and it would not be the ability to
conform. Success and its measure would be found in one slogan, a slogan
that would be found for a time on T-shirts sold only at the chicest of
boutiques in the chicest of burgs: "Whoever has the most things when he
dies, wins."
Reprinted with permission from the Globe and Mail.
"The dark side of the system is that the search for profits leads
capitalists to market things that look good but aren't good ... and
to resist discarding them as long as somebody is making a buck
from them."
"From a marketing point of view, disposability is the golden goose
..."

"The purpose is to make the customer discontented with his old

type of fountain pen, kitchen utensil, bathroom, or motor car,
because it is old fashioned, out of date. The technical term for
this idea is obsoletism. We no longer wait for things to wear out.
We displace them with others that are not more effective but
more attractive."
The excerpts above are from Open Reality: The Way Out of Mimicking
Happiness by Richard Altschuler and Nicholas Regush, published by G.P.
Putnam & Sons, New York. Copyright 1974 by Richard Altschuler and
Nicholas Regush. Reprinted with permission courtesy of the Putnam
Publishing Group.

You Can Never Get Enough Of What You

Didn't
Want
In
The
First
Place
Sam Keen
"Beyond the level of comfortable survival, goods become a
substitute for the primal goodness we were denied - familiarity,
intimacy, kindness."
...At present, families are disintegrating at a rapid rate under the impact of
economic pressures that force both father and mother into the workforce,
easy divorce, constant mobility and rootlessness, and the new ethic of
selfishness. The task of caring for and initiating children is increasingly
turned over to professionals, as both mother and father choose to centre
their identity in the economic rather than the familiar.
More accurately, the crisis in the family goes along with a modern redefinition of "economic." The word "economic" originally meant the art and
science of managing a household. Under the impact of the omnivorous
market-mentality, it changed its meaning and became "the production,
distribution and consumption of commodities." The subversion and
destruction of the family can be measured in the distance between these
two definitions -- between home economics and corporate economics...
...No number of products, money, or abstract goods satisfies us. This is the
fundamental mistake we make in substituting the economic for the
familiar as the root of identity. Economic man is driven by insatiability
because, as my friend Anne Valley Fox says, "You can never get enough of
what you didn't want in the first place." Beyond the level of comfortable
survival, goods become a substitute for the primal goodness we were
denied -- familiarity, intimacy, kindness...

Excerpted from The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving, by Sam Keen.

Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1983.

The

Poverty

of

Rich

Society

John F. Gardener
"Yet how many gleaming, cheerful, well-centred faces one sees
among men and women whose livelihood is meagre; and how
many clouded, petulant, craving faces among those who seem to
have everything!"
...Without making distinctions between those who have money and those
who do not, we can say of most Americans at the present time that they
suffer from a hunger of the soul, which they try to satisfy by eating too
much, smoking and drinking too much, buying too much, looking at too
much TV, and rushing around more and faster than necessary. Their
unfulfilled hunger drives them to self-destroying life-habits and the
growing gap between what they need from life and what they succeed in
getting opens them to anguish and despair that they try to suppress by
sedatives, stimulants, and mind-changing drugs in enormous amounts, at
enormous cost...
...We know that millions of Americans in rural as well as urban areas are illfed, ill-housed, and ill-clothed. We could be so incautious as to suppose
that these areas are the centre of poverty in our society. Yet how many
gleaming, cheerful, well-centred faces one sees among men and women
whose livelihood is meagre; and how many clouded, petulant, craving
faces among those who seem to have everything! Which of the two is
poorer? And if Want cries out so painfully, so balefully, from the squalor of
the ghettos, how much of this sense of want is the simple need for more
adequate food, housing and clothes; and how much results from inner
deprivations and distortions that can hardly be distinguished from those of
the pampered rich?...
Men who can buy a bigger, faster car every year or two may scoff at the
idea that the car leads away from the satisfaction of their more
fundamental desires. While it lasts, material opulance certainly has power
to delude us into thinking dark is light, down is up, ugly is beautiful, and
bankrupcy of the soul is fulfillment...
Excerpted from The Poverty of a Rich Society.Proceedings No. 31 by
John F. Gardener. The Myrin Institute Inc., 1976.

Is This a Culture We Can Afford to be

Complacent
About?
Lawrence S. Kubie
"A piece by Lawrence Kubie, a psychoanalyst. He wrote it in 1961 as an
indictment of a culture that wants to sell you cars that go faster, cars that
are bigger than you can use, and chromium and all of that nonsense, and
its dangerous. But it's what gets marketed to us and what we get to
worship. And he goes on to say, look I'm not saying that the communists
can do it better, or the socialists can do it better. What I am saying is that
we have to do something different because this culture is getting
dangerous and we should do some thinking about that before we are
driven to hell by the people who can market stuff so well."
Is this a culture that breads health?"
...Finally, we must consider our economy, increasingly gambling its
success or failure on consumption by the instalment plan. Has anyone
since Veblen asked what would happen to such an economy if the masked
neurotic ingredients in human nature were by sudden magic to be
eliminated? What would happen to the fashion cults, the beauty cults, the
food and drink and tobacco cults with their exploitation of orality, the
excretory cult, the cleanliness cults, the size cults, the height cults, the
strip-tease cults? Consider the exploitation of hypochondriasis through the
drug houses and even our more elite publishing houses. Take also the
endless whetting of consumer craving, the exploitation of the "gimmes" of
childhood by transmuting them into the "gimmes" of adult life. Consider
the ministering to neurotic needs through size and power: the knight of old
replaced by Casper Milquetoast in General Motors armour, complete with
chromium, unneeded size, unused seating capacity, and a pointless illegal,
and unusable capacity for speed. Or consider the search for happiness
anywhere else than where one is, whether it is an adolescent with his hotrod, or the travel industry selling vacations on the instalment plan.
To repeat, what would happen to our economy if we were to get well? And
what does the exploitation of neurosis by so many forces in our culture do
to the neurotic process itself? Is this a culture that breads health? Is this a
culture that we can afford to be complacent about? Or have we allowed
the enormous creative potential of private enterprise to be enslaved to
neurotic processes in industry, exactly as the creative process in art,
literature, music, even science, has become the slave of neurosis?
Lest we think that I am singling out our culture, our economy for attack, I
repeat that I do not believe that human ingenuity has yet devised any

political or economic system that does not exploit, intensify, and reward
much that is neurotic (potentially even psychotic) in human nature. If the
profit-driven economies exploit subtle manifestations of neurotic selfindulgence and short-term needs, so do totalitarian systems, whether
Fascist or Communist, exploit power needs and power fantasies in an even
more primitive fashion, rewarding the sadistic lusts and the paranoid
components of human nature...
Excerpted with permission from an article entitled, The Eagle and The
Ostrich, by Lawrence S. Kubie, MD, which appeared in the Archives of
General Psychiatry, Vol. 5, No. 2. August 1961. At the time of writing, Dr.
Kubie was on the faculty of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Clinical
Professor of Psychiatry (Emeritus), Yale.
"The economic freedom that makes an American electric kitchen
does not lead to any greater happiness or wisdom; all it does is to
allow more comfort , and this soon becomes accepted
automatically and loses its emotional value.
The economic solution alone will never free the world from its
hate and misery, its crime and scandal, its neuroses and
diseases."
A.S. Neil

The
Link
Between
Consumerism

Psychopathy

and

E.T. Barker, MD
I see consumerism as the most powerful cultural force making us create
childcare arrangements institutionalized group daycare for children
under three which risk making partial psychopaths.
Having been manipulated into near terminally ill consumer addicts, the
necessity to end very legitimate inequities in our patriarchal society has
been seen as only possible by other childcare arrangements. In my opinion
that has been a dangerous tactical miscalculation in the legitimate war
against arbitrary male dominance. And I see consumerism and
psychopathy linked in that if a person develops as a psychopath or partial
psychopath, their capacity to form intimate, trusting mutually satisfying
relationships with other human beings is impaired.
The emptiness of the hollow man must be filled, and consumerism has
learned how. So those two illness dovetail. Someone once said that a

culture creates the kind of people it needs. Maybe we're into haphazard
nurturing relationships in the first three years of the lives of our children so
they will grow up with an insatiable need to shop till they drop.
If you're unable to obtain satisfaction from BEING, which is based on love
and the pleasure of sharing then the HAVING MODE, as Eric Fromm put it,
is your only choice:
"The HAVING MODE, concentrates on material possession, acquisitiveness,
power, and aggression and is the basis of such universal evils as greed,
envy, and violence..."
Psychopathy and Consumerism need and feed each other.
"...It is consumerism that drives the 80-hour work week. When we
learn that consumer goods don't make us happy, we can get
serious about reconstructing the family. The critical question in
America, at the end of the 20th century, is whether consumption
or the family will prevail."

Consumerism,
and

Arbitrary

Male

Dominance
Daycare

E.T. Barker, MD
"This is an excerpt from a paper I gave at the Fifth International Congress
on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1984, linking consumerism, arbitrary male
dominance and daycare."
The capacities for trust, empathy and affection are in fact the
central core of what it means to be human, and are indispensable
for adults to be able to form lasting, mutually satisfying
cooperative relationships with others. In a world of decreasing
size and increasing numbers of weapons of mass destruction it is
dangerous for these qualities to become deficient.
There are two powerful and dangerous social forces underlying the need
for daycare: consumerism, and arbitrary male dominance. The former
lures parents into believing that they need to be making more money
rather than caring for their children. The latter drives women away from
nurturing their children to gain emancipation via the marketplace.
The problem is that the necessity of shared and the inevitability of
changing caregivers in any type of group daycare for infants and toddlers
puts the development of their capacity for trust, empathy, and affection at

risk. No one sees this as a problem because these deficits don't show up
clearly until adulthood, and even then they are not easily measurable like
an intelligence quotient is. What is worse, their absence can actually be an
asset in a consumer society which often rewards the opposite values.
But the capacities for trust, empathy, and affection are in fact the central
core of what it means to be human, and are indispensable for adults to be
able to form lasting, mutually satisfying co-operative relationships with
others. In a world of decreasing size and increasing numbers of weapons
of mass destruction it is dangerous for these qualities to become deficient.
What is needed is greater understanding of the pragmatic nature of the
values of trust, empathy, and affection; a means of measuring the degree
of their presence or absence in adults; more rapid progress in the
elimination of arbitrary male dominance; and closer examination of the
destructive aspects of consumerism.

