/lit/ - Literature

In Haven in a Heartless World, Lasch explains how the religious outlook on life in the United States, which was dominant until the sixties but whose decline has its roots in the twenties through fifties, gave way to the new, contemporary, therapeutic outlook. The therapeutic outlook has its roots in the formation of American social science, which from early on ditched a more theoretical approach with an empirical and activist approach (Perhaps the best part of the work is Lasch's history of this process). As sociology, anthropology, and psychology entered into their own and into the mainstream, people began to be seen not as good or evil, deserving punishment, but healthy or sick, deserving treatment. This culminates in the formation and mission statement of the WHO, whose formation is rather chilling.