ABSTRACT
It is suggested that the influence of victim and therapeutic cultures is fuelling the current “campus culture wars” afflicting contemporary universities. Psychology’s participation in creating the victim and therapeutic cultures of universities is explored with specific attention to the expansion of psychological conceptions of harm and the range of acts to which individuals can take offence. Following, is a discussion of how this conceptual development, together with an intensified focus on feelings and their unconditional validation, encourages a kind of emotional reasoning that now often supersedes rational warrants by which claims and disagreements are debated and adjudicated. It further is described how this emotional reasoning is bolstered by identity politics that have thrived in universities. The result is consequential for the educative mission of universities, and the implications of therapeutic and victim cultures for the intellectual atmosphere of universities and their educational mission are considered.
