Neoliberalism's Appropriation of Humanistic Psychology

Master's Thesis, 2021

In the past 40 years, there has been a significant change in the categorization and medicalization of the manifestation of human behaviour and emotions. Certain experiences that are distributed due to people's location in economic, political or social structures fall no longer in a political reality simply to be categorized as psychological disorders. Although Marxist scholars have often attempted to locate the mental disorders and their political-economic sources within infrastructural environment that neoliberalism created, their systematic analyses barely corresponded to the theories and practices regarding the abnormal behaviour and psychology. That is to say that, the nature of the "therapeutic" practices most -if not all- of the time emphasizes the individual as the unit to fix. The depression, anxiety and suicides that are correlated with socio-political problems are prescribed interventions that explicitly aims to systematically "desensitize", "restructure" and "habituate" the individuals; which in its essence is an embodiment of Foucauldian concept biopower. The aim of this thesis is to further investigate the political implications of the psychological interventions and psycho-social programs within the neoliberal agenda. It is hypothesized that the devastating impacts of neoliberal and capitalist discourses are systematically concealed through psychological and psycho-social intervention programs as "individual suffering". The individuation of the suffering goes parallel to the atomization promoted by the neoliberal agenda and -again- it is further commodified, reinforcing the capitalist economic structures.

Psychotherapy and Politics International

This paper focuses on the currently hegemonic economic system in the world known as "neoliberal capitalism" or "neoliberalism." It attempts to gauge the neoliberal psychopolitics accompanying the unfolding and reinforcement of neoliberalism-as well as the psychological impact this has on individuals worldwide. The work of several

Pavón-Cuéllar, D. y Orozco Guzmán, M. (2017). Politics of psychoanalysis in liberal and neoliberal capitalism. Psychotherapy and Politics International 15(2), 1–14, 2017

This article offers a discussion on the politics of psychoanalysis in liberal and neoliberal capitalism. After jointly reflecting on the persistence of neoliberalism in these times of Trump, the two authors separate and exchange various arguments, some more closely related to Marxism and others closer to Freudianism, in discussing the positions of psychoanalysis in regard to various aspects related to capitalism: its liberal modality and its patriarchal foundation, its scientific and university guises, money and the market, the socialist alternative and the revolutionary horizon.

Today, as a result of external pressures from a state-driven audit culture brought about by the cultural components of neoliberalism, there exists less and less space for thoughtful psychotherapeutic study and practice, and a questioning of the assumptions of our ever-shallowing field and current organizational practices. The overregulation of psychotherapy, the manualization of both treatment and training programs, and an overwhelming focus on modalities that offer little more than

Filozofija i društvo, 2024

This article explores the relationship between neoliberalism and the phenomena of "therapy culture". We define therapy culture as a consequence of the spread of ideas, discourses, and practices from psychology and psychotherapy into various realms of society. Previous studies, drawing from cultural sociology, Marxism, and governmentality theory, have failed to adequately address how therapy culture integrates subjectivity with the institutions of the neoliberal mode of regulation. We begin with a historical overview of therapy culture's evolution through the twentieth century and its role in neoliberal economic reforms. Our analysis then delves into conceptualizing the neoliberal mode of regulation, emphasizing the role it gives to subjectivity. Finally, we propose a theoretical framework integrating Foucault's "technologies of the self" and Lacan's concept of "fantasy" to conceptualize the relationship between neoliberalism and therapy culture. By relying on this framework, we will conclude that therapy culture serves as a governmental technology through which neoliberalism integrates subjectivity into the process of capital accumulation.

2019

In this article, we present and discuss 20 theses to characterize the relationship between psychology and neoliberalism on the one hand, and neoliberal psychology and society on the other. These theses consist of three overarching themes which are psychology education, clinical and counseling psychology in practice, and the psychological profile of the neoliberal subject. With regard to psychology education, our discussion revolves on privatization of psychology degrees, commodification of higher education, quantity fetishism, studying to get rich, double-edged popularization of psychology, customerization of psychology education, clinical chauvinism, and packaged and pacified psychology. Under the title of clinical and counseling psychology in practice, factory models of psychological services, financialization of success, privatized life-long training, psychologization of the social and political, neoliberal psychology as the guardian of status quo, fake psychologists, and the cla...

Psychotherapy and Politics International, 2014

This paper is about the place of psychotherapy under capitalism, addressed using elements of the critique of political economy undertaken by Marx. Marxist critique of capitalist political economy is also, it is argued, necessarily feminist. I include analyses of "feminisation" of work in order to grasp how value is produced, circulated and managed by psychotherapy, how subjectivity is targeted. Three aspects of psychotherapy are discussed to illustrate the value of a Marxist feminist approach to this particular practice of the self: the question of payment for the labour of a psychotherapist (and the labour of the client), the question of public health provision (focusing here on the UK National Health Service), and the continuing debates about the role of the State (and the regulation of public and private provision of psychotherapy).

