Unit Two
Boredom: The Most Prevalent American Disease Part 1 Notes to vocabulary and texts I. Vocabulary
1. vignette: n. a short piece of writing, music, acting, etc. which clearly expresses the typical characteristics of something or someone. / any brief composition or self - contained passage, usually a descriptive prose sketch, essay, or short story. The term also refers to a kind of decorative design sometimes found at the beginning or end of a chapter in a book; these were often based on vine - leaves.
2. non-event: n. a disappointing occasion which was not interesting, especially one which was expected to be exciting and important. E.g. The party turned out to be a bit of a non-event --hardly anybody turned up.
3. caption: n. a short piece of text under a picture in a book, magazine or newspaper which describes the picture or explains what the people in it are doing or saying.
4. dispirited: adj. not feeling hopeful about a particular situation or problem.
5. PTA: n. abbreviation for parent-teacher-association, an organization run by teachers and the parents of children at a school which tries to help the school, especially by arranging activities that raise money for it.
6. per se: (Latin) by or of itself. E.g. Research shows that it is not divorce per se that harms children, but the continuing conflict between parents.
7. pathology: n. the scientific study of disease. / Medical specialty dealing with causes of disease and structural and functional changes in abnormal conditions. As autopsies, initially prohibited for religious reasons, became more accepted in the late Middle Ages, people learned more about the causes of death. In 1761 Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771) published the first book to locate disease in individual organs. In the mid-19th century the humoral theories of infection were replaced first by cell-based theories (see Rudolf Virchow) and then by the bacteriologic theories of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. Today pathologists work mostly in the laboratory and consult with a patient ’s physician after examining specimens including surgically removed body parts, blood and other fluids, urine, feces, and discharges. Culturing of
infectious organisms, staining, fibre-optic endoscopy, and electron microscopy have greatly expanded the information available to the pathologist.
8. outpost: n. a place, especially a small group of buildings or a town, which keeps going the authority or business interests of a government or company that is far away.
9. traffic: n. illegal trade. E.g. to cut down the traffic in drugs /the drug traffic E.g. Police are looking for ways of curbing the traffic in guns.
10. drag: n. [ S ] (slang) something which is not convenient and is boring or unpleasant.
11. jaded: adj. not having interest or losing interest because something has been experienced too many times.
12. tone up: If you tone a part of the body, you make it firmer and stronger, usually by taking physical exercise.
13. credo: n. (formal) a set of beliefs which expresses a particular opinion and influences the way you live.
14. verge on: v. (phrasal verb) to be almost a particular state, quality or feeling, especially one that is very bad or very good. E.g. At times, his performance verged on brilliance, but at others it was only ordinary.
15. ennui: n. a feeling of being bored and mentally tired caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to do. E.g. The whole country seems to be affected by the ennui of winter.
16. mainstay: n. the most important part of something, providing support for everything else.
17. in-box: n. a flat open container where letters and other documents are put when they arrive in a person’s office and where they are kept until the person has time to deal with them.
18. coronary: adj. an extremely dangerous medical condition in which the flow of blood to the heart is blocked by a blood clot (= a mass of blood)
19. take to:
a) Have recourse to, go to, E.g. They took to the woods. [c. 1200]
b) Develop as a habit or steady practice, E.g. He took to coming home later and later. [c. 1300]
c) Become fond of, like, E.g. I took to him immediately, or The first time she skied she took to it.
This expression, from the mid-1700s, is sometimes expanded to take to it like a duck to water, a simile dating from the late l800s.
d) Take to be: Understand, consider, or assume, E.g. I took it to be the right entrance.
[Mid-1500s] Also see the subsequent entries beginning with take to.
20. squirrel away: (phrasal verb) to hide or store something, especially money, in order to use it in the future.
21. free-floating: adj. a free-floating feeling is one which is general and does not have an obvious cause.
22. get one’s own back: (phrasal verb) Take revenge on, E.g. Watch out for Peter; he’s sure to get back at you. Similarly, get one’s own back means simply "get revenge," E.g. She finally saw a chance to get her own back. The first expression dates from the late 1800s, the second from the early 1900s.
