Americans also tend to feel defensive about hysterical disorders after the recent spate of accusations that this country is becoming a hysterical victim society. Its a standing joke that Americans no longer view themselves as sinners struggling with the guilt of lust, avarice or greed but rather sick people addicted to sex, shopping or sweets.
Books like Charles Syke's A Nation of Victims The Decay of the American Character ...(1992), Robert Hughe's The Culture of Complaint (1993), Wendy Kaminer's I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional (1993), and Alan Dershowitz's The Abuse Excuse (1995) mock and denounce what they see as the twelve-step, self-help culture of contemporary America.
Because many of these books have an ideological ax to grind, they seek political scapegoats and simple answers for a complex phenomenon. Pundits blame the recovery movement on Freud and psychoanalysis, changes in sexuality, or a collapse of American family values. These attacks are so sweeping and vitrolic, so one-sided and so unfair, it's no wonder patients, psychitrists and therapists feel threatened and panicky. In the Journal of Psychohistory, Nielltje Gedney, for example, charges that critics are after "the total annihilation of therapy and therapists."
Books like Charles Syke's A Nation of Victims The Decay of the American Character ...(1992), Robert Hughe's The Culture of Complaint (1993), Wendy Kaminer's I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional (1993), and Alan Dershowitz's The Abuse Excuse (1995) mock and denounce what they see as the twelve-step, self-help culture of contemporary America.Because many of these books have an ideological ax to grind, they seek political scapegoats and simple answers for a complex phenomenon. Pundits blame the recovery movement on Freud and psychoanalysis, changes in sexuality, or a collapse of American family values. These attacks are so sweeping and vitrolic, so one-sided and so unfair, it's no wonder patients, psychitrists and therapists feel threatened and panicky. In the Journal of Psychohistory, Nielltje Gedney, for example, charges that critics are after "the total annihilation of therapy and therapists."
No comments:
Post a Comment