Caprice: The ‘COOL’ Rebellion

Our present age has contributed a ‘new’ factor to the historical dialogue between the forces of rebellion and the status quo. From many sources movements have arisen which have in common non-predictability. In mathematics this is known as the non-linear relationship, in literature the non-novel, in drama the theatre-of-the-absurd, and in physics and philosophy the ‘uncertainty principle’. In psychotherapy, particularly of adolescents, there is often seen a remarkable capricious wilfulness which, rich in irony, often sabotages the entire psychotherapeutic effort. The same cool mockery of social form pervades much of adolescent life, being seen in the. ‘twist’, the college beach migrations, the loosely integrated gangs (mods and rockers, stilyagi, hoods). The ‘kick’, the capricious hallmark of the ‘cool’ experience, can reduce the whole idea of deterministic form to something which may be ‘allowed’ to exist or may be brushed rudely aside by an act of wilfulness. This paper makes no moral pronouncement on this development as ‘bad’ or ‘good’, but merely attempts to describe a phenomenon.