Psychological Impacts of Capitalism

[comet_rider]

Hey all.

Our sociology class this year has an open ended research project and I chose to do mine on the psychological impacts of capitalism. Needless to say, I myself have plenty to say about this and my primary research (in the form of interviews) is coming along just fine. The problem is putting together a good literature review for secondary research, as there aren't many writings about the positive impacts of capitalism (for certain reasons i'm sure ;) ). I've found plenty on how capitalism contribute to various psychological disorders, change our values of existence from "being" to "having", decay our morals, eliminate proccesses such as love, etc. etc. etc.... but to have a complete review (and also to attack capitalism by debating each point :P) i need to find some positive things.

Anyone ever came across such material?

Just to make it clearer, I divided up the research into three sub-cats, sort of based on Freud's 3 parts:

(the ego) - The influence capitalism has on our concepts and values of existence

(the id) - The influence capitalism has on our needs - both physical ones (ex. sex, food, etc... related to drug prolems, violence, etc.) and non-physical ones (ex. freedom, equality, "love", etc.)

(the superego) - The influence capitalism has on our moral believes, our faith/religious values, our ranga of parental figures and idols and their roles on individual and social developments

Thanks :D

[Janus]

The era of capitalism has basically ushered in the era of individualism. The collective and community based system of the earlier ages has dissappeared as people are left to fend for themselves. This is probably the largest impact.


(the superego)
Well, basically, the ruling ideas of an epoch are the ideas of the ruling class.

You could start out with Wikipedia but I'm not exactly sure where to go from there.

[BobKKKindle$]

One Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse

[comet_rider]

thx, i've been trying to find opposition to erich fromm for some time.. even though i like fromm :P

[Nachie]

Paulo Freire, though that's not strictly psychological so you may want to focus your research there.

Also some guy named Dr. Wolfgang Huber in the 60's taught that mental disorders stemmed from capitalism (LINK (http://www.baader-meinhof.com/terminology/terms/spk.html)) and as a result his patients formed the "Socialist Patients Collective" and blew up the West German embassy in Sweden in the name of the Red Army Faction.

And definitely check out Dr. Wilhelm Reich, who I recommend even more than the above two. He was a student of Freud for some time.

[comet_rider]

thx.. a whole damn lot of reading just from those.... lol

but, like i said, i need some ~positive~ things about capitalism, however weak the arguments may be, cuz i'm suppose to compare all perspectives (and it gives me a chance to attack the arguments in my report lol)

u guys ever came across any such things?

[Nachie]

Hahahaha that's a little more difficult!

I think the clever way to approach it would be to show how capitalism creates a huge pharaceuticals market where "tight competition leads to incredible scientific advances in how we can treat psychological disorders" or some such hogwash. Then you can contrast this to the way capitalism creates the market for antidepressants by manufacturing a repressive, spectacular, and alienating society. I know in the UK they just ruled that Prozac can be prescribed to kids as young as ten.

By the way, I like your icon!

[comet_rider]

thx all. i'm done the project.... well kinda :P i dont care about the mark but if i dont do this i will literally fail :P

thx i made the icon. i started a local collective and thats the symbol i settled on. the green guy is a H, stands for humanism. and the rest is obvious :P the H guy also represents standing up for mankind by uniting communism and anarchism

[comet_rider]

thx all. i'm done the project.... well kinda :P i dont care about the mark but if i dont do this i will literally fail :P

thx i made the icon. i started a local collective and thats the symbol i settled on. the green guy is a H, stands for humanism. and the rest is obvious :P the H guy also represents standing up for mankind by uniting communism and anarchism

[comet_rider]

thx all. i'm done the project.... well kinda :P i dont care about the mark but if i dont do this i will literally fail :P

thx i made the icon. i started a local collective and thats the symbol i settled on. the green guy is a H, stands for humanism. and the rest is obvious :P the H guy also represents standing up for mankind by uniting communism and anarchism