The Therapeutic State is a deeply researched study of the influence of psychoanalytic 'emotional talk' in American statecraft, from its origins in the Progressive Era to a crescendo during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Each chapter is deeply researched and developed, with topics including emotional damages in civil lawsuits, mandatory drug rehab, the self-esteem movement in education, child welfare legislation, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, and the rhetoric of presidential campaigns. While the individual chapters are quite good, the larger framing and theory doesn't quite cohere.

Nolan's thesis is that in a period of declining legitimacy in the American state, as measured by public opinion polls and an inability to link the traditional Weberian sources of legitimacy (charisma, tradition, rationality) to anything the government says or does, policy has taken a therapeutic bent, attempting to heal various psychological ills through a host of programs that 'feel a citizen's pain' and guide them through a psychodrama to self-fulfillment. As a consequence, the government is larger, more invasive, and beholden to a radical psychological agenda. Whatever our beliefs or actual problems, we must play out the roles of victim and healer.

The reason for my skepticism is basically one of causality and timing. Education has been doing some form of values and self-esteem since the 30s. Drug courts are a product of the 1970s, emotional damages and Clintonian rhetoric of the 80s and 90s. Meanwhile, psychology has itself had many movements and changes during this time, with strictly analytic perspectives dominant only from the 1940s through 1960s. Nolan has definitively proved that something has changed, but he doesn't quite put his finger on why, or what it means.

This book is definitely provocative, and putting in conversation with other works on subjectivity, such as Rose's Governing the Soul suggest a different take on how the minds of citizens became a rightful location of governance. Basically, happiness is a means to defuse labor movements, maintain a population under aerial attack, and encourage personal flourishing as prelude to longterm development and stability. The radical individuality proposed by psychoanalytic theories is a reaction to the anti-individual ideologies of the 20th century; Facism and Communism. The State can only demonstrate its legitimacy by cultivating a personal relationship with every citizen.

Nothing ages as rapidly as political commentary, a lot of this book feels like a conservative critique of everything about Bill Clinton's America as an abandonment of Weber's Protestant Ethic. While it's somewhat dated, it's not wrong. George W. Bush ran and won as a 'compassionate conservative', and definitely governed in an emotional rather than rational style. Obama might be described as an ultra-logical Spock, but his strength as a politician is a symbol of a young, non-white, aspiration America. With the 2016 campaign heating up, Hillary Clinton is dusting off Bill's rhetoric to say that she understands that struggles of working Americans (Don't even ask me about the GOP field right now). I try not to let my politics get in the way of my reviews, and this is a really good book. I just think that the evidence strongly suggests a replacement of a Weberian paradigm of State power and legitimacy with a Foucauldian biopolitical model, whereas Nolan says the opposite.