Featured Article
Theorizing Therapeutic Culture
Journal of Sociology (2008) 44(4): 321-336
Katie Wright
University of Melbourne
Analyses of the influence of psychology and the growth of counselling during the 20th century commonly point to the deleterious effects of a cultural shift from reticence and self-reliance to emotional expressiveness and help-seeking. Indeed, the ascendancy of therapeutic culture has been widely interpreted as fostering cultural decline and enabling new forms of social control. Drawing on less pessimistic assessments of cultural change and recent directions in social theory, this article argues for greater recognition of the ambivalent legacy of the therapeutic turn. Through a reinterpretation of the consequences of the diminution of traditional authority, the weakening of the division between public and private life, and the rise of the confessional, the article challenges dominant readings of decline and control. In doing so, it draws attention to how psychological knowledge and therapeutic understandings of the self have given legitimacy to, and furnished a language with which to articulate, experiences of suffering formerly confined to private life. In advancing a less pessimistic interpretation of cultural change, it considers two historic moments in Australia: the advent of telephone counselling in the 1960s and the Royal Commission on Human Relationships in the 1970s.
News
conservative sociology: what is it?
February 5, 2009 2:46 pm
Sociologists John Carroll, Eduardo de la Fuente and Steven Thiele discuss how society might be studied from a perspective that is not based on commitment to radical change. They also survey the impact that conservative theorists have had on the social sciences.
Counterpoint ABC Radio National 2 February, 2008 (Read or Listen)
Objects of the Dead
February 5, 2009 3:15 pm
When a loved one dies their personal belongings take on a new meaning. As you mourn the person you've lost, possessions remain as a tangible connection to the past. Then there's the difficult decision about what to do with all their things.your father's clothes, your mother's photos or a partner's favourite books? How do these choices help us to make meaning of life and death?
Listen to Margaret Gibson on ABC Radio National's Life Matters 17 September 2008