["The committee on women's rights will now come to order."]

The Real Culprits
The real culprit in all this, of course, is the inflexibility of men. It comes back to that
over and over again. Men are inflexible as fathers when they either do not assume more
responsibility for care or do not provide support that they are committed to and put
women in the position of starving or working outside the home. Then there are men in
policy-making positions who are very inflexible and define child care as a woman's
problem. Part and parcel of any childcare initiative needs to be a major initiative in
male re-socialization. Otherwise, it's women and children
who pay the price.
Dr. James Garbarino, President
Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development
[INDEX]

Women's Liberation and Cruelty to Children

E.T. Barker, MD
From the perspective of the CSPCC, one of the most important aspects of the. struggle for
equality in all dealings bet- ween men and women is the prevention of permanent emotional
damage to children.

An emotionally "put-down" mother, a woman whose relationship with her husband is

characterized by arbitrary male dominance, will have negative feelings (conscious or
unconscious) resulting from her unequal or powerless position.
Infants, being extraordinarily sensitive to the feelings of the mother are affected by these
feelings. The infant is affected directly by the mother's conscious or unconscious anger or
resentment. Indirectly, the child is affected by rationalized excesses of arbitrary authority
(unnecessary eat this's, do this's, don't do that's), and other psychological defence manoeuvers
necessary to cope with the feelings generated from an unequal position vis-a-vis a father
whose arbitrary male dominance is unquestioned.
When the norm for all relations between men and women becomes one of equality, and
especially when parents re- late on a basis of mutual respect and cooperation, then our
children will have a major source of emotional abuse removed. Not until women are
themselves treated as persons, will it be reasonable to expect them to treat their infant children
as persons, bathing them in the empathic, affectionate care so necessary during the earliest
formative years.
Editorial, Journal of the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Vol 4,
Issue 2.
In a sense everyone's liberation depends on the liberation of white males, precisely
because they have the power to prevent women and minorities from seeking a broader
range of alternatives if they do not play the game by the rules of the masculine value
system.
Madonna Kolbenschiag

Sexism: A Dangerous Delusion

George W. Albee
"Sexists (along with Anti-Semites, antigays, racists, and bigots of all kinds) should be
defined as emotionally disturbed."
Sexism means ascribing superiority or inferiority, unsupported by any evidence, in traits,
abilities, social value, personal worth, and other characteristics to males or females as a group.
The "standard of excellence" usually is the white male.
Most commonly sexism involves perceiving and acting toward females as if they are
categorically inferior. This places sexism in the pantheon of prejudices alongside racism,
ageism, and other political pathologies defended as part of natural eternal cosmic truths
revealed and supported by religion and science. The hand that writes the truth has long been
attached to the masculist patriarchal body. And whether the writer has been engaged in
producing scripture, literature, scientific treatises, or law - or painting pictures or writing
songs - the result is the same: Kings rule by divine right, slavery is a natural consequence of

the superiority of the masters and the inferiority of the slaves, and women are born to be
objects deprived by nature of autonomy and freedom and subservient to the master sex.
Sexism is woven into the texture of our lives and damages both the sexist and the target
group. Not only are many forms of psychopathology produced in the victims of sexism, but
sexism itself is a form of psychopathology. Traditionally, a major criterion of mental disorders
is the judgement that the person is so irrational and emotionally out of control as to be
dangerous to others. According to this definition, sexists (along with Anti-Semites, antigays,
racists, and bigots of all kinds) should be defined as emotionally disturbed.)
Whenever a group representing an identifiable segment of humankind is singled out as the
object of discrimination or of exploitation, the exploiters justify the discrimination and
exploitation by claiming that all members of the target group are somehow defective or
subhuman. Examples of this process abound. Whether it was blacks imported from Africa to
work on the southern plantations or the Eastern Europeans long enslaved by the Nordics
(which is where the word Slave comes from), the excuse was always the same: Every member
of the group was seen as inferior. The Nazis justification for persecuting the Jews sounded
like the English arguments for excluding Eastern European Jews half a century before. We
need not review the whole sad sorry historical litany of the endless exploitation of humans by
humans except to underline the one common feature -- that subjugated people are said to be
different in kind and that the difference is a defect.
Individual members of groups that are the objects of prejudice and are mistreated tend to live
a powerless, pathological existence. Understandably, members of the group often accept the
prejudiced view of themselves. Social learning theorists point out that symbolic models
portrayed at home, on TV, and in books and magazines are important sources of sex
stereotyped attitudes. The descriptions become self-fulfilling prophecies. Members of the
group begin to live and behave in ways that are expected of them, and they become caught up
in self-perpetuating behaviour, thereby reinforcing the prejudices.
Psychologist Phyllis Chester (1973) eloquently describes the result:
Women are impaled on a cross of self-sacrifice. Unlike men, they are categorically denied the
experience of actual supremacy, humanity and renewal based on their sexual identity -- and on
the blood sacrifice, in some way, of a member of the opposite sex. In different ways, some
women are driven mad by this fact. Such madness is essentially an intense experience of
female biological, sexual and cultural castration, and a doomed search for potency.
Whether this woman's defect - her fatal flaw - is explained on the basis of Freudian
chauvinism (penis envy), on observable physical differences (the weaker sex), or on historical
guilt (Eve caused the fall), the result is the same. We see profound and debilitating suffering
in the victims, acceptance by some of them of the values and beliefs of their oppressors (see
Morgan's Total Woman, 1973), and widespread learned helplessness and despair. We also
hope to see a spirit of resistance and revolution emerge that gathers strength through mutual

support, encouragement, and the enlistment of significant numbers of defectors from the
oppressor group...
Excerpted from the article The Prevention of Sexism by George W. Albee, published first in
the journal Professional Psychology, Volume 12, No. 1, Feb. 1981. Reprinted/Adapted by
permission of the publisher and Author. Copyright c 1981 by the American Psychological
Association.
George W. Albee is Professor of Psychology at the University of Vermont 05405. He is
General Editor (with Justin M. Joffe) of a series of volumes (published by the University
Press of New England in Hanover, NH) on the primary prevention of psychopathology. These
books result from the annual conference on primary prevention held at the University of
Vermont each June. He was Chair of the Task Panel on Primary Prevention for President
Carter's Commission on Mental Health. Twenty years ago he was Director of the Task Force
on Manpower for the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health established by the
Congress and President Eisenhower. His research and scholarly activities have been in the
area of primary prevention, the psychopathology of prejudice, and human resources affecting
the delivery of psychological services.
"Most commonly sexism involves perceiving and acting toward females as if they are
categorically inferior. This places sexism in the pantheon of prejudices alongside racism,
ageism, and other political pathologies defended as part of natural eternal cosmic truths
revealed and supported by religion and science."

Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye

Madonna Kolbenschiag
"This is one of the most powerful statements I have seen dealing with the pervasiveness of
patriarchy and the futility of women trying to beat men at men's' games. It is the epilogue of a
book, and is written in the form of a good-bye letter from a wife to her husband."
...In a sense everyone's liberation depends on the liberation of white males, precisely because
they have the power to prevent women and minorities from seeking a broader range of
alternatives if they do not play the game by the rules of the masculine value system. Unless
you can admit that you are the problem and begin the task of liberating yourself and
dismantling the male-ordered system, many so-called "liberated" women will be seduced into
a patriarchal, elitist, one-dimensional, masculine role. We will simply have a new set of "halfpersons" who happen to be female...
...I would like to free you of your compulsive workaholism, your "breadwinner" fixation. But
I can't share that load unless you relieve me of some of the burden of homemaking and child
rearing. Can you learn to work less, earn less, spend more time with the kids -- and be happy?
If you can't then I can't be happy either. Can you stop measuring yourself by the size of your
paycheck?

I want to be an equal partner with you in supporting our home and in building a world. I think
I should work, but I don't want to betray myself in "liberating" myself into the marketplace. I
know I have to learn how to cope with competition. But I don't want to be infected with it, as
you are. If my professional advancement is going to depend on conforming to the male model
of achievement (compulsive-accretive production, narrow specialization, manipulation of
data, the ability to walk over others on the way up, "chutzpah" and hustling, a cool and stoic
demeanour), then I would be a fool to remake myself in your image.
Your institutions are like your automobiles -- extensions of your ego. So pervaded by the
masculine consciousness that they have become lethal instruments, harmful to all forms of
human life. Your hospitals, schools, universities, governments and churches are all
corporations, factories. All in bondage to the idea of male supremacy, that might makes right
and wealth dictates policy, where workers are excluded from ownership and decision making,
and profit becomes synonymous with survival. Most of your institutions are still modelled on
the plantation -- a few privileged white male professionals supported by a huge substructure
of underpaid, underprivileged, largely female labour force...
...I'm tired of lobbying for shared responsibility, equal pay, promotions and job opportunities.
Women have always wanted these things, unless they've been brainwashed beyond repair. We
won't get these things, however, until men realize that they have to give up something -power, advantage -- in order for us to be equal. Until you promote women's liberation, there
won't be any. It isn't going to happen by natural evolution -- your present position is too
comfortable. You play the "anointed" role, as if authority always had to be given to the oldest
son. It might be easier to take if you simply acknowledged the lust for power and the
insecurity that underlies your need to be in charge. But you keep referring your status to some
fundamental principle of cosmic order, or worse yet, as God's plan for the human species".
The possibilities of human destiny, human structures and human relationships are infinitely
more varied than this. Stand back and let the future unfold.
But let us not be naive. The mere presence of women in new jobs, in management positions -in greater numbers -- is not necessarily going to make a difference. Misogyny and patriarchy
run deep, in women as well as men. Much more fundamental changes in social structures are
needed if human personas are to develop to their full spiritual maturity...
...Change will no doubt be more precarious for you than for me. It will be a more lonely, more
alienated path. In shedding the husk of your reflected masculine glory, you will discover what
many women already know -- what it means to be a no-thing. Women in the process of a
consciousness breakthrough usually experience rage and frustration. Our behaviour is often
overtly anti-male. Men undergoing the same process will experience more of a feeling of loss.
Anger and resolve motivate a woman to sustain her changed consciousness and evolve new
relationship patterns. As she withdraws from male hegemony she will often discover the
support and encouragement of other women who will reach out to her in her struggle. You, on
the other hand, are likely to suffer the loss, not only of the women to whom you can no longer
relate in the old way, but also the loss of your male buddies -- because you have betrayed the
masculine code. You will be alone, you will be tempted to revert to the old patriarchal and

macho scenarios. You have everything to lose by continuing the struggle; I have everything to
lose by giving it up.
I want you to know that I understand what is a stake for you. I want you to know that I can
support you in that death and rebirth process -- it is the price of reclaiming your humanity and
your own soul. I can be your companion. My conversion to feminism is an unfinished,
incomplete experience unless it leads to your liberation. We can walk beside each other and
support each other. We need not be spouses -- in fact, it might be better if we weren't. Believe
me when I say that I want you to be different (in spite of the fact that I sometimes behave
instinctively to the contrary). If I give up my princess ways, will you give up your princedom?
I know I will have to steel myself to accept the consequences. If you begin to take on more
responsibility for home and children, I will have to sacrifice some of my matriarchal
prerogatives there. If you begin to shed the "team" mystique at work, take a stand on sensitive
issues, work fewer hours, I will have to bear with the consequences in loss of promotions,
lower pay, job changes, whatever may come. I'll have to bear with insecurity and loss of status
without putting guilt on you. You'll have to stop putting guilt on me for abandoning the
"imperial motherhood" role in the home and the Girl Friday role in the office...
...Perhaps the most difficult change of all will be admitting that neither of us can be all things
to the other. If we are married, we will have to allow others to be a part of our lives,
individually and together. We will need more than other supportive couples, mirror images of
our own dyad. I will need women and men as friends; you will need men and women as
friends.
We have to be committed to this transformation. These changes will come slowly and
painfully. We will have to bear with different rhythms of growth in each other. We will have to
persevere in them in spite of the pressures of society. We will have to explode and upset our
life together, occasionally, in order to find new ways to keep ourselves growing. This
commitment to each other's liberation and growth should be our best reason for being
together. If that is not a part of our continuing compact, then even if I love you, I must leave
you...
Excerpted from the book Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye by Madonna Kolbenschiag.
Copyright 1979 by Madonna Kolbenschiag. Published by Doubleday and Co., Inc.
Reprinted with permission.
" Unless you can admit that you are the problem and begin the task of liberating
yourself and dismantling the male-ordered system, many so-called "liberated" women
will be seduced into a patriarchal, elitist, one-dimensional, masculine role. We will
simply have a new set of "half-persons" who happen to be female..."
"Until you promote women's liberation, there won't be any. It isn't going to happen by
natural evolution - your present position is too comfortable."

"In countless ways we need each other as models for change. But I don't want to be what
you are, and you wouldn't want to be what I have been. Can we become something new
together?"

The Feminine Utopia

Walter Karp
"A movement that began by asking for a fair share of dignity and human achievement
can today think of no other source of dignity, no other source of achievement, than
toiling at a job."
...Females, in the view of the women's movement, remain subordinate, because they are still
"economically dependent" on males, which is to say, husbands. Miss Millett views the entire
"sexist" system as the means by which males prevent females from gaining "independence in
economic life." As Mme de Beauvoir wrote twenty years earlier in Paris, the extent to which
women are dominated is the extent to which they are kept "from assuming a place in
productive labor." Only when all women are "raised and trained exactly like men ... to work
under the same conditions and for the same wages," will females ever be liberated.
What looms up as the giant barrier to such liberation is, of course, the primal institution of the
family. It is the family that directly secures the economic dependence of women, for within
the family the female is supported while she herself labors without pay -- a point the women's
movement finds particularly telling. It is by means of the family division of roles that females
are assigned, in Miss Millett's words, to "menial tasks and compulsory child-care," and thus
are prevented from taking their place in the work force. It is by virtue of her training for the
family that a female is brought up to be feminine, passive, compliant, and unaggressive, and
so rendered unfit for winning independence through work.
The conclusion of the movement's argument is not easily avoided, though more moderate
elements flinch from the logic of the case. The liberation of females, all females, can only
come when the family is abolished as the primary unit of human life, to be supplanted, in the
words of Miss Millett, by "collective, professionalized care of the young." With the end of the
durable family-centered world, females would no longer have to be trained from birth to
exhibit and admire domestic and maternal virtues. Legal distinctions, like that between
legitimate and illegitimate children, and moral distinctions, like that between fidelity and
adultery, would cease to have any meaning. The bond of marriage would be quite unnecessary
and would be replaced by "voluntary associations."
In this familyless world females would enjoy "complete sexual autonomy," and their decision
to bear children would become a purely voluntary one. Trained alike, sharing alike in the
world's labor, men and women would be equals. Except for their differing roles in
procreation, they would for the first time in human history be interchangeable, one with the
other, as fellow human beings.

Those women's movement spokespersons who propose this "sexual revolution," as it has been
called, do not expect that it lies in the immediate offing. What they do maintain is that this
must be the ultimate goal of women in their struggle for liberation. They do not promise, in
general, that humankind would be happier under this new dispensation. What they do say is
that this new dispensation would be just and that only such a dispensation can liberate females
from the age-old injustice of male domination.
And yet, something seems wrong, and very seriously wrong. At the base of the long and
complicated argument propounded by spokespersons for the women's liberation movement lie
two seminal assumptions, which deserve more scrutiny than the movement, to date, has given
them. The first is the assumption that the family can be replaced successfully by a modern
organization of experts, professionals, and salaried employees. The second is the assumption
that human dignity is to be found in the organized wage-earning work force.
G.K. Chesterton put his finger on the first assumption in a short essay he wrote some fifty
years ago, called "Marriage and the Modern Mind." What, he asked, did the women's
movement of his day think about children? The answer was that they did not think about them
at all. They would "imitate Rousseau, who left his baby on the doorstep of the Foundling
Hospital." They overlooked the problem of children, Chesterton implied, because they saw
children not as a problem but merely as an obstacle. Yet every known human society has
made the problem of children its primary concern, and has done so because the problem is
primary.
The most important thing about children is that we must have them. We must reproduce our
kind in sufficient numbers to replace those who die. This is so not because we are animals,
who cannot recognize, and will not mourn, the possible extinction of their species. It is so
because we are human and have made for ourselves a human world whose essential attribute
is its permanence. We die, yet it abides. Without that assurance, human life would be
unthinkable. But precisely because we inhabit a human world, not even the birth of children is
assured: as the women's movement has emphasized, there is no maternal instinct and no
natural fulfillment in bringing children into the world. Just so. However, humankind must find
some secure and permanent means to ensure that females submit to motherhood, that they
continue to sacrifice a large portion of their individuality, for the sake of the human world's
survival.
To date, at least, this has been assured by the family. Because of the personal bonds it
establishes, the female is not asked to carry out an abstract duty to the species and to the
world. She bears children for the sake of her spouse, or for the sake of her father, or for the
sake of her mother's clan, according to the form of the family system. By means of the family,
duty to the species becomes duty to known persons, to persons united to females by abiding
ties of loyalty and affection. But what of the familyless world outlined by the women's
movement? In such a world the sexual training of females would be abolished and bearing
children would cease, of necessity, to be a deeply felt personal virtue. Under such conditions
reproduction would become a public duty, as it was in the garrison state of Sparta, where
women, as well as men, were largely liberated from family ties. The personal voice of the

family would be replaced by mass exhortation -- the voice of the megaphone -- urging
females to bear children for the good of the State or the Nation or the People.
Such a prospect can be looked on as merely repugnant, but more is at stake than that. To make
child rearing a public duty, and mothers into state charges, it is worth remarking, was seen by
the Nazis as a perfect means to extend totalitarian control, which is why they exhorted
females to bear children out of wedlock in sunny, luxurious nursing homes. The Nazi effort to
"liberate" females from the thralldom of husbands was not done, however, for the sake of
liberty. A society compelled to make childbearing a public duty is one that puts into the hands
of its leaders a vast potential for tyranny and oppression. The "purely voluntary" choice of
bearing children might one day have a very hollow ring...
...But ... what of the familyless world of women's liberation? In describing possible family
substitutes, spokespersons for the movement have not gone much beyond their cursory
remarks about collective and professional child care. The details, however, do not matter as
much as the essence of the thing. The care of children would be paid employment; the
primary relation of adults to children would be the cash nexus. Child rearing would be an
administrative function. That is the heart of the matter.
Certain consequences seem inevitable. From that primary experience of life the young would
learn -- could not help but learn -- that the basic relation of one being to another is the relation
of a jobholder to his job. Seeing that the paid functionaries who tended them could be
replaced by any other paid functionaries, they would also learn that adults must be looked
upon as interchangeable units, individually unique in no important way. Nor is it difficult to
imagine the chief virtue the young would acquire should their care be turned into an
administrative function. All our experience of bureaucracy tells us what it would be: the virtue
of being quick to submit to standardized rules and procedures.
How would the human world appear to a child brought up in such a way? It would appear as a
world whose inhabitants are jobholders and nothing more, where there is nothing else for a
grownup to be except gainfully employed. What is more, the child would be perfectly raised,
by the most basic lessons of his young life, to become another jobholder...
...In a society where cash is too often the link between people, it would make cash the sole
link between adults and children. In a society where people are being reduced more and more
to mere jobholders and paid employees, it would make the child's primary experience of life
the experience of being someone's job. In a society showing a remorseless capacity to
standardize and depersonalize, it would standardize and depersonalize the world in which
children are raised. The ideal world in which females would be liberated for productive labor
is a world that would tyrannize the young, which means, in the end, it would tyrannize us all.
Paid labor is freedom and dignity: that is the axiom of the women's movement today. It is not
theirs alone. We hear it every day in a hundred different guises. We are told that the dignity of
the citizen consists, not in being a free citizen, but in working on a job, that the dignity of the
factory worker consists in working in a factory, and that the dignity of the "hard-hat" comes

