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Table of Contents
Tim Aubry and Trysh Travis, Introduction : What is "therapeutic culture," and why do we need to "rethink" it?
1 Joseph M. Gabriel, Damage : Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans were inured to suffering. Maybe we have something to learn from them.
2 Kathryn Lofton, Gospel : If Christian ministers and secular therapists now sound strangely alike, it's because they have been imitating each other for over a century.
3 Courtney Bender, Spirit : Spiritual gurus and critics of therapeutic culture both view the world as an inescapable cage. As a result, their visions of freedom both rely on some form of magic.
4 Gabriel Mendes, Race : An underground Harlem clinic could have radicalized the practice of therapy in the 1950s
if only more people had paid attention.
5 Rebecca Jo Plant, Motherhood : As they warned women about the perils of maternal overinvolvement, midcentury psychological experts inadvertently helped to pave the way for second-wave feminism.
6 Badia Ahad, Confessions : Cautionary tales about taboo sexual behaviors offered in a black confessional magazine gave readers from outside the white middle class access to therapeutic culture
and a sense of sexual selfhood.
7 Michael Staub, Radical : Although the radical therapists of the 1960s failed to make therapy into a revolutionary tool, they did succeed at transforming their own profession.
8 Elizabeth Lunbeck, Narcissism : The narcissism that worries social critics so much bears little resemblance to the one that interests psychoanalysts. Why is that?
9 Beryl Satter, The Left : How did the "discharge" of negative emotions become a substitute for structural critique?
10 David Herzberg, Pills : Psychotropic drug users are political actors too.
11 Stevan Weine, Testimony : What happens
and who benefits
when trauma victims are encouraged to tell their stories?
12 Tanya Erzen, Heart : Christian "heart-change" rehabilitation is challenging punishment in the American penal system, and its therapeutic dimensions confound critics on the right and the left.
13 Elizabeth Spelman, Privacy : In order to shield their actions from public scrutiny, corporations depend upon protections of privacy that individual citizens have come to disdain.
14 Suzanne Bost, Pain : Rather than trying to eliminate pain, some modern therapeutic practices invite us to experience the body's contingency and permeability.
15 Michael Sayeau, Blogging : Blogging is a new form of democratic, crowd-sourced therapy. But it works the way therapy always has: by bringing individuals' private thoughts to the attention of strangers.
16 Philip Cushman, Practice : A therapist works through
and with
the critique of therapeutic culture.
Jackson Lears, Afterword : One of the therapeutic culture's most persuasive critics considers the historical category anew.
1 Joseph M. Gabriel, Damage : Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans were inured to suffering. Maybe we have something to learn from them.
2 Kathryn Lofton, Gospel : If Christian ministers and secular therapists now sound strangely alike, it's because they have been imitating each other for over a century.
3 Courtney Bender, Spirit : Spiritual gurus and critics of therapeutic culture both view the world as an inescapable cage. As a result, their visions of freedom both rely on some form of magic.
4 Gabriel Mendes, Race : An underground Harlem clinic could have radicalized the practice of therapy in the 1950s
if only more people had paid attention.
5 Rebecca Jo Plant, Motherhood : As they warned women about the perils of maternal overinvolvement, midcentury psychological experts inadvertently helped to pave the way for second-wave feminism.
6 Badia Ahad, Confessions : Cautionary tales about taboo sexual behaviors offered in a black confessional magazine gave readers from outside the white middle class access to therapeutic culture
and a sense of sexual selfhood.
7 Michael Staub, Radical : Although the radical therapists of the 1960s failed to make therapy into a revolutionary tool, they did succeed at transforming their own profession.
8 Elizabeth Lunbeck, Narcissism : The narcissism that worries social critics so much bears little resemblance to the one that interests psychoanalysts. Why is that?
9 Beryl Satter, The Left : How did the "discharge" of negative emotions become a substitute for structural critique?
10 David Herzberg, Pills : Psychotropic drug users are political actors too.
11 Stevan Weine, Testimony : What happens
and who benefits
when trauma victims are encouraged to tell their stories?
12 Tanya Erzen, Heart : Christian "heart-change" rehabilitation is challenging punishment in the American penal system, and its therapeutic dimensions confound critics on the right and the left.
13 Elizabeth Spelman, Privacy : In order to shield their actions from public scrutiny, corporations depend upon protections of privacy that individual citizens have come to disdain.
14 Suzanne Bost, Pain : Rather than trying to eliminate pain, some modern therapeutic practices invite us to experience the body's contingency and permeability.
15 Michael Sayeau, Blogging : Blogging is a new form of democratic, crowd-sourced therapy. But it works the way therapy always has: by bringing individuals' private thoughts to the attention of strangers.
16 Philip Cushman, Practice : A therapist works through
and with
the critique of therapeutic culture.
Jackson Lears, Afterword : One of the therapeutic culture's most persuasive critics considers the historical category anew.