Word: keniston
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This smattering of quotes should suggest the intrinsic interest of the first part of the book. Yet it is important not to let the immediacy of the subject obscure the book's methodological limitations. First, Keniston is not much of a foreigner to his topic. He lived through many of the experiences which his subjects were struggling with, in the course of which he arrived at a personal stance which was bound to color his perception of uncommitted behavior...
...Keniston's record (A.B. magnacum laude '51, Junior Fellow 1956-60) suggests a fairly high degree of commitment. But the composite uncommitted anti-hero of the first part of the book--Inburn, an American Ishmael--is clearly a hero to Keniston. Like Inburn, Keniston is critical of American society, but he has contrived to keep his disenchantment from interfering with objective achievement. In the first part of the book, the reader is at Keniston's mercy. It is in his power to make the uncommitted students he talks about attractive or offensive, justified or unjustified. That he takes their angst...
Another question Keniston might well have anticipated is whether uncommitment might not be a temporary phase. The sort of self doubt and inner fragmentation which his subjects experienced can easily be seen as a severe identity crisis, as a former head section man in Soc. Sci. 139--like Keniston--should know. Erik Erikson's view of the life cycle makes such a crisis routine--a necessary prelude to adult identity and commitment. At one point, Keniston seems to acknowledge this possibility, yet he never incorporates it into the mainstream of his analysis...
...early to tell whether the uncommitted of his study are permanently uncommitted or not. If not--as is probably the case--then much of Keniston's indignation, and the justification for the book itself is called into question. The Uncom- mitted would then amount to no more than a highly empathic account of young people at an uncertain moment of their lives, plus some social and psychological reasons why their uncertainty should be so extreme...
...beginning of his book, Keniston acknowledges a debt to "three extraordinarily wise teachers: Henry A. Murray, David Riesman, and Erik H. Erikson...