Year: 2012
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: This paper investigates the cultural, social and political contexts of the Prime Minister, David\nCameron's proposal to measure the wellbeing of the UK population. I adopt a psycho-cultural\napproach whereby theories and methods from the disciplines of psychoanalytic and psychosocial\nstudies are combined with those from the fields of media and cultural studies. The paper includes\nrelevant case study material taken from the UK press, television, documents and artefacts within\npopular culture. From this investigation, I provide a critical cultural analysis and contextualisation\nof the proposal to measure wellbeing. This comprises an examination of recurring themes and\ndiscourses in those texts, linking them with cultural movements and histories. I explore the\nposition of wellbeing measurement in terms of the contemporary psychosocial debates about the\nnature of 'therapy culture’. The paper draws on Cooper’s (2009) psychodynamic approach to the\ninterrogation of policy processes, which explores that which is absent, suppressed or denied. I\nsuggest that the current exposition of wellbeing measurement, as deployed by David Cameron, is\nunderpinned by a culturally powerful therapeutic discourse, comprised of a version of self-help\ntherapy culture that has an undercurrent of neoliberal pro-market values. This discourse has been\nstrategically applied by the current government as a means of situating the locus of responsibility\nfor personal wellbeing firmly on the individual. This investigation forms a new intervention in\ncontemporary psychosocial debates about the nature and value of ‘therapy culture’ and is a\ncontribution to the development of a psycho-cultural studies approach.
Author: Siobhan Lennon-Patience
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1560915641