Since the beginnings of my career as a professional sociologist, I have been struck by the binding power which psychotherapy as acquired as a cultural idiom to make sense of who we are, how we create and develop social relationships with others, and how we respond to social problems. Around these concerns, I have built a long-term line of research that seeks to understand how psychotherapeutic discourses enter public life and become salient across a wide range of non-specialist institutional domains, how individuals use these discourses to make sense of everyday experiences and organise practice, and what political implications the psychologisation of social life might have. I am particularly interested in exploring these issues from a transnational perspective and in the Global South.
Around these issues, I have published widely, including several books, as well as numerous articles in international journals. Beyond my own publications, I also convene an interdisciplinary academic network of scholars with a shared interest in therapeutic cultures (see here). Moreover, I am an editor of the book series Therapeutic Cultures for Routledge (more here).
Around these issues, I have published widely, including several books, as well as numerous articles in international journals. Beyond my own publications, I also convene an interdisciplinary academic network of scholars with a shared interest in therapeutic cultures (see here). Moreover, I am an editor of the book series Therapeutic Cultures for Routledge (more here).
Some recent publications
The routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures
Nehring, D., Cabanas, E., Kerrigan, D., Madsen, O. J. and Mills, C. (eds.) (2020) The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures, Abingdon: Routledge.
The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures explores central lines of enquiry and seminal scholarship on therapeutic cultures, popular psychology, and the happiness industry. Bringing together studies of therapeutic cultures from sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, politics, law, history, social work, cultural studies, development studies, and American Indian studies, it adopts a consciously global focus, combining studies of the psychologisation of social life from across the world. Thematically organised, it offers historical accounts of the growing prominence of therapeutic discourses and practices in everyday life, before moving to consider the construction of self-identity in the context of the diffusion of therapeutic discourses in connection with the global spread of capitalism. With attention to the ways in which emotional language has brought new problematisations of the dichotomy between the normal and the pathological, as well as significant transformations of key institutions, such as work, family, education, and religion, it examines emergent trends in therapeutic culture and explores the manner in which the advent of new therapeutic technologies, the political interest in happiness, and the radical privatisation and financialisation of social life converge to remake self-identities and modes of everyday experience. Finally, the volume features the work of scholars who have foregrounded the historical and contemporary implication of psychotherapeutic practices in processes of globalisation and colonial and postcolonial modes of social organisation. Presenting agenda-setting research to encourage interdisciplinary and international dialogue and foster the development of a distinctive new field of social research, The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in the advance of therapeutic discourses and practices in an increasingly psychologised society. More about the book at Routledge, here. |
Therapeutic Worlds
Nehring, D. and Kerrigan, D. (2019), Therapeutic Worlds: Popular Psychology and the Social Organisation of Intimate Life, Abingdon: Routledge. Nominated for the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize (UK) 2020.
