Kinderduden [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION In his highly impressive booi, "The Unknown Man", written in the forties, Alexis Carel, a medical doctor and Nobel Laureate, analyses the fact that, while n>edical science and technology have developed to an incredible extent in the last century, and we know more and more about human cells, organs and elements of psychic function, we understand very little about the determinants of the behaviour of human individuals and human groups. Millions of people stumble and suffer in mental and social traps, many of which, if recognised in time, would be avoidable. The human being has become an experimental subject in a world-wide laboratory. While many modem developments, such as in health and communications, have generally improved living standards, others have created levels of change, uncertainty and loss of individual and local control that amount to widespread trauma. Animal protection leagues would have protested had such cruel experiments been performed on animals. The conditions in which we live have been turned upside down many times over by developments in science, technology and urbanisation, as well as by war and politics. During all this we have paid the least possible attention to whether the individual, the family or the human community is able to accommodate to the changing conditions. As an example, throughout human history it has been natural for parents and grandparents to pass down values, behaviour patterns and norms to the next generation. Young people acquired abilities and found colleagues through an organic network of relationships with friends and relatives. Husbands and wives carried out the tasks of the extended family according to traditional rules for the division of labour. In modem society this process has been drastically changed. Children who grow up in kindergartens, or for whom extended families are unknown, or who grow up in broken families rarely receive the continuity of patterns and values with which they can identify themselves. While there are undeniable benefits to many in the move away from more tightly-knit rule-bound traditional societies we have not sufficiently studied the damage such conditions do to the development of a mature personality and sociocultural identity. Who then is "the unknown man" who remains in the spreading shadow of our incredible technological development? What are the psychological effects