The uses of therapy

In conclusion, let us return briefly to the question of therapy, seen by Lasch, despite his use of psychoanalytic theory, primarily in negative vein as a form of dependence on experts. Rather than considering Lasch's views directly on this issue, we might turn to the somewhat comparable viewpoint established in the well-known writings of Philip Rieff. ³³ Rieff relates the rise of therapy to secularisation and to what he sees as a moral dearth which the weakening of traditional religion has created. What he calls `therapeutic control' operates to preserve a certain level of `adequate social functioning' in settings where religion no longer supplies binding guidelines. Formerly if people were miserable, they sought the solace of the church; now they turn to the nearest available therapist. By means of therapy, a person aims to become `the sane self in a mad world, the integrated personality in the age of nuclear fission, the quiet answer to loud explosions'. <sup>34</sup> Therapy seeks to create a confident and prosperous individual without a sense of higher moralities; it dispenses with the great riddles of life in exchange for a modest and durable sense of well-being. `The important thing', as Rieff puts it, `is to keep going.' ³⁵

There is a certain amount of validity in such a view, but it has to be recast substantially. We should first of all note that therapy does not replicate the `authority' of previous times, most notably religious authority. There is no authoritative version of therapy. Anyone who seeks therapy, as was pointed out, is confronted with an almost inexhaustible variety of different schools, practices and philosophies, many of which are radically at odds with others. If classical psychoanalysis seems to have a pre-eminent place in intellectual debates about modes of therapy, this is more

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a tribute to Freud's genius than to any overall acceptance in practice that this particular version of therapy is more legitimate or efficacious than others. Therapy, therefore, is more a specific expression of dilemmas and practices relevant to high modernity than it is a phenomenon substituting for more traditional social or moral forms.

Is therapy only a means of adjusting dissatisfied individuals to a flawed social environment? Is it simply a narrow substitute, in secular vein, for a deeper range of involvements available in pre-modern settings? There is no denying that therapy can be an indulgence, and can perhaps promote narcissistic withdrawal. Most forms of therapy take time and money; therapy is in some degree a cultivated diversion of the privileged.

Yet it is also much more than this. ³⁶ Therapy is an expert system deeply implicated in the reflexive project of the self: it is a phenomenon of modernity's reflexivity. In the shape of psychoanalysis, therapy developed as a means of combating pathologies of the personality. It was formed around a rhetoric of `illnesses' and `cures', and the curative properties of diverse forms of therapy -- including classical psychoanalysis -- continues to be the subject of acrimonious debate. But the prime importance of therapy in circumstances of late modernity does not lie in this direction. Therapy should be understood and evaluated essentially as a methodology of life-planning. The `capable individual' today not only has a developed self-understanding, but is able to harmonise present concerns and future projects with a psychological inheritance from the past. Therapy is not just an adjustment device. As an expression of generalised reflexivity it exhibits in full the dislocations and uncertainties to which modernity gives rise. At the same time, it participates in that mixture of opportunity and risk characteristic of the late modern order. It can promote dependence and passivity, yet it can also permit engagement and reappropriation.

Therapeutic endeavours, nonetheless, take place against the background of the sequestration of experience and the internally referential systems of modernity. It is not surprising that many -- not all -- therapies are oriented primarily towards control. They interpret the reflexive project of the self in terms of self-determination alone, thus confirming, and even accentuating, the separation of the lifespan from extrinsic moral considerations.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 676