from wearing a hard hat. When an oppressed minority in America demands a citizen's share in
power, it is told that what it "really" needs are more and better jobs. That is the common
ideology, and if the dream of the women's movement is monstrous, that ideology is its
seedbed. The women's movement has simply driven that ideology to its logical conclusion,
and the ideal "sexual revolution" is that conclusion.
We must turn, then, to the work world to see what it does offer in the way of human dignity,
achievement, and freedom. The first and primary question is that of freedom and its relation to
work. The relation is negative. To the Greeks it was axiomatic that those who must labor
could not be free. To be free required leisure -- even Karl Marx, the philosopher of productive
labor, admitted in the end that freedom began when the workday ended. Without leisure, men
could not take part in public affairs, could not speak and act in the polis, could not share in
power, and thus could not be called free, for those subject to commands are not free. There is
nothing abstruse about this, for quite obviously, people work and are paid for their labor even
under conditions of abject tyranny and totalitarian domination. In the Soviet Union women
play a far more prominent part in the work force than they do in America -- most of the
doctors in Russia, for example, are, women -- and thus, by the women's movement definition,
are freer than women are here. Yet Russian women enjoy no freedom at all.
The liberationists' blindness to the nature of the work world may have been explained,
inadvertently, by Mme de Beauvoir when she pointed out in The Second Sex that in
comprehending men, women see little more than "the male." So, in looking at the realm of
work, the women's movement sees that males, as such, are ascendant. But they have hardly
begun to grasp the obvious: that some men are more ascendant than others. When movement
spokesmen contrast the "male" role and "male" achievements with the monotonous tasks of
the household, many men may well wonder which males they are talking about. According to
a statement in The Sisterhood is Powerful, "a great many American men are not accustomed
to doing monotonous, repetitive work which never ushers in any lasting, let alone important,
achievement." It sounds like a typographical error. Most jobs are monotonous and do not
usher in lasting or important achievements. The majority of jobs are narrow functions,
dovetailing with other narrow functions, in large-scale organizations.
Because this is so, most jobs demand few of the moral qualities that mankind has found
worthy of admiration. They demand our proficiency, patience, and punctuality, but rarely our
courage, loyalty, generosity, and magnanimity, the virtues we mean when we speak of human
dignity. The one honorable satisfaction that most men obtain from their labor is the
satisfaction of providing for their families, and the women's liberation movement would
sacrifice the family for the sake of performing such labors. A movement that began by asking
for a fair share of dignity and human achievement can today think of no other source of
dignity, no other source of achievement, than toiling at a job. It has looked on the modern
mass society, a society in which more and more activities are in the hands of administrations
and bureaucracies, a society in which more people are becoming, more and more, merely paid
employees, and it has made this mass society its ideal for human life. That, in the end, is the
failure of the women's movement...

"The conclusion of the movement's argument is not easily avoided, though more
moderate elements flinch from the logic of the case. The liberation of females, all
females, can only come when the family is abolished as the primary unit of human life,
to be supplanted, in the words of Miss Millett, by 'collective, professionalized care of the
young'."
Reprinted with permission from Horizon. Spring, 1971, Volume XIII, Number 2. Copyright
1971, American Heritage Publishing Company Inc.

Letter to Editor
E.T. Barker
"Here is a diatribe I wrote about accepting the existing reality because so many people will
say, yeah, but get with it Barker, this is what we have to deal with, the here and now, and so
on.
Editor
Zero to Three
National Center for Clinical Infant Programs
733 15th Street N. W., Suite 912
Washington, DC 20005 U.S.A.
To The Editor
What a giant step forward to have some DAYCARE DIALOGUE in Zero to Three*. For too
long it has been construed as treason to discuss the potential hazards of substitute care for
infants and toddlers. For too long, too many infant mental health clinicians have been
unwilling to pay the price for saying what they see or fear.
Your press release -- "Consensus on Infant-Toddler Daycare bemoans the "loss of
productivity" when parents have to look after their toddlers themselves. Producing what? Why
do you accept without question a definition of productivity that excludes or jeopardizes so
important an endeavour as giving an infant the healthiest possible start in life?
You say that "staying at home to care for an infant and toddler" may not be economically
feasible. Why do you accept without question this "reality" for parents in one of the richest
countries in the world?
What is so striking is the degree of acceptance accorded "the way it is" -- "reality". No
mention of how it should be, or could be for infants and toddlers. No hint of indictment of
societal values that make it so bad for kids -- the fundamental inequalities forced on women,
and unbridled consumerism to mention only two.
How is it that clinicians who can be bold in the treatment of disturbed infants and their
families, those who can see daily how the sickness of society finds its inevitable counterpart

in the sickness of the child, cannot be brought to deal with society boldly -- or even to indict it
clearly?
Whether history will judge infant mental health clinicians as the real Quislings in America for
their audible silence about societal values that adversely affect infants and toddlers, remains
an interesting open question.
Yours very truly
E.T.Barker,M.D.,D.Psych.,F.R.C.P.(C)
President, Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
*Zero to Three is a bulletin published by the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs
(733 15th Street, N.W., Suite 912, Washington, DC, 20005). Daycare Dialogue was a special
section of the bulletin set aside for debate over the dangers of daycare. It began after the
publication of Jay Belsky's article "The Dangers of Daycare", in the September 1986 issue.
The National Center for Clinical Infant Programs is, as its name implies, an organization for
clinicians treating damaged infants and toddlers.
"...Both mothers and fathers of young children are experiencing significant stress and
loss of productivity when high quality care for infants is not available and affordable,
and when staying at home to care for an infant is not economically feasable, inadequate
care poses risks to the current well-being and future development of infants, toddlers
and their families, on whose productivity the country depends..."
"It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral
teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men. Most
reverend seniors, the Illuminati of the age, tell me, with a gracious,
reminiscent smile, betwixt an aspiration and a shudder, not to be too
tender about these things - to lump all that - that is, make a lump of
gold of it. The highest advice I have heard on these subjects was
grovelling. The burden of it was - It is not worth your while to undertake
to reform the world in this particular. Do not ask how your bread is
buttered; it will make you sick if you do - and the like."
Henry David Thoreau,
1854

"The corporate consumer system has imposed its own domination of reality and its own
definition of the 'good life' on all of us."
"The mass media have imposed on us a conception of reality which defines for us what
happiness is, what the 'good life' is, what the human being is potentially capable of
achieving, in fact, all that we hear, say, and think."
"Simple observation shows they have been extremely successful. But in the process they
have left us believing that happiness can be achieved only by continually buying new
products and services."

Altschuler and Regush

Social

Science

E.T. Barker, MD
"With regard to social science, it might seem overly provocative here to take a shot at that.
Social science is really the only thing we've got -- how do you make sense of observations
unless you follow the canons of social science? And I'm not trying to suggest anything else.
But I am trying to suggest how misleading social science can be."
You will, though, run into the problem of social science research from vested interests. You
see that in your attempts to reduce tobacco use. Very well-respected scientists on each side of
the question will give you opposing results, and that's particularly true where a lot of money is
at stake, as there is in violence in entertainment. You will simply get study after study after
study that will befuddle you so that you won't do what seems to be common sense.
When I studied social psychology in graduate school, just one year, 30 years ago, the
professor said that there is confusion between physical and social sciences. If we lost all our
knowledge of the physical sciences, then we would be back to the cave days tomorrow. If we
lost all knowledge we had from social sciences, then you wouldn't notice one thing different. I
don't know if that's true or not, but it does put a kind of perspective on social science, as
Seeley has said, as being perhaps only one notch better than propaganda. Social science is
respectable and so on, but one must understand that social scientists can, with great sincerity
and rigorous techniques, produce opposing results, given their own personal biases or who
they're working for...
Excerpted from testimony by Dr. Barker at the Standing Committee on Justice and the
Solicitor General relating to crime prevention. December, 1992.
"Social science is respectable and so on, but one must understand that social scientists
can, with great sincerity and rigorous techniques, produce opposing results, given their
own personal biases or who they're working for..."

Overreliance on Social Science for Proof

J.R. Seeley
"The best I've ever seen by way of a statement of caution about social science is by a Jack
Seeley, who is a sociologist. (Actually a co-founder of York University) I've included a brief
excerpt from one of his papers where he cautioned I think in plain language that I've never
seen a rebuttal of, how misleading social science can be and he ends up with an inflammatory
comment that it's a bit better than propaganda but not by much. I think it's important for all of
us to tuck that in the back of our minds."
...whatever else the social scientist does, he redefines and thereby, and insofar, alters the
society. Indeed, insofar as he does function as a social scientist, he does nothing else: even
when he seems to function otherwise, when he merely records the going definitions of his

society, he has altered the general level of self-consciousness in reference to the definition, he
has brought it into or to the threshold of critical awareness, and thereby altered it functionally
about as radically as it can be altered. So the social scientist is, in the very performance of his
scientific role, a social actor, a crucial actor, a mover and shaker, parallel in function to any
formally designated politician, and probably eventually more powerful. Who was it said, Let
me write the songs of a nation...? In our day, he should have said, Let me write its
definitions... for the right to define is the right to make and unmake, create or destroy.
Even when this inescapable entanglement in action is recognized, a second effort is made to
save some special, extraordinary and in some sense superior status or standpoint for the social
scientist. It is held, briefly, that he is under the discipline of his data (and his method) and that
these drive him to a position very little dependent on his personal predilections and
preferences. It is usually allowed that interest may well direct inquiry up to the point where
an object of attention is selected, but that beyond that point the scientific process somehow
takes over and controls outcome.
Even if the claim were conceded, it would be almost infinitely damaging to the asserted role
of the social scientist, for the right to attend to this and not that is the right to direct attention
hither and not thither (that is, to adjudicate on the basis of personal sensibilities and
preferences). Suppose a judge declared a free power to direct attention upon whatever in the
evidence interested him; it is a near equivalent to a proclamation that he will decide the
outcome in terms of his private program.
But the claim cannot be allowed; the scientific process does not somehow take over once the
object is focused under the eyepiece. For there is still the selection of the light in which the
object is to be viewed, the context in which it is to be seen (actually put) and the setting of
canons for discrimination between true and false, or more or less plausible propositions.
I am not saying that "reality" constrains the social scientist in no way at all; but I am saying
that the constraint is not much (if at all) tighter than the corresponding reality lays upon the
artist, say a portraitist or painter. There is in each case a literal infinity of non-false
representations that can be made. Which will be made in actuality is as poetic in motive and
political in effect as any other essentially expressive action. For that is what it is: a ritualized
acting out of an internal choice or necessity, in which the ritual in some sense orders and
hence renders comprehensible, while in another sense it frees and hence allows the largest
latitude for the personal. (I shall not document these statements here, but it should be obvious
that one may, for instance, account for delinquency, say, in countless ways: as an expression
of the delinquents wish, or character or need; as a consequence of his parents acts or
unconscious motivations or those of their parents; as a result of differential association or
communication; as a function of the slum or the economic system or advertising or the police
system or the rating and dating scheme; as a result of want of care on the part of folks stolen
from or beaten up -- the victim makes the crime! -- or the presence of alleys or want of light at
the site; as an artifact of unreasonable laws... and so, literally, ad infinitum. The putting of all
these true propositions together in one book -- as in most texts on the subject -- does not alter
the status of the whole over that of the parts, for the ratio of one to infinity is the same as the

