The Lonely Crowd

The hypothesis of the Lonely Crowd is that there has been a change in the character of the American people that where one men whose character was "inner-directed"dominated our society, the tendency is now toward the dominance of the "other-directs" character. The inner-directed persons are those who internalize adult authority -the pioneers, the individualists, the other-directed persons are those whose character is formed chiefly by the example of their peers and contemporaries. The substance o the book is concerned with the confluence and consequences of these two types in contemporary American society.