Out of Weakness

by Andrew Schmookler

“A wide-ranging and deeply thoughtful meditation on the psychological sources of the danger to humanity created by the advent of weapons of mass destruction. It draws on a vast range of sources... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553053299
• ISBN13: 9780553053296
• Release Date: August 1988
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Length: 370 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Deep, balanced, integrative

I'm amazed to be the first one reviewing this exceptional work. It has considerably clarified my views on militarism-pacifism and power relations between individual and group. Not only the author's ability to synthesise knolwedge of diverse fields (politics & national security, culture & history, psychology, religion...) but his lucid thinking and fluent use of language really bring matters home. Sometimes I asked myself whether "Out of Weakness..." is a professional academic account of extremely complex and controversial issues or a poetic parable much to the like of Indian chieftains' famous orations. Obviously it is both - something that one does not come across very often - as it reflects the synchronization of head and heart (thinking and feeling) in it's best. The latter in a sense being the subject matter of the whole book - how anxiety and rage is produced and regulated in (inter)societal context, how it is supressed and what are the compensatory mechanisms of this supression (narcissism and paranoia); and how the latter bring about and breed on war. And last but not least, how this self-perpetuating situation might be overcome. If this topic is of serious interest, you can't be disappointed in a more recent work by James DeMeo, "Saharasia".