ratio of ten to infinity. It should be obvious too that what is selected for exposition out of this
interminable tangle is free neither of personal motive nor political consequence: indeed, it
arises almost altogether out of the first and eventuates almost altogether in the second. (The
word almost is meant to cover the barring of patently false propositions, which is
indeed one of the virtues of social science over less scrupulous propaganda).
Excerpted from Personal Science by John R. Seeley, Professor of Sociology, York University,
Toronto, Canada. Presented at the American Orthopsychiatric Association, Thirty-Ninth
Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, March 21-24, 1962. Published in The Urban Condition:
People and Policy in the Metropolis, Basic Books, 1963, and The Americanization of the
Unconscious, International Science Press, 1967.
"Not in any important point of comparison is there any resemblance between the
natural and the social sciences. I can but summarize briefly."

The Role of Research

Once it has been funded the next influence on research is the bias of the researcher(s). As
much as some people in the social sciences have aspired to be "objective", it is clear that
subjectivity is an integral part of social research. It is impossible to be objective, especially
when studying social phenomena which impinge on one's own life. Researchers who claim
objectivity are really concealing their attitudes and their probable influence on the research.
These attitudes should be stated explicitly. The point of view of the researchers throughout the
project determines the questions which are asked -- as well as the interpretation of the
responses.
"...my feeling is that there are very few communities in Canada where research would be a
good tactic now."
"...Research should be undertaken with the goal of furthering the cause of daycare in your
community."
Excerpted from the book, GOOD DAY CARE: Fighting For It, Getting It, Keeping It, edited
by Kathleen Galagher Ross, published by The Women's Press, Toronto, 1978.
"...my feeling is that there are very few communities in Canada where research would be
a good tactic now."

A Dangerous Possibility
Michael Trout
Dear Elliott
...As research is increasingly done by those who were raised in a substitute-care society, in
which intense and painful separations become normative, and shame (at "...being such a
baby") is added to the anger and sorrow felt by children, then very few will even grow up
with memory of their own feelings. But because the feelings will be so very much alive, I

suspect more and more clinicians will attempt to "guide" their patients away from such
explorations, more and more researchers will find unempathic group care to be utterly
innocuous, and more and more academics will teach the new line (that separation doesn't
hurt) as if it is scientific fact...
...I suspect a tremendous amount of quite personal repression will be at work, and this is only
going to get worse, as I see it....
Michael Trout
Director
Infant-Parent Institute
Champaigne
Illinois

One factor that is big in this whole issue of childcare is put forward
very well by James and Joyce Robertson, reviewing the work of their
entire life in their 1989 book "Separation and the Very Young". They
both worked at the Tavistock Clinic in England and did some filming
of very young kids when they were separated from parents when put in
hospital. Their film "A Two-Year Old goes to Hospital" literally
changed the practise of not letting parents visit young children in
hospital -- world wide.
They then did a series of equally powerful and significant films, the
most famous of which is JOHN, a brief description of which follows in
the next article - The Problem of Professional Anxiety. At age 17
months John is a healthy baby and is put in residential nursery care
for 9 days. Just 9 days. A normal kid. He is put in this place. It isnt
daycare, it's around the clock day care in Britain twenty years ago.
Well run, caring staff. It's a black and white film with voice over
sound. James told me the original soundtrack would have made the
film totally unbearable. It will scare the hell out of you, or make you
mad. All James Robertson did was go to the nursery every day with
his movie camera and record what happened to John emotionally
while his mother was in hospital having a second baby and father
visited periodically.
What the point is in this piece, and it is lifted out of their most recent
book, is the final line which youll see in bold at the end of that
article, "I could kill you", said a distinguished psychoanalyst after
seeing the film. So those of us who are psychiatrists and experts really
can be resistant to looking at the damage inflicted on children. If

youve ever said anything about the dangers of daycare publicly you'll
know. Ask Burton White.

The Problem of Professional Anxiety

James and Joyce Robertson
"One factor that is big in this whole issue of childcare is put forward very well by James and
Joyce Robertson, reviewing the work of their entire life in their 1989 book "Separation and
the Very Young". They both worked at the Tavistock Clinic in England and did some filming
of very young kids when they were separated from parents when put in hospital. Their film "A
Two-Year Old goes to Hospital" literally changed the practise of not letting parents visit
young children in hospital -- world wide.
They then did a series of equally powerful and significant films, the most famous of which is
JOHN, a brief description of which follows the article presented here. At age 17 months John
is a healthy baby and is put in residential nursery care for 9 days. Just 9 days. A normal kid.
He is put in this place. It isn't daycare, it's around the clock day care in Britain twenty years
ago. Well run, caring staff. It's a black and white film with voice over sound. James told me
the original soundtrack would have made the film totally unbearable. It will scare the hell out
of you, or make you mad. All James Robertson did was go to the nursery every day with his
movie camera and record what happened to John emotionally while his mother was in
hospital having a second baby and father visited periodically.
What the point is in this piece, and it is lifted out of their most recent book, is the final line, "I
could kill you", said a distinguished psychoanalyst after seeing the film. So those of us
who are psychiatrists and experts really can be resistant to looking at the damage inflicted on
children. If you've ever said anything about the dangers of daycare publicly you'll know. Ask
Burton White.
"Why is it that although the importance of meeting the emotional needs of young
children is well established by research, and is taught in many trainings, this
requirement of mental health is not well attended to in our child-care practice?"
It is common knowledge that experiences in the first years of life have a profound influence
upon later mental health. In particular, it is known that to ensure good social and emotional
development the young child needs a stable relationship with a responsive mother figure
(Bowlby, 1951). This is an experience that most young children find within the security of
their families.
An implication of this knowledge is that if a young child has for any reason to lose the care of
his mother, it is essential that his experience of responsive mothering be maintained. But at
the present time, if a young child goes into hospital without his mother, he will be handled by
a succession of nurses, and if he goes into residential care he will rarely find there a stable
mother substitute.

Why does this happen? Why is it that although the importance of meeting the emotional needs
of young children is well established by research, and is taught in many trainings, this
requirement of mental health is not well attended to in our child-care practice? Why is it that
although we know it to be imperative that young children have stable relationships, we still
fragment their care among many people when they come into hospital or other residential
settings?
If the relevant professions had a serious concern to meet the mothering needs of young
children in their care, practical difficulties arising from staff shortages and the short working
week might be found to be hard to overcome. But scanning the journals of the paediatric,
nursing and other caretaking professions reveals that, although there is an endeavour to
provide play and education, there is little or no reference to the much greater need for
mothering-type care.
Systems of care that disastrously fragment relationships can operate in institutions busy with
'child-oriented' activities, and are more likely to result from planning for work efficiency than
from staff shortage. It is well known, for instance, that even in large teaching hospitals where
there is no staff shortage, nursing is commonly organized on a 'job assignment' basis in
disregard of the emotional needs of the young patients, even though in the same hospitals the
nurses are likely to be taught the importance of stable relationships.
The major obstacle to suitable care is neither practical difficulty nor lack of knowledge. It is
that, whatever of intellectual understanding may obtain throughout the professions, the
appropriate sense of urgency and alarm is missing, or is dampened down. There is a tendency
for even the best-educated and the best-motivated of people working with young children to
become to some extent habituated to the states of distress and deviant behaviour that are
commonly found in young people in hospitals and other residential settings...
...Although there is everywhere goodwill and good intention towards young children in care,
with great resources and knowledge and understanding of their needs ... the common defence
against pain allows the acuteness of the problem to be dulled as by a tranquillizer.
Without a sufficient degree of anxiety in the professions there can be little improvement, no
matter how much knowledge is available. The problem is how to bring pain and anxiety back
into the experience of professional workers, but in such a way that these are put to
constructive use instead of being defensively sealed off by the constant pressure in all of us to
escape hurt.
Our way of focusing attention on the problem was to turn to narrative film.
The advantages of a narrative film record are twofold: first, presentation on film gives the
nearest approximation to actuality and the visual medium is much more effective than the
spoken or printed word in piercing resistance in the field of child care. Secondly, by focusing
on one child it is possible to show the sequence of events from first day to last, noting shifts
and changes in significant areas of behaviour, and to condense the related factors within a
relatively short presentation. This allows the child's experience and behaviour to be perceived

in a longitudinal way that is not possible for staff caught up in multiple duties and diversions
or for the occasional visitor open to impressions from the entire child group.
(See John: A Distressing Film About Separation)
Excerpted from Separation and the Very Young by James and Joyce Robertson, published by
Free Association Books, London, 1989. This is an incredible book. It chronicles 50 years of
the lives and work of the Robertsons whose work revolutionized the world's understanding of
how small children feel when they are separated from their parents and familiar
surroundings. ETB.

