Social Amnesia

Russell Jacoby defines social amnesia as society's repression of remembrance - society's own past. In this book, Jacoby excavates the critical and historical concepts that have fallen prey to the dynamic of a society that strips them both of their historical and critical content. Social Amnesia is an effort to remember what is perpetually lost under the pressure of society. It is simultaneously a critique of present practices and theories in psychology. Jacoby's new self-evaluation has the same sharp edge as the book itself, offering special insights into the evolution of psychological theory during the past two decades.In his probing, self-critical new introduction, Jacoby maintains that any serious appraisal of psychology or sociology, or any discipline, must seek to separate the political from the theoretical. He discusses how in the years since Social Amnesia was first published society has oscillated from extreme subjectivism to extreme objectivism, which feed off each other and constitute two forms of social amnesia: a forgetting of the past and a pseudo-historical consciousness. Social Amnesia contains a forceful argument for "thinking against the grain - an endeavor that remains as urgent as ever." It is an important work for sociologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts.

The Nation We Are; I: The Diversity of America; II: T wo Interpretations of American History; III: Social Science Discovers Regionalism; IV: Regionalism in the Arts; V: Federation or Disunion : The Political Economy of Regionalism; Immovable Bodies and Irresistible Forces; VI: Still Rebels , S till Yankees; VII: New York and the Hinterland; VIII: The Two Old Wests; IX: The Great Plains; X: American Heroes; XI: Regionalism and Nationalism in American Literature; XII: Regionalism and Education 1; Southern Essays; XIII: The Dilemma of the Southern Liberals 1; XIV: Howard Odum and the Sociological Proteus; XV: Expedients vs . Principles -C ross -Purposes in the South; XVI: The Southern Poet and His Tradition 1; The World State; XVII: The Shape of Things and Men : H. G. W ells and Æ on the World State