"I like to watch daytime television serials," Dan Wakefield wrote in the 1976 book, 'All Her Children'. "This even though I am not necessarily a housewife, a maid, or an account executive for a leading detergent. I am, irrespective of age, sex, or profession, a devoted fan of one or more of the Monday-through-Friday soap operas. As we all know, the origins of socially aberrant behavior can be found in childhood.
"I grew up in the Midwest in the 1930s and 1940s and hurried home from grade school to listen to radio soap operas. Sometimes on sunny afternoons I sat indoors with ears glued to the radio. For a healthy American boy to sit indoors and listen to radio soap operas when he could go outside and play baseball or building a treehouse was bad.
"Worse still, at least two or three days a week I feigned an upset stomach in order to stay home and lie around listening to the soap operas that were on during school hours. Despite this neurotic behavior I lived up to most of my responsibilities as a budding good citizen – I was named a member of the Traffic Squad of School No. 80 when I was 12.
"For several years I thought I was the only boy in the sane and civilized world who listened to such stuff. Then in the sophomore year of high school at a party people my own age started talking about 'Ma Perkins', 'Stella Dallas', 'Helen Trent', 'Just Plain Bill' and 'Our Gal Sunday' in which the announcer, in stentorian tones, told us – and we never tired of hearing it - 'This is the story that asks the question: Can a girl from a little mining town in Colorado find happiness with the rich and titled Lord Henry Brinthrop of Blackswan Hall?'
"I was a latecomer to television soap operas, primarily because I was a latecomer to television of any kind, I am of the last generation in America that grew up without the tube. When I went to Columbia University in the early '50s no student would have been caught dead owning a television set. We were intellectuals, you see, and at that time all self-respecting intellectuals feared television would fry the minds of the masses, make free men into Orwellian robots, and in general turn all of Western culture into a vast wasteland.
"The only television program my friends and I watched in college was the Army vs. McCarthy hearings, a daytime 'show' respectable to watch because it was news and history. There were crises, threats, challenges, and even tears as careers and policies hung in the balance. Tune in tomorrow and see whether good will triumph over evil! For pure soap opera, all it lacked was organ music."
In 1976, then 25-year-old Manuela Soares who graduated from Rutgers in 1973 with a degree in comparative literature, would watch all 14 daytime dramas on television during the week in order to write summaries of soap operas plot lines. As editor-and-chief of the 'Daily TV Newsletter' (founded in July 1974 and had up to 12,000 subscribers paying $24 a year for 48 issues), Manuela's job was to keep track of 70 plot lines a week by watching two TV sets. "After a while, you get so you can manage to do other work and keep an ear on the TV set. Of course, the music is helpful. You can tell there's something coming up, just judging by the music."
Dan Wakefield continued, "Perhaps, like many other people, I started watching daytime television in a time of crisis. It was the holiday season of 1965, and while consider any holiday season a time of crisis, this one was especially a downer because it was the first after I had been divorced. As an innocent intellectual, I had no idea that the masses out there in videoland were watching everyday stories that dealt with drugs, divorce, abortion, mental illness, loneliness, despair, and other such subjects that were mostly taboo in the '60s in prime-time viewing.
"By the time of the Nixon-McGovern campaign in New Hampshire (in 1972), I had become a follower of one daytime serial, 'All My Children'. The small true touches, the accurate rendering of contemporary styles and feelings was one of the things that fascinated me about the program. But I can’t pretend I got hooked on it because of some sociological interest.
"In the spring of 1971 I was living in Los Angeles and recuperating from writing a novel. I choose the word ‘recuperating’ advisedly, believing, as George Orwell said, that writing a book is like 'having a bout with a long illness,' and, as after any long illness, one requires a recovery period. By 1974, 'All My Children' has become the object of a growing cult of avid fans across the country. The 'All My Children' phenomenon is part of a confluence of different forces making soap opera respectable.
"Soap opera really is the same basic concept of serial drama as old as storytelling, as old as 'The Arabian Nights' and 'once upon a time' and 'in our next episode we shall learn what happens to...' It is the old form of serial storytelling practiced by Dickens and Dostoevsky and Henry James as they shaped their novels in installments to be read in sequential issues of periodicals.
"Beyond the pure entertainment I began to be fascinated with what must lie behind it – the professional skill and imagination involved in turning out a continuous story five days a week, 52 weeks a year, with a cast of several dozen characters interacting with one another in daily situations dramatic enough and believable enough to hold the interest of a mass nationwide audience. And this without the lures of cops, crime, eroticism or violence."
Trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland and Northwestern University, Evanston, Dr. June Singer wrote the book, 'The Unholy Bible' in 1970. Speaking to Patricia Schofler of the 'Chicago Tribune', Dr. Singer stated vision a person experienced, or being able to visualize something or someone when the person was half asleep and half awake were fairly common because a lot of people, particularly creative people, saw in visual terms.
