Blueprint for a Sane Society (Paperback)

Humankind appears to be no longer in charge of its destiny. People want peace but do not cease to make wars; they want freedom but submit to tyrants and politicians who promote the interests of their own class and impose them upon the public in the name of democracy. People want prosperity, but 80 per cent of the world's population lives in poverty. Our "schizophrenic" species is torn between the desire for love and friendship while overwhelmed by hatreds and aggression which afflict not only individuals but societies and cultures. Tribes, nations and religions have for a long time been engaged in killing each other, but now our powers of destruction have increased a thousandfold with the development of science and technology which have cosmic forces of nuclear energy and biochemically manufactured bacteria at their command, and are able to annihilate untold millions of their fellow humans and are well on the way to destroying the life-supporting system of this planet. After a lifetime of working as a psychoanalyst, exploring the unconscious motivations of his patients' neurotic and psychotic pathologies, Frankl sets out in this book to relate the unconscious processes of the mind to the pathologies of societies and cultures, and then to propose a blueprint for a sane society.