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Copyright
© 1958 Lithuanian
Students Association, Inc. June, 1958 Vol. 4, No. 2 Managing Editor P. V. Vygantas |
Book Review
AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM OF OUR AGE
Cirtautas, K. C., The Refugee.
Published by Meador, Boston, 1957. 166 pp. $3.00.
While reading the essay by Dr. Cirtautas, this reviewer was vividly
reminded of a minor but rather significant incident that occurred in
May 1945 in a little northern German town near Luebeck. On a sunny
afternoon three young American soldiers were given the order to
extradite 14 Lithuanians to Russian troops stationed a few miles east
of that location. The GIs were rather suprisea when these individuals
refused to board the truck. The people were put on the vehicle, but one
middle-aged, rather stocky individual kept .jumping off the truck thus
delaying the departure. After repeated unsuccessful attempts to keep
him on, one soldier became impatient and hit the man (who happened to
be a famous Lithuanian writer) rather severely. Though obviously hurt
and bleeding in his face, the man continued his efforts to stay off the
truck. This strange behavior puzzled the young soldiers, and, although
language difficulties presented considerable barriers in the
communication, the Americans tiied to determine the motives for such
behavior. When told that these people did not want to return to their
homes because of the Communist regime, the Americans could not quite
grasp the meaning cf the explanation; one soldier simply suggested that
if they did not like Stalin and his party, all they had to do was to go
home and during the next election vote for somebody else and thereby
change the political situation. However, even this democratic argument
did not persuade the refugees to go back, and, still puzzled, the GIs
reported the problem to the officer in charge. After considerable
discussion it was finally decided not to force these people to return.
Do we need a better example of the lack of real understanding of
refugees and their problems? It must be pointed out that such lack was
and, to a considerable extent, still is a rather common phenomenon. Any
attempt to explain and communicate these problems meaningfully is to be
commended. Dr. Cirtautas certainly deserves praise for his efforts to
describe the psychological aspects of the refugee, who, according to
the foreword by prof. P. A. Sorokin (Harvard University), is to be
considered as one of the most important problems of our age. Many a
reader will find valuable information in this publication. Those well
informed about the statistical, political and other aspects, will
derive abundant data of human interest and consequently have a better
understanding of relevant personality characteristics; those less
informed will definitely gain some insight into the basic refugee
problems; and many an interested reader will bo stimulated to further
thinking on this subject. For instance, the author points out very
clearly the various linguistic problems which a refugee faces and the
feelings associated with these difficulties (p. 50). Few, if any,
individuals, who did not share the fate of a refugee, are aware of such
problems, and readers will certainly become interested in as well as be
stimulated by many such aspects.
The author, who has defined his essay as dealing with homelessness as a
psychological, social and religious phenomenon, has subdivided his book
into a preface and five chapters. The first one is devoted to the cause
of homelessness, and herein the uprooted, the refugee and the expellee
are described. The world of strangers is discussed in the second part,
while the third chapter analyzes the world of morality and
characterizes the despondent, the indifferent and the determined. The
future is visualized in terms of the decadent, the cultured and the
blessed, and this description composes the fourth chapter, while the
last section of the book covers such topics as the process of
assimilation, homelessness as world destiny and other relevant aspects.
As can readily be seen, the author makes continued attempts to classify
refugees into types. His typological efforts are influenced by time and
hierarchies of value as determining and classifying factors of the
types described. A psychologically trained reader will find this
typological system rather unusual since none of the types is based on
the frame of reference of customarily accepted and widely known
psychological schools of thought. This observation, which may even be
considered as a criticism, is warranted since such an approach may
easily lead to rationalizations in classifying psychological aspects.
The delineation among types as well as their definitions do not
necessarily provide the reader with an exhaustive or even mutually
exclusive classification system, and thus the types may appear to be
somewhat arbitrary. On the other hand, however, the selected approach
to typology does not limit the author to empirically assessable aspects
of personality only. Considering the fact that Dr. Cir-tautas also
covers social as well as religious characteristics, his classification
system becomes more justified. It is interesting to note that the first
four chapters were originally written in German, and the fact that
thess creative efforts were initially intended to inform Europeans,
will make this approach even more understandable; Europeans find such
methodological attempts much more acceptable than their American
counterparts.
Essentially, the author has chosen the phenomenological approach in
dealing with the refugee problem, and limiting himself to phenotypical
descriptions, has not attempted to draw genotypical conclusions which
might have given this creative effort a more distinct dimension of
depth, especially with regard to underlying motivational forces. It
must, however, be emphasized that within his selected frame of
reference, the author has done a commendable job of describing and
analyzing the refugee.
If we assume that scientific efforts either lead to the discovery and
formulation of hypotheses or to the testing and verification of the
already formulated ones; we may readily assign the creative efforts of
Dr. Cirtautas to the first category. He suggests numerous isolated,
specific formulations, and his types may also be considered as rather
broad, general hypotheses. Indeed many a thesis of the hypothesis
testing nature (and it seems that the current trend in American
graduate schools favors this type of scientific endeavor in psychology
to an almost exclusive extent) could be written on the basis of the
observations, suggestions and formulations made by the author. We
would, for instance, certainly be interested in the answer to the
question whether educated people find it more difficult to adjust
themselves to life in a new country than people with relatively little
schooling. This list of interesting topics could easily be a rather
long one.
Although it is very difficult to determine whether the author is
psychologically sound with regard to his attempted formulations of
hypotheses, existing evidence seems to point out a correct analysis of
the subject matter. The reviewer's empirical study of the change of
avo-cational interests in refugees, for instance, verifies the
speculations of Dr. Cirtautas with regard to assimilation (p. 110), and
other studies most probably will also substantiate and support many a
statement or formulation made by the author.
American readers will certainly ba surprised to find no quantitative
findings in this book. The author does not make any attempts to
determine the relative frequency of any of the given types, nor is he
interested in any other numerical comparisons. Will the reader find
this to be refreshing or will he tend to be critical? — the answer, of
course, will depend on the individual. Some people will certainly miss
the commonly used psychological terms. Restlessness (p. 109) may, for
instance, be considered as, and therefore called, anxiety), but the
author could certainly not describe all the phenomena studied in
psychological terms used by a social scientist in this country.
The author uses a style that signifies incorporated value judgment. For
instance, his phrase "seeks the company of undesirable women" (p. 80)
certainly manifests an intrinsic evaluative cannotation, which is
rather infrequent among empirically oriented social scientists. The
writer's style reflects an ideology, and readers, who are aware of this
fact and can identify themselves with the basic assumptions of the
ideology, may find this style acceptable and even gratifying, yet
others, who do not accept these assumptions, may be confused or even
somewhat irritated. The reader should know, that the author himself is
a refugee, who has received his education in Europe, and this fact may
shed some light on the author's style. An excerpt of the essay on pp.
56-58 provides the reader with an opportunity to acquaint himself with
the thinking and his style. The author is most successful in his
analytical thoughts and formulations, but does not always convincingly
succeed in his descriptive efforts.
The contribution cf Dr. Cirtautas is a very valuable one. His essay
significantly enriches the available literature on refugees and their
problems, and herein lies the substantial value of this publication.