Journal for Cultural Research, 2018

In this paper, I argue that the appropriate answer to the question of the form contemporary neoliberalism gives our lives rests on Michel Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as a particular art of governing human beings. I claim that Foucault’s definition consists in three components: neoliberalism as a set of technologies structuring the ‘milieu’ of individuals in order to obtain specific effects from their behavior; neoliberalism as a governmental rationality transforming individual freedom into the very instrument through which individuals are directed; and neoliberalism as a set of political strategies that constitute a specific, and eminently governable, form of subjectivity. I conclude by emphasising the importance that Foucault’s work on neoliberalism as well as the ancient ‘ethics of the care of the self’ still holds for us today.

Annual Review of Critical Psychology , 2019

We live in a transitional social period of historic proportions, in which the historical class compromise of Fordism has been revoked 'from above. ' In response to what has been 'achieved' and based on their current strength, those 'above' are seeking a new model of social organization and are trying to push it through -let's call this model 'neoliberalism.' Like its predecessor, Fordism, neoliberalism demands and enables a specific form of social organization, which 'needs' (both enables and presupposes) certain types of 'average' people. Let's call these 'forms of subjectivity,' i.e. configurations of subjectivity and new templates for historical normality. What prevailed in the 20th century as Psychology-and shapes our inherent understanding, whether approving or critical, of a normal person and his/her subjectivity-was just Fordist psychology, i.e. a psychology that had to help organize (i.e. develop and use) the productive force 'individuality' in a manner useful for Fordism. Psychology has/d to help get people to think and act 'functionally' -why else should bureaucracies or ruling classes invest in it? The nascent neoliberalism involves other (normality) requirements -which are always simultaneously both hindrances and opportunities for the subjects! Today, the productive force 'individuality' is simply being organized differently and poured into more current efficiency/profit molds of subjectivity. The respective concepts of a person in Fordism and neoliberalism can be condensed in buzzwords: Fordist 'homogeneous normality' vs. neoliberal 'differential normality' from 'above'-we are still and always dealing with a practice of normalization of (developing and exploited) individuals! In Fordism, it was the task of the predominant social sciences (such as psychology) to homogenize people along specific socially produced patterns, social categories (both: to control and reorient them, to fix them): the right/normal man, the normal worker, normal sex ... Neoliberalism no longer needs homogeneity (that much). It 'operates' with differentiality. Homogeneity is not as crucial and important, everyone can (but also must) be individually useable in his/her own way or prove (!) his/her usability individually. Individuality, idiosyncrasies, peculiarities are not only ok., but may effectively support one's utility even better. For neoliberalism, collectives are not only no longer 'in,' they even smell of homogeneity -yuck! And exactly here lie both the crux and the trap of 100 years of criticisms from and of dominant psychology: any critique of Fordist psychology boiled down to questioning homogeneity -and expounding individuality. However, homogeneity was not only submission to a 'norm;' at the same time it (also) meant or promised social protection -which had to be won, to be sure! It is exactly this social protection that is the original sin of the neoliberal religion! If criticism fails to reflect the dialectic of homogeneity and (the promise of) social protection by historicizing itself and its context, by becoming aware of its respective societal relativity, then its painful thorn against Fordist homogeneity will quickly become a knitting needle useful for the individual's straitjacket in his/her struggle with neoliberal differential normalcy. Criticism is not some timeless rhetorical jewelry, nor an academic frock one puts on and carries around individually, but rather a social relationship with the historical 24 NEOLIBERAL FRAMING OF (CRITICAL) PSYCHOLOGY mainstream as the counterpart; it is a social relationship in which real subjects (must) form historical regimes of agency in and for their lives! In addition, there are dynamics of 'dis-simultaneity' (Ungleichzeitigkeit) in the organization of our societies: neither Fordism nor neoliberalism were or are the same everywhere and for everyone! There never was, nor is there now, a single, possibly dominant, mode of working, mode of living or mode of desiring: neither intra-societally nor inter-nationally. Not all (social groups of) people live in the same historical Nowwith the same opportunities and obstacles! There were and are structural contradictions -such as class, gender, 'race'/colonialism, ... -and the relationships between these shape sociability (societality) historically. Any one, geo-politically specific, psychology depends on the confrontation with these structural contradictions: as scientific topic, as academic discipline, and as professional occupation.

The article aims to discuss some psychic consequences of the emergence of neoliberalism. I seek to understand the major changes presupposed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder III upon the rise of a neoliberal subjectivity. If we want to have a real idea of the disciplinary process immanent to neoliberalism, we need to understand how it changed our way of describing categories of psychic suffering and disease.