Political Activism of the Sixties Generation as Adults

I never dared to be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old. ~Robert Frost, 'Ten Mills,' A Further Range, 1936 Introduction In Beyond the Barricades: The Sixties Generation Grows Up, Whalen and Flacks examine the question of what happened to the idealism and radical activism displayed by the young men and women who came of age in the late sixties as this cohort grew up and became adults. The media …

…was not unlike descriptions of a war zone. The stress of such an environment, plus the legal battles waged by the Santa Barbara 19 and those charged in the bank burning case, must have undoubtedly taken its toll. Yet, at that time, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was not yet widely recognized. Since mental health issues are receiving much more attention today, it would be interesting to study the psychological profiles of the former radical activists.