Post-Modern Man: Psychocultural Responses to Social Trends

Abstract

The most important social trends of the contemporary period are interpreted as giving rise to a polarization between two types of culture and personality: the “modernistic” and the “underground.” Evidence for the two types is drawn from cultural products (mainly literature and the visual arts), psychiatric observations, and accounts of emerging modes of behavior among the youth. A psychological mechanism for this dualistic impact of social trends on culture and personality is hypothetically identified. “Post-modern” man is conceptualized by his recognition of the tension between “modernistic” and “underground” tendencies in his own mind. Theories of psychological modernization are criticized in the light of the foregoing.