An adept introduction to an innovative thinker whose dramatic flair and sometimes-messianic personality tended to overshadow...
The son of the psychiatrist who founded psychodrama examines the life of his “famous, eccentric, and controversial” father and traces the evolution and impact of his ideas.
For clarity, Moreno (Philosophy and Medical Ethics/Univ. of Pennsylvania; The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, 2011, etc.) refers to his subject as J.L. throughout the book. Born in Bucharest in 1889, J.L. rejected Freudian theory while still a medical student. Early in his career, he developed a form of psychotherapy he called psychodrama, in which the stage becomes a therapeutic platform. From the 1940s to the 1970s, public psychodrama sessions were a feature of Manhattan’s Moreno Institute. Recognized as one of the leading social scientists in the United States, J.L. believed that spontaneity and creativity are driving forces in human nature and that love and mutual sharing are powerful principles. In J.L.’s view, improvisation and spontaneity come together in psychodrama, providing a way for members to help each other. Moreno shows the influence of his father’s ideas in the “happenings” of the 1960s and the group-dynamic experiments of the human potential movement. That J.L.’s ideas percolated through popular culture, though in watered-down form, is aptly demonstrated in the author’s discussion of the hit movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), in which the characters experience an Esalen-like encounter, and of Clint Eastwood’s 2012 empty-chair role-playing performance at the Republican convention, a technique rooted in improvisational theater that J.L. used in Vienna a century earlier. J.L.’s insights into group relationships—he created the science of sociometry—predates by decades the success of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The attention-loving J.L. understood the human impulse for self-expression and the desire to belong to a group.
An adept introduction to an innovative thinker whose dramatic flair and sometimes-messianic personality tended to overshadow his accomplishments.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-934137-84-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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