The dynamic and emerging social reality of the liberal/capitalistic Western World has created a new type of personality, the characteristics of which the educational community must be aware. Although early capitalism stressed production, the present emphasis features consumption as the dominant activity. The acquisitive, hardworking individual has been replaced by the shallow, easily swayed, self-infatuated individual. The collapse of the classic bourgeois family has led to the erosion of privacy and the impoverishment of imagination and fantasy. The stimulation of infantile cravings by an advertising industry that requires people to be unsatisfied, combined with the loss of meaningful work and the usurpation of parental authority, have all contributed to the formation of a new character. The newly emerging personality is characterized by feelings of diffuse dissatisfaction, a fear that existence is futile, depression, fantasies of alternative impotence and omnipotence, and a search for instant intimacy. The rebelliousness of white middle-class youth is focused within the family and the schools. Those responsible for the higher education institutions must prepare teachers to face the historical period in which we live. (KC)