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The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud
Since its publication in 1966, The Triumph of the Therapeutic has been hailed as a work of genuine brilliance, one of those books whose insights uncannily anticipate cultural developments and whose richness of argumentation reorients entire fields of inquiry. This special fortieth-anniversary edition of Philip Rieff’s masterpiece, the first volume in ISI Books’ new Background series, includes an introduction by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn and essays on the text by historians Eugene McCarraher and Wilfred McClay and philosopher Stephen Gardner.
325 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
October 30, 2013
Rieff is certainly no conservative in this book, as he will become in Sacred Order/Social Order, but he is certainly one of the finest intellects of the 20th century. Here he's a lot closer to Nietzsche, stopping to examine the deeper layers of flailing that comes from trying to derive a teleology from psychotherapy, and demanding a better way to situate the therapeutic in the post-Christian world. We shouldn't be surprised that nobody had the courage to respond to his challenge. A moderately difficult read and not a book that could be written today.
January 18, 2009
While writing a rather lengthy review, I accidentally closed the web browser, losing my work. Acutely painful, I assure you. I don't have the time or energy to do it over again. But I will say this:
The ideal notion of community ought to rest on rational consent, not upon a manipulative set of "inner ordinances" and interdictory symbols that guilt members into remaining emotionally invested and attached. Naturally Rieff anticipates this criticism, and wonders whether a traditional form of community can exist within a thoroughly morally permissive (i.e., non-manipulative) milieux. Traditional forms of community have never been rationally optional: they have, through "inner ordinances," transmitted to the individual from his earliest infancy a sense of right and wrong. By transgressing communal ordinances, the individual faced the prospect of profound shame and guilt. Only through obeying moral codes could the individual share in the fundamental pleasures of agreement and mutual contact. Communal purpose thus saved him from the "infinite variety of panic and emptiness" that he would otherwise face.
It's hard not to lament Freud's mechanistic rejection of altruism, sacrifice, and the very idea of love. But how can one lament the decline of asceticism and institutionalized social control? External coercion is a high price for simply belonging. Freud's goal of strengthening the ego remains important in a therapeutic sense, if humans wish not only to free themselves from overt social control, but also from the more subliminal forms of control that exist in the 21st century. (I'm referring here to advertising, and other insidious props of capitalism and entertainment). The irrational is all around us. We need an analytic attitude to combat it. I reject the idea that a scientific attitude excludes spirituality. Somehow, the dialectic of Science and Spirit will resolve itself.
The ideal notion of community ought to rest on rational consent, not upon a manipulative set of "inner ordinances" and interdictory symbols that guilt members into remaining emotionally invested and attached. Naturally Rieff anticipates this criticism, and wonders whether a traditional form of community can exist within a thoroughly morally permissive (i.e., non-manipulative) milieux. Traditional forms of community have never been rationally optional: they have, through "inner ordinances," transmitted to the individual from his earliest infancy a sense of right and wrong. By transgressing communal ordinances, the individual faced the prospect of profound shame and guilt. Only through obeying moral codes could the individual share in the fundamental pleasures of agreement and mutual contact. Communal purpose thus saved him from the "infinite variety of panic and emptiness" that he would otherwise face.
It's hard not to lament Freud's mechanistic rejection of altruism, sacrifice, and the very idea of love. But how can one lament the decline of asceticism and institutionalized social control? External coercion is a high price for simply belonging. Freud's goal of strengthening the ego remains important in a therapeutic sense, if humans wish not only to free themselves from overt social control, but also from the more subliminal forms of control that exist in the 21st century. (I'm referring here to advertising, and other insidious props of capitalism and entertainment). The irrational is all around us. We need an analytic attitude to combat it. I reject the idea that a scientific attitude excludes spirituality. Somehow, the dialectic of Science and Spirit will resolve itself.
December 19, 2014
"The Triumph of the Therapeutic" is a highly influential work on writers such as Alasdair MacIntyre. This is acknowledged by both writers and spoken to by Rieff in the 1987 preface of the reprint of his book. The Therapist of Rieff was combined with “…Nietzsche’s artist and Weber’s bureaucrat…” in "After Virtue", and Rieff completes the actors of the contemporary world with the addition of the “Baconian Scientist”. The Therapist is a corruption of Freud’s psychoanalytical process to the purpose of messianic movements in our society. Rieff feels Freud’s practice of psychology was focused on preparing the patient to be able to deal with the Hobbesian world through the individual’s balance within through self-analysis and that the use of psychoanalysis for cultural purposes amounted to the creation of a religion which to Freud would be an act of injuring the patient. In essence, Freud’s practice of psychology provides the individual the psychic basis for the role of Superman, Manager or Scientist in the world which the Modernist condition requires of them and presents the possibility of a “post-religious culture”. The first break with Freud is by Jung who formulizes archetypes as “…universal and historic forms of fantasy, sometimes memorialized as religions…” and, thereby, providing his patients and the community with a quasi-religious solution to Modernist condition. And what is critical is that Jung has discovered a methodology for communication through the symbolic not as an art but as science – a science that will combine the arts from literature to architecture into a tool of politics in a rational way for the use by mass movements intent on societal disruption and change. Rieff specifically references the Puritans of England as “…the carriers of new moral demands…” who after utilizing their symbolic forms to achieve power will “…use the symbol system as a control device…for preservation and expansion of the system…first established…” by them and for their new order. The communicational methods of the Puritans, the Soviets, and the neo-classical economists of today are clearly apparent.
Rieff also speaks of another student of Freud’s Wilhelm Reich who eventually followed his theories into the realm practiced by the Superman as a self-described Freudo-Marxist. Reich felt that a successful revolution had a requirement to be “…psychologically deep as well as politically broad…” in order to avoid “…counter-revolution…” from the “masses” and this would be accomplished through a non-institutionally based religion of the therapeutic. This allows the Therapist to combine the role of the Scientist with the language of religion for purposes of cultural change and control.
D. H. Lawrence is also treated by Rieff as a theoretical descendent of Freud. Lawrence rejects the sexual focus of Freud for love and sees love as the counterweight to psychoanalysis rationality. What is interesting about this theory is that in 1984 Orwell utilizes the power of love as the shield that protects his character, Julia, from the logic-driven control of the State. We must keep in mind that the emotive is a powerful force in mankind for contesting the rational. This is also the basis for Jung’s opinion of National Socialism in Germany. Rieff explains that from the Jungian perspective it represented “…a therapeutic realignment of an unbalanced German collective unconscious…” and a rejection of 19th century German rationalism. This is due to psychoanalytic theory and Marxism sharing a belief in human power as a method for achieving an improved world condition for mankind.
A fascinating read for anyone interested in the psychological roots of today's major social movements.
Rieff also speaks of another student of Freud’s Wilhelm Reich who eventually followed his theories into the realm practiced by the Superman as a self-described Freudo-Marxist. Reich felt that a successful revolution had a requirement to be “…psychologically deep as well as politically broad…” in order to avoid “…counter-revolution…” from the “masses” and this would be accomplished through a non-institutionally based religion of the therapeutic. This allows the Therapist to combine the role of the Scientist with the language of religion for purposes of cultural change and control.
D. H. Lawrence is also treated by Rieff as a theoretical descendent of Freud. Lawrence rejects the sexual focus of Freud for love and sees love as the counterweight to psychoanalysis rationality. What is interesting about this theory is that in 1984 Orwell utilizes the power of love as the shield that protects his character, Julia, from the logic-driven control of the State. We must keep in mind that the emotive is a powerful force in mankind for contesting the rational. This is also the basis for Jung’s opinion of National Socialism in Germany. Rieff explains that from the Jungian perspective it represented “…a therapeutic realignment of an unbalanced German collective unconscious…” and a rejection of 19th century German rationalism. This is due to psychoanalytic theory and Marxism sharing a belief in human power as a method for achieving an improved world condition for mankind.
A fascinating read for anyone interested in the psychological roots of today's major social movements.
May 12, 2021
Rieff offers a cultural and Freudian analysis of the West that is both insightful as it is disturbing. In this book, Rieff argues that Freud and his self-proclaimed disciples have led to the development of a new ideal for modern man: the psychological man. The West now sees its ultimate value as human desire unleashed. Human beings are not only to be free to express their desires, this is the very basis for having a self at all. To deny this is to oppress. But why care about a psychologist whose theories are now largely disputed or proven false? The reason this should be of any interest to us is that Freud is as much a sociologist reinventing western life in light of the "death of God," as he is a psychoanalyst, and ultimately a midwife to the modern myth of the self that creates itself. For Rieff, Freud has ushered in something completely new, an anti-culture that puts human beings individual desires as the pinnacle of all value and finds his identity and healing in himself rather than in his community. Mankind is ultimately the self-creating-self. He is the originator of his desires. His true self is not found in being an Aristotelian man of the city, or in being created in God's image, or even in economic activity. Man's true self is found in his libidinal desire.
Rieff makes a clear distinction between civilizations before modernity and modernity itself. Pre-modern societies were founded on authorities that made rules, symbols, and myths - think society-forming story, not the usual definition of fiction as we often do - that created a moral demand system of control and relief. These he calls therapies of commitment. Every society that has come before in Western history (it could easily be argued that most, if not, all societies are this way) has always had a divine authority above that then instructed the social, and then the psychological orders of human existence below. Some behaviors were rejected while other behaviors were accepted. Religion with its cult and laws creates culture. In pre-modern societies, the salvation and healing of the self is found in the community and its authoritative symbols that affirm and deny human behavior. For the Greco-Roman world, fate was the authority, honor, shame, and taboos the centers of control. For the Christian West, it was the law of God, preaching and the sacraments, salvation being found in union with Him. In contrast, modern man rejects these previous orders for an atheistic one that has no authority. Salvation is not found in the community that is upheld either by the authority of fate, honor and shame, or the Church with its mediating authorities, sacraments and rites; rather it is found in the self expressing itself without restriction. Salvation is not even a thing that modern man thinks needs to be found, for as Rieff says, "Religious man was born to be saved, therapeutic man is born to be pleased." Desire becomes the ultimate expression of human freedom and identity. This is the myth of the romantic era in full bloom and operational - Desire is original and individual and is the fundamental reality of self and existence. Yet, by what authority did modernity place its constraints? The answer will show that this new society without God cannot legitimize its authority.
Freud, the cold atheist that he was, rather than creating a therapy of commitment, created a therapy that was individual and non-cultic, psychoanalysis. It offered no myth, no authoritative and orienting story, no doctrine as his successors would later try to achieve through a reinvention and reapplication of Freud's therapy. What Rieff reveals is that while Freud's theories and therapy no longer find strong support, when one looks to him as a force of cultural change, his significance is overwhelming. For example, the incest taboo, while an explanation of sexual desire run amok (Oedipus complex), it is equally a story about authority in society, in this case, the authority of the father to control the son's libido. Understanding this background reality, repressed by the superego, but in a sense, the id remembers and desires, psychoanalysis is the technique that then gives man understanding of his neurotic obsessions, whether it be fantasies of sleeping with his mother or the rest of the family. Freud's investigations into taboo are really analyses of authority. It is important to note, Feud did not want to destroy the taboos of society, otherwise, in his mind, society could not exist. To put it crudely, to destroy taboos would result in fathers and sons killing each other for sleeping with their wives/mothers. He sees humankind's achievements as being the result of placing restrictions on sex, which, pent up under this repression, can be diverted to behaviors that are societally positive, whether it be art, music, politics, etc. The root and origin of these societal interactions is libido. These are the actions of sublimation.
But where Freud thought reason and science could replace the authorities of God and the Church, Rieff argues that this is impossible. Science, including psychotherapy is strictly analytical. It observes and cannot demand. While Rieff never subscribed to a religion, he thought the modern experiment of life without God would lead nowhere. Without God there is no authority. As someone else once said, if God does not exist, everything is permissible. After modern man has made desire the ultimate goal, not a by-product to realizing the good, or following the proper ends of natural law as Aristotle would prescribe, there is no authority to control his desire. The moral demand system of the West is losing its controls and releases, and the releases are overriding the controls. Rather than science and reason becoming authorities, modernity has dispensed with authority and is running on the fumes of a past civilization, that therapeutic man is now destroying bit by bit. Modern man far from being more scientific creates new religions of individuality (think those who describe themselves as being spiritual but not religious). The rituals of these religions/therapies are not used to submit to an authority or right ordering of things, they are used to become therapies of individuality to soothe the self, but lacking authority and metanarrative, cannot instruct man for a communal purpose. A society that permits everything and raises the value of desire to be both the ultimate value and the very identity of the self is impossible. Such a society will rip itself apart. Rieff's Freudian sociology shows that while the academics have largely abandoned his theories, his values have influenced the modern world more than any other man. He is at once analyst, prophet, and advocate for the romantic self. Rieff sees a future world where human beings rather than finding their true self in community and seeking truth, become geniuses of themselves and the ordering of their desires, taking on and adapting whatever new religion or method gives them satisfaction. People after Freud embraced and expanded the releases and decided that the repressive forces, which Freud thought necessary for society, were not the places of control that keeps chaos at bay, but the central problem keeping us from freedom.
Rieff makes a clear distinction between civilizations before modernity and modernity itself. Pre-modern societies were founded on authorities that made rules, symbols, and myths - think society-forming story, not the usual definition of fiction as we often do - that created a moral demand system of control and relief. These he calls therapies of commitment. Every society that has come before in Western history (it could easily be argued that most, if not, all societies are this way) has always had a divine authority above that then instructed the social, and then the psychological orders of human existence below. Some behaviors were rejected while other behaviors were accepted. Religion with its cult and laws creates culture. In pre-modern societies, the salvation and healing of the self is found in the community and its authoritative symbols that affirm and deny human behavior. For the Greco-Roman world, fate was the authority, honor, shame, and taboos the centers of control. For the Christian West, it was the law of God, preaching and the sacraments, salvation being found in union with Him. In contrast, modern man rejects these previous orders for an atheistic one that has no authority. Salvation is not found in the community that is upheld either by the authority of fate, honor and shame, or the Church with its mediating authorities, sacraments and rites; rather it is found in the self expressing itself without restriction. Salvation is not even a thing that modern man thinks needs to be found, for as Rieff says, "Religious man was born to be saved, therapeutic man is born to be pleased." Desire becomes the ultimate expression of human freedom and identity. This is the myth of the romantic era in full bloom and operational - Desire is original and individual and is the fundamental reality of self and existence. Yet, by what authority did modernity place its constraints? The answer will show that this new society without God cannot legitimize its authority.
Freud, the cold atheist that he was, rather than creating a therapy of commitment, created a therapy that was individual and non-cultic, psychoanalysis. It offered no myth, no authoritative and orienting story, no doctrine as his successors would later try to achieve through a reinvention and reapplication of Freud's therapy. What Rieff reveals is that while Freud's theories and therapy no longer find strong support, when one looks to him as a force of cultural change, his significance is overwhelming. For example, the incest taboo, while an explanation of sexual desire run amok (Oedipus complex), it is equally a story about authority in society, in this case, the authority of the father to control the son's libido. Understanding this background reality, repressed by the superego, but in a sense, the id remembers and desires, psychoanalysis is the technique that then gives man understanding of his neurotic obsessions, whether it be fantasies of sleeping with his mother or the rest of the family. Freud's investigations into taboo are really analyses of authority. It is important to note, Feud did not want to destroy the taboos of society, otherwise, in his mind, society could not exist. To put it crudely, to destroy taboos would result in fathers and sons killing each other for sleeping with their wives/mothers. He sees humankind's achievements as being the result of placing restrictions on sex, which, pent up under this repression, can be diverted to behaviors that are societally positive, whether it be art, music, politics, etc. The root and origin of these societal interactions is libido. These are the actions of sublimation.
