Katherine Boyle

There's a great book by Philip Reith that was written in the 60s actually called The Triumph of the Therapeutic.

which is that man really started turning inward in the 60s and early 70s and really thinking about like, do I have purpose on this earth and what is this?

And the minute that you stop focusing outward and you become very contemplative, which is really what American culture has become, you become very individualistic, become very obsessed with yourself,

Our generation is the trophy generation, the me generation of everything about me is interesting, and I'm an individual, and I can achieve anything I want.

There's no barriers.

There's no limitations.

But it completely rips out all of the underpinnings of what makes a society function.

And I think in some ways that those were sort of the moments where it's like then you saw the unraveling of, well, there shouldn't be any kind of suffering.

It's around the same time that no-fault divorce happened, around the same time that you shouldn't be told who you are, you shouldn't be judged.

Similarly in the medical arena, this is around the time where ADHD sort of, the late 80s SSRIs started really coming about where it's like we have to start medicating us because we're thinking too much about ourselves and we have too much depression.

Of course, depression, the SSRIs, I think, were seen as kind of a niche thing and now they're, what is the number of Americans that are on them?

The sort of focus on the, the move to focus on the self

was a very deliberate action.

And I think that the crisis of the family comes from the fact that if you're focused on yourself, you really can't be focused on a family.

And you hear this all the time from young people.

It's like, I haven't achieved what I wanted.

I can barely take care of myself at mid-20s.

I don't know who I am.

How am I going to be able to take care of a kid?

And we've forgotten that previous generations