Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help Paperback – 4 March 2008

I find Eva Illouz very interesting. Her style may not appeal to some as she intersperses vignettes of people talking about their relationships with a discussion of how therapy and particularly the language of therapy has infused the personal relationship world. With deeply negative results. Can we talk or write our way out of marital conflict, when we are such complex beings? From my perspective I think Illouz could be more direct in looking at causes for inter sex conflict. We are both cultural beings and genetic beings and culture evolves rapidly, though constrained by our biology. Her other book "The End of Love" points the finger at capitalism and the way it makes markets out of everything. And that love is destroyed that way. And love provides much if not all human meaning. And humans are meaning generating machines (my philosophy). If you want to get really big picture look at the evolutionary psychology writings of Tooby and Cosmides. They critique the whole social science standard model, which separates different parts of psychology. They argue for a unifying approach to all science and particularly trying to understand who we are. Know thyself!

Brilliant. One of the most important and thoughtful books I've ever read.

As someone from the natural sciences I found the style of discourse in this book rather unsatisfying. As the author herself states she does not present much data to support her hypotheses, you have to take her word for it when she says that an idea is based on extensive reading based research into a particular topic. Some excerpts from interviews are presented to support some assertions. With that said the book might quite the impression on me and I found the arguments compelling, in that they seemed to accord with personal observations and explain them well.One thing I would say is that she makes clear from the beginning that she plans to present a criticism of the therapeutic approach but this is all implicit until a very short section at the end. I would have liked to hear more on that, not just description of the history and social impact of the therapeutic approach.

Illouz tackles a very important matter. They influence of therapy on society is pervasive and has impacted on how we live our lives, how we percieve ourselves and others. Illouz explains how psyhchology has great appeal in all aspects of modern life, the corporate institutions, family,personal and political. The theraputic language and model attempts to explain suffering, Illouz suggests that instead it may be the cause of much suffering. A very worthwhile and though provoking read.

This book brings quite a lot of interesting ideas about psychotherapy and society. Psychologists should absolutely read this sociological study.