Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain AgePsychology Press, 2004 - 245 pages Therapy Culture explores the powerful influence of therapeutic imperative in Anglo-American societies. In recent decades virtually every sphere of life has become subject to a new emotional culture. Professor Furedi suggests that the recent cultural turn toward the realm of the emotions coincides with a radical redefinition of personhood. Increasingly vulnerability is presented as the defining feature of people's psychology. Terms like people 'at risk', 'scarred for life' or 'emotional damage' evoke a unique sense of powerlessness. Furedi questions the widely accepted thesis that the therapeutic turn represents an enlightened shift towards emotions. He claims that therapeutic culture is primarily about imposing a new conformity through the management of people's emotions. Through framing the problem of everyday life through the prism of emotions, therapeutic culture incites people to feel powerless and ill. Drawing on developments in popular culture, political and social life, Furedi provides a path-breaking analysis of the therapeutic turn. |
Contents
The culture of emotionalism | 24 |
The politics of emotion | 44 |
Targeting privacy and informal relations | 66 |
How did we get here? | 84 |
The diminished self | 106 |
The self at risk | 127 |
Fragile identity hooked on selfesteem | 143 |
Conferring recognition the quest for identity and the state | 162 |
Therapeutic claimsmaking and the demand for a diagnosis | 175 |
does it matter? | 195 |
Notes | 205 |
226 | |
237 | |
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Aberfan abuse According addiction advocates American argues associated authority become behaviour believe Britain British bullying cent child chronic fatigue syndrome claim codependency contemporary counselling crime Daily Telegraph defined demand Derek Summerfield diagnosis disease disorder distress emotional injury emotional intelligence emotional literacy emotionally everyday experience Factiva feelings fibromyalgia Furedi Guardian Holocaust human identity identity politics illness impact important increasingly individual individualised influence informal institutionalisation institutions intervention John Vasconcellos Lasch London medicalisation mental health moral Nolan noted organisation parents people's political politicians post-traumatic stress disorder potential powerlessness Primal Therapy private sphere problems professional promoted psychological damage psychologist PTSD recent recognition relations relationship represents responsibility risk role self-esteem sense sexual sick role significant social society stress suffering survivors syndrome therapeutic culture therapeutic ethos therapists therapy traditional trauma traumatised Ulrich Beck victimisation victims violence wider workplace