ABSTRACT
The crisis of values in American society became apparent when I started work at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health in Oakland. This organization had been created by psychotherapists, social workers, union activists, and community activists to explore the psychodynamics of American society and why people were moving to the political right. Many of us were from progressive communities and had a set of assumptions about who the American working class was and why people were moving to the right. We believed that people were moving to the right primarily because they were racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic but our assumptions were incorrect. Instead, we discovered that this was occurring because people were in tremendous pain.
