The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change. Katie Wright
The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change
therapeutic turn. As the research progressed, the possibility that the therapeutic might operate not only in repressive ways but also in emancipatory ones emerged as a neglected yet significant issue. It became increasingly evident that premises upon which dominant analyses rested became questionable in the light of inquiry that was open to differences in the experiences of women and men, and to the ways in which the rise of the therapeutic society and changes in the gender order were interconnected.
Theoretical and empirical concerns thus intersect as I trace the contours of the therapeutic society historically—how it arose and was legitimated in Australia—and develop an alternative framework from which to consider its implications. To capture its disparate strands in an inquiry grounded in the sociohistorical but driven by present concerns, my methodological approach follows Michel Foucault's exposition of the genealogical project. Rather than a search for truth or historical linearity, a major thrust of genealogical research involves the problematization of the present, and an examination of the past in light of present concerns. It is a mode of inquiry that aims to disrupt common sense by looking at what is familiar in a new way.7
In the face of the preponderance of social theory surmising its pernicious effects, the book aims to defamiliarize assumptions about the therapeutic turn. Therefore, while I draw on Foucault's approach to critical history and his delineation of problematization, I do not begin from the premise that there is something inherently wrong with what I am calling the therapeutic society. My interest, rather, lies in exploring its manifestations in various domains of social, cultural, and personal life at different points in time, in order to look anew at how we have come to understand the therapeutic, both theoretically and in everyday life.
My analysis, moreover, is concerned less with uncovering the operation of power in the governing of modern subjectivity than it is with throwing light on the contradictory consequences of sociocultural change. In the face of excessively negative theorizing, this entails, among other things, shedding light on the ways in which psychological knowledges and therapeutic dispositions have engendered new concerns with emotional life that in turn have given rise to new concerns about suffering. Particularly in relation to suffering in the private domain, and forms of injustice hitherto unacknowledged, this development has had major implications for gender relations, and in moving towards a more just society.
Historicizing concerns about psychological and emotional life throws light on the many factors at play in the emergence of therapeutic discourses and practices. Conceptually, I have delineated a number of key dimensions and central processes. These include: the destabilization of gender and the self; the legitimation of psychological expertise; professional therapeutic intervention into private life; the cultural diffusion of psychological models of reflexive selfhood; the ascendancy of the emotional realm; and, the disruption of the boundaries between public and private life. Though all may be understood as critical, they assume varying degrees of significance and take different forms of expression during different historical periods.
An examination of the therapeutic society grounded in the context of its sociohistorical development reveals that many aspects of social change have been propelled by an emancipatory impulse of progress. The individual became knowable, suffering was accorded new forms of recognition, and therapeutic strategies were developed to deal with the alienation of modern life. Yet in the process, the therapeutic has been bound up with the contradictions of modernity itself, ever inseparable from consumer capitalism, mass media, bureaucratic rationality, and professional self-interest. This complex picture is further illuminated when consideration is also given to the experiences of those who best exemplify the spirit of our therapeutic age: people who have sought psychological assistance and experts who provide it.
In the chapters that follow I examine a number of historical developments that demonstrate how therapeutic concerns and psychological knowledges arose within particular sociohistorical locations, often in response to emergent social and personal dilemmas. Suffice to say, the therapeutic society did not "arrive" out of nowhere during the last decades of the twentieth century with the spread of therapy and counseling. The seeds had been sown earlier with the diffusion of psychological knowledges and therapeutic strategies in diverse spheres of social, economic, and cultural life. Its strands can be traced through developments in medicine, in the economic sphere, and in the educational sector, as well as in professional practices and in the wider dissemination of therapeutic discourses.
Before Freud, therapy, or even psychology, had any significant cultural impact, discourses and practices associated with "nerves" were engendering a distinctly therapeutic ethos and recasting ideas about the self in critical ways. Concerns about nervousness captured the public imagination, and the increasing prevalence of nervous disorder in the late nineteenth century fostered the belief that the "stresses and strains of modern life" were damaging to individual health. Both in the medical arena and at the popular level, discourses of nervousness generated new conceptualizations of the self that challenged dominant models of personhood.
That nervousness was understood not just as a problem of women, but increasingly as an affliction of the male population, became especially important to the ascendancy of the therapeutic. For as men were subject to diagnoses of the contemporary equivalent of depression and anxiety, established views on mental health were disrupted, and prevailing views about gender—especially dominant ideals of masculinity—were challenged. The destabilization of taken-for-granted selfhood characteristic of this period was further intensified with the outbreak of World War I and the profound social and psychological consequences that followed. Yet while there was significant consternation about the emotional and psychological cost of modern life, at the same time, new hopes of cure were also emerging.
During the interwar years, yet more complex representations of the individual emerged as selfhood increasingly came to be framed in psychological terms. Though notions of nervousness persisted, the institutional spread of psychology was promulgating a conceptualization of the individual as calculable and knowable. The "scientific" analysis of self and behavior thus pushed the therapeutic in another direction. Psychology provided a discursive scaffolding which made possible the measurement and classification of individual differences. The reach of psychological ideas to normal populations was therefore fostered, with opportunities for the dissemination of psychology's broadening repertoire of knowledges of the individual into fields where those knowledges could be usefully applied.
At the same time, psychological and psychoanalytic ideas spread at the cultural level, underpinned by these institutional developments. In the popular media, psychoanalytic ideas fermented as models of reflexive selfhood were diffused, first during the interwar years with the influence of Freud, but increasingly by the mid-twentieth century as the technical rationality of institutional practices yielded to more therapeutic approaches. As emotional and relational dimensions came to the fore, the therapeutic also found expression in the advent of counseling for problems of everyday life. Psychological knowledge and therapeutic techniques went at least some way to providing strategies with which to manage the difficulties faced by ordinary people in an increasingly complex world.
Insofar as the interplay of gender and the therapeutic is concerned, the destabilization of the self, particularly the masculine self, has been of central importance. While this can be traced to the popularization of male nervous conditions in the late nineteenth century, the therapeutic continues in a variety of ways to challenge dominant notions of masculinity. Indeed during the late twentieth century, the therapeutic not only became more diffuse and multifaceted, but it increasingly assumed an emotional, humanistic, some might say feminized hue. It is through exploring these changing cultural dimensions and associated institutional practices that a central impulse of the therapeutic becomes evident, one concerned with the articulation of—and with attempts to remedy—experiences of suffering. This is apparent in the early period through the discourse of nerves and becomes more explicit in the latter part of the twentieth century, for example, in public revelations of personal distress and in the growth of counseling and therapy.
Given the enormity of the terrain, the account I establish is far from exhaustive. What I hope it offers, however, are some new insights into the therapeutic turn and an alternative way of thinking about its ramifications. Specifically, I begin from the premise that the undermining of cultural authority, which Rieff's incisive analysis revealed was central to the