In Therapy We Trust: America's Obsession with Self-Fulfillment
by Eva S. Moskowitz
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Description
"Beginning with the example of a "Mind Cure" developed by mid-nineteenth-century clockmaker Phineas P. Quimby, Moskowitz explains how Americans' growing fascination with therapy led them to adopt new kinds of reform - including, at the turn of the twentieth century, provisions for psychological services in prisons, courts, hospitals, and schools. Depression-era divorce rates prompted colleges and high schools to offer courses on marital happiness and produced a new marriage-counseling show more industry. During World War II, Moskowitz shows, the army devoted unprecedented energy to a soldier's "psychological readiness for combat." Moskowitz also explores more recent developments, including Cold War-era psychological assumptions of magazine campaigns that targeted unhappy housewives. She confronts the social protest movements in the 60s and the explosion of 70s self-help fads that continue to the present." "In a study that encompasses all aspects of American society - from television talk shows to the criminal justice system, from office politics to world politics - Moskowitz identifies a debilitating "sense of self" that is intimately bound up with the major developments of the twentieth century."--Jacket. show lessTags
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Therapeutic Society
61 works; 1 member
Author Information
2 Works 26 Members
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Betty Friedan; Miriam Van Waters; Paul Popenoe
- First words
- We live in an age consumed by worship of the psyche.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, Sociology, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 361.1 — Society, Government, and Culture Social problems and social services Social problems and services Social Problems
- LCC
- HN64 .M872 — Social sciences Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Social history and conditions. Social problems. By region or country
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 23
- Popularity
- 1,144,709
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