23. screw: into Screw it/you/them! (offensive) used when expressing extreme anger.
24. stave off: to stop something bad from happening, or to keep an unwanted situation or person away, usually temporarily.
25. saddle someone with something: (phrasal verb) informal to give someone a responsibility or problem which they do not want and which will cause them a lot of work or difficulty.
II. Notes to the text
1. Valium: Trademark for a preparation of diazepam. A tranquillizing drug used to treat anxiety and tension states and as an aid in sedation, first introduced in 1963, it belongs to the group of chemically related compounds called benzodiazepines, the first of which was synthesized in 1933. Side effects include drowsiness and muscular incoordination; physical dependence can result after prolonged use. The discovery of Valium and similar drugs led to a new era in psychopharmacology. (镇静安眠药，安眠镇静药) (Source: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Valium)
2. Eric Fromm: 弗洛姆 Erich Fromm (1900-1980) achieved international fame for his writings and lectures in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, and social philosophy. He wrote extensively on a variety of topics ranging from sociology, anthropology, and ethics to religion, politics, and mythology.
Erich Fromm was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on March 23,1900, and died in Muralto, Switzerland, on March 18, 1980. He grew up in a devout Jewish family, but abandoned religious orthodoxy early in life when he became convinced that religion was a source of division of the human race. His academic career was impressive. He studied at the Universities of Frankfurt and Munich and received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg. Later, he obtained psychoanalytic training at the prestigious Psychoanalytic Institute of Berlin under the leadership of such prominent Freudian analysts as Hanns Sachs and Theodor Reik. After pursuing a brief career as a psychoanalyst he left Nazi Germany in 1934 and settled permanently in the United States. Fromm taught in various universities such as Bennington College, Columbia, Yale, New School for Social Research, Michigan State, and the Universidad Aut6noma de Mexico. In 1962 he became professor of psychiatry at New York University.
Fromm wrote more than 20 books. Some of them became popular bestsellers: Escape from Freedom (1942); Man for Himself (1947); Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950); The Forgotten Language (1951); The Sane Society (1955); The Art of Loving (1956); Marx’s Concept of Man (1961); Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962); The Dogma of Christ, and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture (1963); Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960); The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1963); The Heart of Man (1964); Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970); The Revolution of Hope (1968); The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (1970); and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973).
A sincere and profound humanism permeates all of Fromm ’s writings. He was genuinely concerned with the reality of human existence and the full unfolding of man ’s potentialities. He searched for the essence of man, the meaning of life, and the nature of individual alienation in the modem technological world. Deeply moved by
the destruction and the suffering caused by two world wars, Fromm wrote extensively on the threats of technology and the insanity of the arms race. Faith in the future of man and the unity of humanity was the base of his humanistic vision.
Freud and Marx were the most decisive influences on Fromm ’s thinking. Originally Freudian in his intellectual orientation and clinical practice, he gradually grew more distant from Freudian therapeutic principles and later became a major critic of Freud. Along with Karen Homey, Harry Sullivan, and Karl Jung, Fromm was considered a Freudian revisionist and the founder of the neo-Freudian school. He rejected Freud’s libido theory, the Oedipus complex, and the instincts of life and death as universally constant in the human species. Instead, he insisted on cultural variations and the influence of the larger context of history and social conditions upon the character of the individual. The concept of the unconscious and the dynamic conception of character were considered to be Freud’s major achievements. The task of analytical social psychology, Fromm wrote, is that of understanding unconscious human behavior as the effect of the socio-economic structure of society on basic human psychic drives. Likewise, the character of the individual is rooted in the libidinal structure of society, understood as a combination of basic human drives and social forces. In the last analysis, Fromm rejected Freudian theory as authoritarian, repressive, and culturally narrow, enabling the individual to overcome the conflict between society and personal gratification and accept bourgeois norms.
