20 Year Anniversary 'Triumph of the Therapeutic'

The Therapeutic is the symbolic truth of the present age. He is  . . an assault, more and more successful, upon all sacred barriers. Those high barriers broken down, the therapeutic politicised, bursts into no free space, and into no broad daylight. Rather to his constant surprise, he finds himself buried incredibly deep in a night he never consciously desired. From this burial, the therapeutic may yet find a way up to the higher life. Anyway I do so hope, for the sake and souls of those who make it inside one of the leveling elites than for those who remain in the spiritual safety, however deadly dangerous politically and therefore bodily, of being outsiders.  Philip Rieff - preface to 1987 ed. The Triumph of the Therapeutic