Everywhere I go I meet people who suffer from a sense of loneliness, of the insufficiency of their relationships, of the fragmentation of their lives and sense of selfhood, and of doubts concerning the meaning and worth of their actions. I have found this is true even of some persons who appear to be productive in their work, happy in their family life, and rooted in a circle of friends. This sense of dis-ease, however, is experienced even more sharply by large numbers of young people who express it in the form of a thoroughgoing disengagement from society as we know it today, or in a radical activism directed at bringing about social change. In my own life, I find that my commitment to my vocation is often marred by the recognition that psychology today prizes method over meaning, treats psychological processes without clarifying their relationship to the life of man, and produces knowledge that threatens to become a tool in the control of men instead of enhancing man�s dignity and freedom. In relations with colleagues � and too often with friends � I sense (often after, rather than during our meetings) how much we have left unspoken and I strive, with difficulty, to overcome the sterility of our interaction.
