I took my degree in psychology in the heyday of Maslow and Rogers, and found the overemphasis on "finding yourself" narcissistic and off point. This book is worth it alone for the chapter on Esteem Thyself which traces how this crept into the field of psychology and opened the door to one nation under therapy.

The positive potential of the self-esteem and self-actualization movement got spun into the overwrought "therapism" that has come to pervade our lives and assume every situation has something that needs "help." This point is even demonstrated (unintentionally it appears) by another reviewer who presumes that people who like the book are just another group who needs help because they are looking for something to blame for their frustrations with modern life. That's just plain silly. Most don't need help and aren't necessarily frustrated with modern life (I am not). What's worse, it demeans the difficulties of those who truly do need help.

Well worth reading with much more, including the mythology of the fragile child as yet another object to be saved by the misguided helping culture.

Sommers and Satel's thesis, which I find indisputable no matter what your politics, is that the therapy industry, driven by the human potential movement and making big bucks, has contributed largely to our nation's weakening psyche: We have become a bunch of over-sensitive cry-babies full of entitlement, divorced from common sense and self-reliance. What's really frightening is the manner in which the authors have put our therapy-numbed brains in the context of a post 9/11 world, a time in which we need to be tougher and more street-smart than ever. Woefully though, too many of us are still seduced by the fraud of the "fragile inner child," the cult of self-esteem, the obsession with removing morality and character in the name of "syndromes."

The most salient point is the hiring of grief counselors to help people cope with the aftermath of 9/11. The rest of the world must be laughing at us for seeing the war against us as a matter of grief counseling. How dangerously weak we've become. One Nation Under Therapy is a bracing wake-up call.