“I move in a society so devoid of ordinary reality that I am continually stopping to teach good sense, to give support, to help out, as a young gangster might help an old lady across the street on his way to the stick-up.” WayGivingHelpingRealityMightMovingYoungTeachSupportStreetsOrdinarySticksStoppingGood SenseGangstersOld Lady Book:Five years Source: Five years
“Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves. ... Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominant society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical and wasted.” MenImportantHandsKidsYoungChoicesBoysStupidObjectsGeniusCapacityAverageInventionYoung ManDisappointedCynicalCharmingDominantConformApatheticDeviateDeviants Book:Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society Source: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
“Freud pointed out, in his Problem of Lay Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M.D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for young analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those who had chosen human contact. But in their economic wisdom, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Vienna (and New York) overruled him.” MenYearsHumansLooksProblemYoungMotherEconomicNew YorkDegreesLaysLawyerChosenContactAnalysisYoung ManUnlikelyInstituteAnalystsDrudgeryBest YearViennaPsychoanalytic Author:Paul Goodman
“In a milieu of resignation, where the young men think of society as a closed room in which there are no values but the rejected rat race, ... it is extremely hard to aim at objective truth or world culture. One's own products are likely to be personal or parochial.” ThinkingMenWorldHardYoungValuesCultureRoomsRaceProductsAimObjectivesYoung ManRejectedRatsResignationRat RaceMilieuObjective Truth Author:Paul Goodman
“Wrong' training can be a very innocent thing. Consider a father who allows his child to read good books. That child may soon cease to watch television or go to the movies, nor will he eventually read Book-of-the-Month Club selections, because they are ludicrous and dull. As a young man, then, he will effectually be excluded from all of Madison Avenue and Hollywood and most of publishing, because what moves him or what he creates is quite irrelevant to what is going on: it is too fine. His father has brought him up as a dodo.” MenMayChildrenBookMovingYoungFatherWatchesTelevisionFineMonthsTrainingHollywoodClubsCeaseInnocentYoung ManDullPublishingIrrelevantSelectionGood BookAvenuesExcludedMadisonMadison Avenue Book:Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society Source: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
