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The Rage for Utopia: Obsession and Civilization (A Susan Haynes book)
  
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The Rage for Utopia: Obsession and Civilization (A Susan Haynes book) (Paperback)

by Ronald Conway (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 280 pages
  • Publisher: Allen & Unwin (19 Feb 1993)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1863731822
  • ISBN-13: 978-1863731829
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 3,547,902 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
Can there be a parallel between psychic illness in individuals and the psychopathology of a whole society? "The Rage for Utopia" is a cross-disciplinary work that weaves psychology, history and sociology into a continuous fabric, and assails many a sacred cow in western life. Ronald Conway examines the obsessive social behaviour of western society in the light of its long-term psychological and ecological consequences. He traces much of the physical unrest and mental disturbance in affluent western communities to a vain quest for an earthly paradise, showing how a longing for the kingdom of God on earth was gradually transformed into the secular scientific and commercial strivings of our own time. These have produced dazzling technologies at the cost of life on a human, natural scale, while threatening the whole planet with desolation due to nationalistic pride, greed and waste. Selecting a wide range of examples of obsession and compulsion in western intellectual, political and institutional behaviour, Conway tries to show how the rage for earthly perfection can produce forms of social neurosis which masquerade under noble abstractions we call "freedom", "progress", "democracy" and "equal rights", all of which have ceased to be reasonable ideals and have turned into new forms of idolatry. To distract ourselves and to drown our dread of the future, we plunge into ever louder, more glittering forms of industry and entertainment. "The Rage for Utopia" explodes the vision of reality accepted by most western people and argues that our problems lie not in the world but in our false perceptions of it. Conway ends on a note of spiritual hope and optimism by suggesting ways out of the obsessively created maze of structures in which western societies have lost themselves. Ronald Conway has spent half a lifetime dealing with psychological suffering as a way of spotlighting aspects of western history and society in terms of people's most grotesque mistakes and deepest longings. He asserts that each individual contains the answers to the world's anxieties in microcosm if only they had the wit to see it.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A Psychoanalyst attacks strict cultural systems, 15 Oct 2002
By A Customer
Although he doesn't admit it until the end, Conway is a Gnostic who hates rigid hierarchical social systems such a communism, religious fundamentalism, and moral busybodies. He lists the psychological damage caused by these systems through the ages. Judaism comes in for some hard knocks but Islam is barely mentioned. If he were to update this book, I guess they would get quite a bruising. The book is vaguely like William James's classic study of "Forms of Religious Experience" except that James studied the upside of religion and Conway examines the downside.
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