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 »
Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles,... as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »