Shock therapy
Subtitle: psychology, precarity, and well-being in postsocialist Russia
By: Tomas Matza
Contributors: Duke University Press
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 305
ISBN-13: 9780822370611; 9780822370765
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Post-communism; Psychologists; Psychology; Psychotherapists; Social aspects; Psychotherapy
Description: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia witnessed a dramatic increase in psychotherapeutic options, which promoted social connection while advancing new forms of capitalist subjectivity amid often-wrenching social and economic transformations. In this book, the author provides an ethnography of post-Soviet Saint Petersburg, following psychotherapists, psychologists, and their clients as they navigate the challenges of post-Soviet life. Juxtaposing personal growth and success seminars for elites with crisis counseling and remedial interventions for those on public assistance, the author shows how profound inequalities are emerging in contemporary Russia in increasingly intimate ways as matters of selfhood. Extending anthropologies of neoliberalism and care in new directions, the author offers a profound meditation on the interplay between ethics, therapy, and biopolitics, as well as a sensitive portrait of everyday caring practices in the face of the confounding promise of postsocialist democracy.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "Tears of bitterness and joy" : the haunting subject in Soviet biopolitics; title: "Wait, and the train will have left" : the success complex and psychological difference; title: "Now, finally, we are starting to relax" : on civilizing missions and democratic desire; title: "What do we have the right to do?" Tactical guidance at a social margin; title: "I can feel his tears" : psychosociality under Putin; title: "Hello, Lena, you are on the air" : talk-show selves and the dream of public intimacy.