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.
Social Control & Psychological Consolation
In accounts that emphasize the political economy rather than the cultural symbolic, historical transformations associated with the development of capitalist market economies are seen as central to the formation of a therapeutic ethos.31 Though some, most notably Lasch, develop approaches that integrate the social and cultural with an analysis of the political economy, the major point of divergence lies in what is seen as the distinguishing feature of the therapeutic. While Rieff read the therapeutic as remissive, the political economy critique views it rather as a potent mechanism of depoliticization and social control. Grounded in historical materialism, this line of interpretation makes changes in the production and consumption systems of the capitalist economy central to analyses of the therapeutic society.
The extent to which the advent of consumer capitalism and the ascendancy of the therapeutic were mutually reinforcing has been widely noted.32 According to T.J. Jackson Lears, the shift from a Protestant ethos of self-denial to a therapeutic culture of self-gratification provided fertile ground for the expansion of consumer capitalism. Advertisers, he notes, "began speaking to many of the same preoccupations addressed by liberal ministers, psychologists, and other therapeutic ideologues. A dialectic developed between Americans' new emotional needs and advertisers' strategies; each continually reshaped and intensified the other."33 As Stuart Ewen has shown, psychology provided advertisers with insights into "human instinct" that stimulated the desire for consumption in mass audiences.34 A critical dimension of this involved creating a level of unease and dissatisfaction that consumer culture then promised to ameliorate. With the promise of self-improvement through consumption, Philip Cushman argues that advertising became—like psychotherapy itself—a therapeutic activity.35
In displacing the ethic of salvation, the emerging ethos of self-realization provided, Lears argues, a "new and secular basis for capitalist cultural hegemony."36 He suggests that shifting patterns of consumption were intimately connected to changing experiences of selfhood in the late nineteenth century. The corrosive effects of capitalism and technological change were intensified by the secularization of Protestantism. These factors coalesced, he argues, to undermine the solid sense of selfhood that had been maintained by Victorian moral boundaries and religious authority. There was, according to Lears, an increasing sense of anxiety amongst the educated bourgeoisie that was generated by urbanization, technological development, and greater levels of affluence: a phenomenon he refers to as "the feeling of unreality."37
The observation that the political and economic structures of capitalist modernity gave rise to changing experiences of selfhood is widespread.38 Lears' evocative depiction of the "sense of unreality" experienced during the late Victorian era resonates with David Riesman's account of post-WWII shifts in culture and personality. Riesman argued that selfhood lost coherence in the rapidly changing social circumstances associated with transformations in organizational life and new forms of mass communication. In his view, corporate culture, bureaucratization, and closer to home, permissive parenting, brought about changes in social character; the "inner-directed" individual guided by internalized values, conscience and guilt, gave way to the "other-directed" conformist individual who sought cues from others. By contrast to feelings of guilt that govern the inner-directed person, Riesman argued that the "prime psychological lever of the other-directed person is a diffuse anxiety."39
Tackling similar themes several years later, Lasch extended Riesman's account of American culture and personality in his analysis of narcissism. In the
