THE GEORGIA REVIEW Summer 1984 Existentialism Here and Now By Alfie Kohn TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, existentialism was a hot piece of intellectual property. A wide reading public was buying up such new books as William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s From Death Camp to Existentialism (later republished under the title Man’s Search for Meaning). American psychologists were being introduced … Read More
B. F. Skinner: Reinforced by Life
BOSTON MAGAZINE July 1984 B. F. Skinner: Reinforced by Life By Alfie Kohn If a dozen people show up for one of these “sandwich seminars” sponsored by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, it’s a good day. Every Thursday at noon, a different academic comes to talk about his or her latest research, and a few students drop in with lunch in … Read More
Lottery Lies
BOSTON PHOENIX April 10, 1984 Lottery Lies By Alfie Kohn Sure, I support Freedom of the Press, but I’ll tell you what’s at the top of my list when I get to censor newspapers: photographs of grinning lottery winners. Also stories about what they plan to do with their millions and puff pieces about the lottery with headlines like “The … Read More
Rich Man, Poor Man
BOSTON PHOENIX January 17, 1984 Rich Man, Poor Man A Review of Paul Wachtel’s The Poverty of Affluence By Alfie Kohn Psychoanalyst and social critic Erich Fromm had a talent for making other thinkers angry. In part it may have been a function of his personality (B.F. Skinner in his autobiography described Fromm as an irritating know-it-all), but it is … Read More
Growth Potential
BOSTON PHOENIX September 20, 1983 Growth Potential A Review of Robert Kegan’s The Evolving Self By Alfie Kohn Most people would be surprised, and more than a little amused, to learn how faddish intellectual currents are in the academy. When I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago, Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development was out and Clifford … Read More
Existential Quizzes
BOSTON PHOENIX July 19, 1983 Existential Quizzes A Review of Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos By Alfie Kohn Were it not for his grounding in American culture — specifically, his evident Southern roots — one might think Walker Percy was French. His equal (and superb) facility at writing philosophical essays, social criticism, and fiction; his novels’ status as genuine … Read More
How to Make the Least of Your College Years
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL February 1981 How to Make the Least of Your College Years By Alfie Kohn In the face of mounting evidence that college is an inherently broadening experience, it seems almost impossible to complete those four years without growing a little. Twenty-two-year-olds have been known to emerge from their chosen institution of higher learning dogged by greater perspective and … Read More
Rodents and the Barometry of Tension
Brown Daily Herald April 22, 1976 Rodents and the Barometry of Tension By Alfie Kohn Since the innovative experimentation on canines to determine pain thresholds (“Torturing Puppies,” Sadiski, 1961), little work has been done to correlate external stress with quantifiable phenomena in a laboratory context. In order to better understand how people think, feel, and interact, it seems only logical … Read More