Читать книгу The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change - Katie Wright - Страница 7

A persistent theme in critiques of the therapeutic society is that its inherent focus on the self and internal life has fostered a pervasive moral collapse. Underpinning this line of analysis is disquiet about the displacement of traditional authority, a concern definitively elaborated in 1966 with the publication of Philip Rieff's seminal text, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, but foreshadowed earlier with his declaration that "the emergence of psychological man" sounded the death knell for Western culture.⁵ Rather than directing the self toward communal purposes—which for Rieffian sociology is the primary function of culture itself—Rieff identified the driving impulse of the therapeutic as one of interiority.

Locating its gestation in the transition from a premodern social order, the most basic tenet of Rieff's argument is that the therapeutic emerged with changing notions of selfhood that accompanied secularization and liberal individualism. With the old order of the Christian tradition undermined, he interpreted the new organizing symbolic as scientific rather than sacred, governed not by religious authority but by psycho-affective imperatives. By contrast with the moral authority of the Christian era, he argued that the therapeutic had given rise to the birth of a society in which the "self, improved, is the ultimate concern of modern culture."⁶

Nietzsche, Durkheim, and Freud inform Rieff's pessimistic reading of cultural and personal decline. In his theorizing of the collapse of the sacred and moral orders, diminished authority and lower levels of societal repression signaled for Rieff, "the end of the historical road taken by the Western spirit."⁷ According to his analysis, the collapse of communal faith and the erosion of religious authority had led to a shift in the balance of what Durkheim referred to as the system of interdicts, or as Rieff put it, "a reorganization of those dialectical expressions of Yes and No the interplay of which constitutes culture."⁸ The corollary of secularization was, therefore, the emergence of a remissive therapeutic culture in which repression no longer functioned as a powerful mechanism of control and cohesion. He argued: "What is revolutionary in modern culture refers to releases from inherited doctrines of therapeutic deprivation; from a predicate of renunciatory control, enjoying releases from impulse need, our culture has shifted toward a predicate of impulse release, projecting controls unsteadily based upon an infinite variety of wants raised to the status of needs."⁹

The symbolic controls of the Christian era had, according to Rieff, provided not only the foundational elements of moral authority and social cohesion, but also the structuring principles of the personality. He was thus pessimistic about the implications of the "dissolution of a unitary system of common belief, accompanied, as it must be," he argued, "by a certain disorganization of personality."¹⁰ According to his analysis, the subjugation of lower order wants to higher order needs, while constraining, freed the self from base instinctual desires. In the Christian era, this was most evident in the repression of sexuality, the nexus around which much of the Christian doctrine centered. The separation of procreation and sexuality, according to Rieff, served the individual and culture well. Writing in response to the social changes of the 1960s, he was troubled by the liberation of sexuality in the modern era, producing as he saw it, the liberation of the id and consequently the dominance of unruly and disruptive forces of the self.

For Rieff, the shift toward a culture of impulse release offers only an illusory freedom in that it leads to the collapse of public life, community, social responsibility, and ultimately the self. In view of his lack of interest in the experience of those marginalized by the dominant cultural order, it is unsurprising that he is cynical about the diminution of repression. His concern, rather, is that in a secular, remissive, and therapeutic culture, faith and reverence no longer function to direct individuals toward communal purpose. As he articulated the distinction as it played out in the formation of character: "Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased. The difference was established long ago, when 'I believe,' the cry of the ascetic, lost precedence to 'one feels,' the caveat of the therapeutic."¹¹

In Rieff 's analysis, the displacement of a religious framework by a psychological worldview has resulted in diminished levels of repression that threaten the viability of both culture and the self. His preoccupation with a sacred order as essential to maintaining communal purpose reflects his debt to both Durkheim and Nietzsche. However, it is the Freudian view of the crucial role played by a strong cultural super-ego in containing the id—both at the individual and collective level—which underpins his interpretation of the threat to the moral demand system that the therapeutic ethos entails. Fundamental to his analysis is the assumption that the private domain of intimate and familial relations cannot form the basis of a moral order, which must be universal and abstract. In taking for granted the differing values of public and private life as established in Western political thought, Rieff's analysis privileges the cultural over the social.¹²

While clearly influenced by Rieff's cultural analysis, the social forms the cornerstone of James Nolan's examination of the institutionalization of the therapeutic within the political order of late twentieth century America.¹³ Nolan argues that the therapeutic ethos must be understood not only in cultural symbolic terms, but also in terms of how it shapes the social landscape and the terrain of public policy. In the criminal justice system, in education, and especially in welfare, Nolan sees the therapeutic ethos as a means by which the state, facing diminishing public confidence and with weakened authority, deploys a legitimizing discourse of morality. Nolan follows Rieff in predicating his analysis on the erosion of traditional codes of moral understanding, but he draws on other theoretical traditions, notably Weber's notion of legitimation, to argue that psychological and therapeutic discourses have become a key way in which the modern state secures legitimacy.

