Cruel compassion: how politically correct psychology weakens Americans.(Dr Christina Hoff Sommers; Sally Satel)(Interview)

TAE contributing editor Karlyn Bowman recently sat down with Dr: Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, M.D., resident scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss their new book One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance.

TAE: You criticize what you call "therapism." What is that?

CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS: Therapism celebrates emotional self-absorption and the sharing of feelings. Its proponents believe that vulnerability, not strength, characterizes the American psyche. They see us as an anguished, emotionally apprehensive population that requires a vast array of counseling to cope with the trials of everyday life.

TAE: Let's start with the myth of the fragile child.

SOMMERS: There is a great deal of anxiety about the mental health of the nation's children because some very widely read psychologists claim to have found a crisis. In her bestselling book Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher describes girls as "crashing and burning." She says adults fail to appreciate how universal and extreme their suffering is. William Pollack, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, wrote another book claiming that it was boys who suffer egregiously, with millions drowning in isolation. Neither of these assumptions about young people's fragility turns out to be true. Responsible research by psychologists and epidemiologists paints a different picture: A small percentage of kids are in trouble psychologically, but the vast majority are healthy and happy.

TAE: Many young people even have an over-abundance of self-esteem, you suggest.

SOMMERS: Our schools of education promote the idea that high self-esteem is essential to academic achievement. But the concept is too poorly understood to be an appropriate class room objective. High-school dropouts, burglars, car thieves, shoplifters, even murderers, are just as likely to have high self-esteem as the winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor or Rhodes Scholars.