For nearly half a century, social scientists have made claims that there is a "therapeutic ethos" with extensive infl uence upon numerous aspects of American society. In Therapeutic Culture, twelve authors address the implications of this ethos and its effects on a wide range of social institutions, extending from the family to schools, and operating in religious behavior and within the legal system. Has there been, as the sociological theorist Philip Rieff argued in 1966, a "triumph of the therapeutic?" If so, in what kinds of institutions has it been most pervasive? At the same time, what aspects of modern culture has it replaced or defeated?

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.