Essay: POP-PSYCH, or, Doc, I'm Fed Up with These Boring Figures

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One of the heroes of today's amateur psychologizers is Harvard's Erik Erikson, perhaps the most influential of the new generation of builders upon Freudian foundations. Erikson is known for his study of the life cycle ("the eight ages of man") and for his work on the problem of identity, by which he means the bewilderment of youth as it witnesses the confusion of modern man. For this modern man is uncertain of his place in society, with his old roles as husband, father and guardian of tradition diminished in favor of his work—and his work less and less under his own control. Another current hero of pop-psych is Norman O. Brown, author of Life Against Death. Not a trained psychologist but an English professor, he belongs to a group of academics who have been described as "professional amateur psychologists." Brown's joyful acceptance of uninhibited love and play as the right way of life seems to out-Freud Freud, who thought repression was a necessary price to pay for the fruits of civilization.

The result of such work is that the formal, deterministic view of psychology is outmoded and being replaced by a far freer eclectic, and occasionally chaotic, scene in which nobody seems afraid to get into the act.

Indigestion as Status

Freud predicted sourly that the only use the U.S. would have for his theories would be to make advertising more effective. Certainly a major achievement of pop-psych is the art known as "consumer motivation," whose leading exponent, Ernest Dichter, keeps pouring out fresh insights in a monthly newsletter. Dichter perceives qualities in objects and situations that nobody, except possibly a mad metaphysician, has seen before. He proclaims that lamb is less popular than beef because it is associated with "gentle innocence"; that rice is a favorite "feminine food" because in the cooking "it expands and swells." Dichter also asserts that gloves are sexy because taking them off to shake hands is an "act of undressing" which provides "skin contacts"; that shaving is a masochistic ritual associated with virility, and that therefore the most popular aftershave lotions "have to burn almost to the extent of hurting"; and that indigestion is a status symbol because it suggests high living and responsibility.

This sort of thing is not necessarily bought by Madison Avenue, let alone by American business. Yet in dealing with their own personnel, many U.S. business firms also act on fairly fanciful assumptions and do their share of amateur psychologizing. A growing number of corporations sponsor a psychological technique known as "sensitivity training." Its goal is to make executives better able to deal with their business peers and underlings, better able to see themselves as others see them.