Therapeutic States

One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance, by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel (St. Martin’s, 320 pp., $23.95)

ANY book that includes self-reliance in its title must call to mind the Spartan scruples of Emerson, who, looking objectively at his contemporaries, worried that “the sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons . . . We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.”

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Daniel N. Robinson

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One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance, by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel (St. Martin’s, 320 pp., $23.95)

ANY book that includes self-reliance in its title must call to mind the Spartan scruples of Emerson, who, looking objectively at his contemporaries, worried that “the sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons . . . We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.”