But where Freud thought reason and science could replace the authorities of God and the Church, Rieff argues that this is impossible. Science, including psychotherapy is strictly analytical. It observes and cannot demand. While Rieff never subscribed to a religion, he thought the modern experiment of life without God would lead nowhere. Without God there is no authority. As someone else once said, if God does not exist, everything is permissible. After modern man has made desire the ultimate goal, not a by-product to realizing the good, or following the proper ends of natural law as Aristotle would prescribe, there is no authority to control his desire. The moral demand system of the West is losing its controls and releases, and the releases are overriding the controls. Rather than science and reason becoming authorities, modernity has dispensed with authority and is running on the fumes of a past civilization, that therapeutic man is now destroying bit by bit. Modern man far from being more scientific creates new religions of individuality (think those who describe themselves as being spiritual but not religious). The rituals of these religions/therapies are not used to submit to an authority or right ordering of things, they are used to become therapies of individuality to soothe the self, but lacking authority and metanarrative, cannot instruct man for a communal purpose. A society that permits everything and raises the value of desire to be both the ultimate value and the very identity of the self is impossible. Such a society will rip itself apart. Rieff's Freudian sociology shows that while the academics have largely abandoned his theories, his values have influenced the modern world more than any other man. He is at once analyst, prophet, and advocate for the romantic self. Rieff sees a future world where human beings rather than finding their true self in community and seeking truth, become geniuses of themselves and the ordering of their desires, taking on and adapting whatever new religion or method gives them satisfaction. People after Freud embraced and expanded the releases and decided that the repressive forces, which Freud thought necessary for society, were not the places of control that keeps chaos at bay, but the central problem keeping us from freedom.
May 25, 2012
The fact is, I am simply not equipped to understand this book. I gave it a heroic effort though, and did learn some things about Freud, Jung, and Lawrence in the process. This book came up in a Christian Anthropology class this past year and I finally got around to following up on it, and found the excerpts used in class to describe quite precisely some of the dysfunctional aspects of our present culture. If I understand the author correctly (and it's entirely possible that I don't), it seems as if he is quite aware of these destructive, individualistic, and ultimately unfulfilling impulses driving our contemporary culture, but sees a solution not in a return to the antiquated ascetic "collective therapies" of the past (prayer, fasting, sacramental participation, etc.) but an entirely new collective therapy that eschews individualism and its psychologically destructive structures, but the old "delusions" as well. I certainly wasn't expecting this coming from ISI but my best reading has confused me quite a bit and given me the impression that Rieff is no ally of traditional religion. However, this is just an impression, and I find myself doubting this judgment for no other reason than I am not conversant with the Freudian and post-Freudian terminology he uses somewhat glibly and opaquely at times. In short, it feels like starting to listen in on an intense conversation about quite particular events three quarters of the way through.
July 3, 2019
This was a challenging but fascinating work of cultural criticism, deeply pertinent some 50 years after coming into print. Philip Rieff traces the emergence of “Psychological man” (the successor of Political, Religious, and Economic man—pardon the gender exclusivity) as the current archetype of Western civilization. Rieff critiques three disciples of Freud (Jung, Reich, and Lawrence) for going beyond their teacher’s merely “analytic” attitude to promote a “therapeutic” culture (or even “religion”) founded on remissions rather than controls. Rieff’s style feels at once elliptical and yet punctuated by aphorisms throughout. (“Crowded more and more together, we are learning to live more distantly from one another;” “Theoretical categories, too passionately held, generate their own facts.”) As someone largely un-versed in sociology and psychology, it took time to adapt to Rieff’s lexicon, but the final chapter tied the work together in a powerful way. For those interested in a critical reading of modern (and particularly “therapeutic”) culture, I recommend this work, as well as the two critical essays that follow in its 40th anniversary edition.
January 14, 2016
This book is not to be entered into lightly. It is thick with sociological language and there is much that needs to be unpacked. This 40th anniversary issue is very helpful with two essays at the end which explain Rieff's theory of culture and give biographical insight into his academic career and personal life since the book's publication.
Rieff's theory comes out of the reality that Western man had been deconverted from belief in God, Christianity and any other symbol system that might make culture coherent. Freud had been one of the first to see the implications of this and adopted an analytical approach to help people deal with the misery of life without purpose or meaning. He produced the "psychological man" who would succeed religious and economic man who had both failed to bring meaning to culture. His disciples--Jung, Reich and Lawrence--could not tolerate the hopelessness of such a condition and sought to create a symbol system where people could flourish as a culture without the aid of any natural law or supernatural reality. Reiff did not believe this was helpful or even possible and postulated that western culture would grow increasingly individualistic and fragmented with nothing acting as glue to hold culture together. Authority of all kinds would be rejected and each person would be his or her own god as it were. If this is sounding familiar, we are pretty close to there.
Rieff's theory comes out of the reality that Western man had been deconverted from belief in God, Christianity and any other symbol system that might make culture coherent. Freud had been one of the first to see the implications of this and adopted an analytical approach to help people deal with the misery of life without purpose or meaning. He produced the "psychological man" who would succeed religious and economic man who had both failed to bring meaning to culture. His disciples--Jung, Reich and Lawrence--could not tolerate the hopelessness of such a condition and sought to create a symbol system where people could flourish as a culture without the aid of any natural law or supernatural reality. Reiff did not believe this was helpful or even possible and postulated that western culture would grow increasingly individualistic and fragmented with nothing acting as glue to hold culture together. Authority of all kinds would be rejected and each person would be his or her own god as it were. If this is sounding familiar, we are pretty close to there.
April 26, 2017
"The Triumph of the Therapeutic" is a famous and perceptive work that has been on my "to-read" list for a long time. Many religious thinkers, such as Rod Dreher in his book "The Benedict Option," have gleaned many useful insights from Philip Rieff. I do believe we live in a very therapeutic age. I found it a rather challenging read, particularly since I have little exposure to or understanding of many of the thinkers Rieff analyzes - Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, William Reich, D.H. Lawrence (I read an edition released in 1968; the newer ISI edition features extra essays by additional scholars and an introduction by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn which may be helpful). I found the first couple of chapters and the final chapter the most interesting, but this is certainly a book I should read again after learning more about psychology.
January 16, 2016
I first read this book a few years ago, and only partially understood it. Last fall I read My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, written 40 years after The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud and The Crisis of Modernity by Augusto Del Noce, both of which dealt with post-Christian aspects of the West, and particularly its dissolution of coherent vertical structures of authority. Rieff was much less sanguine after watching the practical outworkings of society after embracing many of the aspects of the Freudian world view. Rieff spends some time in discussing post-Freudian thinkers, Jung, Carl Gustav, Wilhelm Reich, and D.H. Lawrence. While each of these men diverged from Freud, their points of departure illuminate what Freud was really saying about emancipated "Man" from the prior (negative) constraints of culture. I recommend highly the last 20 pages or so of the book as a good summary of Rieff's observations. These pages are useful for any Christian, first of all for introspection, and then as a checklist of aspects of the West which are now thoroughly secularized, and perhaps now antithetical to traditional Christian thought and practice.
April 11, 2022
Whew... Definitely can't say I understood it all so I don't really feel that qualified to review / rate it yet I finished it so here I am. I bought it because Tim Keller mentioned it. It's really not a layman's text (or at least an extreme layman like me). He uses a number of terms / phrases throughout the book without first defining them, which was confusing. But there were some zingy and eerily prophetic one-liners - one that comes to mind is the reality that our culture has arrived at the point of "having the freedom to choose anything yet having nothing worth choosing". I don't get the impression Rieff was a theist of any kind but I could be wrong. Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether he was presenting his own opinion or the positions of Jung, Reich or DH Lawrence. Dang, he was really good at burning Jung (which my husband, a one-time Jungian, appreciated more than me as I read him a particularly critical passage).
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August 31, 2007Anybody who married Susan Sontag obviously needs therapy -- yuk yuk yuk. Actually this book is an anti-therapy screed.
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April 26, 2016More information here.
April 3, 2023
I’ve been putting off reading, and reviewing, this book for quite some time now - I think first because I believe that there are at least a dozen books to read prior to this to properly analyze it. But I can’t seem to ever get away from the topics of this book for too long, these subjects always seem to be lingering around me. Whether it’s articles (James Mumford ‘Therapy Beyond Good and Evil’ from the New Atlantis, spring 2022, volume 68) that dance around the topics or conversations with friends and acquaintances about therapeutic approaches, these ideas seem to be haunting me now more than ever.
Rieff has an intimidatingly smart mind and he doesn’t dumb down his concepts for his audience - he expects you to to be as intensely interested in the subject as he is. He is writing in 1966 about this new age of therapy and how it differs from the past. He believes that all social order needs to be grounded in a sacred order and that culture functions to produce controls and releases. Looking at the past ages, Rieff finds two world orders: the mythological, which is the Greek world, as they supplant their norms in/through their mythological stories; and the Christian world, which is monotheistic and partially centered around the commandments (simplifying here for sake of brevity). Rieff states that currently, however, we are moving into this new third world, the therapeutic world, which is throwing away the traditional and foundational sacred order underpinnings. In this new culture, or rather anti-culture, there is no emphasis placed on inculcating/transmitting tradition, but rather attacking it.