In contrast, Fromm’s admiration for Marx was complete. He considered Marx a sincere humanist who sought an end to human alienation and the full development of the individual as the precondition for the full development of society (Marx’s Concept of Man). Marx ’s emphasis on the socio-economic base of society as a major determinant of human behavior was accepted as a given by Fromm. Marxism, though, needed to be completed by a dynamic and critical psychology - that is, a psychology which explained the evolution of psychic forces in terms of an interaction between man’s needs and the socio-historical reality in which he lives (The Crisis of Psychoanalysis). Fromm never renounced his project of merging psycho-analysis and Marxism.
This was his major work as a member of the Frankfurt School (The Institute for Social Research), a school committed to Critical Theory, a critique of the repressive character of bourgeois society. Psychological theory, he wrote, can demonstrate that the economic base of a society produces the social character, and that the social character produces ideas and ideologies which fit it and are nourished by it. Ideas, once created, also influence the social character and, indirectly, the socio-economic structure of society (Socialist Humanism).
In his popular book Escape from Freedom Fromm analyzed the existential condition of man. The source of man ’s aggressiveness, the human instinct of destructiveness, neurosis, sadism, and masochism were not viewed as sexually derived behavior, but as attempts to overcome alienation and powerlessness. His notion of freedom, in contrast to Freud and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, had a more positive connotation. It was not a matter of attaining "freedom from" the repressive character of the technological society, as Herbert Marcuse, for instance, held, but "freedom to" develop the creative powers of man. In Man for Himself Fromm focused on the problem of neurosis, characterizing it as the moral problem of a repressive society, as the failure of man to achieve maturity and an integrated personality. Man’s capacity for freedom and love, he noted, are dependent upon socio-economic conditions, but are rarely found in societies where the drive of destructiveness prevails.
In the Sane Society he attempted to psychologize society and culture and showed that psychoanalytic principles can be successfully applied to the solution of social and cultural problems. In a society becoming increasingly insane, he wrote, only a concern for ethics can restore sanity. Each person needs to develop high ethical standards in order to rejuvenate society and to arrest the process of robotization of the human being. Technological domination is destructive of human personality. Man’s need to destroy, for Fromm, stemmed from an "unlived life," that is, the frustration of the life instinct. Love becomes the only answer to human problems (The Art of Loving). He advocated a "socialist humanism" which in theory and practice is committed to the full development of man within the context of a socio-economic
system that, by its rationality and abundance, harmonizes the development of the individual and society (Socialist Humanism).
In contrast to the pessimistic and deterministic conclusions of Freudian theory and the nihilistic implications of Critical Theory, Fromm functioned as a voice of conscience. He maintained that true happiness could be achieved and that a happiness-oriented therapy, through empathy, was the most successful one. He severely criticized established psychoanalysis for contributing to the dehumanization of man (The Crisis of Psychoanalysis). Also, consistent with his philosophy of love and peace, Fromm fought against nuclear weapons and helped organize a "sane society" movement to stop the insanity of the arms race.
His influence on humanistic psychology was enormous. Many later social analysts were inspired by Fromm’s writings. An example would be the work of Christopher Lasch on the Culture of Narcissism, which continued in the United States Fromm’s effort to psychoanalyze culture and society in a neo-Freudian and Marxist tradition. (Source: Answers.com)
3. Christopher Burney: Christopher Arthur Geoffrey Burney MBE (1917-1980) was an upper-class Englishman who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. In 1941, Pierre de Vomecourt organized AUTOGYRO, one of the first resistance networks of Section F of the Special Operations Executive. Among de V omecourt ’s recruits were Georges Begue, the first SOE agent ever to be parachuted into France, who was assigned as the wireless operator; Noel Fernand Raoul Burdeyron (real name: Norman F. Burley); and Mathilde Carre. Lack of money, weapons and personnel, along with spotty communications with London meant that AUTOGYRO accomplished little. In frustration, Burdeyron/Burley singlehandedly derailed a German supply train by pulling up a rail, AUTOGYRO’s only successful attack, causing considerable German casualties.
