Word: brodbeck
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Beyond this, Riesman has touched a gnawing fear that Arthur Brodbeck captures brilliantly, "What is felt throughout the volume is an overpowering and painful sense of loneliness in American society. It is not so much that a great deal is said about loneliness. There are listed in the index rather disappointing references to only five lean remarks about loneliness. Yet the mood haunts almost every page, like an insistent and sorrowful background music...
...Brodbeck looks beyond this theme to ask, very carefully but almost pensively, what would lead a nation to this sense of loneliness, and to the uneasy fear that accompanies it. He answers, almost elliptically, by recalling a theoretical link between fear of the unconscious and longing for membership, and then suggesting that a nation whose illusions are constantly shattered, and whose self-awareness is coming inexorably to dominate its thought, could scarcely avoid this fear. It is disturbing that Dahrendorf has commented, "I do not wish to be misunderstood...whatever criticism I may suggest of American society is praise...