Therapeutic politics reconsidered: Power, post-colonialism and the psychologisation of society in the Global South

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 post-colonial 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.