Jak ryby w wodzie. Kultura terapii i jej krytycy
Like Fish in Water. Therapy Culture and Its Critics

Summary/Abstract: If therapeutic discourse is the horizon of contemporary culture and the ideological underpinning of neoliberalism, then the present crisis requires transcending this horizon. The article examines the historical and political dimensions of the therapeutic dominant of contemporary culture. The first part presents the model of subjectivity implicit in therapy culture, the expansion of psychology as a narrative and cognitive paradigm, and two rival political orientations in critique of therapy culture. The second part looks at historical sources of the therapeutic mode and its subsequent transformations. The third part examines the entanglement of therapy culture in neoliberalism, its role in responsibilisation of the subject, pathologization of poverty, and privatisation of stress. The conclusions look at responses to such critique coming from therapists themselves.

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