Freud was the forerunner of this new culture, as his approach was an analytical therapy (check-in with yourself to see how you feel about a scenario) rather than the previous commitment therapy (i.e. confession with a priest to help recommit/renter you with culture and reaffirm your relationship with the sacred order/religion). Freud creates this new therapy but he completely sacrifices any sense of communal purpose and only focuses on a sort of personal fulfillment/happiness, an expressive individualism. Reiff finds these ideas catastrophic, as every culture is mostly ‘controls’, because, as Freud says, “repression buys civilization” - that all cultures are defined by their interdictions, or what is negated. So, we’re doing away with negative, or that’s what our society is an attempt to do. However, because of this radicalized, permissive orientation individuals only focus on making themselves happier by not having any commitment therapy. In other words, there is a total sacrifice of community that is made due to this war against any and all repression. This sacrificing of community for the individual is the ‘anti-culture’ movement. Thus, the new ‘psychological-man’ only sees cost with any restrictions on themselves; the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have been cast aside, there is only ‘well’ (happy) or ‘unwell’ (unhappy). This, Rieff believes, inevitably leads to violence - a war of all against all, producing a Hobbesian situation.
It’s hard to remember that politics, according to the ancient view, was not just about power and the economy but about striving to conform shared life to an order rooted in the nature of things and so make public life meaningful in a cosmic framework. If there is no ‘nature of things’ public life becomes a balancing act of assuring all private lives, all individual desires, are satisfied as much as possible. But, as Freud and many others have noted, human beings are not finally satisfied being mere individuals. In theological terms we were made for communion, for common life guided by a common understanding of what is good and true. That common vision and it’s representation, in custom, practices, taboos, and other forms are what constitute a culture. One of Phillip Rieff’s great insights is that if the desires of individuals are the only objective reality we can recognize then we don’t have a culture, we have an anti-culture, a system for encouraging self-definition without restraint. It’s an anti-culture, not because it’s chaotic or unstructured, but because it’s structures work in the opposite direction of cultures throughout human history. Real cultures are mechanisms of restraint, our anti-culture is guided by an ethic of release, of personal liberation committed, in Rieff’s words, “to the systematic hunting down of all settled convictions”. Now, how does religion fit into such a setting? It was once assumed by sociologists that modern societies, societies devoted more to the liberation of than the restraint of individual desires, would have no need for religion. But, as it has turned out, religion is still a feature of modern life, at least in the US. Americans have rarely been troubled by the providing of their faith by making faith an intensely personal matter. So for many Americans religion still retains subjective plausibility even if it lacks an objective, ‘taken-for-granted-ness’. Religious beliefs, like all beliefs, are a preference not a necessity; religion is only an expression of individual desire, not of cosmic reality. Phillip Rieff predicted, in 1966, the advent of a more therapeutic self-centered religion in America. “In the emergent culture” he wrote - and note that adjective, emergent, as for Rieff the emergent culture was an anti-culture, “a wider range of people will have spiritual concerns and engage in spiritual pursuits”. Note that Rieff predicted the displacement of religion with a vague ‘spirituality’. He goes on, “people with continue to genuflect and read the Bible, which has long achieved the status of great literature, but no prophet will denounce the rich attire or stop the dancing; there will be more theatre, not less and no puritan will denounce the stage and draw its curtains. On the contrary, I expect that modern society will mount psychodramas far more frequently than its ancestors mounted miracles plays, with patient analysts acting out their inner lives”. So he even predicted the rise of Oprah. Rieff ends this speculation with this observation, “psychological man in his independence from all gods, can feel free to use all god terms. I imagine he will be hedger against his own bets; a user of any faith that lends itself to therapeutic use”.
Now, this new man, even though he will be a hedger against his own bets, will stand under the illusion of total self-reliance — a notion of pure undetermined freedom of choice, free of tradition, obligation, or commitment, as the essence of the self. In turn, in the domain of love and marriage, this notion fuels the ascendancy of 'the therapeutic attitude,' which has become much more widely diffused than the older notions of obligation and willingness to sacrifice one’s self for others. In other words, the middle-class mainstream sees the authentic self as the source of their standards, and good relationships are based in self-knowledge, self-realization, and open and honest communication. While this orientation may seem positive, as honesty and open communication are certainly proper ways to conduct oneself, the actuality is that this new grounding, which these attributes will be supplanted in, is no grounding at all; so, consequently, they lose their legitimacy because they are no longer tethered to any sacred order underpinnings, or sense of an ultimate good. It is akin to two astronauts cutover from the shuttle, flipping endlessly through space, but convinced that embracing one another is what the sufficient action is in sustaining themselves. Rieff describes this lack of direction due to this new sense of total self-reliance saying, “Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.” Sad.
Quotes/Excerpts:
- (intro E. Lasch-Quinn) Ignoring a previous counsel and reflection from Aristotle to Freud, we embrace a gospel of personal happiness, defined as the unbridled pursuit of impulse. Yet, we remain profoundly unhappy
- At worst, impulse – when not embedded in human association and cultural meaning – plunges people, already temperamentally inclined toward estrangement, deeper into the abyss of the psyche. It’s wreckage ranges from depression to genocide.
- We believe “we can live freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except the sense of the past – as I remembering, honest, and friendly barbarians all, in a technological Eden”.
- This hardly means that the modern individual has abandoned spiritual concerns, but rather that they have been recast purely as enhancing personal well-being, instead of serving as a source of love or awe before the great mysteries, or inspiring gratitude for the gift of life.
- To Rieff, the psyche’s reach toward the divine lies at the foundation of culture. Freud’s view that nothing exists beyond the individual and society rendered religious belief – and the search for meaning – a pathological delusion.
- To Rieff, culture gives people the means of “controlling the infinite variety of panic and emptiness to which they are disposed”. It provides a “great chain of meaning” that delivers us from the “destructive illusions of uniqueness and separateness” to which we are prone
- In every culture there is a “delicate interplay of right and wrong,” expressed in the form of permissions and interdictions, which we ignore at the “terrible cost of guilt”.
- The individual’s well-being derived from his or her bond with the community, which, through both reprimand and solace, provides legitimate outlets for impulses and desires as well as the underlying reasons for belief.
- In the commitment mode of culture, individuals built character by learning self-mastery and changing themselves; they were even reborn, after a fashion, when they learned to control desire. A healing discipline helped people “carry out their pledges to some communal purpose.” In the purely therapeutic mode, where a guiding symbolic” is absent, therapy instead takes the form of self-analysis; it is “not primarily transformative but informative”.
- (Quotes from Rieff going forward) But, suppose the tension is driven deeper – so deep that all communication of ideals come under permanent and easy suspicion? The question is no longer as Dostoevsky put it: “Can civilized men believe?” Rather: Can unbelieving men be civilized?
- Difficult as the modern cultural condition may be, I doubt that Western men can be persuaded again to the Greek opinion that the secret of happiness is to have as few needs as possible.
- Affluence achieved, the creation of a knowing rather than a believing person, able to enjoy life without erecting high symbolic hedges around it, distinguishes the emergent culture from its predecessor. The new anti-culture aims merely at an eternal interim ethic of release from the inherited controls.
- Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.
- I do not refer to a “sensualist” culture but to one that prepares for adaptability in matters of the “spirit”. There is no special affection reserved in this volume for the superiority usually claimed for “spiritual” over “sensual” concerns. In the emergent culture, a wider range of people will have “spiritual” concerns and engage in “spiritual” pursuits. There will be more singing and more listening. People will continue to genuflect and read the Bible, which has long achieved the status of great literature; but no prophet will denounce the rich attire or stop the dancing. There will be more theater, not less, and no Puritan will denounce the stage and draw its curtains. On the contrary, I expect that modern society will mount psychodramas far more frequently than its ancestors mounted miracles plays, with patient-analysts acting out their inner lives, after which they could extemporize the final act as interpretation. We shall even institutionalize in the hospital-theater the Verfremdungseffekt, with the therapeutic triumphantly enacting his own discovered will.
