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The Challenge of Political Self-Responsibility in the Nuclear Age

The Cambridge Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, 1493 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.

The attribution to another country of responsibility for the failures and perils of one's own society is a tradition, if not an accepted norm, in the conduct of international relations. There is, as yet, nothing analogous in the international political realm to the assumption of personal responsibility that is expected in working therapeutically with individuals, families, and other groups. Yet the destructive properties of thermonuclear weapons, and other world-uniting nuclear-age technologies, have made obsolete and dangerous habitually ignoring the contributions of one's own nation to international political tensions. The necessity of creating a transnational paradigm that includes the assumption of political self-responsibility by a nation and its leaders is argued here. The obstacles that stand in the way of political responsibility are examined, and possible steps for bringing this new paradigm into being are considered. One important project, the American-Soviet Film Initiative (ASFI), in which an industry has taken major steps toward achieving global political responsibility, is described in detail.

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 28, No. 3, 75-87 (1988)
DOI: 10.1177/0022167888283005


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