Stress. Everyone is talking about it, suffering from it, trying desperately to manage it-now more than ever. From 1970 to 1980, 2,326 academic articles appeared with the word "stress" in the title. In the decade between 2000 and 2010 that number jumped to 21,750. Has life become ten times more stressful, or is it the stress concept itself that has grown exponentially over the past 40 years? In One Nation Under Stress, Dana Becker argues that our national infatuation with the therapeutic culture has created a middle-class moral imperative to manage the tensions of daily life by turning inward, ignoring the social and political realities that underlie those tensions. Becker shows that although stress is often associated with conditions over which people have little control- workplace policies unfavorable to family life, increasing economic inequality, war in the age of terrorism-the stress concept focuses most of our attention on how individuals react to stress. A proliferation of self-help books and dire medical warnings about the negative effects of stress on our physical and emotional health all place the responsibility for alleviating stress-though yoga, deep breathing, better diet, etc.-squarely on the individual. The stress concept has come of age in a period of tectonic social and political shifts. Nevertheless, we persist in the all-American belief that we can meet these changes by re-engineering ourselves rather than tackling the root causes of stress. Examining both research and popular representations of stress in cultural terms, Becker traces the evolution of the social uses of the stress concept as it has been transformed into an all-purpose vehicle for defining, expressing, and containing middle-class anxieties about upheavals in American society.

"Dana Becker writes that for the past few decades women have been encouraged to believe that by taking care of their psychological selves they are becoming ever more powerful. Not so. In this intelligent and chilling examination, Becker traces how the repackaging of the psychological as power has led to the ultimate colonization of women's psyches. She is a beautiful writer, an exacting historian of ideas, and a tremendously intelligent guide through these troubled waters."
--Sharon Lamb, Professor of Psychology, Saint Michael's College and author of "The Secret Lives of Girls" and "The Trouble with Blame,"

"I was impressed with how the author marshaled this critical literature into a coherent and...compelling narrative."
--"Social Service Review"

""The Myth of Empowerment" artfully documents 150 years of American efforts at self-improvement. Re-reading such sociological classics as Bellah, Lasch, Reiff, and Reissman, Becker expands (and sometimes explodes) their arguments by inserting women into their accounts of social life. Moving next to a savvy account of popular women-centered therapies arising out of the late 20th century feminism, Becker shows how they unwittingly incorporate some of the very premises that they repudiate. The Myth of Empowerment--delightfully informed by a witty sensibility, written with brio and clarity, and cast in elegant prose--is compelling reading. "
--Jeanne Maracek

The Myth of Empowerment surveys the ways in which women have been represented and influenced by the rapidly growing therapeutic culture--both popular and professional--from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The middle-class woman concerned about her health and herability to care for others in an uncertain world is not as different from her late nineteenth-century white middle-class predecessors as we might imagine. In the nineteenth century she was told that her moral virtue was her power; today, her power is said to reside in her ability to "relate" to others or to take better care of herself so that she can take care of others. Dana Becker argues that ideas like empowerment perpetuate the myth that many of the problems women have are medical rather than societal; personal rather than political.

From mesmerism to psychotherapy to the "Oprah Winfrey Show," women have gleaned ideas about who they are as psychological beings. Becker questions what women have had to gain from these ideas as she recounts the story of where they have been led and where the therapeutic culture is taking them.

To what extent is borderline personality disorder (BPD) a truly ?female? affliction given how women are socialized? This and other questions are addressed within the context of the historical relationship between women and madness, as well as women's often-strained relationship with the psychiatric profession.In a refreshing look at the facts behin

The public has a right to know that when they go to a therapist, they are almost certain to be given a psychiatric diagnosis, no matter how mild or normal their problems might be. It is unlikely that they will be told that a diagnosis will be written forever in their chart and that alarming consequences can result solely from having any psychiatric diagnosis. It would be disturbing enough if diagnosis was a thoroughly scientific process, but it is not, and its unscientific nature creates a vacuum into which biases of all kinds can rush. Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis is the first book ever published about how gender, race, social class, age, physical disability, and sexual orientation affect the classification of human beings into categories of psychiatric diagnosis. It is surprising that this kind of book is not yet on the market, because it is such a hot topic, and the negative consequences of psychiatric diagnosis range from loss of custody of a child to denial of health insurance and employment to removal of one's right to make decisions about one's legal affairs. It is an unusually compelling book because of its real-life relevance for millions of people. Virtually everyone these days has been a therapy patient or has a loved one who has been. In addition, psychiatric diagnosis and biases in diagnosis are increasingly crucial portions of, or the main subject of, legal proceedings. This book should sit next to every doctor's PDR, especially given the skyrocketing use of psychoactive drugs in toddlers, children, and adolescents, as well as in adults, and especially because receiving a psychiatric label vastly increases the chances of being prescribed one or more of these drugs. A Jason Aronson Book

