The Study On Jacoby's Critique Of "Social Amnesia"

The main purpose of “Social Amnesia”,a book of Russell Jacoby,is to disclose a variety of drawbacks of the alienated society in America,the loss of human autonomy,the reversion of human consciousness,the indifference of human relations,etc.In other words,the book criticizes the“society suffering from social amnesia” of America by Freud's psychoanalysis and Marxism's theories of alienation.The alienation phenomenon criticized by Jacoby in this book does not only have a referential significance for the alienation and materialization problems in other developed capitalist countries,but also for the alienation problems in the socialist countries.Thus,it is necessary to analyze and discuss the alienated American society suffering from the "social amnesia”.Combining Jacoby's works,Freud's psychoanalysis and related theories of Marx,the paper will elaborate on the predicament of people's survival and development after American society suffered from "amnesia" and how they overcome the "social amnesia" to pursue the overall and free development of people.Based on this,the paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces the definition of “social amnesia”.This chapter is divided into three sections,in which the manifestation,mechanism and reasons of Jacoby's “social amnesia” are discussed,combining the history and the current state of social development of the United States.First,Jacoby points out that “social amnesia” is a new manifestation of alienation,and its most prominent manifestation is the oblivion of classical theories by people and society.Second,in Jacoby's analysis on the mechanism of “social amnesia”,he argues that the expansion of the counter-culture movement has shaken the traditional culture of the United States.The decline of the Bohemian Spirit has caused the poverty of public culture and the general materialization in the capitalist society.All have prompted the emergence of "social amnesia" or deepened “social amnesia”.Finally,in Jacoby's analysis on the causes of “social amnesia”,he proposes that cultural forces such as technological rationality and mass culture have become alienation forces that suppress people and dispel people's subjectivity under the developed industrial society from three aspects: the failure of New Left Movement,alienation of people in front of technology,and social unconsciousness brought by consumption alienation,thus making a complaint against the American society.The second chapter discusses Jacoby's analysis on the harm of “social amnesia”,i.e.,the harm to the social development and people of the United States after the society suffered from “amnesia”.First,“social amnesia” leads to the lack of effective psychological analysis and draws the people'sattention from the historical research of psychology and Freud's classical psychoanalysis.Second,people's critical thinking has been suppressed,leading to a gradual loss of people's insights and the disability of questioning and observing the world,followed with the increasingly popular crowd mentality.Third,people forget the alienation analysis,forget that they are in an alienated society,and forget their tragic state of life.At this moment,people have lost their own consciousness of the subject and formed a materialized consciousness with the identification of the materialized structure,because they have lived for such a long time in a repressed society for a long time.The materialized consciousness has dominated all spiritual activities and psychological activities of people.Referencing to multiple works of Jacoby,the third chapter discusses Jacoby's analysis on the transcendence of “social amnesia”.Jacoby believes that we must first return to Freud's psychoanalysis and remodel the leading position of Freud's psychoanalysis to explore the psychological and spiritual activities of people in the alienated society,allow people to recognize themselves and abandon alienation through psychoanalytic therapy.Second,it is necessary to return to the critical nature of dialectics,dialectically criticize the materialized capitalist society,and use the critical and revolutionary nature of dialectics to criticize and negate all external and alienating forces,and urge people to constantly realize self-transcendence and self-improvement.Finally,it is required to recreate the utopian spirit of intellectuals,and call upon intellectuals to adhere to the utopian spirit that opposes the heathenism,arouse people's inner utopia impulse and passion for life,thus leading people to a good future with creativity and imagination.The last chapter analyzes the Jacoby's contribution in this book,that is,it promoted the return of Freud's classical psychoanalysis in the era when classical theories were forgotten and encouraged people to pay attention to the alienation of their own at the psychological level and their survival predicament.What's more,this chapter also analyzes the deficiencies in his book.It is inevitable to neglect some key concepts in the psychology,and there is no inner logic control on the history of psychoanalysis.After all,Jacoby is not a specialized psychologist.Finally,the chapter combines the Jacoby's critique of “social amnesia” with Marx's critique of materialization.Particularly,the loss of human autonomy,the indifference of social relations and the reversal of the relationship between people and things are combined with the dissimilation of human nature,the materialization of social relations and the dissimilation of labor products of Marx,respectively to find their common grounds.