Rieff's groundbreaking work, first published by Harper and Row in 1966, caught the scent of the cultural changes that came ripe in the next 40 years. In a series of essays that fully represent his conservative point of view, Rieff finds irony, in that this therapeutic age, which identifies itself as fiercely committed to the growth of human potential and personal fulfillment, is actually anti-therapeutic and even, in some respects, anti-human. He regards Freud as the key transitional figure from the Judeo-Christian to the purely therapeutic, and takes the broad view on Freud's legacy, changes in Western culture, community, the analytic attitude, the replacement of the theologian by the therapist, including the roles of martyr and myth-maker, and the eventual passage to a nearly completely therapeutic culture, complete with all the nearly unheralded irony. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)