Capitalism and Perpetual Adolescence: Essays and Lectures of George S. Becker

About the Book

What is thinking but the courage to work alone developing concepts that are lasting because they grow out of a living relationship to a subject matter. Academic fashions come and go while the thought of the social anthropologist George Becker remains the contemporary of the future. Here assembled by his student and friend, the psychiatrist Jon Lewis, some of the essential papers unpublished in Becker’s lifetime. The range is great: from Female Delinquency to Jonestown. The depth is compelling. The critique of other thinkers in the field are incisive. And a final virtue: the style is clear, without the need for scholarly obfuscations. Walter A Davis, Professor of English Emeritus, Ohio State University. Author of “Death’s Dream Kingdom”, “Deracination” and “Inwardness and Existence”.

About the Author

Jonathan Lewis has practiced psychiatry in Chicago for 35 years. He worked with George Becker in their clinic for neglected and abused children and adolescents. Subsequently, he spent 25 years in private practice focusing on the treatment of traumatized refugees and asylum seekers from countries that had experienced civil strife . His account of this work is titled 'Towards a Unified Theory of Trauma and its Consequences' published online in The International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 9 (4): 298-317; 18 January 2012