Dr. Singer maintained these visions were the opening to the unconscious, "The trick is to allow conscious defense to slip and be open to these visions, to be open to feelings, impressions and particularly to dreams, and to recognize symbols and to use the imagination and see what symbols lead to. I was interested in what man does that is not directed by intellect, as expressed in art and psychic manifestations like E.S.P. - even ghosts. Though I do not believe in ghosts, I thought there must be a reason why there is so much interest in the supernatural."
Dr. Singer pointed out both Carl G. Jung and William Blake experienced these visions and were capable of communicating with their unconscious. It was understood some people were able to do this through psychodelic drugs, but that Jung and Blake were able to create a dialog with their unconscious without artificial stimuli as had mystics of all ages.
Dr. Singer said through therapy a person could learn to hear messages from the unconscious and to carry on an active relationship with the unconscious. Dr. Singer described a stable person as one "who can live with tension, take responsibility for his own acts including his errors, and who is aware that he cannot accomplish everything by his will alone and therefore accepts limitations, while trusting the unconscious to provide sources of energy to grow and develop as long as he (or she) lives.
"Most of us are taught that where there is a will there is a way, and that if we work hard and study hard, we will succeed. Some find they cannot. There is something working at cross purpose with this will. They are angry when they would like to be pleasant, drunk when they would like to be sober. There are many unknowns. They want to know these unconscious forces working against them. So they go into analysis to figure out what they are."
As reported, manifesting the unconscious were fears. The analyst could help the patient to learn what his or her unconscious was saying, to confront the unconscious and to use the unconscious to solve problems and to make the patient a more well-rounded personality. "Analysis is a way of developing ones innate potential through self-knowledge. It is a difficult way because one sees potential for greatness but also for the negative things. We are potentially strong and potentially weak. We make the best of the strong and become aware of the pitfalls."
A believer of Jungian psychology, Dr. Singer said although Jung was a member of the Sigmund Freud circle for 12 years, he separated from Freud because he felt man was motivated by more than one major drive, where Freud felt man was driven by the desire for sexual fulfillment. "Man is looking to find meaning in life and in the cosmos, to find himself in personal ways and transpersonal or in relation to the created world. He is looking for the source of his energy as Freud said sexual fulfillment is. Jung felt that sex is not just a physical impulse but a way to create – to meet one's opposite and create something new whether it is a child or a spiritual creation like a piece of art."
Jung also did not believe that all problems stemmed from the way parents treated a child when the child was under two years old. "It may happen that way, but neurotic problems may happen at any time – a change of job, marriage, crisis of middle age, when the children leave the nest and parents find their relationship not more than holding a family together or losing a beloved one.
"Freud finds the problem in infantile sexuality with parents at early age. Therefore, for a long time parents were blamed for what was wrong. This is hard on parents and gives the child the chance to shrug off dealing with his own responsibilities. So with Jungian analysis, instead of going back, we are more interested in the purposeful direction, in finding the right life goals for him."
Jung also believed that in every woman there was a masculine element, and in every man there was a feminine element. These elements were largely unconscious. Therefore, the man carrier of this feminine element, for example, had in his unconscious the qualities usually associated with the female such as "tenderness, an earthy quality of wisdom, a maternal nurturing nature.
"Women carry these qualities traditional expressed by men – incisiveness, a kind of abstract way of thinking and reasoning, a certain decisiveness, a particular kind of power drive. This is a kind of preform of what women's liberation is coming into now (in 1970). She has qualities and she needs to develop these qualities associated with the male to be well rounded.
"And she can develop these without being unfeminine, by confronting the unconscious. The same with men who can use tenderness without being unmasculine. Jung saw far into the future. Only today (in 1970) are men starting to wear flamboyant clothes, pay attention to their children, show them care and affection without being afraid of expressing it."
Dr. Singer elaborated that Jung felt there was a difference between men and women, but that they were equal. "They are biologically different which made society put them into these roles. Today (1970), women are not at the mercy of biology. They can choose of and when they want children. They can develop specific feminine qualities or blend the masculine and feminine depending on how much is brought into the conscious or as to how much is desirable for her own goals.
"Ideally, we should be well-balanced, not be clingingly dependent nor asserting independence by giving up qualities that make us women. Because a woman goes to the office and functions efficiently does not mean she cannot come home, cook and be a good marital partner. She should not be ashamed to function with these qualities that society says are masculine. She should not feel that it will compromise her delicious femininity."
