Insight and Personality Adjustment
- Author:
Therese Benedek,
M.D. Institute for Psycho-analysis, Chicago, ihe Ronald Press Company, New York. $4.00.
The first two parts of this book can be recommended to the careful study of all engaged in psychiatric work (both medical and social) with ex-service men and women, provided that the reader has a working knowledge of psycho-analytical theory. Thereafter the book suffers from anxiety to leave nothing out, which results in a certain scrappiness and also, to British readers intent on getting help for their own work, from differences of emphasis necessarily arising out of a study of American social conditions.
Part I contains a useful outline of individual emotional development and of the psycho-dynamics of separation. In the next nine chapters the author makes a penetrating study of the soldier and his family adjusting to war and to reunion, which should prove of great help in understanding his postwar problems. Since the material was apparently derived from civilian case work, the degree of insight into service psychology shown is remarkable. It is possible that the author underestimates the dynamic qualities of army society and its emotional satisfactions, but apart from this the emphasis is admirable.
Later chapters on civilian attitudes are less convincing to the British reader, because it is increasingly evident that the British civilian was much more personally identified with the war and its dangers than his American counterpart. To some extent the American civilian sense of separation has less significance here. An attempt to tackle the formidable subject of the change in sexual conventions and morality at the end of the book could scarcely hope to do more than scratch the surface. This section raises a curious nostalgic feeling in a Briton who may wonder where he has met it all before. Eventually memory recalls the aftermath of World War I, when the balance between the sexes in Britain was more disturbed than it appears to be at present. It is possible that Britain passed through at least some of the current American reactions, twenty-five years ago; and other differences can be accounted for by the fact that American society is by tradition relatively more matriarchal than British.
In spite of these minor disadvantages it is an excellent, worth-while and readable volume, and deserves popularity. Perhaps one more nationalistic comment will be forgiven: in the introduction (page 5) the author, apostrophizing American democracy, emphasizes the American lack of military tradition?the soldier’s right to criticize?” … in this?his highest value?his political freedom, which he is fighting to preserve, is an added unique responsibility of the American soldier It is an uniqueness which he shares with his allies from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, New Zealand, Belgium, Czecho-slovakia, France, Holland, Norway, and, to some extent possibly India and China too. Certainly we from Britain claim a share. K.S.
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