Philip Rieff

Philip Rieff (December 15, 1922 – July 1, 2006) was an American sociologist and cultural critic best known for his early-career work on Sigmund Freud and later criticisms of modern culture. He taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1961 until 1992 after briefer positions the University of Chicago, Brandeis University, and the University of California, Berkeley. He was the author of a number of books on Sigmund Freud and his legacy, including Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959) and The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud (1966).

As a graduate instructor at the University of Chicago, he married his undergraduate student Susan Sontag after 10 days of courtship in 1950. The marriage lasted eight years. Sontag and Rieff had a son together, David Rieff, a writer and the editor of his mother's personal journals.

Philip Rieff was born on December 15, 1922 in Chicago, Illinois,^[1] the son of Lithuanian Jewish refugees.^[2] He attended the University of Chicago for both undergraduate and graduate study, earning a BA in 1946, an MA in 1947, and a PhD in political science in 1954.^[2][3] He first intended to be a sportswriter, specifically a baseball journalist, and his studies were interrupted for service in the US Army Air Force, where he was an attaché to an Air Force general.^[2][3][4]

Rieff taught at the University of Chicago until moving to Boston to teach at Brandeis University in 1952, then to the University of California, Berkeley in 1959^[5] after a one-year fellowship at Stanford University.^[6] He settled for the remainder of his career at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961.^[6] There, he became University Professor of Sociology^[7] and then the named chair the Benjamin Franklin Professor; he retired emeritus in 1992.^[2] He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970.^[5]

Rieff's early career was defined by his analyses and critiques of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, particularly the books Freud: The Mind of the Moralist in 1959 and The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud in 1966.^{[2][4][6][8][9]} In addition to these, he edited a ten-volume edition of Freud's collected works that appeared in 1961^[6] and was published in paperback by Collier Books in 1963. Freud was well-received immediately. Harvard psychologist Henry Murray's review in the American Sociological Review declared it "remarkably subtle and substantial" and the "product of profound analytic thought,"^[10] while Berkeley sociologist and psychoanalyst Neil Smelser recalled "the work seemed to be on everybody's lips, and was generally believed to be the best and most important critical reading of Freud yet."^[2]

As a graduate instructor at the University of Chicago, Rieff met Susan Sontag as a seventeen-year-old undergraduate auditing one of his classes, and they married after a 10-day romance in 1950.^[2][6] She later wrote of him that "he was the first person with whom she could ever really talk."^[6] Sontag and Rieff had a son together born 1952, David Rieff, a writer and the editor of his mother's personal journals.^[6][11] The marriage lasted eight years until divorce in 1959, after a year in which Rieff had taken a fellowship at Stanford University while Sontag had traveled to Paris.^[6]

In 1963, Rieff married Alison Douglas Knox (1933–2011), an Oxford graduate and professor of philosophy and later a lawyer (JD 1977), and they remained married for over forty years until his death.^{[2][4][6][12]}

Rieff died of heart failure on July 1, 2006 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[1][6] His wife Alison survived him; she died December 12, 2011.^[12] Rieff's correspondence is held at the University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center for Special Collections.^[5]

• Rieff, Philip (April 1951). "The Meaning of History and Religion in Freud's Thought". The Journal of Religion. 31 (2): 114–131. JSTOR 1197638.
• Rieff, Philip (July 1953). "Aesthetic Functions in Modern Politics". World Politics. 5 (4): 478–502. doi:10.2307/2009180. JSTOR 2009180.
• Rieff, Philip (Winter 1954). "George Orwell and the Post-Liberal Imagination". The Kenyon Review. 16 (1): 49–70. JSTOR 4333463.
• Rieff, Philip (April 1956). "The Origins of Freud's Political Psychology". Journal of the History of Ideas. 17 (2): 235–249. doi:10.2307/2707744. JSTOR 2707744.
• Rieff, Philip (Fall 1972). "Fellow Teachers". Salmagundi (20): 5–85. JSTOR 40546710.
• Rieff, Philip (Fall–Winter 1982). "VII A Last Word: The Impossible Culture: Wilde As A Modern Prophet". Salmagundi (58/59): 406–426. JSTOR 40547581.
• Rieff, Philip (Spring–Summer 1987). "For the Last Time Psychology: Thoughts on the Therapeutic Twenty Years After". Salmagundi (74/75): 101–117. JSTOR 40547954.

• Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. Viking, 1959.
  • Third edition: University of Chicago Press, 1979. ISBN 978-0-226-71639-8
• Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud (ed.). Collier Books, 1963.
• The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Harper & Row, 1966.
  • 40th Anniversary edition: ISI Books, 2006. ISBN 978-1-932236-80-4
• Fellow Teachers. Harper & Row, 1973. ISBN 0-06-013554-9
• The Feeling Intellect. University of Chicago Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0-226-71641-1
• Sacred Order/Social Order Trilogy, in 3 volumes:
  • My Life Among the Deathworks. University of Virginia Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-81-3925-16-5
  • The Crisis of the Officer Class. University of Virginia Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-81-3926-76-6
  • The Jew of Culture. University of Virginia Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-81-3927-06-0
• Charisma. Pantheon, 2007.
  • Vintage paperback edition: Vintage, 2008. ISBN 978-0-307-27753-4

• Fine, Gary Alan; Manning, Philip (2003). "Preserving Philip Rieff: The Reputation of a Fellow Teacher". Journal of Classical Sociology. 3 (3): 227–233. doi:10.1177/1468795X03003300.
• Glenn, David (November 11, 2005). "Prophet of the 'Anti-Culture'". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
• Hawtree, Christopher (August 1, 2006). "Obituary: Philip Rieff". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2026.
• King, Richard H. (June 1976). "From Creeds to Therapies: Philip Rieff's Work in Perspective". Reviews in American History. 4 (2): 291–296. doi:10.2307/2701568. JSTOR 2701568.
• Lapsley, James N. (January 1967). "Review: The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, by Philip Rieff". Theology Today. 23 (4): 573. doi:10.1177/0040573667023004.
• McFadden, Robert D. (July 4, 2006). "Philip Rieff, Sociologist and Author on Freud, Dies at 83". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 25, 2014.
• Murray, Henry A. (April 1960). "Reviewed Work: Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. by Philip Rieff". American Sociological Review. 25 (2): 299–300. doi:10.2307/2092656. JSTOR 2092656.
• Scialabba, George (2007). "The Curse of Modernity". Boston Review. 32 (4).
• Smelser, Neil J. (September 2007). "Philip Rieff: The Mind of a Dualist". Social Psychology Quarterly. 70 (3): 221–229. JSTOR 20141785.

• Beer, Jeremy. Pieties of Silence, The American Conservative
• Philip Rieff correspondence at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries