In Therapy We Trust: America's Obsession with Self-Fulfillment (review)

A backlash against psychiatry, psychoanalysis, therapy, psychobabble, and psychological institutions and professions has been gathering momentum in the past few decades. On the left, critics condemn psychology as a discourse that adapts us to a repressive society and coerces us into participation in the capitalist order. Governmental policies based on psychological social science focus on effects and not causes, and distract from radical reform (or revolution). On the right, critics disparage psychology as subversive and narcissistic. Psychology undermines the moral absolutes set forth in religion and law and provides a ready-made set of excuses for self-indulgence, immorality, and criminal behavior.

In Therapy We Trust, a selective survey of psychological discourse and practice in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, adds to this growing chorus of detractors. The title is the thesis. We no longer measure ourselves by external moral absolutes: we turn inward and, aided by experts and support groups, try to reconfigure our psyches through psychological advice and treatment. "Rich or poor, black or white, male or female, straight or gay," we are "consumed by . . . a gospel of psychological happiness," argues Eva Moskowitz; we believe that "feelings are sacred and salvation lies in self-esteem," with "happiness as the ultimate goal and psychological healing the means" (p. 3). We adopt the dubious theories and methods of psychology because they flatter us, enable us to avoid difficult political and ethical dilemmas, and excuse us from moral culpability for our actions. Therapy, the common coin of American culture, is a debased coinage. The main beneficiaries are those who use psychological discourse for professional, economic, or political gain.

The book divides up chronologically and topically. In chapter 1, "Illness," Moskowitz locates the origins of therapeutic discourse in the mental healing practice of Phineas Quimby, Christian Science and New Thought. Chapter 2, "Poverty," treats psychological approaches to welfare, mental illness, and penal reform in early-twentieth-century America. Chapter 3, "Marriage," is focused on marriage research and counseling and the new psychological science of personal relations in the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter 4, "War," is a look at how World War II provided psychological professionals with a singular opportunity to put their theories into practice as a part of the war effort, and helped to legitimate psychology as a profession, science, and ideology. Chapter 5, "Home," deals with the proliferation of psychological advice in women's magazines in the 1950s. Moskowitz argues that psychological concepts and explanations served to articulate dissatisfaction with gender arrangements in the postwar household, and so anticipated, and helped lay the groundwork for, Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique—notwithstanding feminist charges that psychological doctrines helped to enforce gender roles and male domination.

In chapter 6, "Social Protest," Moskowitz looks at psychology in the Civil Rights movement (the familiar story of social science and Brown vs. Board of Education); the Kennedy administration's move to expand federal involvement in mental health through the funding of community mental health centers; the Department of Defense's funding of psychological studies of Third World revolutionary movements; the 1968 Kerner Commission's use of psychology as an explanation for the race riots that swept through the nation; and the adoption of psychological discourse by the Black Power movement, the counterculture, and 1970s feminists. In chapters 7 and 8 she brings the story up to date with sections on counterculture and New Age psychological cults, Alcoholics Anonymous and twelve-step programs, Internet support groups, and therapeutic, feeling-oriented TV talk shows like those hosted by Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, Ricki Lake, and Jerry Springer.

Missing are sustained discussions of academic psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and the influence of psychological discourse on literature and film. In Therapy We Trust lacks any consideration of the couch; there is little or no mention of Freud. There is also...