Saving the Modern Soul Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help

Examines the profound impact of therapeutic discourse on our lives and on our contemporary notions of identity. This book examines a range of sources to show how self-help culture has transformed contemporary emotional life and how therapy complicates individuals' lives even as it claims to dissect their emotional experiences and heal trauma.

"A tour de force of critical insights and broad scholarship that provides a rich banquet of ideas for those interested in a broader understanding of the modern soul. It is one of those rare books that forces the reader, whether he agrees or disagrees, to think in new and creative ways."—Charles W. Smith, author of Success and Survival on Wall Street

"Eva Illouz has made another seminal contribution to cultural sociology. Forty years ago, Philip Rieff announced the advent of a new 'therapeutic culture' wherein self-realization, once achieved as a byproduct of commitment to a communal purpose, is pursued as an end in itself. How the therapeutic culture affects selfhood, on the other hand, has remained a mystery. To clarify the matter, Illouz shows how therapeutic values insinuate themselves into the corporate world, the state, mass media, civil society, the family, and the bedroom. Eva Illouz has given to our generation the fullest and clearest account of therapeutic individualism ever written."—Barry Schwartz, author of Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era

"Located within a cultural history of introspection, Eva Illouz has given us a highly original treatise-a cultural critique-of therapeutic discourse as one of the principal historical formations, languages, and codes that both articulate and shape what modern selfhood is today. An important work in cultural sociology and the sociology of emotions, Illouz will change many of our ideas about the emotions and late capitalism."—E. Doyle McCarthy, author of Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge

The language of psychology is all-pervasive in American culture - from "The Sopranos" to "Oprah", from the abundance of self-help books to the private consulting room, and from the support group to the magazine advice column. "Saving the Modern Soul" examines the profound impact of therapeutic discourse on our lives and on our contemporary notions of identity. Eva Illouz plumbs today's particular cultural moment to understand how and why psychology has secured its place at the core of modern identity. She examines a wide range of sources to show how self-help culture has transformed contemporary emotional life and how therapy complicates individuals' lives even as it claims to dissect their emotional experiences and heal trauma.