The Poverty of Affluence. Paul Wachtel

in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Both time to reflect and stimulating people to argue with were provided aplenty in a heady interdisciplinary atmosphere. Will Gaylin and Dan Callahan, the President and Director of the Institute, were extremely gracious and supportive, and they, along with Ron Bayer, Ruth Macklin, and Marilyn Weltz, made very helpful comments on early drafts.

      Because this book ventures into territory for which a clinical psychologist is not formally prepared, I found it necessary to conscript more than the usual number of friends and colleagues into the task of reading and commenting on the manuscript. The following all gave me valuable feedback on one or more chapters: Marsha Amstel, Arthur Arkin, Stephen Bendich, Marshall Berman, George Kaufer, Patricia Laurence, Stuart Laurence, Jane Lury, Ronald Murphy, Stanley Renshon, Oliver Rosengart, Lloyd Silverman, Robert Sollod, Deborah Tanzer, Michael Tanzer. My brother-in-law, Joel Finer, read every chapter with a commitment and energy that were especially appreciated.

      Miles Orvell, in particular, helped shape this work during countless hours of conversation whose loops and byways no computer could track. To the degree that this book is “the real thing” it owes much to both the seriousness and the playfully bantering spirit of our dialogues.

      I am grateful as well for the feedback offered by my students in seminars where portions of the manuscript were considered, as well as in more informal conversations. The PhD program in clinical psychology at City College is a remarkably open and intellectually fertile place. There are few clinical programs in the country where I could have received such consistent support for a project so disregarding of disciplinary boundaries, and none, I believe, where the commitment to critical thought at the very highest level is so ably carried through by students and faculty.

      It is a pleasure to offer a very special note of thanks to Robert Coles, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Robert Heilbroner. The interest they showed in the book at a crucial stage was of inestimable value, and their comments were as perceptive as I had hoped. I wrote to them each as a stranger whose ideas I thought they might find congenial. The generosity of spirit they showed, in the face of extraordinarily busy schedules, is something I will long remember.

      Very special thanks are also due Seymour Sarason, an inspiring teacher of mine at Yale, a friend to be counted on, and a mensch. Not the least of the many things I owe him is introducing me to Kitty Moore, my editor on this book but also a shrewd psychologist who managed my behavior with consummate skill and wrung from me a manuscript far better than the one that first caught her interest.

      One final note of thanks: Once again my family has helped me to maintain the balance so many authors seem so proud of losing; they saved my evenings and weekends rather than my ruining theirs. We are all happier for it. But I cannot extend to them the ritual disclaimer I offer—with considerable truth, by the way—regarding all the others mentioned above: that what is meritorious in the book owes much to them and what is baneful owes to my stubbornness. The fact is, the heart and soul of this book comes from my experience with my wife, Ellen, and my children, Kenny and Karen. My view that feelings, relatedness, and human experience count more than the nonsense we are told today is “the bottom line” comes most of all from knowing and being with them; if that central idea is wrong, it is they who have led me astray!

      ONE

      Introduction

      WE ARE USED TO THINKING OF economic concerns, of dollars and cents, as eminently practical and rational matters. In this book I will present a quite different picture. I will argue that our society’s preoccupation with goods and with material productivity is in large measure irrational and serves needs similar to those which motivate neurotic defense mechanisms in individuals. Despite the many benefits we have derived from our capacity to produce ever more and newer products, there are important ways in which our quest for abundance has become self-defeating.

      A mood of pessimism and a sense of imminent decline have become increasingly evident. Sober warnings that the era of affluence is drawing to an end resonate with the daily experience of millions. It is not really affluence, however, that is threatened, but growth; we have confused the two for reasons that go to the heart of our national psychology.

      Economic growth has been a foundation stone of our way of life. Whether viewing their current station in life as one of comfort and fulfillment or one of deprivation and discontent, Americans have viewed the future as rightfully providing them with more. Even those who doubted that the future would so provide had little doubt that it should. It seems only natural to us that we should all have more than our parents had. To be “standing still” seems to many in our society a sign not of stability but of stagnation and failure.

      This way of thinking has led to our current impasse. If even to stand still we must move ahead, then an ever larger supply of energy and of natural resources must be made available. For many years we managed to satisfy the prodigious appetite of our economic system, but the enterprise has begun to collapse under its own weight. We are finding it increasingly difficult and expensive to meet what have become our needs. Moreover, we have learned that there are severe side effects to our productivity. Health-threatening pollution of air, water, and food has grown along with the economy; “Love Canal,” “Three Mile Island,” and “PCBs” have become unwanted additions to our vocabulary. As a consequence, an “atmosphere of limits” has descended upon us, and fear of the future and a sense of austerity have become widespread.

      But our present problems stem not so much from physical and economic limits—real as those are—as from our miscalculations as to what really works to provide us with security and satisfaction. Our economic system and our relation with nature have gone haywire because we have lost track of what we really need. Increasing numbers of middle-class Americans are feeling pressed and deprived not because of their economic situation per se—we remain an extraordinarily affluent society—but because we have placed an impossible burden on the economic dimension of our lives. So long as we persist in defining well-being predominantly in economic terms and in relying on economic considerations to provide us with our primary frame of reference for personal and social policy decisions, we will remain unsatisfied. A central task of this book will be to show how our excessive concern with economic goals has disrupted the psychological foundations of well-being, which in a wealthy society like ours are often even more critical.

      It is common today to claim that we are already too preoccupied with psychological matters, that we are a culture of narcissism, a “me” generation. I will argue that we are not psychological enough, that the psychological impact of our decisions about how to commit our resources and energies and how to organize our lives has been insufficiently addressed. The critics of psychology have raised important issues. Many of their arguments are useful and compelling. But in examining these critiques, I will try to show how they have been based on a rather narrow and limited conception of psychology—narrow both in terms of the kinds of psychological theories that are considered and with regard to what the possible role of psychology in our culture might be.

      This is not to say that psychological considerations ought to become our exclusive concern. A narrow psychologism would hardly be an improvement over our present way of thinking about things. But it is important to recognize that paying greater attention to the psychological dimension can facilitate the attainment of other important values as well. A shift in emphasis from an economic to a psychological definition of wellbeing, for example, makes far more feasible the attainment of a harmonious ecological balance. To the degree that we measure our lives in terms of social ties, openness to experience, and personal growth instead of in terms of production and accumulation, we are likely to be able to avoid a collision course with our environment without experiencing a sense of deprivation.

      The shift in values and guiding assumptions I am suggesting does not imply reneging on our commitment to social justice or to the poor and disadvantaged. Initially, I will be addressing myself to considerations that bear most clearly on the experience of the middle class. I will try to show that much of the dissatisfaction currently being expressed by middle-class Americans stems not really from material deprivations but from deprivations more psychological in nature, and I will argue that most of us are considerably more affluent than in our present mood (and with our present assumptions) we are able to recognize.