Dan Wakefield observed, "It occurred to me that daytime TV serials are one of the major forms of storytelling for a whole segment of our society. Yet they are largely neglected in any serious discussion of contemporary entertainment. Yet by 1971 daytime programming (comprised soap operas and game shows) accounted for an estimated 75% of the revenue of the major networks."
"I grew up in the Midwest in the 1930s and 1940s and hurried home from grade school to listen to radio soap operas. Sometimes on sunny afternoons I sat indoors with ears glued to the radio. For a healthy American boy to sit indoors and listen to radio soap operas when he could go outside and play baseball or building a treehouse was bad.
"Worse still, at least two or three days a week I feigned an upset stomach in order to stay home and lie around listening to the soap operas that were on during school hours. Despite this neurotic behavior I lived up to most of my responsibilities as a budding good citizen – I was named a member of the Traffic Squad of School No. 80 when I was 12.
"For several years I thought I was the only boy in the sane and civilized world who listened to such stuff. Then in the sophomore year of high school at a party people my own age started talking about 'Ma Perkins', 'Stella Dallas', 'Helen Trent', 'Just Plain Bill' and 'Our Gal Sunday' in which the announcer, in stentorian tones, told us – and we never tired of hearing it - 'This is the story that asks the question: Can a girl from a little mining town in Colorado find happiness with the rich and titled Lord Henry Brinthrop of Blackswan Hall?'
"I was a latecomer to television soap operas, primarily because I was a latecomer to television of any kind, I am of the last generation in America that grew up without the tube. When I went to Columbia University in the early '50s no student would have been caught dead owning a television set. We were intellectuals, you see, and at that time all self-respecting intellectuals feared television would fry the minds of the masses, make free men into Orwellian robots, and in general turn all of Western culture into a vast wasteland.
"The only television program my friends and I watched in college was the Army vs. McCarthy hearings, a daytime 'show' respectable to watch because it was news and history. There were crises, threats, challenges, and even tears as careers and policies hung in the balance. Tune in tomorrow and see whether good will triumph over evil! For pure soap opera, all it lacked was organ music."
In 1976, then 25-year-old Manuela Soares who graduated from Rutgers in 1973 with a degree in comparative literature, would watch all 14 daytime dramas on television during the week in order to write summaries of soap operas plot lines. As editor-and-chief of the 'Daily TV Newsletter' (founded in July 1974 and had up to 12,000 subscribers paying $24 a year for 48 issues), Manuela's job was to keep track of 70 plot lines a week by watching two TV sets. "After a while, you get so you can manage to do other work and keep an ear on the TV set. Of course, the music is helpful. You can tell there's something coming up, just judging by the music."
Dan Wakefield continued, "Perhaps, like many other people, I started watching daytime television in a time of crisis. It was the holiday season of 1965, and while consider any holiday season a time of crisis, this one was especially a downer because it was the first after I had been divorced. As an innocent intellectual, I had no idea that the masses out there in videoland were watching everyday stories that dealt with drugs, divorce, abortion, mental illness, loneliness, despair, and other such subjects that were mostly taboo in the '60s in prime-time viewing.
"By the time of the Nixon-McGovern campaign in New Hampshire (in 1972), I had become a follower of one daytime serial, 'All My Children'. The small true touches, the accurate rendering of contemporary styles and feelings was one of the things that fascinated me about the program. But I can’t pretend I got hooked on it because of some sociological interest.
"In the spring of 1971 I was living in Los Angeles and recuperating from writing a novel. I choose the word ‘recuperating’ advisedly, believing, as George Orwell said, that writing a book is like 'having a bout with a long illness,' and, as after any long illness, one requires a recovery period. By 1974, 'All My Children' has become the object of a growing cult of avid fans across the country. The 'All My Children' phenomenon is part of a confluence of different forces making soap opera respectable.
"Soap opera really is the same basic concept of serial drama as old as storytelling, as old as 'The Arabian Nights' and 'once upon a time' and 'in our next episode we shall learn what happens to...' It is the old form of serial storytelling practiced by Dickens and Dostoevsky and Henry James as they shaped their novels in installments to be read in sequential issues of periodicals.
"Beyond the pure entertainment I began to be fascinated with what must lie behind it – the professional skill and imagination involved in turning out a continuous story five days a week, 52 weeks a year, with a cast of several dozen characters interacting with one another in daily situations dramatic enough and believable enough to hold the interest of a mass nationwide audience. And this without the lures of cops, crime, eroticism or violence."
Trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland and Northwestern University, Evanston, Dr. June Singer wrote the book, 'The Unholy Bible' in 1970. Speaking to Patricia Schofler of the 'Chicago Tribune', Dr. Singer stated vision a person experienced, or being able to visualize something or someone when the person was half asleep and half awake were fairly common because a lot of people, particularly creative people, saw in visual terms.
