Abstract
The litigation explosion, and particularly the rise of victimization, is fueled by the growth of America’s therapeutic culture. Psychologists have teamed up with lawyers to bring new and more victims to the courtroom. As the therapy movement discovers more and more psychological and emotional injuries, the litigation explosion gets more lawsuits. As more Americans explore their victimhood in therapists’ offices, the more they litigate that victim-hood in the courtroom. And as America becomes more a therapeutic culture, juries and judges become more sympathetic to new lawsuits seeking damages for new kinds of psychic injuries.
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Notes
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Oh, Those Family Values,” Time (July 18, 1994): 62.
Robert Wuthnow, Starting the journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 9.
Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 5.
Robert Hughes, “Bitch, Bitch, Bitch...,” Psychology Today (September 1993): 29.
Mary Gaitskill, “On Not Being a Victim,” Harper’s Magazine (March 1994): 39.
Warren Berger, “Childhood Traumas Healed While U-Wait,” New York Times (January 8, 1995), p. H33.
Hughes, “Bitch, Bitch, Bitch ...,” p. 28.
Conrad deFiebre, “Linehan: I Just Want to Live a Normal Life,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (August 29, 1994), p. 1A.
“Reading, Writing and Recovery,” U.S. News & World Report (May 23, 1994): 22.
Ibid.
John Taylor, “Irresistible Impulses,” Esquire (April 1994): 98.
Rolanda Jackson, “U.S. to Pay Weaver’s Family $3.1 Million,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (August 16, 1995), p. 1A.
Junda Woo, “Urban Trauma Mitigates Guilt,” Wall Street Journal (April 27, 1993), p. 1B.
See Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham, The Myth of Repressed Memory (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994);
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Walters, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1993);
Mark Pendergrast, Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives (Lexington, KY: Upper Access Press, 1995); and
Lawrence Wright, Remembering Satan: A Case of Recovered Memory and the Shattering of an American Family (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
Dave Ferman, “Modem America: Where the Buck Stops Nowhere,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (May 4, 1994), p. 1E.
Walter Olson, “The Long Arm of Harassment Law,” New York Times (July 7, 1996), p. E9.
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Garry, P.M. (1997). An Explosive Partnership: Therapists and Lawyers. In: A Nation of Adversaries. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6604-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6604-9_8
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