How Therapy and “Self-Care” Usurped Religion

Examining the modish “gospel of self-actualization” expressed in countless online articles and social-media feeds, Tara Isabella Burton observes that “the pursuit of private happiness has increasingly become culturally celebrated as the ultimate goal . . . at the expense of our sense of communal obligations.” Burton finds here the language of psychotherapy, often with much of its meaning gutted, transformed into a moral imperative for “self-care.”