Critical Perspectives on Personality and Subjectivity 203elaborated by the contemporary psydisciplines that include “self-
regulation, self-management, self-promotion, self-mastery, self-reliance,
self-control, or the resilient self” (p. 586). Following from the collapse
between Self and Ego, the characteristic mode of thinking in neoliberalism
involves an emphasis on a purely Utilitarian thinking where “all is
subsumed under applicability and practicality” rather than a more
expansive Theoretic style of thinking that would open onto more general
and systemic forms of understanding (p. 588).
Teo (2018) argues that under neoliberal conditions feeling takes a
precedence over thinking since there is a “cultural and intellectual move
away from a reason and enlightenment-driven modernism” combined with
an economy that emphasizes the feeling that products provide above and
beyond their specific use value (p. 590). Finally, Teo argues that agency in
neoliberal conditions involves a focus on self-change that is geared
towards better adaptation to neoliberal demands rather than on any kind of
systemic change that could challenge the neoliberal assumptions that it
provides the “best of all possible worlds” (p. 593). Teo (2018) concludes
his analysis of neoliberal subjectivity with a general consideration about
the concept of subjectivity in relation to culture: “The concept of a form of
subjectivity entails understanding that individual subjectivity is connected
with society, and that subjectivity, in and for itself, does not exist.” (p.
596).
The clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe (2014)
further concretizes and critiques how a neoliberal form of life influences
mental and behavioral dispositions. Verhaeghe argues that neo-liberal
meritocracy, “favors certain personality traits and penalizes others” (p.
174). Verhaeghe (2014), citing the Flemish magazine columnist Koen
Meulenaere, lists an unsavory series of personality traits favored in a neo-
liberal social context that include being superficially articulate, lying
without feeling remorse, a tendency to be manipulative,
adaptiveness/flexibility, and impulsivity (p. 174). Verhaeghe notes
ironically that the inspiration for this series of traits is taken from a
diagnostic manual for psychopathy. His main point is that although such