Dr. Singer maintained these visions were the opening to the unconscious, "The trick is to allow conscious defense to slip and be open to these visions, to be open to feelings, impressions and particularly to dreams, and to recognize symbols and to use the imagination and see what symbols lead to. I was interested in what man does that is not directed by intellect, as expressed in art and psychic manifestations like E.S.P. - even ghosts. Though I do not believe in ghosts, I thought there must be a reason why there is so much interest in the supernatural."
Dr. Singer pointed out both Carl G. Jung and William Blake experienced these visions and were capable of communicating with their unconscious. It was understood some people were able to do this through psychodelic drugs, but that Jung and Blake were able to create a dialog with their unconscious without artificial stimuli as had mystics of all ages.
Dr. Singer said through therapy a person could learn to hear messages from the unconscious and to carry on an active relationship with the unconscious. Dr. Singer described a stable person as one "who can live with tension, take responsibility for his own acts including his errors, and who is aware that he cannot accomplish everything by his will alone and therefore accepts limitations, while trusting the unconscious to provide sources of energy to grow and develop as long as he (or she) lives.
"Most of us are taught that where there is a will there is a way, and that if we work hard and study hard, we will succeed. Some find they cannot. There is something working at cross purpose with this will. They are angry when they would like to be pleasant, drunk when they would like to be sober. There are many unknowns. They want to know these unconscious forces working against them. So they go into analysis to figure out what they are."
As reported, manifesting the unconscious were fears. The analyst could help the patient to learn what his or her unconscious was saying, to confront the unconscious and to use the unconscious to solve problems and to make the patient a more well-rounded personality. "Analysis is a way of developing ones innate potential through self-knowledge. It is a difficult way because one sees potential for greatness but also for the negative things. We are potentially strong and potentially weak. We make the best of the strong and become aware of the pitfalls."
A believer of Jungian psychology, Dr. Singer said although Jung was a member of the Sigmund Freud circle for 12 years, he separated from Freud because he felt man was motivated by more than one major drive, where Freud felt man was driven by the desire for sexual fulfillment. "Man is looking to find meaning in life and in the cosmos, to find himself in personal ways and transpersonal or in relation to the created world. He is looking for the source of his energy as Freud said sexual fulfillment is. Jung felt that sex is not just a physical impulse but a way to create – to meet one's opposite and create something new whether it is a child or a spiritual creation like a piece of art."
Jung also did not believe that all problems stemmed from the way parents treated a child when the child was under two years old. "It may happen that way, but neurotic problems may happen at any time – a change of job, marriage, crisis of middle age, when the children leave the nest and parents find their relationship not more than holding a family together or losing a beloved one.
"Freud finds the problem in infantile sexuality with parents at early age. Therefore, for a long time parents were blamed for what was wrong. This is hard on parents and gives the child the chance to shrug off dealing with his own responsibilities. So with Jungian analysis, instead of going back, we are more interested in the purposeful direction, in finding the right life goals for him."
Jung also believed that in every woman there was a masculine element, and in every man there was a feminine element. These elements were largely unconscious. Therefore, the man carrier of this feminine element, for example, had in his unconscious the qualities usually associated with the female such as "tenderness, an earthy quality of wisdom, a maternal nurturing nature.
"Women carry these qualities traditional expressed by men – incisiveness, a kind of abstract way of thinking and reasoning, a certain decisiveness, a particular kind of power drive. This is a kind of preform of what women's liberation is coming into now (in 1970). She has qualities and she needs to develop these qualities associated with the male to be well rounded.
"And she can develop these without being unfeminine, by confronting the unconscious. The same with men who can use tenderness without being unmasculine. Jung saw far into the future. Only today (in 1970) are men starting to wear flamboyant clothes, pay attention to their children, show them care and affection without being afraid of expressing it."
Dr. Singer elaborated that Jung felt there was a difference between men and women, but that they were equal. "They are biologically different which made society put them into these roles. Today (1970), women are not at the mercy of biology. They can choose of and when they want children. They can develop specific feminine qualities or blend the masculine and feminine depending on how much is brought into the conscious or as to how much is desirable for her own goals.
"Ideally, we should be well-balanced, not be clingingly dependent nor asserting independence by giving up qualities that make us women. Because a woman goes to the office and functions efficiently does not mean she cannot come home, cook and be a good marital partner. She should not be ashamed to function with these qualities that society says are masculine. She should not feel that it will compromise her delicious femininity."
Dan Wakefield observed, "It occurred to me that daytime TV serials are one of the major forms of storytelling for a whole segment of our society. Yet they are largely neglected in any serious discussion of contemporary entertainment. Yet by 1971 daytime programming (comprised soap operas and game shows) accounted for an estimated 75% of the revenue of the major networks."
