If psychoanalysis emerged just before World War I to deal with the repressions of Puritanism, the hedonistic age has its counterpa...rt in sensitivity training, encounter groups, "joy therapy," and similar techniques that have two characteristics essentially derived from a hedonistic mood: they are conducted almost exclusively in groups; and they try to "unblock" the individual by physical contact, by groping, touching, fondling, manipulating. Where the earlier intention of psychoanalysis was to enable the patient to achieve self-insight and thereby redirect his life--an aim inseparable from a moral context--the newer therapies are entirely instrumental and psychologistic; their aim is to "free" the person from inhibitions and restraints so that he or she can more easily express his impulses and feelings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after seeing one in the street young ...couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon because murders are enlivened sermons to be analyzed and considered and relished, they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion, murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The forty hearts... of those waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months before, they had come together in similar jollity. For the time Paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they adored none other than themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even when couples share more equitably in the work at home, women do two-thirds of the daily jobs at home, like cooking and cleani...ng up--jobs that fix them into a rigid routine. Most women cook dinner and most men change the oil in the family car. But dinner needs to be prepared every evening around six o'clock, whereas the car oil needs to be changed every six months, any day around that time, any time that day.... Men thus have more control over when they make their contributions than women do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The happiest two-job marriages I saw during my research were ones in which men and women shared the housework and parenting. What ...couples called good communication often meant that they were good at saying thanks to one another for small aspects of taking care of the family. Making it to the school play, helping a child read, cooking dinner in good spirit, remembering the grocery list,... these were silver and gold of the marital exchange.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to inter...fere between them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmoth...er. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.... The emotionally satisfying discussions that take place in Chronic Pain Outreach and Depression Resources are simply updated versions of the grandmotherly practice of hanging crepe. We could eliminate much of the isolation that support groups exist to fill and save the "traditional family" that everybody is so worried about if more couples took their aging parents to live with them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »