Dennis Wrong
MYTHS OF
ALIENATION
The concept of alienation is less salient in contemporary
discourse than it was some years ago, largely as a result of its exces–
sive use in the 1950s and 1960s.
In
part, it has acquired a taken-for–
granted character as shorthand for the mood of distemper, cynicism,
and distrust believed to prevail in contemporary life and society; in
part, synonyms or near-synonyms, such as "legitimation crisis," have
taken on much of the rhetorical and ideological work performed in
the past by "alienation." The term became too vague and shapeless ,
coming to serve as a sort of verbal talisman connoting just about any
state of psychological discomfort or malaise. Yet its very popularity
depended on its suggestion of something more than mere personal
discontent, which is, after all, a pretty commonplace condition .
"Alienation" was meant to convey either a sense of metaphysical
melancholy about the human condition or a sociopolitical diagnosis
of and protest against the failures and limitations of the social order.
The latter emphasis was paramount in the 1960s when the term
was fashionable among social scientists, political intellectuals, and
radical youth. To assert one's alienation became a badge of honor, a
credential attesting to superior moral sensitivity- in short, some–
thing to boast of rather than to complain about. This has never been
true of such strictly subjective or psychological states as "unhappi–
ness," not even as expressed in the more sophisticated synonyms for
them favored by the educated like "frustration," "depression," "anx–
iety," or "neurosis. " When alienation was imputed to or reportedly
observed among ordinary citizens, supposedly exemplifying their at–
titude to politics or capitalism or American life in general, the impli–
cation was usually intended that these collective entities rather than
the alienated individuals themselves were responsible for their con–
dition. Thus even in its most cliched uses the term was never quite
reduced to individual psychology but retained a latent sociological
and even political meaning.
I have no wish to survey once more the uses and abuses of the
concept, nor to explore its origins in Christian theology, nor its
venerable practical meanings , free of wider philosophical or socio–
logical significance, in jurisprudence and early psychiatry. Nor do I
