Activity

Here’s another way of understanding why the “self” belongs in self-help. Self-help concerns the self because it excludes others—because it actively discourages acts of intervention or compassion. Self-help is for selves because it is selfish on the giving end (that is, the not-giving end) and lonel…

pain belongs in therapy, fortified by the anodyne paintings and muted by the padded walls

Perhaps the purpose of this whole song and dance is to convince the marginalized that they are to blame for their own marginalization—to prevent ill-treated female caretakers (and of course the bulk of caretakers are female and many of them are ill-treated) from comparing notes. Or perhaps self-hel…

The sententious tracts of the Gilded Age had always been aimed at breadwinners and would-be financiers, which is to say, at men

distinguish the wealthy wheat from the indigent chaff