JOHN
Age 17 months
In a Residential Nursery for Nine Days
Silver Medal, Venice Film Festival
Silver Medal, British Medical Association
1971 B.L.A.T. Trophy for a Film of Outstanding Educational Merit
43 minutes VHS B
Available in Canada from the CSPCC
At 17 months John was a placid child and easy to manage. He and his parents had moved into
the district a year earlier, and there were neither kin nor close friends to care for John while
the mother was in hospital to have a second baby. Father would ordinarily have stayed home
to look after John, but in that very week an insuperable circumstance prevented him. The
family doctor recommended placement in a local residential nursery.
There in the toddlers' room John joins five other children between 15 months and 2 years of
age. Four of these children have been in the nursery from the first few weeks of life, and
because of the frequent changes of nurses have never known stable loving relationships; they
are aggressive and unattached. The fifth child, Martin, had spent his first year in foster care
and continues to see affection - the only child apart from John to do so.
During the first two days in the nursery John behaves for much of the time as he did at home,
confident that people in the environment will respond to his needs as his parents had done.
When this does not happen he is increasingly bewildered and confused, but he does not
immediately break down. He makes more determined efforts to get attention from the nurses,
but he cannot compete with the more assertive institutionalized children and his quiet
advances are usually overlooked.
When John fails to find a nurse who will take the place of his mother he turns to teddy bears
almost as big as himself. But clinging to these gives only fleeting comfort, and John gradually
breaks down under the cumulative stresses of loss of his mother, the lack of mothering care
from the nurses, strange foods and institutional routines, and attacks from the aggressive
toddlers. He refuses food and drink, stops playing, cries a great deal, and gives up trying to
get the nurses' attention.

His distress becomes so obvious that it can no longer go unanswered; the nurses pick him up
and hold him more, but they are on shift duty and have also to attend to other children.
Because of the work-assignment system, they cannot give sufficient individual attention to
help John sustain the temporary loss of his mother.
When his father visits John revives briefly and gives a glimpse of the normality behind his
distraught behaviour. But as the days go by he turns away from the father who does not
answer to his wish to be taken from the nursery, clearly shown by John's gestures. Father is
painfully aware of the deterioration in his son, and is distressed that he cannot take him home.
John withdraws more and more from the busy life around him. For long periods of the day he
lies with thumb in mouth, enveloped by a large teddy bear. He is overwhelmed by a situation
with which he has tried to cope using all the resources of a normal healthy 17-month old
child, and has withdrawn into apathy. Throughout his stay in the nursery the young nurses
have been kind and friendly, but none has looked after him for any length of time. When on
the 9th day his mother comes to take him home, John screams and struggles against her
attempts to hold him.
A Note on Later Events
For several weeks after returning home John showed extreme upset, often refusing his
mother's comfort and the food she offered. He had severe temper tantrums. For some time any
reminder of his stay in the nursery threw him back into the earlier distraught behaviour. Many
months later he continued to be acutely anxious if he did not know where his mother was, and
to have outbursts of unprovoked hostility against her.John is a simple story of a type found in
journals, short case notes which make little impact before the page is turned over. But, as with
A Two-Year Old Goes to Hospital twenty-five years earlier, when told by the visual medium
the story was powerful; it pierced defences and caused much disturbance in viewers. The
reactions of a few colleagues convinced us we had a bomb on our hands...
...In July 1969 a special edition of the Bulletin of the Home Office Inspectorate devoted all of
its thirteen pages to John, accepting its message and considering the implications for policy
(Home Office Children's Department Inspectorate, 1969). This marked a turning-point in the
provisions for young healthy children in care in Britain. Moreover, the great number of
reviews in professional journals in Britain and around the world were without exception
keenly appreciative. A leading medical journal predicted, "This film is a landmark. What ATwo-Year-Old Goes to Hospital did for paediatrics, John will probably do for residential care"
(Lancet, 1970).
Below is a selection of quotes from the great number of reviews:
A horrifying film which forces us to look at what despair is for a young child...What is so
frightening is that the behaviour of the young nurses is kindly, but the system results in
total failure to meet John's needs of a stable substitute mother (British Journal of
Psychiatric Social Work).

Should be compulsory viewing for everyone engaged in child care. It forces the observer
to identify with the plight of this little boy, and through him with that of all young
children in care (British Journal of Medical Psychology).
No words could convey John's stress reactions as powerfully as the camera does. The
impact of John's hour by hour increasing misery and deterioration becomes almost
unbearable. (Journal of Child Psychotherapy).
Superb photography, a disquieting film which upsets our complacency (Nursery
Journal).
John is an individual who is defeated by a system which fails to recognize or meet his
needs. The nursery can be seen as a microcosm of many other caring institutions, and
perhaps of society itself and the many thousands who are damaged. (Child Care).
Shows with disturbing clarity that institutional care is not geared to meet the emotional
needs of small children. The camera dos not allow us to ward off John's mounting
misery or to disregard his desperate need for comfort. It becomes quite harrowing to
watch (Mental Health)...
...The dangers of early separation had long been known intellectually. Every social worker
and child-care officer had answered examination questions about separation. But it had not
been known with appropriate affect. A story that could be told in twenty lines of textbook
without causing comment, in its visual form struck deep and provoked emotional turmoil in
most viewers. Although we had many grateful communications we also had others which
verged on the abusive. Some said the film was 'obscene.' Some reacted as bereaved persons
can do, searching in their pain for someone to blame -- the parents, the nurses, the authorities,
the Robertsons. We were accused many times of having sacrificed John to research, of having
sat by without doing anything about his plight, about being heartless; some thought the nurses
could have played more with John and were critical of the parents for having left him in a
nursery, etc. All this was avoiding the essential communication about the vulnerability of the
very young. The film touched upon childhood fears of loss and, in some, activated forgotten
memories of events that had scarred their lives. The hostile reactions were classic examples of
"shooting the messenger."
A university tutor wrote that she would not use the film again for teaching, because it had
been too upsetting for her social work students; I replied that if she could not help her students
to learn from this piece of reality in the classroom, how would they fare when they entered the
field and were exposed to situations which could set up defences? A committee which
recommended films for use with church groups blacklisted John as "unethical" -- as if we had
caused John's distress, instead of merely showing it.
Those who could use the experience of seeing John were helped by it, but some others seem
to lock into their irrational responses. These ignored the fact that the four minutes shown of
John's behaviour each day were focused on the stages of John's deterioration under
fragmented care and gave no basis for making judgments on what, for instance, the

Robertsons did or did not do. For some people reality was more than they could bear, whether
for John or for forgotten parts of themselves. Even some consultants in psychiatry and
psychoanalysis could not see through their defensive antipathy. "I could kill you," said a
distinguished psychoanalyst..

Substituting Conserver Values for Consumer Values

Marilyn Berlin Snell
"Finally, I wanted to share a few ideas about what might be done to extricate ourselves from
the impasse of our consumer addicted way of life forcing us into child-care arrangements that
risk producing new people whose only source of satisfaction in life is consumption."
These days, even a modest standard of living comes to us at the price of an 80-hour work
week. When both parentswork full time away from the home, and when children are entrusted
to day care operators, the idea of "family" is dramatically transformed. Almost imperceptibly,
we have altered the family structure to accommodate the imperatives of our work schedule
and our consumerist definition of the "good life".
For the majority of Americans that managed to stay afloat with dual incomes, despite falling
real wages, the economic boom of the eighties brought with it an escalation of consumer
expectation. For most, the limits of the "indispensable" expanded from the mortgage and the
car to such late-modern necessities of life as VCR's, another car, microwaves, CD's and Nikes.
But this frenzied, "shop-til-you-drop" syndrome has had its price: In order to purchase the
pleasures that insulate us from the world, we must work til we drop and contract out the care
of our children to others.
A society in which parents can't afford to raise their children is not sustainable. Yet, the
answer does not lie in a return to conservative values; it lies in the substitution of consumer
values with conserving values.
Conserving values assume a commitment to the future: we must take care of our children so
they can grown into healthy, responsible adults; and we must preserve our environment so that
it can sustain future generations. Such a commitment to the future inevitably requires
compromise from everyone -- not just a select, disenfranchised group...
...In fact, a recent New York Times poll showed that two-thirds of those parents surveyed
would take care of their own children if it were economically feasible. Thus far, however, we
have only succeeded in reorganizing the family to accommodate the consumer economy...
...Historically, one of the most far-reaching accomplishments of the American labor
movement was the creation of the eight-hour work day. As the century winds down, with our
parents and their children becoming strangers, and our ranks of the permanently unemployed
growing, the six-hour work day could bring parents home and the unemployed into the work
force.

Somewhere between materialism and utopia lies a new set of possibilities rooted in
conserving values: A mode of living based on intergenerational responsibility between parent
and child with respect to the environment; shared responsibility between parents for work and
child rearing; and a notion of productive endeavor that rejects the kind of social and economic
hierarchy that reveres the work of stockbrokers and celebrities while it devalues the work of
pregnancy, child birth and the nurturance of our children.
Marilyn Berlin Snell is Managing Editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, Los Angeles,
California. Excerpted and reprinted with permission from Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 1990,
pages 2-3.
"Almost imperceptibly, we have altered the family structure to accommodate the
imperatives of our work schedule and our consumerist definition of the 'good life'."

The Tendency to Confuse Difference with Inequality

Alice S. Rossi
"I have always felt that the thesis of this piece by a feminist sociologist was central to
unlinking the legitimate necessity of the elimination of arbitrary male dominance from the
illegitimate and dangerous 'need for daycare'."
"I believe that contemporary efforts to break up traditional family systems are
doomed..."
...The arguments set forth in this essay may rankle those whose version of sexual equality
requires females to model their lives on male patterns, placing great emphasis on work and
little emphasis on family and home. But I am no stranger to criticism. In 1964 I wrote an
article in the journal Daedalus called "Equality between the Sexes: An Immodest Proposal".
By later feminist standards my argument for equality was mild indeed, but the reaction of
traditionalists in 1964 was not. I was considered by some a monster, an unnatural woman, and
unfit mother. My husband, also a sociologist, received an anonymous condolence card
lamenting the death of his wife.
My theme was simple enough. For the first time in known history, I wrote, motherhood had
become a full-time occupation for adult women and motherhood was not enough. For the
psychological and physical health of mother and child, for the sake of the trembling family
unit, and for the progress of society, equality between men and women was essential and
inevitable.
Older women, who were past career choices, resented my article; younger women felt
reprieved. I know for certain that my essay lowered the birth rate by at least 12 children, and
increased the number of Ph.Ds accordingly.
Last year I wrote another article for Daedalus, one that represented an evolution of my views.
I said that cultural determinism had gone too far. In the effort to debunk the wrong headed