Rieff has an intimidatingly smart mind and he doesn’t dumb down his concepts for his audience - he expects you to to be as intensely interested in the subject as he is. He is writing in 1966 about this new age of therapy and how it differs from the past. He believes that all social order needs to be grounded in a sacred order and that culture functions to produce controls and releases. Looking at the past ages, Rieff finds two world orders: the mythological, which is the Greek world, as they supplant their norms in/through their mythological stories; and the Christian world, which is monotheistic and partially centered around the commandments (simplifying here for sake of brevity). Rieff states that currently, however, we are moving into this new third world, the therapeutic world, which is throwing away the traditional and foundational sacred order underpinnings. In this new culture, or rather anti-culture, there is no emphasis placed on inculcating/transmitting tradition, but rather attacking it.
Freud was the forerunner of this new culture, as his approach was an analytical therapy (check-in with yourself to see how you feel about a scenario) rather than the previous commitment therapy (i.e. confession with a priest to help recommit/renter you with culture and reaffirm your relationship with the sacred order/religion). Freud creates this new therapy but he completely sacrifices any sense of communal purpose and only focuses on a sort of personal fulfillment/happiness, an expressive individualism. Reiff finds these ideas catastrophic, as every culture is mostly ‘controls’, because, as Freud says, “repression buys civilization” - that all cultures are defined by their interdictions, or what is negated. So, we’re doing away with negative, or that’s what our society is an attempt to do. However, because of this radicalized, permissive orientation individuals only focus on making themselves happier by not having any commitment therapy. In other words, there is a total sacrifice of community that is made due to this war against any and all repression. This sacrificing of community for the individual is the ‘anti-culture’ movement. Thus, the new ‘psychological-man’ only sees cost with any restrictions on themselves; the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have been cast aside, there is only ‘well’ (happy) or ‘unwell’ (unhappy). This, Rieff believes, inevitably leads to violence - a war of all against all, producing a Hobbesian situation.
It’s hard to remember that politics, according to the ancient view, was not just about power and the economy but about striving to conform shared life to an order rooted in the nature of things and so make public life meaningful in a cosmic framework. If there is no ‘nature of things’ public life becomes a balancing act of assuring all private lives, all individual desires, are satisfied as much as possible. But, as Freud and many others have noted, human beings are not finally satisfied being mere individuals. In theological terms we were made for communion, for common life guided by a common understanding of what is good and true. That common vision and it’s representation, in custom, practices, taboos, and other forms are what constitute a culture. One of Phillip Rieff’s great insights is that if the desires of individuals are the only objective reality we can recognize then we don’t have a culture, we have an anti-culture, a system for encouraging self-definition without restraint. It’s an anti-culture, not because it’s chaotic or unstructured, but because it’s structures work in the opposite direction of cultures throughout human history. Real cultures are mechanisms of restraint, our anti-culture is guided by an ethic of release, of personal liberation committed, in Rieff’s words, “to the systematic hunting down of all settled convictions”. Now, how does religion fit into such a setting? It was once assumed by sociologists that modern societies, societies devoted more to the liberation of than the restraint of individual desires, would have no need for religion. But, as it has turned out, religion is still a feature of modern life, at least in the US. Americans have rarely been troubled by the providing of their faith by making faith an intensely personal matter. So for many Americans religion still retains subjective plausibility even if it lacks an objective, ‘taken-for-granted-ness’. Religious beliefs, like all beliefs, are a preference not a necessity; religion is only an expression of individual desire, not of cosmic reality. Phillip Rieff predicted, in 1966, the advent of a more therapeutic self-centered religion in America. “In the emergent culture” he wrote - and note that adjective, emergent, as for Rieff the emergent culture was an anti-culture, “a wider range of people will have spiritual concerns and engage in spiritual pursuits”. Note that Rieff predicted the displacement of religion with a vague ‘spirituality’. He goes on, “people with continue to genuflect and read the Bible, which has long achieved the status of great literature, but no prophet will denounce the rich attire or stop the dancing; there will be more theatre, not less and no puritan will denounce the stage and draw its curtains. On the contrary, I expect that modern society will mount psychodramas far more frequently than its ancestors mounted miracles plays, with patient analysts acting out their inner lives”. So he even predicted the rise of Oprah. Rieff ends this speculation with this observation, “psychological man in his independence from all gods, can feel free to use all god terms. I imagine he will be hedger against his own bets; a user of any faith that lends itself to therapeutic use”.
Now, this new man, even though he will be a hedger against his own bets, will stand under the illusion of total self-reliance — a notion of pure undetermined freedom of choice, free of tradition, obligation, or commitment, as the essence of the self. In turn, in the domain of love and marriage, this notion fuels the ascendancy of 'the therapeutic attitude,' which has become much more widely diffused than the older notions of obligation and willingness to sacrifice one’s self for others. In other words, the middle-class mainstream sees the authentic self as the source of their standards, and good relationships are based in self-knowledge, self-realization, and open and honest communication. While this orientation may seem positive, as honesty and open communication are certainly proper ways to conduct oneself, the actuality is that this new grounding, which these attributes will be supplanted in, is no grounding at all; so, consequently, they lose their legitimacy because they are no longer tethered to any sacred order underpinnings, or sense of an ultimate good. It is akin to two astronauts cutover from the shuttle, flipping endlessly through space, but convinced that embracing one another is what the sufficient action is in sustaining themselves. Rieff describes this lack of direction due to this new sense of total self-reliance saying, “Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.” Sad.
Quotes/Excerpts:
- (intro E. Lasch-Quinn) Ignoring a previous counsel and reflection from Aristotle to Freud, we embrace a gospel of personal happiness, defined as the unbridled pursuit of impulse. Yet, we remain profoundly unhappy
- At worst, impulse – when not embedded in human association and cultural meaning – plunges people, already temperamentally inclined toward estrangement, deeper into the abyss of the psyche. It’s wreckage ranges from depression to genocide.
- We believe “we can live freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except the sense of the past – as I remembering, honest, and friendly barbarians all, in a technological Eden”.
- This hardly means that the modern individual has abandoned spiritual concerns, but rather that they have been recast purely as enhancing personal well-being, instead of serving as a source of love or awe before the great mysteries, or inspiring gratitude for the gift of life.
- To Rieff, the psyche’s reach toward the divine lies at the foundation of culture. Freud’s view that nothing exists beyond the individual and society rendered religious belief – and the search for meaning – a pathological delusion.
- To Rieff, culture gives people the means of “controlling the infinite variety of panic and emptiness to which they are disposed”. It provides a “great chain of meaning” that delivers us from the “destructive illusions of uniqueness and separateness” to which we are prone
- In every culture there is a “delicate interplay of right and wrong,” expressed in the form of permissions and interdictions, which we ignore at the “terrible cost of guilt”.
- The individual’s well-being derived from his or her bond with the community, which, through both reprimand and solace, provides legitimate outlets for impulses and desires as well as the underlying reasons for belief.
- In the commitment mode of culture, individuals built character by learning self-mastery and changing themselves; they were even reborn, after a fashion, when they learned to control desire. A healing discipline helped people “carry out their pledges to some communal purpose.” In the purely therapeutic mode, where a guiding symbolic” is absent, therapy instead takes the form of self-analysis; it is “not primarily transformative but informative”.
- (Quotes from Rieff going forward) But, suppose the tension is driven deeper – so deep that all communication of ideals come under permanent and easy suspicion? The question is no longer as Dostoevsky put it: “Can civilized men believe?” Rather: Can unbelieving men be civilized?
- Difficult as the modern cultural condition may be, I doubt that Western men can be persuaded again to the Greek opinion that the secret of happiness is to have as few needs as possible.
- Affluence achieved, the creation of a knowing rather than a believing person, able to enjoy life without erecting high symbolic hedges around it, distinguishes the emergent culture from its predecessor. The new anti-culture aims merely at an eternal interim ethic of release from the inherited controls.
- Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.
- I do not refer to a “sensualist” culture but to one that prepares for adaptability in matters of the “spirit”. There is no special affection reserved in this volume for the superiority usually claimed for “spiritual” over “sensual” concerns. In the emergent culture, a wider range of people will have “spiritual” concerns and engage in “spiritual” pursuits. There will be more singing and more listening. People will continue to genuflect and read the Bible, which has long achieved the status of great literature; but no prophet will denounce the rich attire or stop the dancing. There will be more theater, not less, and no Puritan will denounce the stage and draw its curtains. On the contrary, I expect that modern society will mount psychodramas far more frequently than its ancestors mounted miracles plays, with patient-analysts acting out their inner lives, after which they could extemporize the final act as interpretation. We shall even institutionalize in the hospital-theater the Verfremdungseffekt, with the therapeutic triumphantly enacting his own discovered will.
