Autumn 1983
Psychiatry in America
In Essence
TomSix Years in Wicker, in The New York Times Magazine
(June 26, 1983), 229 West 43rd St., New The Oval Office? York, N.Y. 10036.
Debated the 1787 Constitutional Convention, endorsed by most 19th-century U.S. Presidents, denounced by Harry S Truman, the idea of a single six-year presidential term is once again gaining political ap- peal.
Wicker, a New York Timescolumnist, recalls that the last serious ef- fort to establish a six-year term came early in 1913, when the U.S. Sen- ate approved a...
Arthur Miller, in Public Owinion (June-Julv Pn,Ac,-AmAnfl 1983), American ~nterprise ~nstitute for
Pn-LurLj LUG~LL-c wup Public Policy ~esearch, 1150 17th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Beginning in 1964, public opinion surveys show, the average Ameri- can's confidence in the federal government began a long downhill slide. But that trend may now have reversed.
According to Miller, director of Michigan's Institute for Social Re- search, biennial opinion polls conducted the Institute show that...
Charles
Liberals versus Peters, in The Washington Monthly (May
Neoliberals 1983), 2712 Ontario Rd. N.W., Washing-
ton, D.C. 20009.
American political liberals are beginning to look almost as imperiled as the snail darter once was. Many liberals left the fold during the 1960s and '70s to become "neoconservatives." Today, even more are de- camping to join the "neoliberals."
Notable defectors, writes Peters, Washington Monthly editor and himself a self-styled neoliberal, include...
Jiri Valenta, in Foreign Policy (Summer 1983), P.O. Box 984, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.
The Soviet Union's reactions to unrest in Poland, Hungary, Afghani- stan, and other neighboring states have repeatedly strained super- power relations since World War 11. To avert such tensions, says Valenta, a Soviet affairs specialist at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Washington must somehow steer Moscow toward a more toler- ant view of its neighbors' domestic matters.
History, Valenta notes, offers abundant...
allowing real reform to occur in its troubled satellites can Moscow avoid the peripheral flare-ups that threaten to erupt into wider conflict.
"Alternate Futures" Adam Yarmo- Mixed Ideas for linskv and Gregory D. Foster, in Parame-
ters ar arch i983), U.S. Army WarThe Pentagon College, Carlisle Barracks, Pa. 17013.
The new military "reformersu-junior officers, academics, and Sena- tors and Congressmen, notably Senator Gary Hart (D.-Co10.)-all agree that, in both weapons and Pentagon...
Norman Friedman,
in Orbis (Winter 1983), 3508 Market St.,
Revisited Suite 350, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.
When a sea-skimming Argentine Exocet missile sank the British de- stroyer Sheffield off the Falkland Islands last year, some U.S. defense analysts declared that the incident proved that sophisticated missiles have rendered large warships obsolete.
But Friedman, a Hudson Institute staff member, contends that the lessons for U.S. defense planners are precisely the opposite. The Falk- lands...
A. F. Ehrbar, in Fortune (May 16, 1983),
541 North Fairbanks Ct., Chicago, 111.
60611.
Some economists and politicians worry that high-tech factories and foreign competition will cost millions of American blue-collar workers their jobs over the next several decades. But Ehrbar, a Fortune editor, says such fears are "overblown."
An oft-cited Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, for example,
The Wilson Quar!efi/Autumn 1983
15
PERIODICALS
ECONOMICS, LABOR, & BUSINESS
suggests t...
the year 2000 [see WQ, New Year's 1983, p. 401. He pins part of the blame on industrial robots, whose numbers he expects to grow from a few thousand today to more than 200,000 1990. But other studies peg the total robot population in 1990 at a maximum of 150,000-and a low of 70,000.
Ehrbar adds that the long decline of America's "smokestack" indus- tries now appears to have bottomed out. Between 1950 and 1978, their share of all U.S. employment fell from 34 percent to 24 percent. But...
Bradley R. Schil-
ecessary ler, in The Public Interest (Summer 1983), 10 East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
Newspaper "help wanted" ads always seem to say, "Experience re-quired." How does the first-time job-seeker get such experience? Mostly in small companies, which in effect subsidize job training for America's big corporations.
Hiring and breaking in a new worker can cost up to $10,000, accord- ing to Schiller, an American University economist. Since most compa- nies,...
Daphne
Spain and Suzanne M. Bianchi, in Ameri-For Women can Demographics (May 1983), P.O. Box
68, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850.
One of America's continuing social dramas, with mixed repercussions on the family, the economy, and welfare policy, is the "revolution in women's lives," write demographers Spain and Bianchi, analyzing fresh U.S. Census data.
marrying later, studying and working longer, today's women have begun to "establish independence from their families." They have fewer...
Daphne
Spain and Suzanne M. Bianchi, in Ameri-For Women can Demographics (May 1983), P.O. Box
68, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850.
