Just a moment...

Thus an important part of the work of the belabored self is to engage in a denial of the impact of, or the value of, others’ contributions to oneself.103 One must see one’s self as either commanding, masterful, and in control and not subject to the exigencies of life or the labor market (thus authoritative, or self-authoring) or as given, unique, d

... See more

As psychoanalysts got to work adjusting returning GIs and newly re-domesticated housewives to the bewildering modern age, many postwar neo-Freudians, including the humanist psychologists, took a more critical approach. Suddenly acutely wary of mass society, they were less interested in adjusting individuals to potentially sick social norms than in

... See more

Corporatism, aided by positive psychology, relies on several effective coercive persuasion techniques, similar to those often employed by cults, to meld workers into a “happy” collective. It sanctions interpersonal and psychological attacks and lavish praise to destabilize an individual’s sense of self and promote compliance. It uses the coercive p

... See more

In contrast to the conventional perspective of psychotherapy, however, which tends to view aspects of this struggle in terms of illness or disease and to see human beings as more or less helpless pawns manipulated by forces outside their control, I see the endeavor as potentially heroic. It contains all the elements of great myth or great drama, fr

... See more