For Nolan, a defining feature of the therapeutic state is the centrality of emotions in social and political life. Indeed, he argues that an "emotivist ethic" has supplanted traditional morality and become the touchstone for modern understandings of self and world. In such a "psychologically defined moral universe," psychologists and therapists have a particularly important role in defining reality, behavior is increasingly understood in pathological terms, and there has been a concomitant rise in a mentality of victimhood.¹⁴ Implicit in his analysis is a view of the moral barrenness of the therapeutic and he speculates on the ramifications, for both society and the self, of the state taking on the role of the therapist. In a somewhat gloomy prognosis, Nolan suggests that "Weber's modern iron cage may become the postmodern padded cage."¹⁵

In another reading concerned with the moral implications of the therapeutic, John Carroll speculates on the viability of the emerging remissive culture and its effect on personality.¹⁶ One of his primary concerns is that with the decline of authority, "guilt is read as a psychological and not a moral problem. It is to be eradicated by therapy." In his view: "The force within the individual that enforces morality is interpreted as psychological, deriving from the parental environment. The ethical domain is merely a helpful mask, to be delicately stripped away by the analyst once it becomes troublesome."¹⁷ Once again, as with Rieff, the psychological and the ethical—the personal and the public—are dichotomized, and it is the latter that is more highly valued. With the decline of religious authority and the ascendancy of the therapeutic, psychological experts—"secular priests" as Maurice North called them—are seen as having taken over the function of the spiritual guide.¹⁸ In contrast to the clergy who enforced the moral order, the therapeutic professional is regarded as an advocate of the id rather than an embodiment of the cultural super-ego.

Carroll's characterization casts the analyst's role as the facilitation of subjective wellbeing through the eradication of guilt. The role of the counselor or psychotherapist is therefore to bolster self-sufficiency by banishing the dread, guilt, and anxiety that become manifest in the individual when traditional authority has been supplanted by a preoccupation with the self. As Michael Casey puts it: "Authority, after all, is the foundational problem of therapy, the problem therapy was created to solve."¹⁹ As the pacesetters of change, Rieff himself argued that therapists have played a crucial role in the decline of Western culture. He interpreted the "psychologizers" as a pseudo authority, a face that is "all mask and makeup" rather than carrying legitimate moral weight.²⁰

The psychological expert is similarly critiqued by Martin Gross, who following Rieff argued that: "The contemporary Psychological Society is the most vulnerable culture in history. Its citizen is a new model of Western man, one who is dependent on others for guidance as to what is real or false. In the unsure state of his mind, he is even doubtful of the authenticity of his own emotions. As the Protestant ethic has weakened in Western society, the confused citizen has turned to the only alternative he knows: the psychological expert who claims there is a new scientific standard of behavior to replace fading tradition."²¹ Though sharing the concerns of Rieff and Carroll about cultural and personal decline, the analysis Gross develops is primarily driven by a critique of psychological knowledge itself and the professions constructed upon it. The problem of moral authority as held by the therapist rather than the clergy nevertheless figures prominently, with Gross suggesting that psychiatrists and psychotherapists have become the new seers. Not only have they power to define normality, but according to Gross, they are also the new keepers of the sacred order: "By offering the seeming structure of science wedded to mystical insight, the psychological and psychiatric seer successfully masquerades as a modern oracle."²²

A similar theme of moral indignation about the role of the helping professions emerges in Christopher Lasch's analysis of the modern therapist as principally charged with consoling the discontents of the modern age.²³ For Lasch, the reliance on psychological expertise forms part of a wider set of influences—including schools, peer groups, and the mass media—that undermine parental (but notably paternal) authority. Lasch's overarching concern with the decline of cultural authority, and in particular his anxiety about the absent father, shares something of the conservatism of the Rieffian tradition, especially in relation to the shaping of personality. Reflecting the more Marxist inspired critical reading of the Frankfurt School, however, his concern about the implications of a weakened super-ego is couched in terms of the impact of capitalism on working life and familial relations. I will return to Lasch's sociopolitical critique below and conclude the present discussion of his work by noting his formulation of the "psychic repercussions" of cultural change.