One of America's continuing social dramas, with mixed repercussions on the family, the economy, and welfare policy, is the "revolution in women's lives," write demographers Spain and Bianchi, analyzing fresh U.S. Census data.
marrying later, studying and working longer, today's women have begun to "establish independence from their families." They have fewer...
health insurance, the President hopes to get Washington out of the busi- ness of directly providing services, and thus to cut administrative costs. Some liberals also like vouchers because they may ultimately transfer more income to the poor and would spare recipients the indignity of standing in line for "handouts."
Experience shows vouchers can work. The $1 1.2 billion food-stamp program helps feed some 22 million Americans. Intermittently since 1944, the federal government, in effect,...
Gary Roth- Short Circuit in bart and David Stoller, in Channels of
The 'Wired City' Communications (July-August 1983), Box 2001, Mahopac, N.Y. 10036.
A few years ago, cable television seemed poised to take over America's living rooms, providing everything from movies to home banking to home security systems. But today, many big cities, including Chicago, Washington, and most of Philadelphia, still haven't joined the "wired society" envisioned cable's champions. What happened?
Cable...
Michael Jay Robinson, in Pub-lie Opinion (Feb.-March 1983), American Unbiased News Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Re- search, 1150 17th St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036.
America's top journalists are more liberal-leaning in their personal opinions than is the man on the street, but that does not necessarily mean that their reporting is ideologically slanted.
So argues Robinson, a George Washington University political scien- tist. He notes that conservatives have used opinion surveys...
An-
About Sullivan ? thony Lewis, in the Columbia Law Review (April 1983), 435 West 116th St., New York, N.Y. 10027.
Journalists long regarded the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 New York
Times v. Sullivan decision, which sharply restricted the right of "public
figures" to sue for libel, as a landmark victory for press freedom.
But the decision has proved increasingly costly to the press, says Lewis, a Times columnist and specialist on the law.
To sue for libel, the Court said, a "public...
juries, but 75 percent of those decided judges. Such odds scare off journalists contemplating controversial stories about government.
Lewis suggests a remedy. "Public figures," whether officials or pri- vate citizens, could sue for libel only when a story did not concern gov- ernment business. Otherwise, libel suits would be barred. Public officials' performance, in particular, should be fair game for press criti- cism, even inaccurate criticism. "Their recourse is not litigation...
dpdf-doc>
PERIODICALS
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
ble diseases such as breast cancer. During the early 1860s, Silas Weir Mitchell experimented with neurosurgery to relieve chronic pain.
The growth of sentimentalism in Victorian America's literature, art, and religion was partly behind the change. The Philadelphia Bulletin echoed popular opinion when it editorialized in 1860 that the man most fit "to officiate at the couch of sickness . . .is kind and gentle."
And as time went on...
1874, when they emigrated to the United States, they num- bered only 440.
Today, the Hutterite population is nearing 24,000. Their large fami- lies-the 4.12 percent annual rate of natural increase is one of the world's highest-are the driving force behind the quest for productivity in their collective farming ventures. Constant modernization is re- quired just to produce a surplus. The Hutterites' unique brand of so- cialism is a success-but it is not a model many will be able to follow.
SCIENCE &am...
? John Langone, in Discover (June 1983), 541 North Michigan Ave., Chicago, 111. 60611.
The human body's immune system is curiously inefficient. It releases many kinds of antibodies when only one is needed to combat a particu- lar invader, or antigen. contrast, laboratory-produced "monoclonal antibodies," just coming into use, are "magic bullets"-and, poten-tially, a highly useful treatment for cancer.
PERIODICALS
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Medical researchers Georges Kohler and...
other cells in the blood.
According to Langone, a Discover staff writer, doctors are only now beginning to explore uses of the new antibodies. Stanford researchers used monoclonals to push one California man's lymphatic cancer into remission in 1981. Johns Hopkins's Dr. Stanley Order has successfully injected patients with monoclonals bearing radioactive iodine to treat liver cancers. Because the monoclonals do not bind to normal cells, the patient avoids the side effects of conventional chemotherapy....
the equipment needed to re- enter the Earth's atmosphere." Today's space shuttle program could produce both 1990. And Mark believes that the first small U.S. lunar base could be in place by 2000.
His scenario follows closely the Antarctic timetable-30 years be- tween the "dash to the pole" and the establishment of regular bases on the continent. And just as Antarctica yielded few of its mysteries before the 1957 International Geophysical Year, extensive lunar exploration may not...
10 percent of those surveyed. Sixty percent of the households queried had invested nothing in conservation. As for the rest, the average outlay per household was only $266; those most likely to invest were young and relatively affluent.
The lesson: Higher energy prices spur less affluent families to reduce their living standards, while only those who can easily afford it make lasting improvements. Renters, one-third of U.S. families, have little reason to spend anything on conservation. And during...
this method every year.
