therapy culture
Esther Perel Thinks All This Amateur Therapy-Speak Is Just Making Us Lonelier
Delia Caivanityfair.comPut it all together—diagnostic inflation in medicine; prevalence inflation in media; negativity inflation in news—and one gets the distinct sense that Americans might be making themselves sick with pessimism, anxiety, and gloom. But that’s not all. Just as the U.S. has long been the global economy’s chief cultural exporter—from Coca-Cola to Mickey
... See moreWork in Progress, The Atlantic • America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety
That ‘individual responsibility’ idea is present in so many messages from awareness campaigns: the idea that it is our duty to reach out to loved ones and services for help; the suggestion that mental health support should come in the form of a ‘service’ at all; the emphasis on individual tools like therapy, meds, self-help, mindfulness and apps to
... See moreDazed • This New Book Asks Whether Capitalism Really Is Driving Us All Crazy
When scientific progress destabilized religious authority and the lack of meaning found in a pure rational worldview revealed science’s limitations, movements like Theosophy offered a kind of third way, a path toward understanding the world between science and religion. Theosophy was in conversation with both realms, using tools like magical
... See moreJessa Crispin • Culture, Digested: The Worst Book I Read This Year Culture, Digested: The Worst Book I Read This Year
“diagnostic inflation”—the slapping-on of more (and more, and more) clinical labels to pathologize everyday sadness and stress.
Work in Progress, The Atlantic • America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety
as diagnostic inflation and prevalence inflation combined to raise the salience of our neuroses, something else was happening behind the scenes. The general tenor of America’s political and economic news discourse got much more negative in a very short period of time. To match diagnostic and prevalence inflation, let’s call this negativity
... See moreWork in Progress, The Atlantic • America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety
we should also remember that so much of what we call ‘madness’ or ‘mental illness’ is actually just behaviour that does not lend itself well to the capitalist economic system
Dazed • This New Book Asks Whether Capitalism Really Is Driving Us All Crazy
On one hand, there is an importance in gaining clarity when you name certain things. On the other hand, there is a danger that you lose all nuance, that you’re basically trying to elevate your personal comments and personal experience by invoking the higher authority of psychobabble