Interesting author here! I haven't read any of these yet. But Sally Satel makes some good sense in this summary.
However, if you look at some other titles, you find "
Drug Treatment Posted: Wednesday, January 1, 2003
This study demonstrates the effectiveness of mandated treatment for many drug abusers."
Seems entirely contradictory to me. But I gotta read `em!
http://aei.org/scholars/filter.all,scho ... k_list.asp
http://aei.org/books/bookID.815,filter. ... etail2.asp
This book examines the recent rise of ?therapism,? a doctrine whose practitioners consider most people emotionally damaged and in steady need of therapeutic improvement. The authors reject the notion that uninhibited emotional openness is essential to mental health and conclude that human beings should generally be treated as self-reliant and responsible moral agents.
Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at AEI and the author of The War against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men (Touchstone Books, 2001) and Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women (Touchstone Books, 1995). Sally Satel, M.D., is a resident scholar at AEI, a practicing psychiatrist, a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine, and the author of PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine (Basic Books, 2000).
This summary is adapted from the authors? preface.
How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance
By Sally Satel, M.D., Christina Hoff Sommers
Posted: Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Publication Date: April 2005
Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. In recent decades, however, we have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, psychically frail, and requiring the ministrations of mental health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Being "in touch with one's feelings" and freely expressing them have become paramount personal virtues. Today-with a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every conceivable problem-we are at risk of degrading our native ability to cope with life's challenges.
Drawing on established science and common sense, Christina Hoff Sommers and Dr. Sally Satel reveal how "therapism" and the burgeoning trauma industry have come to pervade our lives. Help is offered everywhere under the presumption that we need it: in children's classrooms, the workplace, churches, courtrooms, the media, the military. But with all the "help" comes a host of troubling consequences, including:
The myth of stressed-out, homework-burdened, hypercompetitive, and depressed or suicidal schoolchildren in need of therapy and medication
The loss of moral bearings in our approach to lying, crime, addiction, and other foibles and vices
The unasked-for "grief counselors" who descend on bereaved families, schools, and communities following a tragedy, offering dubious advice while billing plenty of money
The expansion of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from an affliction of war veterans to nearly everyone who has experienced a setback
Intelligent, provocative, and wryly amusing, One Nation under Therapy demonstrates that "talking about" problems is no substitute for confronting them.
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