beliefs that had debased women for so long, the environmentalists had got themselves into an
untenable position. Instead of replacing outdated biological theories with new, accurate
knowledge, they were forced to deny that there are any physiological differences between
men and women. This view is as foolhardy as the view that sex differences are caused only by
physiology.
Once again I found myself being screamed at -- this time by the very people whose cause I
had supported for nearly two decades. I was accused of selling out, of betraying my
commitment to political and economic equality for women, of pandering to conservatives who
believe in Man the Aggressor and Woman the Doormat. In this area, as in any research that
has serious implications for how we run our lives, commitments are strong and tempers short.
But I believe that contemporary efforts to break up traditional family systems are doomed
unless aspects of our biological heritage are acknowledged and then, if we wish, compensated
for. The mother-infant relationship will continue to have greater emotional depth than the
father-infant relationship because of the mother's physiological experience of pregnancy,
birth, and nursing. A society that chooses to overcome the female's greater investment in
children must institutionalize a program of compensatory education for boys and men that
trains them in infant and child care. (Even then, women may still have the stronger bond with
their offspring.) Conversely, any goal that sets women equal to men in the military or in
strength-related fields will also require compensatory training for women. Any slackening of
such compensatory training -- for generations to come -- will quickly lead to a regression to
the sex-role tradition of our long past, as so many social experiments of this century have
shown.
This point of view upsets environmentalists, but we cannot just toss out the physiological
equipment that centuries of adaptation have created. We can live with that biological heritage
or try to supersede it, but we cannot wish it away. I think we should aim for a society better
attuned to its environment, more respectful of natural body processes and of the differences
between individuals, more concerned for its children, and committed both to achievement in
work and in personal intimacy. This version is more radical, and more human, than one of an
equality between the sexes that denies differences...
Excerpted form the article "The Biosocial Side of Parenthood" by Alice S. Rossi, which
appeared in the June 1978 issue of Human Nature. The ideas contained in this piece are
developed more fully by the author in her article "A Biosocial Perspective on Parenting",
Daedalus, Vol. 106, 1977 pp 1-31, and even more thoroughly in a book written by Alice Rossi
and Jerome Kagan entitled "The Family" published by W.W. Norton in 1978. Reprinted with
kind permission of the author.
Alice S. Rossi is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She
took her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University in 1957 and has done extensive research
on marriage, the family, and sex roles ever since. Her articles include analyses of job
discrimination against women (and what women can do about it), barriers to women in the
scientific professions, and the issues involved in abortion laws. In 1964, when her three
children were still young, she began writing essays on behalf of sex-role equality, including

"The Case against Full-time Motherhood," and the infamous Daedalus plea for fair treatment
of women. She is also the author of The Feminist Papers: from Adams to de Beauvoir and
Academic Women on the Move. Rossi has served as vice president of the American
Sociological Association, where she helped organize the Women's Caucus and a division on
the sociology of sex roles, and she was a member of the National Commission on the
Observance of International Women's Year.

A Return to the Roots of Feminism

Walter Karp
In one man's opinion: "A movement that began by asking by asking for a fair share of
dignity and human achievement can today think of no other source of dignity, no other
source of achievement, than toiling at a job."
...This failure [of the women's movement] must be accounted a tragic one-for women are kept
from their fair share of dignity and achievement; women's talents and moral qualities are too
often wasted. A sense of inferiority still clings to the position of women today. The question
is, what can be done about it?
The history of the women's movement itself provides, I believe, the basis for an answer. The
movement is less than two hundred years old. That some men had power -- and women did
not -- that some men monopolized the privileges and achievements -- and women did not -had never before given rise to a movement for female emancipation, or even to any articulate
awareness that women were unfree. That awareness did not come until the late eighteenth
century, and it came with the rediscovery of political liberty as the Greeks understood it. Not
until men asserted their right, as men, to the dignity of the citizen and their right to share in
public power was it first borne in upon women that they, as females, were unequal and unfree.
The early leaders of the women's movement grasped this principle firmly. They saw that if
men were equal insofar as they were citizens, men and women would be equal when women,
too, were citizens. This is why the major struggle of the original women's movement was the
fight for the franchise, that necessary condition for political equality between the sexes. The
leaders of the movement, women like Susan B. Anthony, saw more in the vote than the simple
act of voting. They saw that women would win their dignity -- the citizen's dignity -- by
actively entering public life. They hoped that women by their political activity would help
overthrow the political machines that corrupted -- and still corrupt -- representative
government and render the citizenry powerless in all but name. In this they grasped a
profound political truth: that men and women would share equally in the dignity and freedom
of the citizen only if the republic were truly a republic of self-governing citizens. In a republic
where power is monopolized by a few, the very status of "citizen" is empty, and the equality
of citizens -- male and female -- a phantom. In such a corrupted republic women might very
well believe that "liberation" is paid labor.
It is often said that the old suffragists were wrong, because enfranchised women did not seize
their opportunity. This only proves, however, that the opportunity was wasted. Today, that

opportunity lies open as never before. From the point of view of public life women today
might even be called privileged. Far more than men, they enjoy the precondition for public
life, which is leisure, or at any rate the prerogative of managing their own time. The second
advantage they enjoy might be called a sense of locality. While men must shuttle back and
forth between their homes and their places of work, it is women who live in local
communities, who know what a community is, and it is in local communities that politics
begins -- at least in the American republic.
The opportunity to enter public life is there, and the will to do so is there as well. There are
literally millions of women who thirst for public activity, though they are shunted by the
established party machines into mere civic work or stultifying chores in the ranks of party
bureaucracies. The old suffragists, however, were talking not of party politics but of nonparty
politics, free republican politics that challenged party machines and their monopoly over
power. This was -- and still is -- the crucial point, and there are tens of thousands of
communities in which women can make a beginning. When they make that beginning, male
ascendancy will near its end, for they would break the hold men still retain over human
achievement.
As Susan B. Anthony said a hundred years ago, "they who have the power to make and
unmake laws and rulers, are feared and respected." For those women whose gifts and
ambitions turn them toward careers in the sphere of work, the public, political activity of
women will open doors now shut. Who will be able to say that women are unfit to run a
business when they share in that far more demanding activity of governing a community and a
nation?
In playing their role as citizens, in helping to restore representative government by their free
political activity, women would help restore to men and women alike the freedom and
equality of the citizen, "our power and our glory," as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another pioneer
of woman's rights, reminded her audiences a century ago. In helping to do that -- and what
nobler venture can we undertake? -- women would restore to motherhood itself its rightful
and proper dignity. That dignity will not come from mass exhortations and mass propaganda,
but from the knowledge that freedom bestows upon a free people: the knowledge that it is
indeed a grave and noble task to bring up children when we are bringing them up to live in
freedom and independence.
This, I believe, is the path that women must take in their struggle for liberation -- and because
it is a true liberation, it means the enhancement of liberty for all...
Reprinted with permission from Horizon. Spring, 1971, Volume XIII, Number 2. Copyright
1971, American Heritage Publishing Company Inc.
"A sense of inferiority still clings to the position of women today. The question is, what
can be done about it?"

The Challenge Before Us

Excerpts from a Green Party Policy Statement
We have the ability to produce more than we can consume. To match consumption with
capacity, we stimulate demand through advertising, planned obsolescence, and the arms trade.
The results are all around us. Rather than continuing this race to bury ourselves in a sea of our
own waste, we must turn our attention to finding a secure place within the natural order.
We must come to grips with the problems of economic inequality, resource depletion and
overpopulation. The goal must be to create the conditions necessary for true world peace.
By emphasizing competition rather than cooperation, sharing has become foreign to us. The
growth of our technological society has alienated large numbers of people who are no longer
connected to any natural rhythms. There are large classes of people for whom the only
expression of their individuality is consumerism.
The Nature of the Solution
Our problems are linked by a common value system. A system founded on principles of
hierarchical relationships and unlimited growth. We as a culture define tradition, social
arrangements, religion, moral codes and technologies. We decide if they will manifest
themselves as institutions of sustainability and subsistence or exploitation and destruction.
The transition from an economy founded on growth and the abuse of our natural resources to
community economic development founded on the sustainable management of our resource
base will eventually have to take place. The question is whether we will be forced to change
more quickly than our social and economic structures can withstand because of environmental
degradation and resource depletion, or whether we will start now with managed change to
minimize economic and social dislocation.

Sustainability
Activities are sustainable when they:
* use materials in continuous cycles
* use continuously reliable sources of energy
* come mainly from the qualities of being human
(i.e. creativity, communication, movement,
appreciation, and spiritual and intellectual
development)
Activities are not sustainable when they:
* require continual inputs of non-renewable
resources

* use renewable resources faster than their rate of

renewal
* cause cumulative degradation of the environment
* require resources in quantities that could never be available
for people everywhere
* lead to the extinction of other life forms

A Sense of Communion
William Line
"I think a piece that really highlights the deficit in psychopathy is the definition of the word
communion. We don't hear about that much, about a sense of communion, but Bill Line says it
here in a few lines. The quiet place where we all wish we could rest at the end of the day, at
one with those around us. Not just accepted by them -- because that implies that we could be
rejected, but just at one with others. And I think that's really where we ought to aim, and that's
really at the opposite pole of psychopathy."
By "Sense of Communion" is meant essentially the feeling of ease, comfort and at-homeness
with other people. It implies all that is comprised by the time-honoured term "empathy" in its
positive aspects, without any taint of stress, anxiety or tension communicated from one person
to another. It is interpersonal in its reference, and reflects the joy and satisfaction of "sharedexperience."
Many of the words and phrases which reflect the core-values of society and of culture are in
reality based upon true communion, words like "family", "home", "hearth", for example. The
French word "foyer" is artistic in this regard, and therefore untranslatable. It means more than
a mere sense of belonging, since "belonging" may be experienced as "being accepted" -- for
reasons of social obligation only, paternalism or custom. It means more than "being
acceptable" -- for reasons that imply acceptability to an established group, with the further
implication that while we might not have met the standards for that group, somehow or other
we have...
Communion is a felt partnership, despite all social symbols of prestige, such as age,
professional or other status, or "authority"...
The principle of communion is basic, without reference to any age, racial or other differential.
Think about the degree, now, of an individual's sensitivity to communion, and of the degree to
which any social situation (such as your work arrangements), takes this important aspect of
society into consideration.
In terms of the development of human beings, according to their own needs as persons, I
would put this first-stated need as first. Without a sensitivity to communion, the human being
is not.

