This essay examines the extension of therapeutic discourse into daytime television talk shows (“Sally Jessy Raphael” and “Oprah Winfrey”), and argues that the programs are fueled by deep social tensions that provide both the substance of the talk and the object of the “ideological labor” of the talk show fom. Key elements of that labor are topical framing, synthetic personalizatton, and the use of therapeutic discourse that help organize (and thereby manage) social conflict into narratives of individual psychological d