Love in the Machine Age

First published in 1930, the object of Love in the Machine Age was to popularize a modern and scientific view of behavior, and thereby help people to live happy and successful lives. The author traces in popular language for the time, the break-up of the patriarchal values held by most of society, and points out from the standpoint of modern psychiatric knowledge the inevitable effects upon sexual mores, personality adjustments and the growth of children. Topics covered include marriage, parenting, adolescence, with special emphasis paid to the "mating problems" of youth. Taking its lead from psychological theories prevalent at the time, today it can be read in its historical context. This book is a re-issue originally published in 1930. The language used and views portrayed are a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

Floyd Dell (1887-1969) was one of the central figures of the Chicago literary renaissance and Greenwich Village bohemianism of the early twentieth century. He was a pivotal American writer whose advocacy of feminism, socialism, psychoanalysis, and progressive education shocked the American bourgeoisie. His novels, plays, essays, and bohemian life came to epitomize the Greenwich Village avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s. Managing editor of radical magazine The Masses, Dell was twice put on trial for publishing subversive literature. Dell has been called "one of the most flamboyant, versatile and influential American men of letters of the first third of the Twentieth Century."

1. What This Book is About 2. Biology vs. History 3. The Decline and Fall of the Patriarchal System 4. Patriarchal Customs Become Modern Neuroses 5. Patriarchal Customs Become Modern Neuroses (continued) 6. Patriarchal vs. Modern Child-Training 7. Some Ideological Overcompensations 8. Some More Ideological Overcompensations 9. Still More Ideological Overcompensations 10. A Fair Warning to All 11. Delay and Failure in Reaching the Heterosexual Goal 12. The Four Paths of Youth 13. Adolescence and Heterosexuality 14. The Mating Age 1 5. The Modern Mating Problem 16. Art, Anxiety and Manners 17. Do We Need a Philosophy of Life? Bibliography. Notes and References. Index