Some Notes on the Good Life in Biographical Experience and its Over-therapeutisation Cover Image

Kilka uwag o dobrym życiu w biograficznym doświadczeniu i jego nadmiernej terapeutyzacji
Some Notes on the Good Life in Biographical Experience and its Over-therapeutisation

Author(s): Katarzyna Waniek
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Sociology
Published by: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: good life; autobiographical narrative interview; paradoxes of therapeutic culture; neo-liberal discourse and individual experience

Summary/Abstract: The analysis of autobiographical narrative interviews with people born after 1980 increasingly reveals their problematic entanglements in rapidly growing, competing and changing social worlds, an increasing proportion of which are embedded in social media. While often stripping of intimacy and urging to expose and nurture their own egos, they offer enticing avenues for personal development and some visions of the good life. The latter, as many young people believe, cannot be achieved without engaging in a therapeutic process that has been infected by neo-liberal discourse and promotes self-realisation, selfresponsibility and creativity. The fundamental difficulty for contemporary people is the inability to separate an actual ‘good life’ from its simulacra. This article is an attempt of applying the tools developed in the autobiographical narrative interview method in order to make such a distinction. It aims at demonstrating the paradoxes inherent in the process of therapy, which frequently ‘suspends’ the very possibility to work through the problems.

  • Issue Year: 248/2023
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 31-58
  • Page Count: 28
  • Language: Polish