Alienation and Family Crisis.

References to alienation abound in both technical literature of the behavioral sciences and journalistic attempts at social diagnosis. Although the concept of alienation may, in fact, be applicable to a range of settings, widespread and impressionistic usage has tended to overemphasize the dramatic aspect of the term while obscuring its basic connotations. If alienation is actually to become a useful analytic tool, therefore, its definitions must be clarified and its theoretical relevance for different settings must be systematically explored. We begin this paper by pointing out the uniqueness of alienation as a psychosocial concept, and thus distinguishing it from alienation as used in a strictly clinical sense. Following this, we allude briefly to two of the major articles in the social sciences which have sought to define psychosocial alienation and to demonstrate its utility. Finally, we attempt to clarify the alienation concept further by setting it in the theoretical framework of au ongoing social system, namely, the nuclear family in the process of response to family crisis. In this context, alienation is designated as one possible mode of crisis response, and the implications of this pattern are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]