Making Neoliberal Selves: Popular Psychology in Contemporary Mexico

Abstract

Since the 1970s, academic debates have considered how psychological discourses may legitimize or challenge capitalist forms of social organization. However, these debates have largely focused on the USA and Western Europe. The roles which psychological discourses play in contemporary popular cultures in Latin America remain poorly understood. Here, I use an analysis of the Mexican self-help publishing industry to examine the roles which psychological narratives may play in constructing, bolstering or subverting neoliberal subjectivities. Self-help books, my subject matter, are widely read in Mexico and at the international level. They therefore constitute a nexus through which the narratives of self and social relationships of academic psychology percolate into popular culture. In Mexico, self-help publishing involves, first, the translation and sale of texts written elsewhere, often in the USA, Europe and other Latin American nations, and, second, the sale of books by Mexican authors. This gives the Mexican self-help industry a distinctively hybrid character, as a variety of interpretations of self-improvement compete with each other for a readership. Here, I contrast self-help texts that blend psychological concepts with Christian nationalism with secular accounts that rely on pseudo-scientific and philosophical arguments to formulate a moral vision of a successful life. In spite of their narrative diversity, I argue that neoliberal understandings of self, choice, and personal responsibility are pervasive in self-help texts. The organization of the self-help publishing industry according to neoliberal economic principles and the refashioning of authors as competitive self-help entrepreneurs may explain this narrative convergence to some extent.