Paper short abstract:

This paper will allow us to observe how the techniques promoted by the well-being movement in France are constructed from materials and their development as sets of ideas often re-enliven older religious and ethnocentric beliefs that are centered on the idea of “salvation” and “expectation”.

Paper long abstract:

Well-being can be considered as the new “flou” term in human sciences. As the term “spirituality” did, the well-being movement too gathered a variety of representations and practices that should allow individuals to reach a sort of perfect state of living in an accomplished balance between inner expectations and social reality. As different authors have already underlined, this is a way to put responsibilities on the shoulders of the subject who is therefore seen as a sort of deity, capable to accomplish his/her goals by finding the necessary resources and skills within him/herself and without considering the complexity of the social, political and economical framework the subject is surrounded by. This paper will represent an opportunity to drive the attention on a specific aspect of this new “umbrella term”, mainly in the therapeutic and spiritual field in France. Some of the contemporary psychotherapies are derived from the American stream of positive psychology and cognitive-behavioural therapy, which are both intrinsically goal and problem-solving oriented aiming to guarantee results to the patient in a short time in comparison to conventional historicized psychotherapies. Many of the patients/subjects are avid consumers of the therapeutic-spiritual marketplace, capable of simultaneously managing a number of different, well-being related practices: visualization and breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, shamanism, communication with different entities (channeling), divination (tarot) and a panoply of short-term psychotherapeutic practices.

This paper will allow us to observe how the techniques promoted by the well-being movement in France are constructed from pre-existing materials and their development as sets of ideas often re-enliven older religious, philosophical and ethnocentric beliefs that are centered on the idea of “salvation” and “expectation”.

The well-being movement shows how some of the traditional systems of beliefs are inextricably interwoven in a contemporary social secularisation process.