Does the modern obsession with self-help and recovery culture fundamentally undermine individual agency and civic responsibility? Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer and social critic, investigates the proliferation of twelve-step programs and therapeutic movements in American life. She argues that the widespread adoption of recovery language encourages a culture of victimhood, shifting focus away from systemic social issues toward an inward-looking, often pseudo-scientific preoccupation with personal dysfunction.

Critics and scholars frequently cite this work as a seminal critique of the late 20th-century therapeutic zeitgeist. Experts highlight the author's sharp, polemical prose as a necessary counterpoint to the uncritical acceptance of recovery-based ideologies in mainstream culture.