ABSTRACT
The mental health professions are faced with a crisis of meaning of tremendous magnitude. They are situated in a despairing sociocultural context that privileges individualism, narcissism, and marketplace concerns and operates from a mentality of survivorship and victimhood. This chapter explores the crisis in meaning and illustrates the responses of the mental health professions with an example from the current debate about the nature and meaning of memory. Psychotherapy, with its traditional focus on individual welfare, individual happiness, and individual rights and privileges, has not helped change the direction of our society’s crisis in meaning fueled by the worship of the individual. The false memory debate is an example of how the mental health professions have responded to society’s crisis in meaning by reinforcing their claims to knowledge and by adopting policies and standards for individual clients and therapists rather than taking clear stands on the societal problems that exacerbate the sexual abuse of women and children in this culture.
