ABSTRACT
Particular megatrends in modern society identified by the philosophical psychologist John Schumaker, this chapter argues, cut against the grain of our deeply social nature and foster inadequate coping strategies in dealing with loss, conflict, and moral confusion. In several ways, they increase human suffering. They encourage the pursuit of instrumental control over events, flying in the face of human finitude and its stark limits. The immensely popular cognitive-behavioral therapy, existential psychotherapy, “positive psychology,” and modern antihumanism are analyzed and found, despite their claims to face and deal with suffering, to still decisively be colored by an instrumentalism that prevents them from attaining that goal.
