In The Triumph of the Therapeutic, the sociologist Philip Rieff…thought the emergent therapeutic culture was an “anti-culture” based on an “ethic of release,” which fostered individualism and preoccupation with the self. Falling by the wayside was the earlier belief that communal commitments provided salvation from the unbridled self and that culture provided relief from the pressure of impulses by limiting them to “fixed wants” and disciplining their expression. Whereas the religious world view erected “creedal hedges…around impulses of independence or autonomy from communal purpose,” the therapeutic one removed all such boundaries. By Rieff’s logic, the new focus on “a manipulatable sense of well being” as an end in itself not only atomized individuals but also forecloesed fulfillment of the profound human need for meaning and common purpose.
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy HIJACKED the Civil Rights Revolution, p. 45.