Therapy is now as American as apple pie. Every problem you could ever face is said to be curable one 45-minute session at a time. But what if our therapeutic culture is doing more harm than good?
Sociologist Philip Rieff predicted this almost 60 years ago in his book “The Triumph of the Therapeutic.”
Rieff argued that the traditional values of the West were being replaced by a therapeutic worldview. By “therapeutic,” he meant not just formal psychoanalysis, but a new cultural paradigm that put psychological well-being, self-fulfillment and the satisfaction of individual desires at the core of human experience. Rather than organizing around man’s religious or economic needs, this new society would be built around his therapeutic needs.
Rieff understood the danger this posed: as subjective fulfillment becomes the highest good, we lose our grip on a shared reality and all the moral obligations we once had to each other fall away.
“We teachers should produce nothing new, no breakthroughs, until we produce, first in ourselves, those protections of older wisdom which may help stave off arrogant stupidities parading as originality, modernization, revolution—and, of course, ‘values.'”
Philip Rieff pic.twitter.com/NB9R9L2dPC
— Archie Goodwin (@ArchieG1946) June 18, 2022
Sixty years later, it’s hard to deny the prescience of this argument. In our over-sensitized world, discussing, understanding and satiating our feelings seems like the answer to every problem.
Struggle with insecurity or anxiety? Go pay an expert $300 an hour to explore how your repressed childhood trauma drives your thoughts and behavior today. Unable to overcome your dependence on alcohol, drugs, sex or any number of compulsions? Join a support group where you can discuss your feelings with those who can relate. Problems at home? An adolescent psychologist or couples counselor will step up to manage your household.
The idea that we should stop ruminating on all that troubles us and just suck it up seems counterintuitive, anti-scientific or even downright cruel in the modern era, where the therapeutic mindset has truly triumphed. If Rieff was right about the shift, then he was likely right about the consequences as well — even if we largely do not yet want to admit it. (RELATED: The Left’s War On Masculinity Is Destroying Western Civilization)
The cracks in the therapy regime are already starting to show. There is perhaps no more therapized group in America than readers of The Atlantic — the neurotic, coastal elites who can afford to read 10,000-word think pieces on topics nearly as abstract and meaningless as their own life struggles. If there is any demographic with more therapy hours per capita, it would have to be those who actually work at The Atlantic — and even they are beginning to see the downsides of the therapeutic.
“Alleviating the teen-mental-health crisis may require something that is not altogether comfortable for adults: trusting that teenagers will know when they need help,” @olgakhazan writes: https://t.co/lJwro0PeuM
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) November 10, 2023
“These kids got therapy. Then they got worse,” the magazine “frustratingly” admitted after reviewing the findings of a study on 1,000 teenagers, half of whom received mandatory therapy training on “cognitive reappraisal” and “mindfulness.” Those in the group that received therapy reported “worse relationships with their parents and increases in depression and anxiety.” They were “less emotionally regulated,” and ultimately “reported a lower quality of life.” Most symptoms dissipated after several months without therapy, but the therapy group “still report[ed] poorer relationships with their parents.”
The Atlantic almost comes to the appropriate conclusion: “Maybe everybody thinking about how anxious or hurt they are might not be the best idea,” said Jean Twenge, the contrarian psychology professor the outlet went to for comment on the study.
As for child-parent relationships, therapy created a “gap of sorts,” with teens learning to “advocate for themselves more assertively” in interactions with family.
In Rieffian terms, by focusing on all the ways we must be psychologically satisfied, we call attention to issues that would have otherwise not existed. Children who are taught by scientific authorities that their subjective happiness is the highest ideal have little patience for parents, who have the audacity to think they might know better. “Honor thy father and mother,” is sacrificed on the altar of self-worship.
But the magazine stops just short of admitting that therapy itself is the problem. Instead, they offer a range of excuses: teens didn’t spend enough time on their “therapy homework,” therapists had to “dilute” their techniques “beyond the point it was actually helpful,” teens in the study weren’t the target demographic therapy is meant to help — all of which deflect from the core failure. Real therapy, just like real socialism, has never been tried, you see. The answer must be more therapy.
If you are a liberal committed to preserving the status quo of sensitivity, then what choice do you have? Tolerance — the hallmark of a liberal society — is an inherently therapeutic pursuit. Originally, it meant respecting others enough to live and let live. Today, it means not only tolerating but celebrating all forms of expression as morally equal. It means tolerating criminality as just the psychological rupture of an individual experiencing “big feelings” under a repressive system. It means tolerating gender perversion as a necessary form of self-fulfillment. It means the censorship of speech and expression due to the psychological harm certain statements cause to others.
The therapeutic is now so triumphant that there are very few limits to how much we’ll coddle those we used to condemn. (RELATED: ROOKE: Leftist Moral Rot, Not Conservative Bullying, Killed The Alabama Drag Queen Preacher)
This is the brave new world liberals seek to create. We no longer strive for the kingdom of heaven, nor even for maximal economic prosperity. If only we can reach true psychic harmony, then there will be no more discord, crime, oppression or injustice, and we will have reached the end of history. To admit the failure of the therapeutic is an indictment of the entire project —that this utopian dream is, in reality, a nightmare.