The Path Not Taken: Reflections on Power and Fear

Wheelis, Allen

ISBN 10: 0393028313 / ISBN 13: 9780393028317

Published by W. W. Norton & Co, 1990

About this Item

123 pages. First edition (first printing). A very good copy in a very good dust jacket. Inscribed by the author to the previous owner. Seller Inventory # 332504

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Path Not Taken: Reflections on Power and...

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co

Publication Date: 1990

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

Argues that the pursuit of power is the main force shaping human relations, suggests that isolation is the price for escape from this condition, and reassesses human nature from the perspectives of history and biology

From Publishers Weekly:

Sounding like a cross between Machiavelli and Alfred Adler, San Francisco psychoanalyst Wheeler sees the will to power as all-pervasive. Anything altruistic--love, charity, self-sacrifice--is just another mask of power, he contends. Fear and morality are the only barriers to strivings for power, in his theory, and nations, the most power-mongering of entities, "speak the language of morality without the intention of being limited by it." The lone individual who refuses to accept conformist norms--the artist, the rebel--lives in existential dread and isolation. Wheelis, whose books include The Scheme of Things and the novel The Doctor of Desire, uncomfortably mixes into this short meditation autobiographical fragments reflecting his own development as a "weakling" (a thinker, an introspective seeker). Still, his relentless vision of power as the motive and measure of all things is disturbing.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.