Congressional blunders and the narrow interests of some producers and pipeline companies have kept natural gas prices high. With intelli- gent regulation, methane could be the answer to what Commoner sees as the real energy crisis: the high cost of energy, not its scarcity. And, eventually, methane could serve as a bridge to a society completely powered renewable solar energy sources.
"Solar Technology: A Whether Report" Solar Power's by Kevin Finneran, in Technology...
Dana Gioia, in Executive Poets The Hudson Review (Spring 1983), 684 Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Business and poetry may seem to mix like oil and water, but in America they blend surprisingly often. Despite the seeming contradiction, writes Gioia, a poet and General Foods executive, the nation's businessman-poets have profited from their dual identities.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), vice president of a Hartford insurance firm and one of America's greatest poets, became the best-known hy- brid....
Leon Botstein, in Harper's (May 1983),
P.O. Box 2620, Boulder, Colo. 80321.
Despite his unrivaled stature in American music, Leonard Bernstein has never become the artist he could have been. Having just reached 65, Bernstein has one "last chance" for greatness, says Botstein, president of Bard College.
Bernstein's accomplishments are legion. His Omnibus TV shows of the 1950s and '60s popularized classical music in America and made him a celebrity. Like German composer Kurt Weill and...
Leon Botstein, in Harper's (May 1983),
P.O. Box 2620, Boulder, Colo. 80321.
Despite his unrivaled stature in American music, Leonard Bernstein has never become the artist he could have been. Having just reached 65, Bernstein has one "last chance" for greatness, says Botstein, president of Bard College.
Bernstein's accomplishments are legion. His Omnibus TV shows of the 1950s and '60s popularized classical music in America and made him a celebrity. Like German composer Kurt Weill and...
Joseph Epstein, in Commentary (May 1983), 165 East 56th St., New York, N.Y.
10022.
Last year, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, won the Nobel Prize in literature at the youthful age of 54. Is he already a great writer, asks Epstein, editor of the American Scholar, or just a very talented one?
Since it first appeared in 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude, a his- tory of the fictional town of Macondo, has been translated into 30 lan- guages and...
PERIODICALS
ARTS&LETTERS
"How Good is Gabriel Garcia Marquez?"
Flawed Marvels Joseph Epstein, in Commentary (May 1983), 165 East 56th St., New York, N.Y.
10022.
Last year, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, won the Nobel Prize in literature at the youthful age of 54. Is he already a great writer, asks Epstein, editor of the American Scholar, or just a very talented one?
Since it first appeared in 1967, One Hundred Years of S...
the left- ist Mujahedeen-al-Khalq that took the lives of several senior govern- ment officials.
Systematic repression of dissent-there have been 4,500 documented executions since Khomeini took power in 1979-has been vital to the regime's survival. Another key: effective "state-building." Khomeini quickly replaced the Shah's bureaucrats with loyalists; he established new quasi-governmental organizations, such as the 150,000-man Revo- lutionary Guards and thousands of neighborhood watch...
Geoffrey Swedish Stew Smith, in Journal of the Institute for So-
cioeconomic Studies (Sprine 1983). Air-
port Rd., White plain;, ~.~.*10604.
In Sweden, have they gone about as far as they can go?
The nation's Social Democratic party ruled without interruption for 44 years (1932-76) as it gradually expanded the welfare state. Since its return to power late last year, writes Smith, a London Times columnist, the search for new initiatives has forced it to contemplate programs considered beyond...
Book Reviews
by W.H. Parker
Oxford, 1982
295 pp. $34.95
by Unni Wikan
Johns Hopkins, 1982
314 pp. $23.50
by Alan Walker
Knopf, 1983
481pp. $25.
by Barbara Villet
Everest House, 1982
255 pp. $16.95
by Barbara Taylor
Pantheon, 1983
394 pp. $9.95
intro. by Estellc Williams
Louisiana State, 1983
276 pp. $19.95
by Carol A. O'Connor
SUNY, 1983
283 pp. $34.50
by Liang Heng
and Judith Shapiro
Knopf, 1983
301 pp. $15
by Nelson W. Polsby
Oxford, 1983
267 pp. $8.95
by H. Stuart Hughes
Harvard, 1983
188 pp. $15.00
by Harriet E. Wilson
introduction and notes
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Vintage, 1983
232 pp. $10.95 cloth,
$4.95 paper
by Svetlana Alpers
Chicago, 1983
273 pp. $37.50
by Jeremy Rifkin
Vikina;, 1983
298 pp. $14.75
by Lewis R. Binford
Thames and Hudson, 1983
256 pp. $18.50
By William
Goetzmann and Kay Sloan. Princeton,
1983.244 pp. $8.95
By Robert Lyons Danley. Yale,
1983.335 pp. $10.95
By William Boyd. Penguin,
1983. 312 pp. $3.95
By Brooke Hindle. Norton, 1983.