While Rieff articulated the consequences of declining authority in Durkheimian terms of the shifting balance of interdicts and remissions, Lasch elaborates this theme in his theory of cultural narcissism. Rejecting the association of narcissism with selfishness, he sees the "narcissistic personality of our time" as a self under threat of disintegration, an empty self that adopts behaviors that may at the surface appear to be selfish, but in reality are indicative of the self struggling to survive against a barrage of forces that threaten psychic annihilation.²⁴

As with Rieff's anxiety about the disorganization of the personality and Lasch's alarm at the rise of narcissism, there has been widespread concern that the ascendancy of the therapeutic has not only involved cultural impoverishment, but also personal decline. Extending earlier analyses, and drawing on Nolan's delineation of the emotivist ethic and escalating claims of victimization in the contemporary era, Furedi argues that the therapeutic ethos fosters a pervasive emotional vulnerability. Indeed he contends that the self in therapeutic culture is "defined by its vulnerability."²⁵ In contrast to Rieff and Carroll's emphasis on the importance of the sacred order, he follows Lasch in framing his moral analysis within a political critique of modern society. The experience of powerlessness that threatens the contemporary individual is understood, by Furedi, as a consequence of the cultural symbolic. In his view, people "make sense of their experiences through reflecting on their specific circumstances and in line with the expectations transmitted through prevailing cultural norms."²⁶

While Furedi's critique traverses aspects of the cultural order and political economy, it lacks the theoretical depth of Rieff and Lasch. His analysis of the self rests largely on descriptions of cultural motifs of vulnerability and representations of a weak, psychologically and emotionally at risk individual, in all a "diminished self." Following Lasch, he identifies transformations in private life as particularly deleterious for the modern self, arguing that the disorganization of the private sphere is not only "the main accomplishment of therapeutic culture," but also that it represents a destructive trend of devaluing private life.²⁷ As he argues: "The casual dismissal of the private sphere represents a disturbingly cavalier attitude towards one of the most important sites of human experience. The separation of the public and private spheres has been essential for the emergence of the modern individual."²⁸

While apparently less preoccupied than others with the decline of paternal authority, Furedi explicitly articulates what is often merely implicit in the conservative moral critique—the importance of a clear separation between an instrumental public rationality and a private domain of intimacy and emotions. Indeed, much of the intellectual outrage directed toward the therapeutic derives from its association with the weakening of the boundaries between the public and private spheres. In a lament reminiscent of Rieff, Furedi regards the ascendancy of the emotional realm, and the reduced levels of repression that it entails, as threatening the viability of public life. As Rieff wrote deprecatingly of the turn away from formalized authority: "Where public and family festivals of recognition were, there let private, even intimate, resolutions of transference relations be."²⁹

While this line of argument captures widely held views about the delicacy of private life and of the necessity of repression for public life, it neglects the individual and social costs of repression and the question of whether these costs are equally distributed. Such an analysis also overlooks the possibility that the foundation of a moral order and indeed the viability of culture itself may not rest on the internalization of traditional forms of paternal and cultural authority. Nevertheless, concerns about the decline of public life associated with the perceived shift toward interiority have been widespread.

In his account of cultural narcissism, Lasch links the collapse of a common life to the development of an impoverished private one. The therapeutic is regarded as a key factor in the waning of communal bonds and civic responsibility due to its increased emphasis on personal autonomy and individual freedom, and its preoccupation with lifestyle and with the self. This strong communitarian theme is further developed in Habits of the Heart, in the view that the therapeutic imperative arouses and fosters individualism. Robert Bellah and his colleagues share Rieff's view of the therapeutic as remissive and deleterious to social life, arguing that the therapeutic attitude "begins with the self, rather than with a set of external obligations."³⁰ They implicate the rise of a therapeutic ethos in the decline of civic membership, noting that almost the only community organizations to experience growth since the 1970s have been support groups and twelve step programs. These groups, they argue, do not share a communal interest but rather encourage individuals to focus on themselves, albeit in the company of others.

Ironically, however, in spite of the stated communitarian concerns, the assumptions underlying these analyses can also be seen as predicated upon an individualist notion of the self. For the question that these accounts do not broach is whether, in spite of all its deficiencies, the therapeutic has fostered new forms of care, not only for the self but also for others. Certainly therapy and the broader therapeutic culture may promote self-absorption, but there are other dimensions that have as yet been under-theorized—for example, how a therapeutic ethos legitimates the domains of empathy, trust, and care, as well as experiences of suffering and injustice. I return to this point later in the chapter. First, however, I will examine other interpretations of the therapeutic, analyses that focus less on weakening authority and moral decline, than on social control and problems of depoliticization.