Jerome Braun,Democratic Culture and Moral Character: A Study of Culture and Personality

Reviewed by: Juris G. Draguns, Pennsylvania State University, USA

The author has set himself the ambitious task of bridging the gap between the major political systems and the prevailing moral character within them, understood as the interplay between values and conduct. Braun's focus here is on democracy in the United States, which he examines from a historical and contemporary perspective. He brings formidable multidisciplinary scholarship to his analysis, which ranges freely over social philosophy, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and political psychology. His argument is subtle, erudite, and complex, and he deals in a novel and fascinating way with a great many topics, including the West's failure to effectively promote democratic governance in contemporary Islamic societies and the parallels between nationalism and juvenile delinquency. Of major interest to readers of Transcultural Psychiatry are Braun's formulations on the effects of various political systems on the social and individual pathological response patterns, and this review will concentrate on these contributions.

Braun proceeds from the contrast between two models of societies: Gemeinschaft, based on the extension of personal face-to-face relationships to the community or small-scale traditional society, and Gesellschaft, characteristic of modern, large-scale cultures in which relationships tend to be impersonal and contractual and are based on rules and regulations. Over history, humanity has moved from the almost pure Gemeinschaften of tribal, prestate societies to the extreme Gesellschaft of contemporary large nation-states. Yet, history does not evolve in a steady linear progression. In fact, Braun traces cultural processes of progress as well as decay. The development of authoritarian and totalitarian political systems in the 20th century can be understood as an, ultimately illusory and futile, quest for the restoration of the lost Gemeinschaft-type features in modern social settings.

Proceeding from a schema of social evolution developed by Braun in the tradition of Max Weber, he distinguishes four major types of societies and spells out their characteristic personal and psychopathological implications. In the traditional prefeudal, often tribal societies, hysteric and dissociative manifestations prevail; these problems are intense, dramatic, and conspicuous, but their prognosis is benign, and they tend to be reversible. The absolute authority of the leader, in traditional, feudal, monarchic states, fosters ever greater distance between leaders and followers and ushers in the era of bureaucratization, the replacement of personal loyalties with increasingly anonymous application of abstract laws. Gradually, especially as the balance between the leader and the led shifts toward the latter, anxiety based on insecurity and intrapsychic conflict assumes prominence in the form of the traditional neuroses and the preoccupation with the individual, private psyche that was the hallmark of the Freudian psychoanalytic era. The authoritarian regimes of the recent past can be regarded as throwbacks to an earlier time period. They replaced the impersonality of the bureaucracy with the charisma of the leader, which brought with it the emergence of paranoia not only as a prominent syndrome, but as a widespread social attitude. Emphasis on loyalty toward the in-group and its personification by the idealized leader went hand-in-hand with the projection of negative impulses and rejecting and aggressive attitudes against devalued and demonized out-groups.

Braun focuses his attention on the present-day democratic American society which, as he endeavors to demonstrate on the basis of copious social research and systematic historical analysis, has evolved into a culture of narcissism. Through the division of power and the resultant growth of bureaucratization, leadership has been fragmented and has become still more anonymous and impersonal, social bonds have weakened, and individualism has come to reign supreme. All of these trends have provided fertile soil for the spread of social isolation and alienation and have promoted the growth of self-centered attitudes focused on pleasure-seeking, escapism, and consumerism. The decline of intimacy has led to an increase in superficial and transient liaisons, but the quest for intense love and passion has not stopped; it continues to seek outlets. Vicariously, it has been channeled into celebrity worship, enabling man and women to experience pseudointimacy with glamorous strangers. Among the major clinical expressions of psychopathology of narcissism, Braun singles out the borderline personality disorder which duplicates the fragmentation and estrangement experienced by many modern narcissists in their actual relationships. Personally unfulfilled and empty lives increase the incidence of depression as well as that of mood swings associated with the bipolar disorder.

All of the above statements should be regarded as plausible hypotheses, carefully derived by Braun from copious theoretical writings in a variety of disciplines. For the most part, they have not yet been empirically tested. They deserve to be systematically scrutinized by means of comparative epidemiological research, thorough clinical studies, and appropriately designed cross-cultural investigations. The open question is, to what extent individual symptoms and personality manifestations are influenced by the macrosocial factors of their time. So far, the several mental health fields have largely missed the opportunity to compare personality and psychological disturbance as they are manifested under specific political systems or after political change. To investigate such transformations systematically and empirically, from a variety of perspectives and by a multiplicity of methods, remains a high-priority task, though it is challenging and demanding. Social trends of the kind that Braun describes do not arise suddenly nor do they vanish overnight, and their reflections in moral character and its psychopathological distortions also evolve and decay gradually. Difficult though this task is, this book will serve as both a stimulus and a guide for empirically studying the impact of societal changes upon character and personality.

Braun has taken a major step by integrating a wealth of material from several disciplines. There are not many examples of such multidisciplinary effort, and the readers of this book are likely to gain much from Braun's daring and erudition. Personally, I found reading Braun's book a difficult, but rewarding task. Quite often, seminal insights are found in crossing the boundaries of several disciplines, and this book is a case in point. Unless scholars transcend their disciplinary fences, as Braun has done, readers are likely to miss valuable insights based on convergence of disparate information. As a reader, I only wish that Braun had provided a greater number of illustrative examples, perhaps in the form of biographical and clinical case studies and situational vignettes that would have enriched his highly abstract narrative. As a reviewer, I also would have liked to see a greater number of pertinent empirical studies incorporated in the text, especially on transcultural psychiatry and cross-cultural psychology. To cite but one example, individualism is one of the key concepts around which the book is organized. The results of the worldwide research on individualism–collectivism by Hofstede and Hofstede (2005) and its ramifications in personal experience and organizational functioning are not cited in this volume, and the systematic program of intracultural and cross-cultural investigations on the same subject by Triandis (1995) is mentioned but once in passing. Theoretically and empirically, these contributions are consonant with Braun's position, and they bolster his conclusions. His book has narrowed the gap between complex sociopolitical developments and their reverberations in individual lives. It remains for researchers in several disciplines to explore the leads in this volume.