Psychological Advice and the Public Realm in America, 1940–1970: A Study in Mutability

The romance of American psychology in the postwar era is consequential," Ellen Herman concludes in her book (see record 1995-97442-000), "not because it offers reassurance that freedom and control are entirely different things, but because it shows that they are not". She argues that there was marked pliancy or mutability within psychological endeavors in the public realm between roughly 1940 and 1970, when respect for psychological knowledge reached an unprecedented height. Her cast of characters mixed and remixed emotional prescriptions for both individual freedom and social control without much regard for their inconsistency. The reviewer contends that in elaborating this theme, Herman does not focus on the psychology profession or psychology as an academic discipline. Rather, her study concerns dialogues and public policy endeavors by certain social workers, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, and others who held themselves out as expert advisors on mental processes, introspection, interpersonal relationships, and behavior to explain convergences between individual and social realities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)