Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. In recent decades, however, we have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, psychically frail, and requiring the ministrations of mental health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Being "in touch with one's feelings" and freely expressing them have become paramount personal virtues. Today-with a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every conceivable problem-we are at risk of degrading our native ability to cope with life's challenges. Drawing on established science and common sense, Christina Hoff Sommers and Dr. Sally Satel reveal how "therapism" and the burgeoning trauma industry have come to pervade our lives. Help is offered everywhere under the presumption that we need it: in children's classrooms, the workplace, churches, courtrooms, the media, the military. But with all the "help" comes a host of troubling consequences, including: * The myth of stressed-out, homework-burdened, hypercompetitive, and depressed or suicidal schoolchildren in need of therapy and medication * The loss of moral bearings in our approach to lying, crime, addiction, and other foibles and vices * The unasked-for "grief counselors" who descend on bereaved families, schools, and communities following a tragedy, offering dubious advice while billing plenty of money * The expansion of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from an affliction of war veterans to nearly everyone who has experienced a setback Intelligent, provocative, and wryly amusing, One Nation Under Therapy demonstrates that "talking about" problems is no substitute for confronting them.
The renowned historian and cultural critic provides an eye-opening study of the dichotomy in American society--one a conservative, Puritan influence and the other based in the counterculture of the 1960s--examining their influence on family ...
... see aiso New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, testimony at the Bellevue hearing, December 16, 1998. 91. See, for example, Eric M. Weiss, “Deadly Restraint: A Nationwide Pattern of Death,” Hartford Caurant, ...
Why doesn't self-help help? Micki McGee explores the demand for self-help & what it tells us about ourselves.
"This updated and revised edition of the controversial classic, which is now more relevant than ever, argues that boys have become the primary victims of American society, showing how boys' weaknesses are aggravated by anti-boy prejudices ...
In One Nation Under Stress, Dana Becker argues that our national infatuation with the therapeutic culture has created a middle-class moral imperative to manage the tensions of daily life by turning inward, ignoring the social and political ...
Herman Badillo's answer is as politically incorrect as the question: Hispanics simply don’t put the same emphasis on education as other immigrant groups.
Freedom Feminism is a primer in the Values & Capitalism series intended for college students.
A second phone call from Baer asked if I would fax ten or twelve of my recent columns down to the White House, and three copies of my book, Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police—one each, I was told, for Bill, Hillary, and Don himself.
Designed for MFT students or those just beginning in the field, this text presents a case study and provides examples of how different models of marriage and family therapy, such as brief therapies, integrative models, and strategic ...
Vice & Virtue in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings in Ethics