Control and consolation in American culture and politics
Subtitle: rhetoric of therapy
By: by Dana L. Cloud.
Series: Rhetoric and society ;; v. 1; Rhetoric & society (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) ;; v. 1.
Publisher: Sage Publications
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Thousand Oaks
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
Subjects: Social problems -- United States -- Psychological aspects.; Psychotherapy -- Social aspects -- United States.; Psychotherapy -- Political aspects -- United States.; English language -- United States -- Rhetoric.; Psychoanalysis and culture -- United States.; Social control -- United States.; Rhetoric and psychology.
Description: What are the consequences in American society when social and political activism is replaced by pursuit of personal, psychological change? How does such a shift happen? Where is it visible?

In wide-ranging case studies, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics points out this change in American culture and attributes it to the "rhetoric of therapy." This rhetoric is defined as a pervasive cultural discourse that applies psychotherapy's lexicon - the constructive language of healing, coping, adaptation, and restoration of a previously existing order - to social and political conflict. The purpose of this therapeutic discourse is to encourage people to focus on themselves and their private lives rather than to attempt to reform flawed systems of social and political power. Author Dana L. Cloud focuses on the therapeutic discourse that emerged after the Vietnam War and links its rise to specific political and economic interests.

The critical case studies describe in detail not only what the therapeutic style looks like but how and why therapeutic discourses are persuasive.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-181) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : on therapy and the therapeutic; title: Perspectives on the therapeutic; title: The therapeutic in history : inventing and discplining the modern self; title: Family therapies : from the White House to the hood; title: The support group nation; title: The therapeutics of feminism : from self-esteem to suicide; title: The new age of post-marxism; title: Conclusion : antidotes to the therapeutic hegemony.