therapism

n. a culture or ideal of mental therapy, empathy, or sharing of feelings, especially as a cure. Subjects: English, Health

Editorial Note: This term was popularized, although probably not coined by, novelist Fay Weldon.

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Citations: 1986 Janice G. Raymond A Passion for Friends p. 155-56 @ Women Without Men (May 1, 1993) Donald J. Greiner p. 112: Therapism is an overvaulation of feeling. In a real sense, it is a tyranny of feelings where women have come to believe that what realy counts in their life is their “psychology.”…We might say that therapism promotes a psychological hypochondria with women as the major seekers of emotional health. 1995 Susan C. Jarratt (May 18) “In excess: radical extensions of neopragmatism” @ Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism Steven Mailloux p. 216: Some are put off by the New Age rhetoric of crystals, spiritualism, and therapism. 1997 Fay Weldon Guardian (U.K.) (Jan. 11) “Mind At The End Of Its Tether”: Once we saw ourselves as serving God, then science, then the state: now we turn inwards and serve ourselves, worship our individuality. This is what I mean by Therapism. It is a religion which began a hundred years ago in the consulting rooms of psychotherapists, and which now, in its wider social and political context, sweeps all before it. 1998 Fay Weldon Harper’s Magazine (May 1) “Where women are women and so are men” vol. 296, no. 1776, p. 65: The first step that women took in their emancipation was to adopt traditional male roles: to insist on their right to wear trousers, not to placate, not to smile, not to be decorative. The first step men have taken in their self-defense is to adopt the language of Therapism: a profoundly female notion this-that all things can be cured by talk. 2005 Andrew Ferguson Bloomberg.com (June 21) “Can U.S. Companies End Emotional Correctness?”: “Therapism,” they write, is a doctrine that “valorizes openness, emotional self-absorption and the sharing of feelings.”

Posted 19 Jul 05 | Permalink | Tell a Friend