162 pp. $5.95
Essays
the Soviet Union's status as an adversary and super- power, and severely constrained Moscow's tight controls on foreign journalists. Typically, daily news stories focus on politi- cal ups and downs in the Kremlin, on a handful of Soviet dissi- dents, on Soviet economic gains and losses, on Moscow's diplomatic coups and setbacks around the world. So familiar have the big issues become that a shorthand list suffices to bring some particulars of each to mind: "Poland," "detente,"...
Over the years, independent Soviet writers, artists, and intellectuals have used Cervantes's hero to symbolize their own high-minded "tilting at windmills." The tragi-comic, self-deluding aspect of the role is accepted, even flaunted. "The sole advantage of Don Quixote's," Soviet writer Fridrikh Gorenshtein wryly observed in a recent story, "is that they're ridiculous and go unrecognized."
In 1946, Winston Churchill declared that an Iron Curtain was descending on Europe, dividing East from West. The metaphor was apt.
As Stalin saw it, the curtain of isolation had two functions. First, it was to shelter the people of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from the disruptive influence of the West. Second, it was to provide a secure environment in which ordinary mortals could be transformed into exemplars of the New Soviet Man.
The next time you are in an American bookstore, take a look at the science-fiction section; in some stores, it is almost as big as all of the other fiction categories put together. Walk into a So- viet bookstore these days, and you'll find . . . probably no sci- ence fiction at all. Go to a Soviet secondhand bookshop, and your chances of finding science fiction there will be equally slim. But take a stroll past the Moscow Art Theater to where Pushkin Street intersects Kuznetskii Most, and you'll...
Aksyonov and four fellow writers. It was published in the United States and France in 1982, after officials in the USSR banned the collection.
An eclectic anthology of poetry and prose 23 Soviet writers, Metro-pol represented yet another attempt by established literary figures to move beyond the constraints of offi- cial literature. The harsh reaction from the Kremlin was due as much to the unsanctioned nature of the group effort as it was to the content of individual pieces of writing. Ak- syonov...
IN DEFENSE
OF HENRY ADAMS
In a recent essay, critic Alfred Kazin praised Henry Adams for
possessing a "a mind so fine that no 'practical' ideas about any-
thing could violate it." But when similar judgments were voiced
-
by Adams's contemporaries, they were not intended as compli- ments. Judged by the pragmatic standards of the 1890s, Adams, the descendant of American presidents, appeared to be a failure. And in some of his own writings, this troubled Bostonian criti- cized himself...
and psychoanalysis, a visitor from Mars could make little sense of much of contemporary America. He would fail to understand the cartoons of Jules Feiffer, the movies of Woody Allen, the nov- els of D. M. Thomas or Philip Roth. His grasp of U.S. politics, ed- ucation, and criminal justice would be incomplete. Psychiatry in America today is, one estimate, a $20-billion-a-year indus- try. As a professional field, it is also unkempt and overgrown, with no regular boundaries. Practitioners cannot always...
today is, by one estimate, a $20-billion-a-year indus- try. As a professional field, it is also unkempt and overgrown, with no regular boundaries. Practitioners cannot always agree on which forms of treatment "work" and which do not. And yet, ironically, in its broader social impact, psychiatry's intellectual disarray has long been irrelevant. Here, in a five-part essay, psy- chiatrist and neurologist Richard Restak surveys the state of the profession and its unusual role in American...
BACKGROUND BOOKS
All societies, not just 20th-century America, confront the mysteries of the deranged, disturbed, or eccentric mind. In the past, they have vari- ously responded elevating the "touched" to positions of considera- ble influence or mystical signifi- cance, by ostracizing or killing them, or by subjecting them to harsh phys- ical or psychological ordeals in the hope of effecting a cure.
The crucial question is: Who is really deranged?
"Every culture, to my knowledge,...
public agencies and priix~te iizstit~itioizs
"Living With Nuclear Weapons."
Harvard Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138. 268 pp. $12.95 cloth. Bantam Books, 666 5th Ave., New York, N.Y. 10103.269 pp. $3.95 paper. Authors: Albert Carnesale, Paul Doty, Stanley Hoffman, Samuel P. Huntington,
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Scott D. Sagan
"Living with nuclear weapons is our only hope. It requires that we perse- vere in reducing the likelihood of war even though we cannot remove the...
The election of 1960 became a classic commanded the political landscape of American political history. It at- since the first term of Franklin D. tracted the highest rate of voter par- Roosevelt. ticipation in half a century (64 Broadly speaking, contemporary percent), marked the emergence of a liberalism could claim legitimate de- glamorous new personality (John F. scent from historic bourgeois liberal- Kennedy), and restored to power, ism, with its affirmation of reason, after an eight-year...