Impressed, SOE decided to send Burdeyron some assistance. They recruited Christopher Burney, a lieutenant in the British Army and a trained commando, who had lived in France and spoke idiomatic French without an accent. On May 30, 1942, under the code name "Charles", he was inserted by parachute into France along with
William Grover- Williams, on a different mission under the code name "Sebastian". After being blind-dropped into the French countryside, Burney made his way to his rendezvous with Burdeyron. Circling the building, he spotted several suspicious men watching from various positions. He immediately concluded that his rendezvous had been blown and AUTOGYRO betrayed (it had - Mathilde Carr was in fact, a double agent). He quietly left, and never attempted any further contact with Burdeyron or de V omecourt,
Burney then tried to create his own network, but after eleven weeks learned that the Abwehr was passing around a circular warning bank clerks, hotel clerks and others to be on the lookout for a man named "Charles" who was asking strange questions, and offering a reward for tips on his whereabouts. The circular contained a good description of Burney who, tall and blonde, was very conspicuous in Normandy, where the average Frenchman was short and dark. Deciding he had done all he could, he planned his escape over the Pyrenees to Spain and back to England. Grover-Williams offered his help, and Burney met with him several times to organize the escape, but on the morning he was to meet Grover-Williams for the last time, Burney was surprised in his sleep by Abwehr agents who had been tipped off by a hotel clerk familiar with the circular.
The Germans locked him up, firstly in Fresnes prison, for fifteen months of solitary confinement, then in Buchenwald.
Freed in 1945, he worked after the war for the newly-formed United Nations, helping to commission their building in New York City. When Dutch diplomat and UN Assistant Secretary-General Adrian Pelt was posted from 1949-1951 in the Franco-British UN Trust Territory of Libya as UN Commissioner for Libyan Independence, Burney was assigned as his assistant.
In the 1950s, banking magnate Siegmund Warburg recruited him as a manager for the British and French Bank.
(Source: Answers.com)
4. Colonel Glenn syndrome: refers to the observation in his experiment, that many men were suffering from the effects of isolation, but denied th
Unit Two
Boredom: The Most Prevalent American Disease Part 1 Notes to vocabulary and texts I. Vocabulary
1. vignette: n. a short piece of writing, music, acting, etc. which clearly expresses the typical characteristics of something or someone. / any brief composition or self - contained passage, usually a descriptive prose sketch, essay, or short story. The term also refers to a kind of decorative design sometimes found at the beginning or end of a chapter in a book; these were often based on vine - leaves.
2. non-event: n. a disappointing occasion which was not interesting, especially one which was expected to be exciting and important. E.g. The party turned out to be a bit of a non-event --hardly anybody turned up.
3. caption: n. a short piece of text under a picture in a book, magazine or newspaper which describes the picture or explains what the people in it are doing or saying.
4. dispirited: adj. not feeling hopeful about a particular situation or problem.
5. PTA: n. abbreviation for parent-teacher-association, an organization run by teachers and the parents of children at a school which tries to help the school, especially by arranging activities that raise money for it.
6. per se: (Latin) by or of itself. E.g. Research shows that it is not divorce per se that harms children, but the continuing conflict between parents.
7. pathology: n. the scientific study of disease. / Medical specialty dealing with causes of disease and structural and functional changes in abnormal conditions. As autopsies, initially prohibited for religious reasons, became more accepted in the late Middle Ages, people learned more about the causes of death. In 1761 Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771) published the first book to locate disease in individual organs. In the mid-19th century the humoral theories of infection were replaced first by cell-based theories (see Rudolf Virchow) and then by the bacteriologic theories of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. Today pathologists work mostly in the laboratory and consult with a patient ’s physician after examining specimens including surgically removed body parts, blood and other fluids, urine, feces, and discharges. Culturing of
infectious organisms, staining, fibre-optic endoscopy, and electron microscopy have greatly expanded the information available to the pathologist.
8. outpost: n. a place, especially a small group of buildings or a town, which keeps going the authority or business interests of a government or company that is far away.
