In 1968, two black psychiatrists published a bestselling book, Black Rage, that captured the spirit of its times, particularly the turn toward a more militant posture in the civil rights movement. The book argued that, among blacks, many signs of mental illness were actually understandable responses to continued white racism, which its authors believed was as virulent as ever, despite the revolutionary advances the civil rights movement had brought. Tracing all kinds of contemporary psychiatric disorders as far back as slavery, William Grier and Price Cobbs delivered a mighty invective against the vestiges of white racism but in the process recast race relations—and indeed, advancement by African Americans—as a therapeutic project. Although they believed that changing social conditions was the only way to address the personal problems that originated in racial discrimination and oppression, they prescribed not social or political activism but an activist psychiatry. Rather than turning to the outer world armed with the conviction that needless individual suffering could be ended through social reform, the authors encouraged therapists to engage in a kind of reformist counseling, where new experts would help overcome racial discrimination. This project was part of a larger move away from the early civil rights movement’s commitment to citizenship and political and social betterment to a therapeutic rendering of racial matLIBERATION THERAPEUTICS: CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING AS A PROBLEM