This paper needs have 3 fully developed paragraphs. Will upload more Essay

This paper needs have 3 fully developed paragraphs. Will upload more details - Essay Example elf-help book’, Walden, where the author urges the readers to assert their individuality, even if it meant turning down their family’s hopes or expectations of them. He then proceeds to take examples from America’s economic philosophy as well as his personal experiences as a psychiatrist to point out how the goal of self-sufficiency and individual enterprise appears to be very deeply entrenched in the American psyche. He points out how a new piece of legislation (passed around the time of publication of the essay in 1997) in Louisiana that allowed for something called a ‘covenant marriage’ wherein getting divorce would be a more difficult proposition than usual, was not really reflective of traditional American values but the opposite. The fact that the whole school of psychotherapy, as prominently practiced and advanced by personalities like Erik Erikson, Murray Bowen or Carl Rogers, emphasizes ‘enhanced autonomy’, is taken by Kramer to indicate how American society at large valued individual autonomy over what he terms ‘mutuality.’ Kramer’s concludes: ‘Though we profess abhorrence of d ivorce, I suspect that the divorce rate reflects our national values with great exactness.’ To counter this increased dependence on autonomous existence Kramer suggests resetting ‘mutuality’ as a goal worth aspiring for. He cites another school of psychiatry as exemplified by the work of Jean Baker Miller which suggests that finding one’s self does not necessarily have to be an exaggeratedly lonely process. Finding oneself through relating to others was just as satisfying and genuine a process of self-development. Kramer also argues that women have traditionally been considered the more tactful ones and therefore the onus of being the one to compromise in a situation of conflict often falls on them, rather unfairly. This too needs to be changed and expanded to each gender so that the relationship is one of true equality. Kramer makes a strong