Various members of your entourage will show differing degrees of interest in communion.
You must expect this. An honest interest in fostering Communion, as first requisite of decent
progressive human relationships, is basic to any organization of people, whether it be family,
school, community, factory or office; in any society...
William Line: Professor of Psychology, member of the Senate of the University of Toronto,
Consultant to the Canadian Mental Health Association, Consultant to the World Health
Organization and to the United Nations secretariat on personnel policies, Consultant to the
International Institute of Child Study established by UNESCO, President of the World
Federation for Mental Health and President of the Canadian Psychological Association. His
main psychological studies are to be found in the learned journals of Canada, the United
States, England, France and Germany.

The Politics of Meaning

Michael Lerner
"Human beings have a need to transcend the materialism and selfishness and the
manipulative consciousness that teaches them to see others primarily in terms of what
they can get out of others."
The politics of meaning is both a new theoretical orientation and a strategy to change
American society.
Theoretical Orientation
Liberals and progressives have focused on economic needs and individual rights -- and have
fought against corporate or governmental forces that deny each. A progressive politics of
meaning supports the liberal agenda on these issues (including civil liberties, women's
liberation, economic justice, choice, ecological sanity etc.). Yet liberals have too narrow an
understanding of human needs, often seeing us as creatures whose primary interest is in
economic survival or individual freedom. But they've been unable to recognize the ethical,
spiritual, and psychological needs that are equally central.
We see human beings as fundamentally in relationship to each other and needing each other's
recognition and love. The healthy human being is not the one who can stand alone, but the
one who can acknowledge his/her need for others and can recognize in every other the
sanctity that makes them worthy of respect and caring.
Human beings have a need to transcend the materialism and selfishness and the manipulative
consciousness that teaches them to see others primarily in terms of what they can get out of
others. Most people have a hunger to move beyond the "looking out for number one" common
sense of this society and to see their lives as connected to some higher ethical and spiritual
meaning. Yet most people believe that this is unrealistic, that ethical and spiritual life can only
be ideals for some future eras, and that in the meantime they must be "realistic' and live
according to the dominant ethos of selfishness and cynicism.

But a world based on selfishness and cynicism produces a huge amount of psychic pain. The
ethos of selfishness and cynicism plays itself out in a weakening of families, loving
relationships, and friendships -- because the more people internalize the cynical view that
everyone is only out for themselves, the harder it becomes to trust anyone or to believe that
they will really be there for you when you most need them, when you don't have so much to
give back and can't make the relationship an 'equal exchange" (in market terms). Nor can you
trust corporations not to pollute the environment or others not to rob you on the streets or at
home. As trust dissolves, fear increases.
Because liberals and the Left never really address this crisis of meaning, the Right has been
able to position itself as the primary meaning-oriented political force in the society,
bemoaning the ethical and spiritual decline and the crisis in families. Yet they are
simultaneously the force that champions the very ethos of selfishness and materialism in the
world of work, whose consequences lead to all this pain in personal life.
That's why we need a progressive politics of meaning.
Sound-Bite Version
The goal of a politics of meaning is to change the bottom line in American society, so that
productivity or efficiency of corporations, legislation, or social practices is no longer
measured solely by the degree to which they maximize wealth and power -- but rather also by
the degree to which they tend to maximize our capacities to sustain loving and caring
relationships and to be ethically, spiritually, and ecologically sensitive.
Strategy
Some people think that all of these meaning issues only have an impact on middle-income
people, and that liberals and progressives should first solve the economic problems of the
society and stop the cutbacks of the conservatives. We wish them luck. But we believe that
they will be unable to do that until they've addressed the meaning crisis. The alliance needed
between poor people and middle-income people can only be built if the pain of middleincome people is given equal attention to the pain faced by poor people. Up till now, the Left
has tended to give the message to the American majority that they are being selfish and bad to
worry about the collapse of their families, crime, etc., when the poor are suffering so much
more. This has not been an effective strategy. We think the best way to serve the interests of
the most oppressed is to take seriously the meaning crisis, and build a cross-class alliance on
that basis.
Some New-Age people talk about meaning issues too but they tend to focus on changing their
own heads. That's an important element -- but it is unlikely to work for most people unless we
build economic and political institutions that foster caring rather than selfishness and
cynicism...

Michael Lerner is publisher and editor of the bimonthly magazine, Tikkun and founder of the
Foundation for Ethics and Meaning, 251 West 100th Street, New York, NY, (
212-864-4110

). He is also author of the book,

Surplus Powerlessness.
"The healthy human being is not the one who can stand alone, but the one who can
acknowledge his/her need for others and can recognize in every other the sanctity that
makes them worthy of respect and caring."

Psychopathy and Consumerism:

Two Illnesses that Need and Feed Each Other
(End of Interview with Dr. E.T. Barker)

Brian - Okay, there is plenty here to invite

discussion and we have quite a large group here
and I will invite people to discuss issues that may
have occurred to them...
...I have a couple of issues. One I guess is the
obvious one, that if inconsistent parenting is so
common and psychopathy is so rare, do you
suppose it is that the children have somehow
been immune to this failure in consistent
parenting.
Dr. Barker - well, there are several things that
bother me about that train of thought.
I suspect first of all if we could measure the
capacity for empathy, these kids that have
experienced a lot of pain in their formative years
may not look so good. Part of that is that adults
with very little capacity for empathy can fit quite
comfortably into our consumer society where the
basic values are envy, selfishness and greed. So if
that "invulnerable child" becomes a successful
businessman, we say that he has overcome a
difficult childhood. But what is it that the

invulnerable child is successfully

fitting into?
Another factor is this. If the DSM
or whoever says there are
probably 4% of psychopaths in the
general population, then what
percent of the population are
partial psychopaths. Even though we can't
measure that precisely, it has to be a big enough
percentage to be worrisome.
Psychopaths don't stick out like amputees in our
culture, they're not immediately visible. So I don't
think there is necessarily any discrepancy
between the number of kids that are poorly
parented and the amount of psychopathy in the
population. They can be there and fitting in just
fine. They can have 7 marriages and they're not
deviant in our culture. They can screw people left,
right and centre and be thought wonderful in our
culture if they make, inherit or steal enough
money. So, it's tricky -- they don't all stand out as
bad guys, like the one's that we catch and
convict.
Brian - I agree. Part of your response and how we
see the outcome may be in your use of the term
partial psychopath. I am wondering how you
would differentiate between -- let me back up. I
would ask you whether you see psychopathy as a
continuum...
Dr. Barker - well, I've always thought of it as a
deficit disease, that when you look for empathy,
trust and affection inside and it's not there, it's
because it really isn't there, not because those
qualities are buried deep beneath a wall of
defences. It didn't get put in at the right time, and
you can't put it in later.
I have also always thought of it as a continuum. If
you could measure empathy then I think all of us
would lie on a continuum from zero to one
hundred percent. I see it as a continuum. It moves
on up the scale of partial psychopathy, the used
car salesman, and the politician -- not everyone
there of course -- but more than we think, on up
to the four percent of the population that meet

the DSM criteria for full blown psychopathy.

To me the core deficit of psychopathy is an
incapacity for that two-part type of empathy -they know how to put themselves in your shoes
very very well. But they do not automatically get
affected by what they feel and how they know
you feel. That link is gone. It may be 50% there,
or 30% there, or 0% there, or 100% there as it is
in a very loving person who has the capacity to
feel the way you feel, and to be hurt by it, or to
be moved by it...
...If you're overly trusting in our society you can
get played for a sucker. You know the motto of the
psychopath: "Do them all once, the easy ones
twice." It's dysfunctional to be an open, honest,
co-operative, trusting, affectionate person in our
society. You can make big bucks more easily if you
don't have those capacities. But in the long run,
all of us get screwed by that. I think that's the
message we need to be saying...
...I think that as clinicians we're chicken. It's much
safer to treat the individuals or groups of patients
in your office where you think you know what
your doing and you're getting paid for it, than to
speak out in public or politically about the cultural
issues that you think are creating your patients.
More of us should do that. Who knows whether we
are right or not, but there ought to be a debate
amongst us, rather than each of us just quietly in
our office trying to cure individual people. I think
we should be indicting things that we think are
creating our patients, and that's the whole area of
prevention. I think we're just chicken about that.
I've been nervous to speak out against things that
are culturally acceptable, but I believe are
damaging to kids -- so-called "normative abuse."
For example the level of violence in society I think
is atrocious. It doesn't surprise me at all that we
have violent crimes. Just look at a hockey game.
Brian - I can't any more.
Dr. Barker - Did you say you can't?

Brian - I can't watch any more.

Dr. Barker - I'm glad to hear that. Even the ads for
hockey on CBC have turned into something you'd
hear at WrestleMania. Who is indicting that? It
seems horrific to me to be trying to entice people
to watch that. It's marketed as entertainment and
paid for by advertisers. But those who make
money from it don't have to pay there share of
the cost of violence in our society. The whole
thing is crap. I am delighted to hear someone like
you say I can't watch hockey any more. You can
hardly watch anything on TV that doesn't upset
you.
But social scientists put up valid studies to show
you can't prove it makes a difference. That's why
we have to question social science, because you
can get valid, responsible, legitimate, honest
social scientists who are working for the atomic
energy commission for example, and others who
are working for some nuclear free advocacy outfit
and they'll produce equally valid but conflicting
studies. And that's in the area of the physical
sciences! So at some point we have to call on our
common sense...
...I don't worry so much about the psychopaths
who are openly antisocial. I like Hare's two factor
concept of psychopathy. They are just as
dangerous or more so without the antisocial stuff.
I testified at two different murder trials where the
accused showed only the Factor One stuff: selfish,
callous and remorseless use of others. A lack of
empathy. No history of chronically unstable and
antisocial life-style or social deviance -- Factor
Two. It was my opinion that it was purely their
lack of empathy that enabled them to shoot their
victims repeatedly at very close range...
Brian - Well, it's almost 2:00. o'clock! This has
been just terrific and I certainly have enjoyed
having you with us, and I appreciate your
responding to my initial request.
Dr. Barker - It's all been worth it to hear you say
you can't watch hockey any more!

Brian - (laugh) - thank you very much Elliott. It's

been terrific and thank you to the various other
sites around...
http://www.empathicparenting.org/psychopathy/index.html