This book builds a fresh perspective on therapeutic narratives of intimate life. Focusing on the question of how popular psychology organises everyday experiences of intimacy, its argument is grounded in qualitative research in Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean. Against the backdrop of Trinidad’s colonial and postcolonial history, the authors map the development of therapeutic institutions and popular therapeutic practices and explore how transnationally mobile, commercial forms of popular psychology, mostly originating in the Global North, have taken root in Trinidadian society through online social networks, self-help books, and other media. In this sense, the book adds to social research on the transnational spread of a digital attention economy and its participation in the proliferation of popular psychological discourse. Drawing on in-depth interviews with self-help readers, the book considers how popular psychology organises their everyday experiences of intimate life. It argues that the proliferation of self-help media contributes to the psychologisation of intimate relationships and obscures the social dimensions of intimacy in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and other social structures and inequalities. At the same time, the book draws on anthropological arguments about the colonisation of consciousness in the Global South to interpret the insertion of transnationally mobile popular psychology into Trinidadian society. An innovative contribution to scholarship on therapeutic cultures, which explores the widely under-researched dissemination of popular psychology in the Global South, the book adds to a sociological understanding of the ways in which therapeutic narratives of self and intimate relationships come to be incorporated into everyday experience. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural studies, anthropology, and the sociology of gender, sexuality, families, and personal life. More about the book here. |
Transnational Popular Psychology and the Global Self-help industry
Nehring, D., Alvarado, E., Hendriks, E. and Kerrigan, D. (2016), Transnational Popular Psychology and the Global Self-Help Industry: The Politics of Contemporary Social Change, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Self-help books aim to empower their readers and deliver happiness and personal fulfilment but do they really live up to this? This book offers a fresh perspective on self-help culture and popular psychology. Research on this subject matter has generally focused on the USA and the Global Northwest. In contrast, this book explores the production, circulation and consumption of self-help books from an innovative transnational perspective. Case studies on Trinidad, Mexico, the People's Republic of China, the UK and the USA explore the roles which self-help's therapeutic narratives of self and social relationships play in the contemporary world. In this context, the book questions the extent to which self-help fulfils its promise of individual autonomy and contentment. At the same time, it addresses debates about contemporary political change under transnational processes of cultural standardization. More about the book here. |
Mindfulness and the psychological imagination
Nehring, D. and Frawley, A., (2020) ‘Mindfulness and the psychological imagination’, Sociology of Health and Illness (SSCI Q1), 42(5), pp.1184-1201, DOI:10.1111/1467-9566.13093. Impact factor 2.802
The article is available in open access here.
We analyse the rise of ‘mindfulness’ in English language media discourses and contextualise it in terms of its expression of a persistent underlying ‘psychological imagination’ in contemporary thinking about social problems. An inversion of C. Wright Mills’ much‐cited sociological imagination, the psychological imagination draws on medical‐scientific authority to treat social problems as private concerns rooted in individual biology, mentality and behaviour. We analyse the roles which academic claims‐making, commercial interests and mass mediatisation have played in the rise of mindfulness from the late 1970s onwards. We first map the translation of mindfulness from Buddhist philosophy into Western psychotherapy and popular psychology before considering its emergence and expression in the public sphere of news media claims‐making. We argue that where the sociological imagination ‘promised’ above all the treatment of private troubles as public issues and insights into the ‘human variety’ produced by myriad ways of living, the psychological imagination promises the isolation of public issues as private concerns rooted in individual biology, mentality and behaviour. The psychological imagination permeates the expression of mindfulness as a solution to social ills and symbolises the comparative decline of assumptions implicit in Mills’ 20th century rousing call to social scientists.
The article is available in open access here.
We analyse the rise of ‘mindfulness’ in English language media discourses and contextualise it in terms of its expression of a persistent underlying ‘psychological imagination’ in contemporary thinking about social problems. An inversion of C. Wright Mills’ much‐cited sociological imagination, the psychological imagination draws on medical‐scientific authority to treat social problems as private concerns rooted in individual biology, mentality and behaviour. We analyse the roles which academic claims‐making, commercial interests and mass mediatisation have played in the rise of mindfulness from the late 1970s onwards. We first map the translation of mindfulness from Buddhist philosophy into Western psychotherapy and popular psychology before considering its emergence and expression in the public sphere of news media claims‐making. We argue that where the sociological imagination ‘promised’ above all the treatment of private troubles as public issues and insights into the ‘human variety’ produced by myriad ways of living, the psychological imagination promises the isolation of public issues as private concerns rooted in individual biology, mentality and behaviour. The psychological imagination permeates the expression of mindfulness as a solution to social ills and symbolises the comparative decline of assumptions implicit in Mills’ 20th century rousing call to social scientists.
