“Languishing” in critical perspective: Roots and routes of a traveling concept in COVID-19 times

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic entered its second year, the New York Times published a column offering readers a name for its negative impact on mental health and well-being: “languishing.” Originally developed by positive psychologists, the term was designed to capture a sense of distress involving feelings of emptiness, stagnation, and lack of motivation that fall short of clinical significance. The column struck so strong a chord with readers that it was designated the most-read NY Times story of 2021. In this article, I examine how the concept of “languishing” traveled into U.S. popular discourse and consider the term’s emerging cultural valences and interpretive dynamics. I also examine key gaps and discrepancies between operationalized and vernacular usages of the term. Analysis focuses on a set of weekly journals created as part of the Pandemic Journaling Project, an online journaling platform and research study launched in May 2020. The journals show how a “psy” concept, once unmoored from its origins as a research construct, can become (re)invented as a cultural resource available to help people narrativize distress and, in some cases, name and confront injustice. Yet the popular appeal of “languishing” also raises urgent questions—in particular, about the growing role of positive psychology in both public and policy discussions about health and well-being. The field’s emphasis on individual-level behavior change tends to neglect the structural factors, ideological contexts, and relations of power that predispose some people to languish, and others to flourish, in the first place. While the language of “languishing” may prove helpful to some, its individual-level focus risks distracting us from another urgent need: to confront the root causes of today's profound and wide-reaching mental health burden—a burden that may not have been precipitated, but certainly has been exacerbated, by the ongoing pandemic.