2 comments about Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas.

1. I have loved the works of Erich Fromm since I was a sophomore in high school. His impact is immense, though his relevancy has been belittled by the Frankfurt School (omitting his contributions - and his development of the basics - of their major theories). When I heard of an Erich Fromm biography written by his long - time companion, Rainer Funk, I was excited. I bought the book as soon as I could, and I was very pleased with it. It has a lot of photos of and relating to Fromm that are hard to find, and give an intimate look into his life and ideas - not just what his ideas were, but why he thought them. Fromm's semi-autobiographical work, "Beyond the Chains of Illusion" offer a bit of insight into his life, but it is interesting to see the characters actually given faces. This book is great for anyone interested in Fromm, whose humanism is hard to surpass. It explains in the way only Funk could what Fromm's life was like.



2. This book is an illustrated biography of one of the most well known psychologists of the 20th century. Fromm had a varied career and his fame spread far beyond the confines of traditional psychoanalysis and sociology. This biography, written by his literary executor, Dr. Rainer Funk, outlines the life and work of Erich Fromm in a good way.

1 comments about Jacques Lacan.

1. Very well written.
   
   First of all, this book is interesting from a peeping Tom perspective. And not surprisingly, Lacan is portrayed as self-absorbed, cold and opportunistic, desperate for recognition. The book covers the bitter institutional battles, too.
   
   However, the book is also quite relevant from the point of view of Lacan's theoretical development. Roudinesco's explicit account of the thinkers Lacan uses / is inspired by when developing his concepts is very helpful. Note, though, that Zizek claims that some of these interpretations are problematic. To me it was particularly interesting to note that in addition to Freud, Bataille was important for Lacan when developing the notion of the Real.
   
   Overall, Roudinesco's is number two on my list of intellectual biographies, just behind Safranski's superb Heidegger-biography.

2 comments about Celebrating Irving Fisher: The Legacy of a Great Economist (Economics and Sociology Thematic Issue).

1. Few American economists have the reputation Irving Fisher has--he is probably second only to Henry George as an economist of whom the American public was aware in the early twentieth century--and no other economist has undergone such dramatic reversals of fortune over time to achieve his reputation. Fisher's ideas and life seem, in some ways, stranger than fiction....
   
   Fisher was always more than a theorist. Like other public intellectuals, such as the late Milton Friedman, he often engaged in supporting public-policy positions. Unlike Friedman's policy advocacy, however, Fisher's concerns--which ranged from good eating habits and life extension to public health, eugenics, and Franklin Roosevelt's monetary and gold policies--often interfered with his ability to perform his teaching duties. He was away from Yale more than he was there. Toward the end, he did little teaching. Fisher's driving passion to engage in public political debate, to run businesses on the side--he invented a card index system and sold it the company that became Remington-Rand, and he published a weekly index-number newsletter that at its peak reached 7 million readers (p. 51)--and to raise Yale's profile even as he raised his own rankled many of his Yale colleagues. No doubt some were simply envious of his pre-1929 crash wealth (he was a millionaire), and others were jealous of his celebrity. Many also doubted the wisdom of his positions on issues such as backing 100 percent reserves for banks and setting up a mechanism that he claimed would produce absolute price stability.
   
   Fisher's personal ideological proclivities were all over the political map and sometimes changed as circumstances did, especially after the Great Depression suggested empirical difficulties with his quantity-theory approach--an approach that Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz resurrected in 1963 and argued had been true all along. Even though Fisher had studied with William Graham Sumner, he was never an advocate, as his professor had been, of total laissez-faire. As Joseph Dorfman mentions, "he opposed any all-out laissez-faire. He supported such liberal measures as high inheritance taxes and wider dispersal of corporate ownership through profitsharing, employee ownership, and co-operation. As examples of existing types of activities which were neither pure private ownership nor pure government ownership, he cited `government regulation; leases to private capitalists with reversionary rights to the city, state, or nation; subsidies; price-fixing; guaranteeing prices, underwriting against loss; taxes on profits or on excess profits'" (The Economic Mind in American Civilization [New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969], 5: 298). To this list, one may add Fisher's sometimes-successful Progressive Era crusades for pure food, abolition of alcohol consumption, human eugenics, government manipulation of the international gold price, and even national health insurance.
   
   At the height of his fame, Fisher did something of which economists should always be wary: he made an economic prediction. Two weeks before Black Friday, in October 1929, he proclaimed that stocks "have reached a permanent high plateau." Ouch! One has to admire, however, the fact that Fisher, unlike so many of his contemporary colleagues in the quirky discipline of economics, at least put his money where his theory was: he then went completely broke in the market crash. Only Yale's forgiveness of the rent on Fisher's New Haven residence, which had been sold to the university, prevented him from declaring personal bankruptcy. His prestige took a huge blow, and he found himself ridiculed, his reputation diminished. Even the economics profession in later years seemed to agree that he had become a fascinating curiosity. At the first Fisher commemorative conference at Yale in 1967, however, another famous economist, Paul Samuelson, made his own prediction: professional economists would ultimately come to recognize Fisher as "this country's greatest scientific economist" (p. 54). Unlike Fisher's unfortunate prediction, Samuelson's has been borne out. Today, most of the citations to Fisher's work pertain not to the history of economic thought, but to his theoretical work. He is, among other things, the father of the Federal Reserve's problematic quest for "price stability" and hence of the entire field of contemporary monetary policy....
   
   Had Nobel awards in economics existed during Fisher's lifetime (he died in 1947, and the first Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 1969), there is little doubt he would have been a recipient. His wide-ranging theoretical ideas have influenced modern neoclassical theory probably more than any other individual's ideas, and many remain relevant for policy decisions today. Most conference proceedings are mixed bags, at best, but Celebrating Irving Fisher is a happy exception: the level of analysis is high and the discussions always on point. Any reader interested in the life and ideas of one of the nation's foremost economists will find much of value in the book. Whether your interest is the history of ideas or Fisher's analytical contributions, Celebrating Irving Fisher is a wonderful place to begin to understand why Fisher continues to be widely regarded as a pioneering economic theorist.



2. This volume of collected essays on Fisher,edited by Robert Dimand,establishes that he was in fact one of the greatest economists of the 20th century.What has hindered Fisher's historical reputation was the problematic,incorrect,notorious forecast he made in late 1929 that the stock market was on an upward path.The Great Crash of October,1929 cost him 11-12 million dollars in losses personally.His response to this catastrophe was to publish his debt-deflation theory of depressions which correctly points to the debt load in the economy as a whole as the best indicator of a possible depression resulting from some exogenous shock that starts the snowball rolling downhill.The excessive debt loads get worse as the price level falls.This leads to a first round of personal and business bankruptcies and home foreclosures .These bankruptcies force furthur rounds of bankruptcies as the debts of one individual were the assets of another.There is no substantial difference between Fisher's analysis and Keynes's General Theory conclusions.Unfortunately, Fisher's work was ignored in the rush to accept Keynes's work.This volume reestablishes Fisher's overall standing .It has great relevance today given the excessive debt loads that have again been created since 1981 in America.

3 comments about The Freud/Jung Letters.

1. I loved this book mostly because I have been fascinated by Freud for many years and now I am studying Jung. To have the privilege of reading their letter back and forth is a treat. Also there are insights into current problems that Psychology still grapples over.



2. This is an amazing collection of letters which depict the relationship of two of the greatest psychologists of all time. Naturally, there are people who interpret this relationship in different ways, especially as a very specific situation, peculiar to the development of psychology or otherwise. I think otherwise. Life is rarely linear--it's usually Normally Distributed. Things tend to go in cycles, not straight lines. The relationship between Freud the mentor & Jung the mentee is just not that unusual. In fact, it parallels that of every child (especially males stereotypically seeking independence). There comes a time to leave the nest & for the mentee to strike out on his own--just as there is a time for a new paradigm (per Thomas Kuhn's classic, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"). This is precisely what occurred between Freud & Jung. It's almost archetypal. There's even something of a parallel between Jung & Father Victor White in Jung's "Letters." This book has some interesting quotes from each of the two psychologists:
   
   By Freud:
   p. 119 Take my urgent advice, arm yourself with ill temper against all unreasonable demands.
   p. 121 One must try to learn something from every experience.
   p. 169 I have long known that one can't change people. Everyone has something worthwhile in him. We must content ourselves with getting it out of him.
   
   By Jung:
   p. 84 What people don't know surpasses the imagination, and what they don't want to know is simply unbelievable.
   p. 157 one likes human beings around one and not complex-masks.
   
   And, very apropos: p. 462 Emma Jung: it is always the nearest thing that one sees worst.



3. This is a sad book to read. In fact, one would not expect that such a type of bad development would occur between the two most important figures of psychoanalisys. It is as if Marx and Engels had broken their friendship for life and began to fight for fame and glory in front of everybody. The spoil was huge: nothing more than the primacy for fame and glory in the first steps of psychanalisys.
   
   Sure, the letters span a pretty much limited space of time of no more than 8 years (1906-1914) but the reader has to keep in mind that what was at stake was the establishing of the foundations of psychoanalisys all over Europe and also in the whole World.
   What began as a cordial friendship and evolved into an almost father (Freud) to son (Jung) relationship, deteriorated into the most depressive fighting of personal primacy on many subjects. In this regard, it seems that the feud was initiated by Freud who considered Jung a type of his personal assistant to market the developments of his findings
   THe fact that this is a abridged edition does not mean nothing except that here the common reader will find the most important material exchanged by the two great men and will be saved from some meaningless material of more burocratical tone.
   Also of value is the introduction that ilustrates all the effort made by the two family sides to publish the letters, in spite the view by Jung that the ideal time for them to be published would be 20 to 30 years after his death.

   THis is a must reading for anyone interested in the history of psychanalisys.

No comments about Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and His Contemporaries.

4 comments about Dr. Freud, a Life.

1. Paul Ferris has undoubtly written a highly readable biography of one of the icons of the XX century. The book may be broken down into three main parts: the first one shows Freud until his mid-life or so and focuses on Freud's obsessive drive for recognition; the second part, is a very superficial account of Freud's threories intertwinded with some irrelevant details of his life, and the third one is an account of the internal and external struggle of the psychoanalytic movement.

   Ferris' writing style is polished and entertaining. However, after 100 pages or so, Ferris (who acknowledges to have no psychology or psychiatry background) loses his objectivity and starts to criticize and put down Freud's theories. This is not necessarily bad, but the criticism is on very superficial grounds while failing to place Freud and his thought in the proper context of the late XIX and early XX. Freud thought is only presented in its outline (which is something expected of a biography) but for the sake of simplicity and brevity the outline lacks a meaningful presentation of the issues behind Freud's theories. The oversimplification of the essence of Freud's thought makes it appear somewhat grotesque and irrational.

   There has been much dispute on Freud as a "scientist" and psychoanalisis as a "science" and Ferris has a go at both. Unfortunately, Ferris forgets that both Freud and his thought fall within the concept of "social science" not "physical science", thus many of the theories and implications are based on case studies, which obviously carry highly individualised connotations some of which can or cannot be generalised to the entire population.

   In summary, this book joins sides against Freudian thought and therefore hardly provides a truthful insight into the man and his theories. A reader looking for an introduction to Freudian thought is advised to look elsewhere. A reader looking for some some insight into the man will find plenty of biased, irrelevant and selectively chosen details that do not paint the entire character of Freud.




2. This is the first biography that I have read (of any one) that has kept me interested to the last page. That says alot for the content and flow of the book. As a psychology student, I have studied Freud's theories. This book helped put it all in perspective, along side theries of Jung and Adler. It showed me how 'way out' his theories were for the time but how they had a certain logic given the type of patients he had and the attitiude towards sex at the time. It's a fascinating read - and strikes me as very frank and honest. There's no glamourising of the man himself - but why should there be.. It's a story of a man's life and an interesting one at that.



3. This is a great biography. Though, the reader can find themselves lost at some times, the overall book is a wonderful peak into the mind of Dr. Freud. We glimpse Freud in new ways- through his own letters, his own shortcomings, his fears, his hopes, his dreams. The picture that history paints of an overlly egotistical man is blown away as we begin to see the human Freud, not the illustration of a sex-obsessed psychoanaylsis. We walk through Freud's pioneering days & can truly understand his outlook on life and the amazing gifts he has given to those who succeed him.



4. Factual and at times irreverent, the chief value of this excellent biography is its objective examination of Freud's work, his accomplishments and his failings, his genius and his humanity. If you're a slavish worshiper of the Freud myth, don't read it. But if you want the truth, it will open your eyes while it amuses and entertains with a prose style that is in itself a delight.

5 comments about The Listener: A Psychoanalyst Examines His Life.

1. It can be embarassing sometimes for a reader to hear about sexual desire-- particularly when it reveals so well that forbidden place men seem to know. Somehow, Wheelis avoids going overboard. At one point, he admits to the reader that if we like him, he has failed to truly reveal himself. Perhaps the reason I like him is that I am thankful. Usually male sexual desire is loaded-- we (as men) are either taught to embrace it (machismo) or chastise it. In this case I it was simply felt and explained.



2. I am editor of the professional journal "Psychotherapy In Australia" and also a therapist. So I've read many many books on, by, and for therapy and therapists. Allen Wheelis' "The Listener" is utterly distinctive and forced me to confront myself about just how honest I have been with myself in my own life. It is also beautifully written. I've read this book three times now, ans gained more each time, and I've set off on a quest to read all his other books. Irvin Yalom has reviewed this book by asking if a more honest autobiography has ever been written. I have no fear in answering "No".



3. I've read many, many self-help books in my pursuit to resolve issues such as controlling food intake, poor social skills, negative self-image, and just simply how to manage what happens externally, so that I'm internally balanced. Then I read Wheelis's "How People Change". POW. What a great impact on me. And in that small book, I got a good glimpse into his life. I absolutely had to know more about him. But while reading Listener, I had to keep reminding myself that is not a self-help book. What I was thinking while reading, was how interesting it was to hear about his emotional challenges, the whole range of dilemma's he lived through. This book supplies a lot of very valuable lessons on how *not* to live life, in contrast to his People Change book. 1.) I will make absolutely sure I am emotionally available to my wife when I do find her and get married. LIke Wheelis, I've been over-analytical, but moreso than Wheelis, been very lonely,( full of meaningless short relationships where sex was pretty much it) 2.) Concerning his agony over not being able to sow his wild oates, not getting enough sex as a young man, this is something I used to dwell on. My attitude, as a Christian I've recently become, is, everytime I feel that heart-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling when I see a beautiful woman with wonder what I'm missing out or how I'm suffering, this life as a human being is short and I'm running out of time to give as much as possible, not lust as much as possible. The lust you experience with one spouse is enough! No other sex is necessary. I wish that Wheelis could have replaced his thoughts of deprivation, during his life, with these sort of thoughts. I am not saying to be a Christian or even religious, but take *some* kind of spirtual approach and realize that a part of you never dies and just because you didn't experience as much sex as you wanted, doesn't mean you've officially blown a "chance". You are eternal, and there are joys ahead after this little margin of human existence, I'm convinced (yeah i guess I *am* asking you to a little religious), that make human lust very minor in comparison. I really felt for him and the pain he described. In an especially sexually-explicit segment of about two pages, he speaks for all men, in terms of our unfortunate hard-wiredness to want sex so bad and under any condition that we want. More than anything, this book will drive you right back to his How People Change book to re-read it and absorb it. ( If your inspirational book of choice is something else, then go re-read that again. I recommend the road less traveled)



4. Allen Wheelis who has written a series of extraordinary novels and professional psychiatric books, offers a moving, beautiful, and powerfully evocative memoir. Psychoanalysts, he says, know too much to hide behind self-decption and this astonishing book reveals the shape of a life seen straight, seen without distorting lenses.



5. Throughout the whole book I felt nothing but pain for this poor little boy; abused by his father, who grew into the adult victim of his elderly mother---a mother whose repressed sexual desires (due to her husbands illness) were directed toward her son. I cried for Allen the boy and Allen the man.

3 comments about Richard Wetherill: Anasazi.

1. To the archaeologists Richard Wetherill is a villain -- an uneducated cowboy who plundered the ruins of the pre-historic civilization of the Southwestern Indians. Author McNitt takes the opposite tact, portraying Wetherill as an upright honest man whose accomplishments, the first scientific examinations of the great ruins at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, far outweigh his faults. Adding to the enigma of Wetherill is the matter of his death -- murdered in cold blood by a Navajo Indian debtor according to this author, the loser in a gunfight caused by his own cattle rustling according to others. Wetherill inspired strong passions in both life and death.
   
   This is a fine biography. The first few chapters may be hard slogging as the book goes through Wetherill's early life, but the chapters of Wetherill's life and work at Chaco Canyon leading up to his death in 1910 are fascinating. The author follows up the shooting of Wetherill with a full description of the trial of his killer and the aftermath of his death. This is a Western tale worthy of an epic movie and one has to wonder why it has not attracted Hollywood's attention.
   
   McNitt makes a persuasive case that Wetherill's reputation was the victim of ambitious Eastern academics, jealous of his discoveries, and government Indian agents, jealous of his influence among the Navajo. I was impressed at how little dated were his descriptions of the ancient civilizations of the Anasazi, although the book was written in 1957.
   
   Was Wetherill a hero or a villain? The controversy about his character makes for a fascinating read.
   
   Smallchief



2. Very interesting and complete. Makes you want to visit and keep exploring. Well written. Holds you interest.



3. Frank McNitt's biography of Richard Wetherhill, the pioneer explorer of the Anasazi culture of the Four Corners Region of the southwest has been in print since 1957. Not a bad record for a trade book, that is to say not a textbook. McNitt's eastern based publishing family owned the Brentwood Newspaper in suburban Los Angeles. Frank, sent out as publisher, vacationed with his family in New Mexico and was ever after attracted to the Southwest. On subsequent trips he heard of Richard Wetherill, the Quaker rancher from Mancos,CO whose family property was below Mesa Verde. As a Quaker, son of a former Indian Agent, Wetherill's honest relationship with the local Utes permited him to range the nearby Mesa Verde canyons unmolested. Here he and his brothers made the first significant explorations of the mostly unknown Anazasi ruins there. Sponsored by the Babo Soap heirs he would eventually discover or explore every significant Anasazi site in four states. He homesteaded at Chaco Canyon,the grandest Anasazi of them all. To finance his commitment to exploration he became one the most successful promotors of Navajo crafts, igniting a national decorative fad before WWI. His goods hung in the Waldorf Astoria Bar, a young Joseph Campbell saw Wetherill's Anazazi collections at The American Museum of Natural History, the St. Louis World's Fair featured his basketmaker culture artifacts. Independent, individualistic and highly humanistic in his relationships, Wetherill,by his very nature threatened those less talented or secure. His archeology was demeaned by professionals. He was subverted by agents of the Dawes Severalty Act,a law binding native Americans to enforced assimilation and dependency. Wetherhill's business enterprises among the Navajo gave lie to the need for the Dawes Act. Assassinated from ambush in what McNitt concludes was a political manipulation, Wetherill was dead by 1910. McNitt's investigative talents lead him through years of research and oral history depositions with living contemporary's of Wetherill. McNitt moved to New Mexico to be closer to his research, supporting himself as a publisher at Farmington and breifly as an employee of The University of New Mexico Press. He wore out a Land Rover driving the unpaved reservation roads of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah to track down facts about Wetherill. McNitt's awe at what he found is disclosed in balanced journalistic terms which build, chapter-upon-chapter into the stuff of legend without a scintilla of sentimentality to mar the art.

2 comments about My Reconstructed Life.

1. This is more than a story of a Holocaust survivor, it is a story of one man's personal trimuph. In this brutally honest and open autobiography the author decribes his peaceful childhood that was shattered by the Holocaust. Although a portion of the book describes his life, and death of most of his family, during the Holocaust, the second half of the book is a psychological drauma of how this young man rebuilds his life against more improbable odds. After he survives near certain death in the concentration camps his losses continue to mount. The author brings the reader into his psyche when he decribes pivitol decisions: whether to kill his abusive concentration camp guard when given the opportunity, to live with his father after the war or seek out an education, or to marry into wealth but loose control over his destiny. Although I would recommend this book to any person interested in Holocaust history or Jewish Studies, I think my recommendation goes beyound that limited group. This is a book that most mature high school students should read but I can recommend it to any adult who wants to know how one young man rebuilt his life after loosing everything, then loosing more.



2. I was fortunate enough to get a prerelease copy of this book before it hit the streets. Some people wanted to know what I thought about it because I have an interest in identity issues. I really liked it. It's a very honest treatment given the series of events that the author describes. The author contrasts different times of his life in relation to the atrocities that occurred in Hitlerite Germany. I don't think that you have to have a pronounced interest in Judaism to appreciate the depth of pain and suffering that happened during this time in history or to this man in particular. Though, if you do or if you're in interested in human rights issues, there's an additional benefit associated with it. The net result is that this book gives a very real human face to a very real human tragedy that now seems foreign to most. Though the barbarism of the Nazis is unsettling at times, it's worth the read. The truth often hurts. Maybe it should because that way you can learn from it. Good stuff.

1 comments about Norbert Elias: An Introduction.

1. Good Introduction to the Norbert Elias' Theory.