In therapy we trust

By Eva S. Moskowitz

Subjects: Self-actualization (Psychology), Social problems, United states, social conditions, 1945-, Popular works, Self-actualization (psychology), Happiness, Social conditions, Psychotherapy, History

Description: "Beginning with the example of a "Mind Cure" developed by mid-nineteenth-century clockmaker Phineas P. Quimby, Moskowitz explains how Americans' growing fascination with therapy led them to adopt new kinds of reform - including, at the turn of the twentieth century, provisions for psychological services in prisons, courts, hospitals, and schools. Depression-era divorce rates prompted colleges and high schools to offer courses on marital happiness and produced a new marriage-counseling industry. During World War II, Moskowitz shows, the army devoted unprecedented energy to a soldier's "psychological readiness for combat." Moskowitz also explores more recent developments, including Cold War-era psychological assumptions of magazine campaigns that targeted unhappy housewives. She confronts the social protest movements in the 60s and the explosion of 70s self-help fads that continue to the present.". "In a study that encompasses all aspects of American society - from television talk shows to the criminal justice system, from office politics to world politics - Moskowitz identifies a debilitating "sense of self" that is intimately bound up with the major developments of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.