What are the consequences in American society when social and political activism is replaced by pursuit of personal, psychological change? How does such a shift happen? Where is it visible?

In wide-ranging case studies, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics points out this change in American culture and attributes it to the "rhetoric of therapy." This rhetoric is defined as a pervasive cultural discourse that applies psychotherapy's lexicon - the constructive language of healing, coping, adaptation, and restoration of a previously existing order - to social and political conflict. The purpose of this therapeutic discourse is to encourage people to focus on themselves and their private lives rather than to attempt to reform flawed systems of social and political power. Author Dana L. Cloud focuses on the therapeutic discourse that emerged after the Vietnam War and links its rise to specific political and economic interests.

The critical case studies describe in detail not only what the therapeutic style looks like but how and why therapeutic discourses are persuasive.