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- Convenors:
-
Keir Martin
(University of Oslo)
Inga-Britt Krause (Tavistock Clinic)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel invites ethnographic exploration of the role of psychotherapy in the transformation of individual and collective identities globally. In particular we invite reflection on the hopes and fears expressed by participants and others that psychotherapy might produce wider social transformation.
Long Abstract:
The growth of new middle-class populations across the non-Western world marks not only a historically unprecedented shift in global economic and cultural power but a potential major transformation in subjectivity and cultural identity for millions of people. The exponential growth of interest in psychotherapy in countries such as India, China and Russia in recent years is a major marker of this transformation. This is a phenomenon that provokes much heated public debate, with many expressing a fear that it marks the growth of a socially destructive 'Western individualism'. For others this development holds out the hope of the development of less constraining forms of subjectivity and overcoming histories of familial or cultural trauma. Whilst much work has been done on other aspects of new middle-class cultural consumption in contexts such as entertainment or tourism, psychotherapy with its more explicit self-reflection upon the kind of person that the process is intended to produce, remains relatively unexplored ethnographically.
We invite paper proposals based upon both ethnographic research and theoretical reflections on psychotherapy as a practice from the standpoint of anthropological theory.
Questions that can be addressed include, but are not limited to;
• What new forms of subjectivity and identity does psychotherapy enable in different national and cultural contexts?
• How are concepts such as 'class' or 'culture' mobilised emically among therapists and clients to shape these processes in practice?
• How can we ethnographically document and analyse the changing nature of psychotherapy in new political and cultural contexts?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
The image of the happy individual that is promoted on social media by celebrities is one which, among many other practices, regularly visits a therapist. I will be discussing the dynamics of mental health literacy in contexts where it becomes or is accused of becoming a conspicuous consumption.
Paper long abstract:
Based on the online and offline ethnography carried out in settings populated by Iranians, the image of the happy and rationale individual that is being promoted on social media by celebrities is one which, among many other practices, regularly visits a therapist. With the rise in popularity of psychotherapist celebrities, having a therapist and being able to pay for the sessions opens up the possibility of making a distinct identity which has entree to the knowledge and assets aimed at bettering her social class. Nevertheless, the characteristics of this class is not homogeneous hence divers. In this paper, I will be discussing the changing aspects of mental health literacy and mental health hygiene in contemporary Iran by seeing this practice in contexts which grows into or is accused of becoming a conspicuous consumption. “My therapist has advised me” has occasionally been seen equivalent to “I have a personal lawyer and I consult with her for the most trivial of affairs”, thus as social capital. However, this must not be a generalization of the population of people who seek therapy; more clearly to study the sociocultural understanding of the practice of seeking help in different strata of contemporary Iran and vicissitudes that it has undergone in terms of accessibility of information on social media and the possibilities that psychotherapy can bring or not. How are these discourses on mental health in Iran and its relation to identity being debated and problematized in this context?
Paper short abstract:
An ethnography of a psychotherapy center for refugees in Sweden that explores how is gender equality tackled in therapy, and what subjectivation processes are mobilized in relation to "women empowerment", in a social context made of the “Othering”, stigmatization, and exclusion of women refugees.
Paper long abstract:
“A lot of our work is about women empowerment”, this was how many of my interlocutors: women psychotherapists, described their work in a psychotherapy center for traumatized refugees in Sweden. Issues related to gender equality and women’s independence were very present in the individual and group therapy sessions, involving women refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and it infused the narratives of many of these women, in relation to the impacts of therapy, recovery, and transformation.
In fact, while refugees have been portrayed all over Europe as a securitarian, economic, and cultural threat (Greussing and Boomgaarden 2017), women refugees in Sweden have been particularly portrayed as a burden and threat to “the gender equality Swedish culture”, considered a hallmark of the Nordic state. They were Othered and constructed as problematic because of their traditionalism, and the idea of an unsurmountable “cultural distance” between “Modern Swedish women” and “Backward refugee women” infused not only popular discourses but political and administrative ones (Mulinari and Lundqvist 2017).
The psychotherapeutic encounter in the center, while focusing on trauma, was also about navigating this “cultural distance”, with an intention to support the women to be liberated, embrace the host country’s codes and values, and fit in. This ethnographic paper focuses on how do women therapists and exiled women “patients” tackle gender equality values in therapy, what subjectivation processes are mobilized, whether new subjectivities of “empowered women” are emerging, and how do these processes articulate with a social and political context made of “Othering” and exclusion.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the dynamics of self-boundary making among Chinese psychotherapists. Although they often use a 'China/West' dichotomy as a framing, they are more likely to look at it as a process that is effected by other distinctions, such as inter-generational or class differences.
Paper long abstract:
Taking Winnicott's famous statement concerning ' the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet inter-related', as its starting point, this paper builds on ethnographic field research with trainee psychoanalysts and their clients in contemporary urban China to explore the dynamics of self-boundary making and maintenance today. I argue that attempts to demonstrate cultural sensitivity on the part of the European and North American analysts who provide training often backfire due to their appropriation of an essentialised vision of cultural difference. The psychoanalytic literature often veers between those who reject any discussion of 'culture' as a means by which patients avoid difficult material on the one hand and those who present a potentially Orientalist division, as can be seen in psychoanalytic writings that attempt to draw a distinction between 'the Chinese mind' and 'the Western mind'. Such polarisation is mirrored in the perspective of training analysts who veer between abstract self-critique as to whether or not their training is 'colonising the Chinese mind' and their discussion of specific case material that often pathologises Chinese trainee analysts and their patients from an orthodox analytic perspective in terms such as 'incomplete individuation/separation'. My discussions with Chinese trainees suggests that although they often use a 'China/West' dichotomy as a framing for understanding clinical work, they are more likely than their trainers to look at the boundary between self and other as a shifting a fluid process that is effected by other distinctions, such as inter-generational or class differences.
Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses the way anthropologists do their work and the similarities and resonances with the work of psychotherapists. Accepting a distinction between participant observation and ethnography this paper will discuss the affinity between anthropology and systemic psychotherapy.
Paper long abstract:
My title derives from the writings of Maurice Blanchot. Blanchot’s work influenced post-structuralist philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. I refer to his essay on Foucault entitled ‘Foucault as I imagine him’ (Blanchot 1987). In his own essay, in the same volume, Foucault shows his appreciation for Blanchot’s writing, and contrasts the interiority of saying ‘I speak’ with the exteriority of literature in which ‘the subject that speaks is less the responsible agent of a discourse…than a non-existence in whose emptiness the unending outpouring of language uninterruptedly continues’ (Foucault, 1987, p. 11). This is a thought which stands outside subjectivity ‘setting its limits as though from without’ (Foucault 1987, p.15). These ideas suggest that firstly thought is always enclosed within certain codes and structures that have historically constituted and delimited it, and secondly that the task and responsibility of thought is to attempt to reflect the outside of these structures, ‘the thinking in a new way’ rather than ‘legitimating what is already known’. I argue that this is where anthropology and the psychotherapy meet. Both anthropologists and psychotherapists work from inside the relation between themselves and people and things and both ought to keep an eye on colonizing processes. In this paper my emphasis will not be on psychoanalytic theory being put to use in anthropological interpretation, but on the affinity between anthropologists and psychotherapists in what we actually do and how we work. This is relevant to all of anthropology but perhaps particularly to how we teach.