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Book
ReviewNot
Just Privation or AdversityTherapy culture. Frank Furedi, 2003. London: Routledge; ISBN 0 415 32159—X, 245 pp. £14.99
SAGE Publications, Inc.2004DOI: 10.1177/09675507040120030403
Shelley Day Sclater
University of East London
This
book is about the expanding idiom of therapeutics in contem- porary life.
The central idea is that we are increasingly living our moral and political
lives through affect, as the historic split between `reason' and `emotion'
is reconfigured. We now, Furedi argues, make sense of the world through a
prism of emotion, as the language and practices of therapy pervade all spheres
of life. Furedi's main thesis is that every aspect of life, not just privation
or adversity, has become a potential site for therapeutic intervention. The
upshot is that social and political problems can now be re-cast in individual
terms. They cry out, not for political remedies, but instead for the kinds
of `support' and treatment that only the new army of psychological experts
can offer. What is new is not an interest in therapy — there have always
been therapies of various sorts — but the ways in which contemporary
public life has become emotionalized, with feelings operating as the main
currency in cultural and political argument and action. In this book, Frank
Furedi takes us on a detailed tour of `ther- apy culture'. The book is packed
full of examples that can not fail to convince us that there is definitely
something a bit dubious, if not downright nasty, in the woodshed. From the
enormous public outpouring of grief on the death of Diana, through the shock
of 9/11, to the widespread sorrow and horror of the Soham murders, we are
witnessing, Furedi argues, a new sensitivity to trauma, dam- age and the need
for healing, as the therapeutic code overwhelms other codes of meaning. Traditional
moral meanings attached to concepts such as trust, guilt and responsibility
are wrenched from their bearings as the therapeutic ethos encroaches. Moralities
are
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newly
negotiable, but only on a therapeutic terrain. It all sounds very worrying.
Much of the book is given to convincing the reader that the tenta- cles of
the therapeutic extend from the personal, through the social and cultural,
to the political, and back again, transforming personal and political life,
and instituting new forms of governance. But surely there is no longer much
dispute about the triumph of the therapeutic in contemporary western culture.
Philip Rieff for example, talked about it in the 1960s; Christopher Lasch
and Jaques Donzelot had something further to say in the 1970s; and Nikolas
Rose picked up the baton too in the 1980s. Given this, Furedi perhaps uses
up too much space making his case that there is an issue here. What is much
more interesting — and this is the point that Furedi, disappointingly,
really only takes up in the last few pages of the book — is whether
we should regard these developments as a good thing, or as a bad thing. `Does
it matter?', he asks, by way of `final thoughts'. I wish that he had raised
this crucial issue much earlier, and given it rather more detailed treatment.
Furedi answers his own question in the affirmative. It matters, he thinks,
because it compromises rights, justice, agency and even subjectivity. It matters
because it margina- lizes certain ways of thinking, feeling and being, potentially
stifling dissent much more effectively than overtly coercive measures ever
could. It matters because it transforms the boundaries of citizenship, upsetting
the possibilities of privacy and promoting reliance on professional authorities.
Furedi evidently regards the encroachment of the therapeutic ethos as a sinister
development. But lest we be tempted, under his influence, to cast rather too
superior a sideways smile at what has been termed the Oprahfication of culture,
it is worth remembering that every downside has its upside. Barry Richards,
for example, might argue that, though the therapeutic is a mixed development,
requiring com- plex assessment, on balance it is to be welcomed as carrying
great potential for increasing human well-being and creativity. Clearly, there
is a whole story to be told around the therapeutic that parallels the one
Furedi tells. Might not `therapy culture' mean something quite positive? Could
it, for example, lead to a deeper appreciation of the complexities of life,
both personal and political? Or, as in the work of the late Ian Craib, to
a critical examination of what it is that we actually mean when we talk of
`feelings' and `emotions'? Far from diminishing the self, is it not possible
that ther- apy culture could alert us to the multidimensional nature of the
self, or the essentially social nature of each individual? And so on. Clearly,
when `emotions' are equated, in the traditional way, with processes
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that
go on inside individuals, the real dangers of manipulation by the therapeutic
ethos become visible. What Furedi does not see is the possibility that the
therapeutic might provide a language to interrog- ate and critique such individualized
and oppressive thinking. I enjoyed this book, and found it compulsive reading.
I have an instinctive sympathy with the author's thesis that therapeutic cul-
ture, far from being enlightened and liberating, is more likely to impose
a new conformity through the management of emotion. But I found the sociological
analysis, ultimately, limiting. The thera- peutic turn is obviously here to
stay, so the most challenging ques- tion that faces us is whether, and how,
we might harness it towards creative and liberating outcomes. But perhaps
that is too thera- peutic a question.