Selected Written Works
Writings on the Psychodynamics of Political Correctness and Related Phenomena
These are endorsements of my new book Society against Itself: Political Correctness and Organizational Self-Destruction, Karnac (2010)
Society
Against Itself is an extraordinary and timely book. It is
in the great tradition of psychodynamically-based
culture criticism from Sigmund Freud to Weston La Barre
and M.D. Faber. With passion, thoughtful analysis, and rich case studies,
Professor Schwartz refutes the widely-held ideology of political correctness
(PC). At the same time, he explores its appeal. He shows that, far from
enriching democracy, PC sabotages it. It fosters lockstep thinking and the
inability to learn from experience. At the unconscious level, PC marks the
overthrow of Oedipality by preoedipality:
the triumph of the mother renders the father impotent and irrelevant. This book
deserves the widest possible audience, and Professor Schwartz has done the
utmost to write it in an accessible language. One need not be a psychoanalyst
or psychoanalytically-oriented organizational researcher to be enriched by it.
The future of democratic governance and education depends on books like this to
nourish it. Society Against Itself is certain
to provoke controversy – a conversation that our society sorely needs to have.
-
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Family and Preventive
Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma USA.
Howard Schwartz's latest book will delight some, infuriate others and should
scare the living daylights out of any thinking person. For if his analysis is
correct, Western civilization is on a path of self-destruction. This will come
not out of external factors such as terrorism or environmental degradation,
but, as Freud said a propos of all death, for reasons internal to itself. Having lost faith in objectivity and external
reality, we have lapsed into a collective hysteria of wishful thinking and
fantasy. Society Against Itself speaks with the
voice of a prophet. It demands to be heard. But can we still bring ourselves to
listen to such voices?
- Yiannis Gabriel, Ph.D., Professor of Organizational Theory,
University of Bath, author of Storytelling in Organizations
Building upon careful case studies of self-destructive behavior in several
familiar organizations in the U.S. - including Harvard University, the Ford
Motor Company, the United Church of Christ, Antioch College, the New York
Times, and the Cincinnati Police Department - Howard Schwartz shows how the
anti-oedipal moral tyranny of political correctness turns organizations against
themselves by overvaluing the female and motherly concern for equal love and
undervaluing the male and fatherly concern for achievement and rational order.
The cumulative effect of Schwartz’s incisive analyses of these cases alarms and
sickens as the reader watches the slow-motion collapse of these organizations,
with erosion of the public confidence and good will on which they depend.
Schwartz’s argument is powerful, important, and original. His prose is lucid,
spirited, and engaging. I strongly recommend this brilliant and lavishly
sensible book to all who are interested to know what is really happening to
organizations in America today.
-
Lloyd Sandelands, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and
Professor of Management and Organization, University of Michigan
Howard Schwartz takes us far beyond the commonplace explanations of our
economic and organizational crises in this pioneering work, into a deep
understanding of the psychological dynamics that underlie our difficulties. In
doing so he brings us into contact with profoundly important aspects of our
contemporary cultural situation and illuminates many essential contradictions
that must be confronted if we are to remain vital in the 21st century. Schwartz
has the courage to question some of our most cherished, taken-for-granted,
assumptions. In doing so he offers us an opportunity to grapple with essential
issues in a fresh and authentic way.
-
James Krantz Ph.D., Former President, International
Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations; Principal, Worklab Consulting
These are published papers, versions of which appear in Society against Itself:
Political Correctness and Organizational Nihilism
Organization
and Meaning: A Multilevel Psychoanalytic Treatment of the Jayson Blair Scandal
at The New York Times (with
Larry Hirschhorn)
Organization
in the Age of Hysteria
These are chapters in my book Revolt of the
Primitive: An Inquiry into the Roots of Political
Correctness, Transaction
Publishers,
(2003) with a new preface.
Scenes from a Sexual Holy War (pdf)
Psychodynamics
of Political Correctness (pdf)
Preface
to paperback edition
These links are reviews of Revolt
of the Primitive by Louis
Marinoff and James
Glass.
Published Short Papers and Reviews
Deconstructing
My Car at the Detroit Airport
The
Succession of Orthodoxies about Sexual Difference:A
Review of Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality, by Kingsley R.
Browne
The
Remembrance of Things Past in Organization Theory A
Review of Memory as a Moral Decision, by Steven P. Feldman
Review of
Blinded by the Right, by David Brock
Working Papers