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 at 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.