9. traffic: n. illegal trade. E.g. to cut down the traffic in drugs /the drug traffic E.g. Police are looking for ways of curbing the traffic in guns.
10. drag: n. [ S ] (slang) something which is not convenient and is boring or unpleasant.
11. jaded: adj. not having interest or losing interest because something has been experienced too many times.
12. tone up: If you tone a part of the body, you make it firmer and stronger, usually by taking physical exercise.
13. credo: n. (formal) a set of beliefs which expresses a particular opinion and influences the way you live.
14. verge on: v. (phrasal verb) to be almost a particular state, quality or feeling, especially one that is very bad or very good. E.g. At times, his performance verged on brilliance, but at others it was only ordinary.
15. ennui: n. a feeling of being bored and mentally tired caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to do. E.g. The whole country seems to be affected by the ennui of winter.
16. mainstay: n. the most important part of something, providing support for everything else.
17. in-box: n. a flat open container where letters and other documents are put when they arrive in a person’s office and where they are kept until the person has time to deal with them.
18. coronary: adj. an extremely dangerous medical condition in which the flow of blood to the heart is blocked by a blood clot (= a mass of blood)
19. take to:
a) Have recourse to, go to, E.g. They took to the woods. [c. 1200]
b) Develop as a habit or steady practice, E.g. He took to coming home later and later. [c. 1300]
c) Become fond of, like, E.g. I took to him immediately, or The first time she skied she took to it.
This expression, from the mid-1700s, is sometimes expanded to take to it like a duck to water, a simile dating from the late l800s.
d) Take to be: Understand, consider, or assume, E.g. I took it to be the right entrance.
[Mid-1500s] Also see the subsequent entries beginning with take to.
20. squirrel away: (phrasal verb) to hide or store something, especially money, in order to use it in the future.
21. free-floating: adj. a free-floating feeling is one which is general and does not have an obvious cause.
22. get one’s own back: (phrasal verb) Take revenge on, E.g. Watch out for Peter; he’s sure to get back at you. Similarly, get one’s own back means simply "get revenge," E.g. She finally saw a chance to get her own back. The first expression dates from the late 1800s, the second from the early 1900s.
23. screw: into Screw it/you/them! (offensive) used when expressing extreme anger.
24. stave off: to stop something bad from happening, or to keep an unwanted situation or person away, usually temporarily.
25. saddle someone with something: (phrasal verb) informal to give someone a responsibility or problem which they do not want and which will cause them a lot of work or difficulty.
II. Notes to the text
1. Valium: Trademark for a preparation of diazepam. A tranquillizing drug used to treat anxiety and tension states and as an aid in sedation, first introduced in 1963, it belongs to the group of chemically related compounds called benzodiazepines, the first of which was synthesized in 1933. Side effects include drowsiness and muscular incoordination; physical dependence can result after prolonged use. The discovery of Valium and similar drugs led to a new era in psychopharmacology. (镇静安眠药，安眠镇静药) (Source: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Valium)
2. Eric Fromm: 弗洛姆 Erich Fromm (1900-1980) achieved international fame for his writings and lectures in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, and social philosophy. He wrote extensively on a variety of topics ranging from sociology, anthropology, and ethics to religion, politics, and mythology.
Erich Fromm was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on March 23,1900, and died in Muralto, Switzerland, on March 18, 1980. He grew up in a devout Jewish family, but abandoned religious orthodoxy early in life when he became convinced that religion was a source of division of the human race. His academic career was impressive. He studied at the Universities of Frankfurt and Munich and received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg. Later, he obtained psychoanalytic training at the prestigious Psychoanalytic Institute of Berlin under the leadership of such prominent Freudian analysts as Hanns Sachs and Theodor Reik. After pursuing a brief career as a psychoanalyst he left Nazi Germany in 1934 and settled permanently in the United States. Fromm taught in various universities such as Bennington College, Columbia, Yale, New School for Social Research, Michigan State, and the Universidad Aut6noma de Mexico. In 1962 he became professor of psychiatry at New York University.