February 12, 2018
I received this book as a random secret Santa gift from someone who picked it as one of their favorite books. I love getting recommendations from folks in that way, especially for a book that I had not heard of and would never have otherwise read.
I found the book overall pretty tough sledding, as it is densely written and filled with specialist vocabulary. The introduction acknowledges that, but then suggests, "Rieff's terms and formulations can be read the first time through for the general sense of the interpretation and lingered over later at length once the end is grasped." I think that is generally correct, but will warn that in this review, I'm still at the "general sense" end of understanding.
The main thrust of Triumph of the Therapeutic is about the sociological implications of Freud's theories (i.e., the titular "therapeutic"). It is divided into roughly three parts of unequal size: an initial set of chapters focusing on background and Freud (~90 pages), three chapters each covering one of Freud's followers (~110 pages), and a brief concluding chapter (~20 pages).
The first section, which I found completely fascinating, begins with the central question of the book, the so-called “religious question”: “How are we to be consoled for the misery of living?” Rieff says that, historically, this question has been answered by a society’s “culture,” and in particular, the specific set of demands a culture makes of those that participate in it. Complying with those demands (or, as Rieff calls them, “commitments” or “interdictions”) may be hard/painful for certain individuals, but the culture in turns holds out a promise of “salvation” to those who conform themselves. Although Rieff discusses Christian culture as one example of a culture that answers the “religious question” with a promise of “salvation,” he does not mean salvation in a theological sense. For example, Marxism has its own culture that holds out a promise of “salvation” through progress toward a non-theistic worker’s paradise.
Rieff discusses that most cultures go through stages of development, moving from “commitments” to “remissions” (i.e., stages where cultural control over various impulses relax). At some point the remissions fall out of balance with the commitments, and a cultural revolution occurs, culminating in a new culture with its own particular set of commitments. In many cases, a culture is tied to a specific society, and the culture rises and falls along with that society. But Rieff points out that one distinctive feature of Christianity is that it self-consciously divorced itself from any particular society and so has endured beyond its original Jewish/Roman context. (Incidentally, I was somewhat surprised to learn that Rieff is Jewish—the book discusses Christianity extensively but has almost no talk of Judaism).
In any event, this model of salvation through culture is what Rieff calls a “therapy of commitment.” Throughout history, an individual’s well-being and stability was established through full participation in the culture. Mental illness and other psychological problems (self-doubt, anxiety, etc.) are addressed through the process of the culture supporting its members in being good citizens.
Rieff observes that toward the end of the 19th century, our culture became more remissive, consistent with the standard pendulum swinging toward another cultural revolution. But unlike past cultural revolutions, the ascendant new culture does not contain its own new set of commitments as would be expected. Rather, the ascending culture is intensely individualistic and requires only minimal commitments of its members—and, as a result, it provides no mechanism of salvation. Rieff characterizes this as the “impoverishment of western culture.” He writes that, “Western culture is changing already into a symbol system unprecedented in its plasticity and absorptive capacity. Nothing much can opposite it really, and it welcomes all criticism, for, in a sense, it stands for nothing.”
Into this vacuum steps Freud and his psychoanalytic approach. To oversimplify: Freud believes that all psychological problems stem from conflict within an individual between the id, ego, and super-ego. Previously, that tension would be resolved by the cultural influence on the super-ego (i.e., the “therapy of commitment”) crushing the id, but with the ascendent culture no longer providing a “therapy of commitment,” some other mechanism is needed.
Thus, rather than relying on a uniform “cultural therapy” from society, Freud proposes individually analyzing and treating each patient to resolve the id/ego/super-ego tension. And because Freud has no interest in suggesting alternative cultures with different “therapies of commitment”—indeed, he does not think the “religious question” is worth asking—he is agnostic about the “right” way to approach each patient. Instead, he believes that through psychoanalytic testing, an individualized “cure” can be scientifically devised to relieve the psychological tension within a patient (the so-called “analytical” or “therapeutic” approach).
The second part of the book discusses the approach of three of Freud’s followers, all of whom started from Freud’s basic analytical approach but tried to go farther and provide an answer to the “religious question” Freud refused to ask. The most gripping of these to me was Wilhelm Reich, who started as a political, psychoanalytic Marxist and ended his life hawking pseudoscientific “orgone energy” machines. The chapter on Carl Jung was also interesting, but I confess that I could not really follow the discussion of D.H. Lawrence. Overall, it was enjoyable to read about three very different approaches, but this section did not have the kind of enduring relevance of the first part of the book.
The short third part is a brief conclusion returning to the themes of the first part. It was shocking to read the accuracy of cultural insights in a book written more than 50 years ago. For example, long before people were complaining about social media reinforced political bubbles, Rieff writes:
“In its reasonableness, the triumph of the therapeutic cannot be viewed simply as a break with the established order of moral demand, but rather as a profound effort to end the tyranny of primary group moral passion (operating first through the family) as the inner dynamic of social order. Crowded more and more together, we are learning to live more distantly from one another, in strategically varied and numerous contacts, rather than in the oppressive warmth of family and a few friends.”
There’s a lot to get through in Triumph of the Therapeutic, and I’m certain that I only scratched the surface on my first read (and probably misunderstood other things). But I'm glad I read it, and I would definitely commend it to others.
(I should also note that my version contains two academic commentaries at the end discussing the book, but I have not yet read those.)
I found the book overall pretty tough sledding, as it is densely written and filled with specialist vocabulary. The introduction acknowledges that, but then suggests, "Rieff's terms and formulations can be read the first time through for the general sense of the interpretation and lingered over later at length once the end is grasped." I think that is generally correct, but will warn that in this review, I'm still at the "general sense" end of understanding.
The main thrust of Triumph of the Therapeutic is about the sociological implications of Freud's theories (i.e., the titular "therapeutic"). It is divided into roughly three parts of unequal size: an initial set of chapters focusing on background and Freud (~90 pages), three chapters each covering one of Freud's followers (~110 pages), and a brief concluding chapter (~20 pages).
The first section, which I found completely fascinating, begins with the central question of the book, the so-called “religious question”: “How are we to be consoled for the misery of living?” Rieff says that, historically, this question has been answered by a society’s “culture,” and in particular, the specific set of demands a culture makes of those that participate in it. Complying with those demands (or, as Rieff calls them, “commitments” or “interdictions”) may be hard/painful for certain individuals, but the culture in turns holds out a promise of “salvation” to those who conform themselves. Although Rieff discusses Christian culture as one example of a culture that answers the “religious question” with a promise of “salvation,” he does not mean salvation in a theological sense. For example, Marxism has its own culture that holds out a promise of “salvation” through progress toward a non-theistic worker’s paradise.
Rieff discusses that most cultures go through stages of development, moving from “commitments” to “remissions” (i.e., stages where cultural control over various impulses relax). At some point the remissions fall out of balance with the commitments, and a cultural revolution occurs, culminating in a new culture with its own particular set of commitments. In many cases, a culture is tied to a specific society, and the culture rises and falls along with that society. But Rieff points out that one distinctive feature of Christianity is that it self-consciously divorced itself from any particular society and so has endured beyond its original Jewish/Roman context. (Incidentally, I was somewhat surprised to learn that Rieff is Jewish—the book discusses Christianity extensively but has almost no talk of Judaism).
In any event, this model of salvation through culture is what Rieff calls a “therapy of commitment.” Throughout history, an individual’s well-being and stability was established through full participation in the culture. Mental illness and other psychological problems (self-doubt, anxiety, etc.) are addressed through the process of the culture supporting its members in being good citizens.
Rieff observes that toward the end of the 19th century, our culture became more remissive, consistent with the standard pendulum swinging toward another cultural revolution. But unlike past cultural revolutions, the ascendant new culture does not contain its own new set of commitments as would be expected. Rather, the ascending culture is intensely individualistic and requires only minimal commitments of its members—and, as a result, it provides no mechanism of salvation. Rieff characterizes this as the “impoverishment of western culture.” He writes that, “Western culture is changing already into a symbol system unprecedented in its plasticity and absorptive capacity. Nothing much can opposite it really, and it welcomes all criticism, for, in a sense, it stands for nothing.”
Into this vacuum steps Freud and his psychoanalytic approach. To oversimplify: Freud believes that all psychological problems stem from conflict within an individual between the id, ego, and super-ego. Previously, that tension would be resolved by the cultural influence on the super-ego (i.e., the “therapy of commitment”) crushing the id, but with the ascendent culture no longer providing a “therapy of commitment,” some other mechanism is needed.
Thus, rather than relying on a uniform “cultural therapy” from society, Freud proposes individually analyzing and treating each patient to resolve the id/ego/super-ego tension. And because Freud has no interest in suggesting alternative cultures with different “therapies of commitment”—indeed, he does not think the “religious question” is worth asking—he is agnostic about the “right” way to approach each patient. Instead, he believes that through psychoanalytic testing, an individualized “cure” can be scientifically devised to relieve the psychological tension within a patient (the so-called “analytical” or “therapeutic” approach).
The second part of the book discusses the approach of three of Freud’s followers, all of whom started from Freud’s basic analytical approach but tried to go farther and provide an answer to the “religious question” Freud refused to ask. The most gripping of these to me was Wilhelm Reich, who started as a political, psychoanalytic Marxist and ended his life hawking pseudoscientific “orgone energy” machines. The chapter on Carl Jung was also interesting, but I confess that I could not really follow the discussion of D.H. Lawrence. Overall, it was enjoyable to read about three very different approaches, but this section did not have the kind of enduring relevance of the first part of the book.
The short third part is a brief conclusion returning to the themes of the first part. It was shocking to read the accuracy of cultural insights in a book written more than 50 years ago. For example, long before people were complaining about social media reinforced political bubbles, Rieff writes:
“In its reasonableness, the triumph of the therapeutic cannot be viewed simply as a break with the established order of moral demand, but rather as a profound effort to end the tyranny of primary group moral passion (operating first through the family) as the inner dynamic of social order. Crowded more and more together, we are learning to live more distantly from one another, in strategically varied and numerous contacts, rather than in the oppressive warmth of family and a few friends.”
There’s a lot to get through in Triumph of the Therapeutic, and I’m certain that I only scratched the surface on my first read (and probably misunderstood other things). But I'm glad I read it, and I would definitely commend it to others.
(I should also note that my version contains two academic commentaries at the end discussing the book, but I have not yet read those.)
February 4, 2023
This book is breathtaking. Rieff explains his cultural moment and predicts our current paradigm with ruthless clarity. Along the way he eviscerates Jung, to my great delight, and maps out largely validated expectations for where he sees the outflow of current therapeutic thinking will go. He is a natural heir of Nietzsche and gave me a similar headrush while reading him
Read
October 10, 2016Philip Rieff (1922-2006) is an American sociologist and cultural critic most active during the mid-twentieth century. His primary concern is the state of “Western” or “Christian” culture, which he considers to be “dying” at the end of a long period of “deconversion.” For Rieff, the “triumph of the therapeutic” after Freud is not a good thing. But it’s not entirely Freud’s fault, because his psychotherapy focuses on helping individuals control their instincts within the Christian cultural setting. For Rieff, the fault lies with Freud’s successors, who challenge the authority of culture to dictate the meaning of individual’s instincts. These successors include C.G. Jung, psychoanalyst and the father of the archetype and the idea of the collective unconscious; D.H. Lawrence, a novelist who celebrates the power of the erotic; and Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst who combined his therapeutic work with Marxist politics.
Rieff’s diagnosis of Western culture’s trouble is closely linked to his theories on why culture is important, and how culture changes and survives. Rieff believes that culture is important because it is a “system of moralizing demands” rooted in institutions that gives human lives meaning based in commitment to purposes greater than the individual self. He’s concerned that the formerly “Christian” culture of faith is being eclipsed by a psychotherapeutic emphasis on self that focuses on the individual’s perceived needs and comfort and cultivates indifference to the demands of the culture of faith, thus undermining it. But—and perhaps this is even worse in Rieff’s eyes—the psychotherapeutic revolution seems incapable of generating a replacement culture that, even if it’s not based on the Christian faith, could provide an equivalent demand structure for people’s moral lives. Rieff’s fear is that without the moral system provided by a robust culture, individuals and society will become degenerate. In his words: “At the breaking point, a culture can no longer maintain itself….it demands less, permits more. Bread and circuses become confused with right and duty.”
Rieff’s diagnosis of Western culture’s trouble is closely linked to his theories on why culture is important, and how culture changes and survives. Rieff believes that culture is important because it is a “system of moralizing demands” rooted in institutions that gives human lives meaning based in commitment to purposes greater than the individual self. He’s concerned that the formerly “Christian” culture of faith is being eclipsed by a psychotherapeutic emphasis on self that focuses on the individual’s perceived needs and comfort and cultivates indifference to the demands of the culture of faith, thus undermining it. But—and perhaps this is even worse in Rieff’s eyes—the psychotherapeutic revolution seems incapable of generating a replacement culture that, even if it’s not based on the Christian faith, could provide an equivalent demand structure for people’s moral lives. Rieff’s fear is that without the moral system provided by a robust culture, individuals and society will become degenerate. In his words: “At the breaking point, a culture can no longer maintain itself….it demands less, permits more. Bread and circuses become confused with right and duty.”
September 10, 2018
Rieff has been on my radar for a long time, and I’m glad that I finally got around to reading this. I’d read Charisma before, and while I enjoyed it, the prose was impenetrable, so I think that put me off on reading him for a while, which is a shame, because this book was excellent and surprisingly accessible. This version comes with a few good essays as well, but they aren’t necessary to understand the text. It’s been a while since I studied Freud in depth, and Rieff explains his ideas well. While his ideas have been more or less empirically disproven, his impact on our culture is enormous and undeniable. Even if you despise Freud and his, you are influenced by them in ways you may not even know. Rieff explores the idea of the cultural revolution that has followed in Freud’s wake, and how Freud’s followers, most notably Jung, Reich and Lawrence, bastardized some of Freud’s ideas utilizing religious language (this book also helped me understand Jung more—and the Jordan Peterson phenomenon as a result—who I’ve never studied directly). Rieff’s concept of psychological man helps to understanding of “psychological man” helps to show how the psychoanalytical conception of human nature has affected everyone in western society, whether they are religious or not. (I also think the concept of the therapeutic is particularly helpful for understanding many contemporary religious feelings. Religion for many has become a therapeutic issue. People believe in God and go to church as a means of expressing themselves and to find solace in comfort in our modern, consumer culture—they don’t really go to have contact with the Gospel).
September 13, 2019
Fascinating, heavy read. Essentially, Rieff sees Freud as a marker in the history of western civilization, someone whose ideas have moved us into the era of the therapeutic. For Rieff, this means that we live in a culture that, through the venue of psychoanalysis, points people toward finding fulfillment through being able to exercise their freedom of choice, whereas in the past, all civilizations pointed people toward "therapies of commitment" to a broader, societal vision of morality and belief. This means that a concept like a communal faith becomes meaningless in contemporary society, since all faith expressions would tend toward the individual.
The tensions I have felt around aligning myself with broader society or, more narrowly, distinct communities, seem to bear out much of what Rieff was writing about in the 1960s. In detailing the damaging work of Freud and others who came after him (Jung, Reich, and Lawrence), Rieff also offers regular pointers toward a healthier and more robust vision of culture.
The tensions I have felt around aligning myself with broader society or, more narrowly, distinct communities, seem to bear out much of what Rieff was writing about in the 1960s. In detailing the damaging work of Freud and others who came after him (Jung, Reich, and Lawrence), Rieff also offers regular pointers toward a healthier and more robust vision of culture.
March 22, 2017
Read it for the introduction and the first five chapters, up to the chapter on Jung. Rieff writes in a peculiarly and pleasingly abstract idiom that may take some getting used to. You should read Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents beforehand, or at least understand its basic thesis.
In some ways, it's a shame that this book is being presented as an "Essential Text of the Conservative Mind" because that may distract others from reading a book which is hardly conservative.
In some ways, it's a shame that this book is being presented as an "Essential Text of the Conservative Mind" because that may distract others from reading a book which is hardly conservative.
December 8, 2013
This is the book that made my intellectual life. It was not the Catholic faith that turned me against a belief in enlightenment modernity but this book.
