Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help (review)

Illouz argues that a "therapeutic discourse," understood as a cultural schema oriented toward a psychoanalytic understanding of self and society, emerged in the 20th century. In Saving the Modern Soul she explores the contours of this dominant episteme, paying attention to its emergence, sites where it has been institutionalized, and the potential effects of this discourse in conditions of late modernity. Although Illouz seems to veer toward partisanism in the conclusion, the substantive chapters are an even-handed search for understanding and should be applauded for avoiding the tendency toward "modernity bashing."

At the outset, Illouz states that her work has four principle goals. First, to understand how and under what conditions new cultural codes and meanings emerge, diffuse and affect society. Second, to explore how the therapeutic discourse guides the ways in which we understand and express selfhood in modern society. Third, to examine how the discourse has been incorporated into institutional settings and how this affects social relationships in such settings. Finally, to use the resiliency of the therapeutic discourse as a lens through which to examine larger questions of cultural continuity.

The first substantive chapter aims at the first and second of these four goals and serves as background regarding how Freud, as a charismatic leader and psychoanalysis, generally created a new "emotional style" or a "new way of thinking about the relationship of self to others."(14) The emergence of psychoanalysis is described as if it were a tidal wave that came ashore sweeping away everything in its path.

I found myself questioning this story. While there is little doubt that Freud's impact has been profound, Illouz' analysis almost wholly ignores the processes of conflict and struggle underlying the ascendancy of psychoanalysis. More careful attention to the "turf wars" characteristic of Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982) seems warranted. Thus, I am not certain that Illouz accomplishes the first of her goals. Nonetheless, this chapter highlights the importance of the rise of therapeutic discourse.

The remainder of the substantive chapters aim primarily at the second and third of her goals, analyzing the rise of a new, psychological repertoire in diverse institutional settings such as the workplace and the family and how such repertoires are translated into understandings of the self and new strategies of action. Here Illouz is at her best. She presents a compelling analysis of how the therapeutic discourse has created a new emotional style and, at the same time, offers alternatives to several prominent perspectives within the fields of work, gender and the family.

Much of her analysis in these chapters centers on how the discourse has legitimated a feminine or androgynous model of emotions arguing that identity is increasingly based on a gender-blind narrative of emotions. Although recent research suggests identities are more gendered in "developed" societies (Schmitt et al. 2008), I think Illouz achieves her second and third goals in articulating how the discourse is embedded within institutional settings as well as how it guides our understandings of self and, in turn, how we relate to one another. By the end of these chapters all of life seems to be dictated by the therapeutic narrative.

Throughout her book, Illouz attempts to connect these issues to the fourth goal, explaining cultural continuity, but falls short. She successfully argues that the therapeutic discourse has been incorporated into both important institutions and individual world views. However, it is never clear that this, in itself, explains the resiliency of the discourse. While I see the connection, I do not think these reasons are ever truly driven home as the chief explanans.

More generally, Illouz' book has an underlying tension that is never explicitly addressed. At times she argues that the therapeutic discourse fundamentally reshaped society, while at other times she seems to suggest that the discourse was an effect of larger structural processes. In her discussion of work, for example, there is an unresolved tension...