Fromm wrote more than 20 books. Some of them became popular bestsellers: Escape from Freedom (1942); Man for Himself (1947); Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950); The Forgotten Language (1951); The Sane Society (1955); The Art of Loving (1956); Marx’s Concept of Man (1961); Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962); The Dogma of Christ, and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture (1963); Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960); The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1963); The Heart of Man (1964); Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970); The Revolution of Hope (1968); The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (1970); and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973).
A sincere and profound humanism permeates all of Fromm ’s writings. He was genuinely concerned with the reality of human existence and the full unfolding of man ’s potentialities. He searched for the essence of man, the meaning of life, and the nature of individual alienation in the modem technological world. Deeply moved by
the destruction and the suffering caused by two world wars, Fromm wrote extensively on the threats of technology and the insanity of the arms race. Faith in the future of man and the unity of humanity was the base of his humanistic vision.
Freud and Marx were the most decisive influences on Fromm ’s thinking. Originally Freudian in his intellectual orientation and clinical practice, he gradually grew more distant from Freudian therapeutic principles and later became a major critic of Freud. Along with Karen Homey, Harry Sullivan, and Karl Jung, Fromm was considered a Freudian revisionist and the founder of the neo-Freudian school. He rejected Freud’s libido theory, the Oedipus complex, and the instincts of life and death as universally constant in the human species. Instead, he insisted on cultural variations and the influence of the larger context of history and social conditions upon the character of the individual. The concept of the unconscious and the dynamic conception of character were considered to be Freud’s major achievements. The task of analytical social psychology, Fromm wrote, is that of understanding unconscious human behavior as the effect of the socio-economic structure of society on basic human psychic drives. Likewise, the character of the individual is rooted in the libidinal structure of society, understood as a combination of basic human drives and social forces. In the last analysis, Fromm rejected Freudian theory as authoritarian, repressive, and culturally narrow, enabling the individual to overcome the conflict between society and personal gratification and accept bourgeois norms.
In contrast, Fromm’s admiration for Marx was complete. He considered Marx a sincere humanist who sought an end to human alienation and the full development of the individual as the precondition for the full development of society (Marx’s Concept of Man). Marx ’s emphasis on the socio-economic base of society as a major determinant of human behavior was accepted as a given by Fromm. Marxism, though, needed to be completed by a dynamic and critical psychology - that is, a psychology which explained the evolution of psychic forces in terms of an interaction between man’s needs and the socio-historical reality in which he lives (The Crisis of Psychoanalysis). Fromm never renounced his project of merging psycho-analysis and Marxism.
This was his major work as a member of the Frankfurt School (The Institute for Social Research), a school committed to Critical Theory, a critique of the repressive character of bourgeois society. Psychological theory, he wrote, can demonstrate that the economic base of a society produces the social character, and that the social character produces ideas and ideologies which fit it and are nourished by it. Ideas, once created, also influence the social character and, indirectly, the socio-economic structure of society (Socialist Humanism).
In his popular book Escape from Freedom Fromm analyzed the existential condition of man. The source of man ’s aggressiveness, the human instinct of destructiveness, neurosis, sadism, and masochism were not viewed as sexually derived behavior, but as attempts to overcome alienation and powerlessness. His notion of freedom, in contrast to Freud and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, had a more positive connotation. It was not a matter of attaining "freedom from" the repressive character of the technological society, as Herbert Marcuse, for instance, held, but "freedom to" develop the creative powers of man. In Man for Himself Fromm focused on the problem of neurosis, characterizing it as the moral problem of a repressive society, as the failure of man to achieve maturity and an integrated personality. Man’s capacity for freedom and love, he noted, are dependent upon socio-economic conditions, but are rarely found in societies where the drive of destructiveness prevails.
In the Sane Society he attempted to psychologize society and culture and showed that psychoanalytic principles can be successfully applied to the solution of social and cultural problems. In a society becoming increasingly insane, he wrote, only a concern for ethics can restore sanity. Each person needs to develop high ethical standards in order to rejuvenate society and to arrest the process of robotization of the human being. Technological domination is destructive of human personality. Man’s need to destroy, for Fromm, stemmed from an "unlived life," that is, the frustration of the life instinct. Love becomes the only answer to human problems (The Art of Loving). He advocated a "socialist humanism" which in theory and practice is committed to the full development of man within the context of a socio-economic
system that, by its rationality and abundance, harmonizes the development of the individual and society (Socialist Humanism).
In contrast to the pessimistic and deterministic conclusions of Freudian theory and the nihilistic implications of Critical Theory, Fromm functioned as a voice of conscience. He maintained that true happiness could be achieved and that a happiness-oriented therapy, through empathy, was the most successful one. He severely criticized established psychoanalysis for contributing to the dehumanization of man (The Crisis of Psychoanalysis). Also, consistent with his philosophy of love and peace, Fromm fought against nuclear weapons and helped organize a "sane society" movement to stop the insanity of the arms race.
His influence on humanistic psychology was enormous. Many later social analysts were inspired by Fromm’s writings. An example would be the work of Christopher Lasch on the Culture of Narcissism, which continued in the United States Fromm’s effort to psychoanalyze culture and society in a neo-Freudian and Marxist tradition. (Source: Answers.com)
3. Christopher Burney: Christopher Arthur Geoffrey Burney MBE (1917-1980) was an upper-class Englishman who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. In 1941, Pierre de Vomecourt organized AUTOGYRO, one of the first resistance networks of Section F of the Special Operations Executive. Among de V omecourt ’s recruits were Georges Begue, the first SOE agent ever to be parachuted into France, who was assigned as the wireless operator; Noel Fernand Raoul Burdeyron (real name: Norman F. Burley); and Mathilde Carre. Lack of money, weapons and personnel, along with spotty communications with London meant that AUTOGYRO accomplished little. In frustration, Burdeyron/Burley singlehandedly derailed a German supply train by pulling up a rail, AUTOGYRO’s only successful attack, causing considerable German casualties.
Impressed, SOE decided to send Burdeyron some assistance. They recruited Christopher Burney, a lieutenant in the British Army and a trained commando, who had lived in France and spoke idiomatic French without an accent. On May 30, 1942, under the code name "Charles", he was inserted by parachute into France along with
William Grover- Williams, on a different mission under the code name "Sebastian". After being blind-dropped into the French countryside, Burney made his way to his rendezvous with Burdeyron. Circling the building, he spotted several suspicious men watching from various positions. He immediately concluded that his rendezvous had been blown and AUTOGYRO betrayed (it had - Mathilde Carr was in fact, a double agent). He quietly left, and never attempted any further contact with Burdeyron or de V omecourt,
Burney then tried to create his own network, but after eleven weeks learned that the Abwehr was passing around a circular warning bank clerks, hotel clerks and others to be on the lookout for a man named "Charles" who was asking strange questions, and offering a reward for tips on his whereabouts. The circular contained a good description of Burney who, tall and blonde, was very conspicuous in Normandy, where the average Frenchman was short and dark. Deciding he had done all he could, he planned his escape over the Pyrenees to Spain and back to England. Grover-Williams offered his help, and Burney met with him several times to organize the escape, but on the morning he was to meet Grover-Williams for the last time, Burney was surprised in his sleep by Abwehr agents who had been tipped off by a hotel clerk familiar with the circular.
The Germans locked him up, firstly in Fresnes prison, for fifteen months of solitary confinement, then in Buchenwald.
Freed in 1945, he worked after the war for the newly-formed United Nations, helping to commission their building in New York City. When Dutch diplomat and UN Assistant Secretary-General Adrian Pelt was posted from 1949-1951 in the Franco-British UN Trust Territory of Libya as UN Commissioner for Libyan Independence, Burney was assigned as his assistant.
In the 1950s, banking magnate Siegmund Warburg recruited him as a manager for the British and French Bank.
(Source: Answers.com)
4. Colonel Glenn syndrome: refers to the observation in his experiment, that many men were suffering from the effects of isolation, but denied th