Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) theorizes how modern societies undergo cultural transformation through moments of “engineered symbolic release”—structured breaks from normative social controls that absorb disruptive impulses rather than confront them. Every culture, Rieff argues, functions by organizing moral demands into... See more

"I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens." And now, in his most improbable guise yet, as artistic director of the 2010 Brighton festival, Eno wants to programme works that demonstrate why surrender is key to the sort of music and art that excite him. "I came to this idea because I noticed that when I set up... See more