2 :: THE REINVENTION OF PERSONS
FAST THERAPY
Ours is the age of therapy. Ever since Sigmund Freud discovered the powers of “the
talking cure” – in which the so-called patient speaks to the so-called therapist about
whatever comes to mind, freely and without limitation – women and men throughout
the expensive, polished cities of the West have sought out the cultivated benefits and
diversions of therapy. In this sense, psychoanalysis as a form of therapy has offered
people the possibility of alternatives, of different lives. Psychoanalysis shows, among
other things, that the emotional lives women and men lead (as well as the emotional
lives they do not lead) are open to interrogation, reappraisal and redrafting.
Ours is also the age of therapeutics, especially at the level of the reconstruction and
reinvention of the self. The language of therapeutics today reigns supreme, at least
throughout the contemporary Western world, for engaging and reflecting on core
dilemmas of the self. Anxiety, narcissism, depression, neurosis, phobia, mourning,
acting-out, defence-mechanism, compulsion and trauma: the vocabulary of
therapeutics has become a central aspect of the emotional scripts through which
contemporary women and men engage with the self, others and the wider world.
Finally, and in addition to the pervasiveness of therapy and the language of
therapeutics, ours is the age of a wholesale therapy culture. That is to say, the
culture of therapy pervades not only the worldview of individuals but also a
framework of meaning for companies, organizations, institutions and, indeed, nations
and geopolitical regions. Today, and as never before, companies routinely undergo
(and seek to recover from) periods of crisis or stress. Organizations and corporations
go about the business of “confidence-building”, in order to “heal” employee distrust
in leadership or management. Entire countries are said to experience periods of
“national trauma”- such as the United States after the terror attacks of 9/11 or the
United Kingdom after the London riots of 2011. Traumatized national communities
are, arguably, part and parcel of a therapeutic imperative which has moved centre
stage in the contemporary period.
This overlapping of individual therapy, the language of therapeutics and therapy culture
can be found in various sectors of everyday life and popular culture. From the
therapist’s couch to cybertherapy, from TV talk shows such as Oprah, Ricki Lake and
Geraldo, to confessional autobiographies like Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation, from
life coaching to speed shrinking: the imperative of the talking cure holds sway.
Notwithstanding the immense complexities of (as well as the differences between)
psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and its related variants, the notion of self-reinvention
lies at the core of all such endeavours. Therapy is, from this angle, deeply interwoven