Therapeutic Culture
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5494775.html#5494775
TheLibrarian and I were having a discussion about employment and an article about it. He mentioned the Therapeutic Culture. I tried looking it up and it is difficult to find something in depth about. What is the Therapeutic Culture? What is the essence of it? What are the underlying tenets and beliefs? He mentioned Machiavelli and his beliefs. Thelibrarian and others, can you all go into more depth on it. Can you compare and contrast Machiavelli's beliefs vs. Therapeutic Culture's beliefs?
nominalist
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The term "therapeutic culture" is a sociological criticism of many modern Western societies. Social problems become psychological problems. Ordinary human difficulties become addictions with their own 12-step groups. The opposite of a therapeutic culture is a sociological imagination:
The first fruit of this imagination—and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it—is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances. In many ways it is a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of man's capacities for supreme effort or willing degradation, for agony or glee, for pleasurable brutality or the sweetness of reason. But in our time we have come to know that the limits of “human nature” are frighteningly broad. We have come to know that every individual lives, from one generation to the next, in some society; that he lives out a biography, and that he lives it out within some historical sequence. By the fact of his living he contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of this society and to the course of its history, even as he is made by society and by its historical push and shove.
The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise. To recognize this task and this promise is the mark of the classic social analyst. It is characteristic of Herbert Spencer-turgid, polysyllabic, comprehensive; of E. A. Ross-graceful, muckraking, upright; of Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim; of the intricate and subtle Karl Mannheim. It is the quality of all that is intellectually excellent in Karl Marx; it is the clue to Thorstein Veblen's brilliant and ironic insight, to Joseph Schumpeter's many-sided constructions of reality; it is the basis of the psychological sweep of W.E.H. Lecky no less than of the profundity and clarity of Max Weber. And it is the signal of what is best in contemporary studies of man and society.
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination.
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Mark A. Foster, Ph.D. (retired tenured sociology professor)
36 domains/24 books: http://www.markfoster.net
Emancipated Autism: http://www.neurelitism.com
Institute for Dialectical metaRealism: http://dmr.institute
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