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Book Review: Community Mental Health Programs in England: An American View

exemplified by La Mettrie, the author of the book L' homme machine. The idea of man as a machine had found a fertile soil in the twentieth century American technological society and blossomed in the form of American Behavioristic Psychology. It is exemplified by the classical Behaviorism of J. B. Watson with a program for its social applications, and by the Operant Conditioning Behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. Matson singles out for his attack Watson and Skinner because of their intention to take Behavioristic Psychology out of the confines of the pure science laboratory and to apply it to a solution of social problems. Thus, Behaviorism ceases to be a problem of scientific methodology but becomes a form of "psychotechnocracy" . This move implies certain assumptions about man and society which were made explicit in two books by Skinner: Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. The main assumption of Behaviorism is that man is a passive robot, reacting to stimuli and reinforcements, completely shaped and manipulated by the environment. After dealing with the Nurture-Nature issue as exemplified by recent controversy regarding the heritability of intelligence with its racist overtones and the controversy with respect to "genetic engineering", Matson presents the third idea of man: "man as man". He sees, both in the contemporary America and the contemporary Europe, a revival of Humanism opposing both the biological and environmental determinisms. The humanistic idea of man is that of serf-conscious, self-creating free agent "man as creator". After criticizing the structural functionalist social system theory of Talcott Parsons, which reduces man to an actor playing the social roles underlying various social systems, Matson opts for the neo-Marxist dialectical model of the relation of man to his society. Thus, Matson sees in social deviance and alienation a potential creative force for a change and betterment of man in a dialogue with his society, instead of seeing them as a manifestation of anomie resulting from a disintegration of society. In short, Matson rejects social determinism the idea that man is nothing but a product of his society and culture. Matson also rejects the idea of positivistic value free social science. He believes that the idea of man chosen implicitly by social scientists and psychologists may become a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and may shape the destiny of the future man and the future society. As far as psychology is concerned, Matson opts for Humanistic Psychology, the "third force" psychology as represented by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May and Gordon Allport in America, and by the Phenomenological and Existentialist psychology and philosophy in Europe. The book is very well written in a delightful and captivating style by an author who was a journalist before becoming an academic. The different ideas of man and associated ideological and conceptual issues have obvious applications to psychiatry and psychotherapy. The book ought to be read by anyone interested in basic philosophical, cultural and sociological assumptions underlying various scientific and social controversies.