Fraters Libertas

Another One For The Shelf

The official Fraters Libertas staff librarians in their mandatory ankle length skirts (let's just say that the combination of short skirts, library ladders, and Saint Paul make our legal department a tad nervous) will soon be making room for a new addition to the already voluminous Fraters collection.

The Road to Malpsychia: Humanistic Psychology and Our Discontents by Joyce Milton is the latest offering to be deemed worthy of admission. Milton analyzes the history of humanistic psychology and its influences on society from Franz Boas, Margaret Meade, and Ruth Benedict through Abraham Maslow (a name that should be familiar to anyone who's taken Management 101 and encountered Abe's hierarchy of needs), Carl Rogers, Timothy Leary, and Werner Erhard (EST) among many others and their quest for "Eupsychia", described by Maslow as a utopia of self actualized individuals. She traces the rise of humanistic psychology from the 20's onwards as it gains widespread academic acceptance in the 50's, is embraced by many elements of the counter culture in the 60's, and finally goes mainstream in the 70's.

When you read books such as this and David Frum's How We Got Here: The 70's: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life--For Better or Worse the real story is not the damage inflicted upon our society by those seeking to cure it of its ills by destroying traditional values and remaking it in their view, rather it is that society has actually come through fairly well considering all the nonsense that proliferated in the 60's and 70's.