PARTISAN REVIEW
389
breakdown of "generational equilibrium" (an equilibrium which,
until recently, has been characteristic of American society) is "a sign
of a sickness, a malady in society." Sons get along well with their
fathers under certain social conditions; under others, they don't.
But if this is the case (which it obviously is), severe generational con–
flicts are not the
cause
of severe generational conflicts (this tautology
is the heart of Feuer's "argument" ), but are rather caused
by
some–
thing else. Why aren't sons always in violent revolt against their
fathers? The dissatisfaction of the young may manifest itself as genera–
tional conflict, but the conflict is a sign and not a reason.
The "unconscious" in Feuer is nothing more than the dirty
word which expresses his own horror of what the young are now
doing.
It
redirects our attention from the social conditions in which
generational conflicts appear to Feuer's own psychological imagina–
tion - an imagination posing as the invisible truth behind the young's
behavior. And there is something frantic about these projections.
Feuer seldom allows his reductive conclusions to be affected by the
evidence he himself offers. A quotation in which Alvah Bessie, speak–
ing of the reasons why he fought in the Spanish Civil War, confesses
that
his
passion for social justice was "a shade weaker" than
his
desire "to achieve self-integration" and to further
his
"development
as a man,"
is
presented by Feuer as a document of self-punishment,
of self-annihilation. Why? Because for the American volunteers in
Spain, Feuer writes, "by a curious process of projection and
mis–
perception, 'our eternal enemy-oppression' was somehow identified
with the source of their middle-class training." But what if the iden–
tification is a valid one? Feuer doesn't even ask the question, be–
cause (to use his own tools of analysis) he cannot conceive of a
rebellion against the father which is not a suicide.
This, I would guess,
is
the profound psychological reason which
makes Feuer so indifferent to what's going on in the father's house.
All he has to say about Vietnam is: "The fathers favor a policy of
war in Vietnam; therefore, the rebellious sons are for peace." The
horror of Berkeley is that it "was the intellectual precursor for Watts,"
and the lawless, violent, obscene mobs at Columbia "gave the sanc–
tion of similar action to the uneducated and the poor." Is there no
need at all to argue whether or not the poor have the
right
to take
that action? For Feuer, obviously not, for the father (middle-class
America) must apparently be allowed to do anything if the son
is
to
