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 Minimal Self, in particular, he developed the idea that changes in personality under advanced capitalism involved a hollowing out or emptying of the self as a strategy of "psychic survival in troubled times." Lasch grounds his analysis of minimal selfhood in the context of the expansion of the state and corporate bureaucracies, the rise of managerialism, shifts in cultural authority, and the decline of the family, arguing that social conditions under advanced capitalism are increasingly warlike—not only in the public sphere, but also in personal life. In his analysis, the family is no longer a "haven in a heartless world" and the private sphere "has become as anarchical, as warlike, and as full of stress as the marketplace itself."40 The retreat inward and the growth of ideals of self-improvement for Lasch are thus understood as a direct consequence of major social change: "The growth of bureaucracy, the cult of consumption with its immediate gratifications, but above all the severance of the sense of historical continuity have transformed the Protestant ethic while carrying the underlying principles of capitalist society to their logical conclusion. The pursuit of self-interest, formerly identified with the rational pursuit of gain and the accumulation of wealth, has become a search for pleasure and psychic survival."41
Entering therapy, in his view, is a means of mitigating psychic disintegration. The hope of achieving mental health represents for Lasch, "the modern equivalent of salvation," with therapists, not priests, the "principal allies in the struggle for composure."42 More broadly, the fixation with emotional life and self-improvement reflect, in his view, a repudiation of the past and the "waning sense of historical time."43 A preoccupation with present concerns and personal change has arisen as the sole means by which individuals can exercise control over their lives. However, these strategies of "psychic survival" have brought about, according to Lasch, an unfortunate shift from political engagement to self-examination: "Having displaced religion as the organizing framework of American culture, the therapeutic outlook threatens to displace politics as well, the last refuge of ideology. Bureaucracy transforms collective grievances into personal problems amenable to therapeutic intervention."44
Lasch's view of the therapeutic as a mechanism of depoliticization constitutes one of the most salient contributions to debates about the therapeutic society. Indeed, following Lasch, the personalization of social problems has been widely read as its central impulse. Dana Cloud, for example, draws on this idea to argue that therapeutic