I read it in 1966 and can remember how difficult it was to read. I have gone back to parts of it on occasion, especially when dealing with the shifts of modern culture and the splits within the Catholic Church.
I read it in 1966 and can remember how difficult it was to read. I have gone back to parts of it on occasion, especially when dealing with the shifts of modern culture and the splits within the Catholic Church.
January 8, 2024
In his book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff examines the influence of Freud, Jung, Reich, and Lawrence on the psychological and cultural revolution within the Western Culture from the “grand crisis” (the antiquated ascetic of rules, symbols, prayer, etc.), to a conversion to a “superior system” of science wherein the “psychologized man” has developed. The highest value is now man unleashed to freely express his desires. Rieff highlights the attitude of the analytical, the move from commitment culture toward individualism, free of the restraints of the ascetic. Freud’s goal was not to cure, but to help people control their religious instincts. Jung, Lawrence, and Reich sought to “go beyond the analytic attitude” with ideas such as Jung’s archetype theory with an adapted strain of religion within. Reich, too, had a “faith of sorts” blending Marxist philosophy with Freud’s as the Freudo-Marxist. Reich branded theology as the authoritative form of fascism, imperialism, and mysticism, a great threat to sexuality which he saw as true freedom. He attacked the family as the “chief institutional instrument of repressive authority.” Lawrence contrived a second faith to replace “false Christian philosophy” and the rationalism of science, claiming that abstract thinking damages the mind, while the power of love and the erotic repairs and restores mankind.
Strengths: Demonstrates the transition from the ascetic to the psychologized man which resulted in the current mindset (as seen 50 years later)
Weaknesses: Confusing wording throughout; speaks favorably of Freud; dated, having been written in 1966; dishonors and degrades religious beliefs and their influence on conscience.
Use in Biblical Counseling: reinforces the superiority of God’s unchanging Word, and shows the utter confusion in the teaching of Freud, Jung, Reich, Lawrence, etc.
I couldn't recommend this book to anyone as the author used such flowery, outlandish wording that it was brutally hard to read. Save your money and time.
Strengths: Demonstrates the transition from the ascetic to the psychologized man which resulted in the current mindset (as seen 50 years later)
Weaknesses: Confusing wording throughout; speaks favorably of Freud; dated, having been written in 1966; dishonors and degrades religious beliefs and their influence on conscience.
Use in Biblical Counseling: reinforces the superiority of God’s unchanging Word, and shows the utter confusion in the teaching of Freud, Jung, Reich, Lawrence, etc.
I couldn't recommend this book to anyone as the author used such flowery, outlandish wording that it was brutally hard to read. Save your money and time.
July 18, 2024
A brilliant book, justly praised and still important. Here Rieff examines the legacy of Freud as the herald of a new sociological type: Psychological Man, who by (psycho)analysis must learn to navigate the competing demands of his own desires and society's prohibitions. By introducing this idea that psychic well-being (becoming a "well-adjusted" individual) could be separated from social order, Freud either created or illustrated a great cultural revolution: the idea that culture could be built on the basis of the individual's autonomy, and not by any subordination of the individual to the society's moral system. Freud's "disciples" - Jung, Reich, and Lawrence - each went beyond mere analysis and tried to construct a new system of society based on the liberated individual. Perhaps one could say that each attempted, with a different blade, to cut the Freudian knot.
Rieff is suspicious though coy about the possibilities of success for these endeavors, but the brilliance of the book is in its pervasive exploration of the culture significance of the Freudian turn inwards. Whether we define our world as Freudian, or post-Freudian, it is a world we all inhabit now.
Rieff is suspicious though coy about the possibilities of success for these endeavors, but the brilliance of the book is in its pervasive exploration of the culture significance of the Freudian turn inwards. Whether we define our world as Freudian, or post-Freudian, it is a world we all inhabit now.
September 2, 2024
This book was wonderfully insightful.
As an LPC with a degree in clinical mental health counseling, surrounded by licensed clinical social workers, I am amazed at the absence of intellectualism, perspicacity, insight, and purpose behind most of what takes place in therapy currently. It’s like, in a collective hopelessness, psychology, and subsequently society, has devolved from a struggle to move forward with some kind of a metaphysical backbone (always groping for a more justifiable one), to an epistemological leap without justification, to a resignation of pragmatism. Collectively, we now engage with ‘evidence-based’ modalities as a kind of pushing of buttons and pulling of levers to get people to feel happy, without really knowing what we are doing or why. We are divorced from our pedigree and it is not an advancement. I only wish we still had Rieff, and the likes of Rieff, to keep the narrative going so that we might more effectively, and with intent, forge a path forward. This book was needed, is needed, and more of its kind is needed.
As an LPC with a degree in clinical mental health counseling, surrounded by licensed clinical social workers, I am amazed at the absence of intellectualism, perspicacity, insight, and purpose behind most of what takes place in therapy currently. It’s like, in a collective hopelessness, psychology, and subsequently society, has devolved from a struggle to move forward with some kind of a metaphysical backbone (always groping for a more justifiable one), to an epistemological leap without justification, to a resignation of pragmatism. Collectively, we now engage with ‘evidence-based’ modalities as a kind of pushing of buttons and pulling of levers to get people to feel happy, without really knowing what we are doing or why. We are divorced from our pedigree and it is not an advancement. I only wish we still had Rieff, and the likes of Rieff, to keep the narrative going so that we might more effectively, and with intent, forge a path forward. This book was needed, is needed, and more of its kind is needed.
May 19, 2022
In The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Rieff describes modern society (the book was written in 1966) as completely different from the past. Previously, society was marked by “religious man” – and then, many centuries later, by “economic man”, and now, in the current stage, by “psychological man.”
And this new type of individual differs from ancestors in the way he creates meaning in his life. Whereas the older generations sought meaning from without, by burdening themselves with cultural traditions and economic aspirations, the psychological man is mainly interested in maintaining a balanced mindset, he seeks meaning from within. A principal feature of psychological man is his indifference.
https://unearnedwisdom.com/the-triump...
And this new type of individual differs from ancestors in the way he creates meaning in his life. Whereas the older generations sought meaning from without, by burdening themselves with cultural traditions and economic aspirations, the psychological man is mainly interested in maintaining a balanced mindset, he seeks meaning from within. A principal feature of psychological man is his indifference.
https://unearnedwisdom.com/the-triump...
May 6, 2020
I have heard this book talked about and quoted so often it seemed on par with water in an ocean. The book however is a tough read. He is dealing with really complex ideas, histories and concepts that he assumes you are already familiar with. Most of those ideas etc. I had only a passing understanding of. Nevertheless I still feel like I am coming out of this book with a greater appreciation of our culture and the dynamics of the age. It would be helpful to read through Freud, Jung and company prior to reading Rieff’s work. I am glad I worked through it.
January 2, 2019
Rieff's analysis is very important and but I found his writing style difficult to the degree that I would have never made it through without the accountability of a reading group. I can read Heidegger, Kant, Derrida, and many a difficult writer, so perhaps my lack of familiarity with the disciplines of psychology and sociology was the issue, but I suspect that Reiff is one of those scholars that has developed the sad habit of considering erudite obtuseness to be the mark of intelligence.
October 17, 2023
This is a really interesting read. Freud and his cronies have forever changed our landscape in how we think and communicate with each other. Modernity has justified Rieff's analysis that therapeutic talk has replaced what we had in religion. It's up to the reader to decide whether this was a good thing, and what other options there may be. But this is a magnificent piece of sociology/social commentary which brings great understanding to the context of our current worldviews.
September 29, 2025
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I expected a stuffy scholarly work that lacked any writing skill, however Rieff writes with great ability. I found his analysis extremely profound and insightful to our current age. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is reasonably acquainted with the history of philosophy and society for the last 200 years. Without that there just may be too much reference to other works to draw out his meaning.
August 13, 2017
Appreciated this book. Reading through his chapters is like an experience of reverse engineering my thought patterns and western cultures thought patterns. Thanks Rieff for your prophetic efforts, its seems, for the conservative perspective.
July 19, 2025
I am still trying to work out whether or not Rieff is sarcastic; in any event, his diagnosis of the therapeutic qua cultural revolution was prophetic. This book is elliptical, opaque, infuriating … and profoundly insightful. *sigh*
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