Passage Through Crisis by Fred Davis

Author:Fred Davis [Davis, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780887388538
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 1990-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

1 Franklin D. Roosevelt's life is the most prominent example.

2 Particularly as regards the goal-directed efforts of children, it may be that our culture systematically exaggerates the difficulty of circumstances, so that the individual soon acquires—rather inexpensively—a “sense of accomplishment in the face of adversity.” Perhaps this kind of emotional pump-priming is necessary in contemporary America if the plentiful rewards of our society are to continue to be regarded as rewards. It may be the culture's way of maintaining a sense of ideological continuity with earlier eras of Protestant asceticism and scarcity, when the fewer material rewards available were much harder to come by. What at first, therefore, seems like a significant vestige of “inner-direction” in the generalized American character may on closer examination reveal itself to be little more than a charade. This may in part account for the widespread popularity of such radio and television programs as “This Is Your Life” and “Queen for a Day,” in which essentially petty and prosaic tales of woe, perseverance, and triumph are accorded warm plaudits by studio audiences and handsome gifts by sponsors. It is difficult to imagine citizens of earlier or less affluent contemporary societies manifesting the same enthusiasm for such innocuous and inflated “life histories.” See D. Riesman, The Lonely Crowd, A Study of the Changing American Character, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.

3Similar rationalizations have been noted by students of the family during the depression. See E. W. Bakke, Citizens Without Work, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940; and R. S. Cavan and K. H. Ranck, The Family and the Depression, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938.

4See, in this connection, the illuminating discussion by Anselm Strauss of “Danger and Dispossession” in his Mirrors and Masks, Glencoe, I11.: Free Press, 1959, pp. 36-39.

5 I am greatly indebted to Renee Fox for formulating and clarifying this issue for me. Also see N. Arnold, “The Adjustment of Adolescents to Poliomyelitis,” Journal of Pediatrics, VL (September, 1954), 356-60.

6 American Orthopaedic Association, “Infantile Paralysis, or Acute Poliomyelitis: A Brief Primer of the Disease and its Treatment,” Journal of the American Medical Association, CXXI, (August 24, 1946), 1419.

7 Although there are strong and conflicting opinions on this question, in our extensive review of the literature on polio rehabilitation, my colleagues and I failed to come across conclusive evidence on the matter. Quite apart, however, from whatever may be the intrinsic truth of its claims, there are important historical and sociological reasons for the adoption by the profession of physiotherapy of a distinctive point of view on this and related issues. To varying degrees, this derives from the marginal and poorly defined role of physiotherapy in many treatment centers; the changing pattern of recruitment to the profession (in recent years, an increasing proportion of men), and the gradual acceptance by the medical community of certain of Sister Kenny’s views on the treatment of paralytic poliomyelitis. The last, in particular, appears to have significantly enhanced the role of the physiotherapist in polio rehabilitation. For an extended discussion of these matters see F.

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