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.

[An] important reference point for understanding the nexus between self and culture. . . . Deserving of a wide readership.

Autorentext

Eva Illouz is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Center for the Study of Rationality. She is also the Academic Director of the Program in Cultural Studies. She is the author of Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (UC Press; honorable mention, Outstanding Contribution Award, American Sociological Association, 2000); The Culture of Capitalism (in hebrew); Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture (Best Book Award, American Sociological Association, 2005); and Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism.

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
   Cultural Sociology and the Therapeutic
   Therapy as a New Emotional Style
   Texts and Contexts
   Cultural Critique and Psychology

2. Freud: ACultural Innovator
   Psychoanalysis as a Charismatic Enterprise
   The Social Organization of Freudian Charisma
   Freud in America
   The Freudian Cultural Matrix
   The Romance of Psychology and Popular Culture
   Conclusion

3. From Homo economicus to Homo communicans
   Emotional Control in the Sociology of Organizations
   The Power of Control and the Control of Power
   Psychologists Enter the Market
   ANew Emotional Style
   Emotional Control
   The Communicative Ethic as the Spirit of the Corporation
   Emotional, Moral, and Professional Competence
   Conclusion

4. The Tyranny of Intimacy
   Intimacy: An Increasingly Cold Haven
   Beyond Their Will? Psychologists and Marriage
   What Feminism and Psychology Have in Common
   Intimacy: ANew Emotional Imagination
   Communicative Rationality in the Bedroom
   Toward the Ideology of Pure Emotion
   The Cooling of Passion
   Conclusion

5. Triumphant Suffering
   Why Therapy Triumphed
   The Therapeutic Narrative of Selfhood
   Performing the Self through Therapy
   ANarrative in Action
   Conclusion

6. ANew Emotional Stratification?
   The Rise of Emotional Competence
   Emotional Intelligence and Its Antecedents
   The Global Therapeutic Habitus and the New Man
   Intimacy as a Social Good
   Conclusion

7. Conclusion: Institutional Pragmatism in the Study of Culture

Notes
Index