American Literature and Therapeutic Cultures

This dynamic collection offers a kaleidoscope analysis of American literature and therapeutic culture from the early twentieth century to the present day. Moving beyond familiar psychoanalytic accounts of the emergence of the modern self, it brings to the fore the pluralistic, everyday and often eccentric therapeutic coping mechanisms pursued by major American authors and laypeople alike. A superb synthesis of the state of therapeutic scholarship today, this volume is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the rich literary prehistory of our own therapeutic times. -- Beth Blum, Harvard University
Who wouldn’t long for literature to supply repair in an age of interminable calamity? This authoritative volume invites us to historicise that longing, asking us to think again before idealising literature’s curative utility. By foregrounding the mutual imbrication of American writing and therapeutic cultures, it offers a vital resource for resituating the socio-affective valences of literature from the early twentieth century onwards – giving renewed primacy to the collective over the individual, while being unafraid to encompass literature’s complicities as much as its possibilities. From William Carlos Williams to Colson Whitehead, from postwar poetry to contemporary autofiction, American Literature and Therapeutic Cultures offers an essential guide to the creative, institutional and intellectual terrains that have contested as much as fostered the reparative capacities of, and enduring hopes for, the experience of literature in an unravelling world. -- David James, University of Birmingham