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Katie Wright. The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change
Preface & Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Therapeutic Society & Its Discontents
Moral Collapse
Social Control & Psychological Consolation
Governing & Constituting the Modern Self
The Myth of Women's Empowerment
Assessing the Therapeutic: Ways Forward
2. Modernity, Medicine & the Problem of "Nerves"
Neurasthenia& Nervous Exhaustion
"Nervous Debility" & "Self-Abuse"
"Shattered Nerves"
The case of Gunner Perry
Mending the Mind
Popular Cures for a Nervous Nation
3. The Legitimation of Psychological Expertise
From Mental Science to Psychology
The Making of a Profession
Education & Applied Psychology
Educational & Vocational Guidance
Psychology at Work
Therapy at Work
4. Cultural Diffusion of the Analytic Attitude
Analyze Thyself
Specialists of Private Life
Marketing the Psychological
Therapists as Public Experts
Lifting the Lid on Private Pain
5. Therapy: Inside the Talking Cure
"Ordinary Suffering" & the Promise of Therapy
Turning to Therapy
– Jessica –
– James –
– George –
– Simon –
– Svetlana –
– Andrew –
– Maria –
– Amy –
Turning to Therapy – The Therapists' View
Clarifying the Issues
The Therapeutic Alliance
Investing in the Self
Meaning, Morality & Responsibility
Therapy & Self-Change
In the Final Analysis
6. Reflections on the Therapeutic Turn
Notes. Introduction
1The Therapeutic Society & Its Discontents
2Modernity, Medicine & the Problem of "Nerves"
3The Legitimation of Psychological Expertise
4Cultural Diffusion of the Analytic Attitude
5Therapy: Inside the Talking Cure
6Reflections on the Therapeutic Turn
Bibliography
Отрывок из книги
Since the publication in 1966 of Philip Rieff's classic treatise, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, the West's fascination with the psychological has been a subject of ongoing scholarly interest. In the wake of his brilliant, if at times impenetrable, study of "faith after Freud," stands a now voluminous literature that extends Rieff's analytic frame in a variety of directions. In light of these debates, this book offers an account of the rise of the therapeutic in Australia, where its presence is evident no less than in other parts of the West. Beyond telling an Australian story, however, the book has a theoretical purpose that transcends national boundaries. My hope, therefore, is that it will appeal both to those already familiar with debates about the therapeutic, as well as those interested in the spread of psychological knowledges and changing ideas about the self and emotional life in Australia and beyond.
In the face of its pervasiveness, the therapeutic is a daunting object of study, one I suspect that leaves those who endeavor to investigate it acutely aware of the impossibility of coming to grips with its many and varied dimensions. It is both omnipresent and ephemeral, finding expression in a multiplicity of ways at different times and in a variety of locations. I have tried to capture something of its disparate historical development by focusing on some of the key institutional sites and processes involved in its emergence. I have also tried to bring to bear upon my analysis a central dimension of the therapeutic society that is too often overlooked: people's actual experiences of therapy.
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This so-called clinical reason is evident not only in processes of self-analysis and the analysis of others, but the concomitant role of talk in the therapeutic society. Foucault's genealogy of confession is useful here. He traced the history of confessional practices, particularly those associated with sexual prohibition, from the religious realm—where confession was associated with renunciation—to the medical arena where "the obtaining of the confession and its effects were recodified as therapeutic operations."64 For Foucault, confession is a "technology of the self," a means by which the self is constituted. In the Christian tradition, such verbalization was linked to renunciation of sin; however, with the influence of the human sciences, Foucault argues that verbalization became important in its own right: "From the eighteenth century to the present, the techniques of verbalization have been reinserted in a different context by the so-called human sciences in order to use them without renunciation of the self but to constitute, positively, a new self. To use these techniques without renouncing oneself constitutes a decisive break."65
As through confession, constituting the self "positively" in the therapeutic society is also enacted through consumption. Rose connects what he terms technologies of consumption with psychological technologies, arguing that the two are interlinked; consumption is stimulated through advertising and market research which utilizes psychological knowledge and techniques, while psychological expertise is itself disseminated by means of therapies and products to be consumed.
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