Rethinking therapeutic culture

278 Pages·2015·0.871 MB·English

by  Aubry, Timothy Richard, Travis, Trysh

Rethinking Therapeutic Culture

Rethinking
Therapeutic Culture
Edited by Timothy Aubry and Trysh Travis
The University of Chicago Press Chicago & London
Timothy aubry is associate professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. He is
the author of Reading as Therapy: What Contemporary Fiction Does for Middle- Class
Americans. Trysh Travis is a cultural and literary historian who teaches in the
Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Florida. She is the
author of The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from
Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2015 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 24993- 3 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 25013- 7 (paper)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 25027- 4 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226250274.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Aubry, Timothy Richard, 1975– author.
Rethinking therapeutic culture / Timothy Aubry and Trysh Travis.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 226- 24993- 3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 0- 226- 25013- 7 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978- 0- 226- 25027- 4 (e- book) 1. Therapeutic communities. 2. Self- help groups.
I. Travis, Trysh, author. II. Title.
rc489.t67a93 2015
615.8'528—dc23
2014033249
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
C o n t e n t s
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
What is “therapeutic culture,” and why do we need to “rethink” it? 1
Tim Aubry and Trysh Travis
chapter 1 Damage
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans were inured to
suffering. Maybe we have something to learn from them. 24
Joseph M. Gabriel
chapter 2 Gospel
If Christian ministers and secular therapists now sound strangely alike, it’s
because they have been imitating each other for over a century. 34
Kathryn Lofton
chapter 3 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. 46
Courtney Bender
chapter 4 Race
An underground Harlem clinic could have radicalized the practice of
therapy in the 1950s— if only more people had paid attention. 59
Gabriel Mendes
vi Contents
chapter 5 Motherhood
As they warned women about the perils of maternal overinvolvement,
midcentury psychological experts inadvertently helped to pave the way
for second- wave feminism. 72
Rebecca Jo Plant
chapter 6 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. 85
Badia Ahad
chapter 7 Radical
Although the radical therapists of the 1960s failed to make therapy into
a revolutionary tool, they did succeed at transforming their own profession. 96
Michael Staub
chapter 8 Narcissism
The narcissism that worries social critics so much bears little resemblance
to the one that interests psychoanalysts. Why is that? 108
Elizabeth Lunbeck
chapter 9 The Left
How did the “discharge” of negative emotions become a substitute for
structural critique? 119
Beryl Satter
chapter 10 Pills
Psychotropic drug users are political actors too. 132
David Herzberg
chapter 11 Testimony
What happens— and who benefits— when trauma victims are encouraged
to tell their stories? 143
Stevan Weine
Contents vii
chapter 12 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. 154
Tanya Erzen
chapter 13 Privacy
In order to shield their actions from public scrutiny, corporations depend
upon protections of privacy that individual citizens have come to disdain. 166
Elizabeth Spelman
chapter 14 Pain
Rather than trying to eliminate pain, some modern therapeutic practices
invite us to experience the body’s contingency and permeability. 175
Suzanne Bost
chapter 15 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. 187
Michael Sayeau
chapter 16 Practice
A therapist works through— and with— the critique of therapeutic culture. 199
Philip Cushman
Afterword
One of the therapeutic culture’s most persuasive critics considers the
historical category anew. 211
Jackson Lears
Notes 217
Contributors 251
Index 255

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
I have been thinking about therapeutic culture for over a decade, and during
that time many people have responded to my ideas, challenged my arguments,
and offered extremely useful provocations, among them Diana Fuss, Michael
Wood, Mark McGurl, Leah Price, Joe Parsons, John Brenkman, Jon Baskin,
Mary McGlynn, Shelly Eversley, Robert Devens, Timothy Mennel, Rita Felski,
Sandra Parvu, and Tala Dowlatshahi. In the past several years, I have been par-
ticularly inspired by the contributors to this volume and the careful, textured
accounts they have offered of how therapeutic culture functions in particular
places at particular times in history. But more than anyone else, my coeditor,
Trysh Travis, has underscored for me the remarkable complexity of this collec-
tion’s subject matter. The project has been a complete collaboration; reflecting
that fact, our names appear in alphabetical order. But I would nevertheless
hold that she deserves more credit than I do, at least for the book’s moments
of greatest clarity and insight. Her indefatigable commitment to the editorial
process— to finding the clearest, sharpest, and most precise formulation for
every given idea— not only resulted in more polished essays, it also inspired
many of the volume’s most surprising and original arguments. From her, in
other words, I learned just how important the task of rethinking can be. It
was, admittedly, an exhausting process; fortunately Trysh’s ever- reliable, often
pugnacious sense of humor also made it an extremely amusing one.
Timothy Aubry