The public has a right to know that when they go to a therapist, they are almost certain to be given a psychiatric diagnosis, no matter how mild or normal their problems might be. It is unlikely that they will be told that a diagnosis will be written forever in their chart and that alarming consequences can result solely from having any psychiatric diagnosis. It would be disturbing enough if diagnosis was a thoroughly scientific process, but it is not, and its unscientific nature creates a vacuum into which biases of all kinds can rush. Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis is the first book ever published about how gender, race, social class, age, physical disability, and sexual orientation affect the classification of human beings into categories of psychiatric diagnosis. It is surprising that this kind of book is not yet on the market, because it is such a hot topic, and the negative consequences of psychiatric diagnosis range from loss of custody of a child to denial of health insurance and employment to removal of one's right to make decisions about one's legal affairs. It is an unusually compelling book because of its real-life relevance for millions of people. Virtually everyone these days has been a therapy patient or has a loved one who has been. In addition, psychiatric diagnosis and biases in diagnosis are increasingly crucial portions of, or the main subject of, legal proceedings. This book should sit next to every doctor's PDR, especially given the skyrocketing use of psychoactive drugs in toddlers, children, and adolescents, as well as in adults, and especially because receiving a psychiatric label vastly increases the chances of being prescribed one or more of these drugs. A Jason Aronson Book

"Dana Becker writes that for the past few decades women have been encouraged to believe that by taking care of their psychological selves they are becoming ever more powerful. Not so. In this intelligent and chilling examination, Becker traces how the repackaging of the psychological as power has led to the ultimate colonization of women's psyches. She is a beautiful writer, an exacting historian of ideas, and a tremendously intelligent guide through these troubled waters."
--Sharon Lamb, Professor of Psychology, Saint Michael's College and author of "The Secret Lives of Girls" and "The Trouble with Blame,"

"I was impressed with how the author marshaled this critical literature into a coherent and...compelling narrative."
--"Social Service Review"

""The Myth of Empowerment" artfully documents 150 years of American efforts at self-improvement. Re-reading such sociological classics as Bellah, Lasch, Reiff, and Reissman, Becker expands (and sometimes explodes) their arguments by inserting women into their accounts of social life. Moving next to a savvy account of popular women-centered therapies arising out of the late 20th century feminism, Becker shows how they unwittingly incorporate some of the very premises that they repudiate. The Myth of Empowerment--delightfully informed by a witty sensibility, written with brio and clarity, and cast in elegant prose--is compelling reading. "
--Jeanne Maracek

The Myth of Empowerment surveys the ways in which women have been represented and influenced by the rapidly growing therapeutic culture--both popular and professional--from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The middle-class woman concerned about her health and herability to care for others in an uncertain world is not as different from her late nineteenth-century white middle-class predecessors as we might imagine. In the nineteenth century she was told that her moral virtue was her power; today, her power is said to reside in her ability to "relate" to others or to take better care of herself so that she can take care of others. Dana Becker argues that ideas like empowerment perpetuate the myth that many of the problems women have are medical rather than societal; personal rather than political.

From mesmerism to psychotherapy to the "Oprah Winfrey Show," women have gleaned ideas about who they are as psychological beings. Becker questions what women have had to gain from these ideas as she recounts the story of where they have been led and where the therapeutic culture is taking them.

To what extent is borderline personality disorder (BPD) a truly "female" affliction given how women are socialized? This and other questions are addressed within the context of the historical relationship between women and madness, as well as women's often-strained relationship with the psychiatric profession.In a refreshing look at the facts behind why a preponderance of women are diagnosed with BPD, Dana Becker provides evidence that the struggles of these "borderline" women are extreme versions of the day-to-day struggles many women face. Examining the relationship between gender, psychological distress, and the classification of BPD as a psychiatric disorder, the author offers a new emphasis on elements of female socialization as keys to understanding the development of borderline symptoms.The book should appeal to psychotherapists in all professional groups--psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health professionals--as well as graduate students in these disciplines. It should also be valuable to those involved in the fields of women's studies, psychology of women, sociology, and the history of medicine.