Thin selves: Popular psychology and the transnational moral grammar of self-identity in Trinidad
Nehring, D. and Kerrigan, D. (2018) ‘Thin selves: Popular psychology and the transnational moral grammar of self-identity in Trinidad‘, Consumption Markets & Culture (SSCI), 23(4), pp.319-341, DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2018.1516814. Impact factor 2.232
This article explores popular psychology as a transnational moral grammar. Academic debates have been sharply critical of popular psychology, and they have emphasised its association with neoliberal capitalism’s narratives of social relationships. However, scholarship on popular psychology has focused on the Global Northwest. The transnational diffusion of popular psychology remains poorly understood, as do its implications for experiences of self-identity in the Global South. This article conceptualises popular psychology as a moral grammar of transnational scale, whose diffusion is closely associated with the globalisation of neoliberal developmental models. Its argument is grounded in an analysis of the transnational market for self-help books. Drawing on publishing statistics, it documents the transnational circulation and consumption of self-help books. Through ethnographic research in Trinidad it then explores how some female readers in drawing on self-help books to account for their experiences of everyday life against the backdrop of neoliberal structural adjustment, personal insecurity and already existing local socio-cultural traditions of self-help instantiate a moral grammar of transnational popular psychology in potentially syncretic forms.
This article can be found online here.
This article explores popular psychology as a transnational moral grammar. Academic debates have been sharply critical of popular psychology, and they have emphasised its association with neoliberal capitalism’s narratives of social relationships. However, scholarship on popular psychology has focused on the Global Northwest. The transnational diffusion of popular psychology remains poorly understood, as do its implications for experiences of self-identity in the Global South. This article conceptualises popular psychology as a moral grammar of transnational scale, whose diffusion is closely associated with the globalisation of neoliberal developmental models. Its argument is grounded in an analysis of the transnational market for self-help books. Drawing on publishing statistics, it documents the transnational circulation and consumption of self-help books. Through ethnographic research in Trinidad it then explores how some female readers in drawing on self-help books to account for their experiences of everyday life against the backdrop of neoliberal structural adjustment, personal insecurity and already existing local socio-cultural traditions of self-help instantiate a moral grammar of transnational popular psychology in potentially syncretic forms.
This article can be found online here.
Therapeutic Politics Reconsidered
Nehring, D. and Kerrigan, D. (2022) ‘Therapeutic politics reconsidered: Power, post-colonialism and the psychologisation of society in the Global South’, International Sociology (SSCI), 37)3, pp.286-304, DOI: 10.1177/02685809221076266. Impact factor: 1.242
Available here.
Abstract
In this article, we critically interrogate the relationship between the post-political turn and
the psychologisation of social life. It has long been argued that psychologisation, in the form
the popularisation of psychotherapeutic discourses and practices and their usage across a
range of non-specialist institutional domains, contributes to de-politicisation and the current
crisis of democratic politics. However, the empirical basis for this argument remains narrow,
and there is a dearth of attendant research in the Global South. In response, we consider
how the psychologisation of society might intersect with its de-politicisation or, possibly,
with its re-politicisation, focusing on Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean. We do so
through a socio-historical analysis of the implication of psychotherapy in colonial and postcolonial
programmes of social control, and by exploring contemporary middle-class people’s
uses of popular psychotherapeutic discourses to account for everyday experiences of gender
and intimate life.
Available here.
Abstract
In this article, we critically interrogate the relationship between the post-political turn and
the psychologisation of social life. It has long been argued that psychologisation, in the form
the popularisation of psychotherapeutic discourses and practices and their usage across a
range of non-specialist institutional domains, contributes to de-politicisation and the current
crisis of democratic politics. However, the empirical basis for this argument remains narrow,
and there is a dearth of attendant research in the Global South. In response, we consider
how the psychologisation of society might intersect with its de-politicisation or, possibly,
with its re-politicisation, focusing on Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean. We do so
through a socio-historical analysis of the implication of psychotherapy in colonial and postcolonial
programmes of social control, and by exploring contemporary middle-class people’s
uses of popular psychotherapeutic discourses to account for everyday experiences of gender
and intimate life.
More on my research on therapeutic cultures
For more on my research and publications on therapeutic cultures, please take a look at my profiles on Google Scholar and Research Gate: